[feedback] Mana leech in the passive tree

Please enable it to function with all forms of damage.

Spells/attacks/elemental/physical etc.

It's quite obnoxious at this point that not a single bone was thrown at elemental melee builds. Hell they have been further nerfed with the ailment status change and with adding fortify to the game(that does nothing for them if linked to the main skill)

I would go as far as to give life leech the same treatment, but perhaps a distinction between mana and life leech is healthy.

But please, make this distinction.

Peace,

-Boem-

Fortify helps elemental melee builds that scale off physical damage, i.e. it will buff
physical to lightning, added fire, converted WED, glacial hammer/ice crash/infernal blow/lightning strike/molten strike/static strike/frost blades/wild strike, + hatred.

Builds like that which still need to leech generally drop below 100% physical conversion (and probably swap WED with melee physical damage).

Most elemental melee builds utilize converted damage. The pure elemental attack melee skills are... elemental hit? Is that it?

Remaining options would come from purely elemental weapons, like tri added damage rares, hyaon's fury or oro's sacrifice. Perhaps GGG should look at building elemental leech directly into the pure elemental weapons (as well as elemental hit). Alternatively, or in addition, they could add a sword base with an intrinsic for elemental attack damage leech (maybe one for life, and one for mana). They sort of went in that direction already, with Gemini claws.

Pure elemental weapons tend to be quite cheap and it's not a bad option to corrupt elemental life leech onto one (assuming BM). A new vaal corruption for elemental mana leech would be nice. They could also buff the life/mana leech gems, to make them a little more appealing (maybe just mana leech; throw a defensive trigger onto it (perhaps a mind over matter effect) or just give it a small buff to elemental damage).

Or, we can all just stick with the current meta of elreon jewelry for sustain, or blood dance regen (+BM or +ZO/EB) for sustain, or elreon jewelry + blood dance + super high hp/ES pool for defense + skill sustain + effective health sustain. Seems to be the way to go, for nearly every build, post awakening.

Uhm i am talking about pure elemental builds where 95% or more of the damage is elemental.

Most of the things you listed start of with physical scaling and then convert all of that. Which get's massively boosted by the passive tree.(physical oriented nodes still apply)

A pure elemental user, like an elemental cleave or elemental spectral throw, hyaons, oro's and dyadus are left in the cold.

They can't scale damage like a physical user now-a-days because of power-creep. They don't get any benefit from fortify other then it's base defensive effect and they are extremely limited in ways to sustain themselves.

Further more, status ailments where reworked to nerf critical hits from the physical converters you mentioned.

As a result, pure elemental users got kicked down again.

Allowing mana and perhaps even life leech in the passive tree to simply apply to "melee attack damage" would be a major boon and might even encourage the utility of these clusters.

To put it bluntly, a build that scales everything with physical oriented nodes and gimmicks only to convert it to elemental is not a pure elemental build, it's a gimmick that the game allows simply because they are the best options to further improve overall damage out-put.(this is my own opinion though, feel free to disagree since they do in fact have a large portion of elemental damage, sadly)

Peace,

-Boem-

Did you write that after only reading the first 2 paragraphs? Can't help but get that impression, since the bulk of my post actually gave feedback for the "pure" elemental builds you spoke of (hyaons, oro's, etc). But I only did that after mentioning that the most common elemental melee builds use converted damage.

:)

I suspect GGG reads through the forums in a similar fashion. I need make my suggestions more skim-proof.

"

Vhlad wrote:

Did you write that after only reading the first 2 paragraphs? Can't help but get that impression, since the bulk of my post actually gave feedback for the "pure" elemental builds you spoke of (hyaons, oro's, etc). But I only did that after mentioning that the most common elemental melee builds use converted damage.

:)

I suspect GGG reads through the forums in a similar fashion. I need make my suggestions more skim-proof.

Nope i read it all, it was simply irrelevant or warrants it's own thread.

Your stating pure elemental users should be gimped further by

1) sacrificing their implicit on a % wealth gated vaal corruption
2) sacrificing their implicit for a small % leech, which knowing GGG and the current mechanic would be roughly 0.2% to 0.4% tops?
3) changing elemental unique's, creating legacy versions, something GGG is not keen on doing at any time.

Simply put, you post a bunch of suggestions that are irrelevant to the one i am suggesting, thus i can discard them no?

Irrelevant of that notion, i think they are poor suggestions. Taking "elemental weapons are cheap" as a premise is flawed, since they are cheap because of the things i stated in the OP and the current meta. Prices should not dictate a design change to a core functionality or a lack there off.

So yes, it was just an impression on your part.

Peace,

-Boem-

I wasn't disagreeing with you, Boem. Mana leech in the passive tree for elemental skills could be nice. Casters would love it too but I suspect GGG's intent is to keep mana sustain for spells and non-attacks as something that requires extra attention in a build, so if a change was made it would likely be to include melee/ranged elemental attacks only.

Rather than just saying yay and focusing on skill tree changes, there are alternatives for elemental attack sustain. If we want to stop reinforcing the current meta of elreon or blood dance (+bm or +zo/eb) dominance, players need more passive sustain options (or better active sustain options).

For GGG, here are some options:
1. A vaal corruption for elemental mana leech (attacks only if you prefer)
2. New weapon implicits for % elemental attack damage leeched as mana
3. Buffing the small number of purely elemental unique weapons (oro's, hyaon's, dyadus) to leech elemental or provide skill cost reductions
4. Buffing the mana leech gem (adding a defensive buff to it or adding some bonus to it, such as +% elemental damage, or changing the quality bonus to 0.5% elemental penetration).
5. A unique flask that provides mana sustain over a reliable duration, and/or that has something appealing beyond mana recovery.

I disagree that alternative suggestions are irrelevant to your thread (that seems narrow minded), as fundamentally this is a discussion of sustain. You have to evaluate current and alternative sustain options to determine whether a particular suggested change is comparatively effective.

New implicits don't gimp builds, either. A vaal corruption for elemental attack mana leech does not sacrifice much, nor does an eventual new weapon class with new implicits (as I said, they went in that direction already with Gemini claws). Sacrificing a current implicit on a weapon for elemental attack mana leech would be less of a sacrifice than the passive points spent on getting to and taking a new leech cluster.

With respect to skill tree changes: the current mana leech clusters are exclusive to the ranger and duelist quadrant. Simply buffing them to function with all forms of damage wouldn't reliably open up sustain options for all elemental attackers (i.e. crit vs RT, dual wield vs 2H vs shield, claw vs dagger vs sword vs axe vs hammer vs staff vs wand vs bow). GGG would have to scatter a bunch of mana leech clusters around in more places, or just say too bad to the elemental attack builds that utilize the other side of the passive tree.

So, while your suggestion may be nice for some elemental attack builds (heck my ranger would love it), adding more sustain options outside of the skill tree (and beyond a single quadrant at that) can potentially benefit more players.

I don't disagree that proper elemental melee builds are in a pretty weak spot right now, but I'd rather see something more clever than just "give elemental the same perks as physical". That's just a lazy, homogeneous solution.

I'm not entirely sure what I'd call a clever solution, but pondering it for a while would probably be helpful. Shock stacks (when they actually stacked) was a neat elemental perk, for example. But the game was also much simpler, old shock stacks would just be abused by phys builds nowadays. That's probably one of the biggest challenges in balancing for GGG; they've added so many different ways to convert damage and trigger skills and etc that they're walking on egg shells whenever they want to add something remotely bold

Mana management problem for ATTACK builds? There are none since +2 mana on hit jewels and several +mana on hit passives.

Several being 2?

And melee elemental attack based builds who are notorious for capping at 5 attacks per second and upwards?

Yeah, no.

@JahIthBer89

I'd rather have functional elemental attacking builds then the completely lack-luster state they are in currently. They got devoid of almost any benefits in the last year, mainly because of physical builds scaling elemental heavier in crit cases compared to non-crit ele builds.

And then they released physical to lightning, aaaah....

So while i agree with you that's it's a cop-out of some sorts, i'd rather have that and hold the innovative stuff for after they are functional at a reasonable power level again.

So i don't disagree with you, but i still think it's worth the change for the current game state.

Peace,

-Boem-

"

Boem wrote:

It's quite obnoxious at this point that not a single bone was thrown at elemental melee builds. Hell they have been further nerfed...

Yeah, for example this char looks completely unplayable weak for his godlike gear and level. ;o)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JH8wZ-wsqsw