Failing to understand life leech and how to get more life per hit faster.

Hi,
I've tried to follow explanations on the forums or wiki about life leech but it just does my head in so I thought I'd try asking the questions I have and seeing if some kind soul can give an explanation I can understand.

The main question I have is if am I wasting time and money on trying to get my life leech from physical attacks up because it don't feel like it's doing much despite how hard I've worked to get it up from 2% to 6%.

What's confusing me a lot is when people talk about a leech rate cap at 20%. Is that not what the life leach rate modifier is? In which case why can I get it to go higher than 20% in my char panel? Also is it 20% of the life I see above my red orb on screen or some hidden base life number?

I'm sure its going to be obvious but what i want to know is how to get more life from mobs quicker so I die less. Am I better off with life on hit than leech once I reach a certain point? If I already have Main hand life leach from physical attacks at 6% is it worthwhile to use the life leech gem with my main attack or will it not have much effect compared to putting in a gem that just gives me more straight forward damage? If I can only ever regenerate 20% of my life per second is it better to put the skill points into getting more life and leaving the Main hand life leach from physical attacks at 2 or 3%?

I'm finding it so hard to tell since the game gives me little to no indication about what's really going on so I can actually see what I'm better off doing.

Let's say I've got 7k health and have 10k dps with double strike. I also have Main hand life leach from physical attacks at 6% and life leach rate modifier at 50%.

What do I need to do so for example say instead of me hitting 10 mobs and getting back 100 life over 5 seconds I get back 110, 120, 130 etc over 4, 3, 2 seconds etc?

I've looked at vaal pact but it's on the other side of the skill point map to me with no chance of me spending that many regrets to even consider getting to it. Something I'm also not clear about is if I was to take vaal pact wouldn't I still be limited by this 20% cap? So if I gain 100 life over 5 seconds all the vaal pact does is remove the 5 seconds where as what I want to know is how I increase the 100 life part as well and more importantly if there isn't something else I could that would be better like having some life on hit stuff instead.

Sometimes it looks like my life leech is working and then other times its like someone threw a load of snails at it and I see a feint red background bar going up but it takes ages for my actual health bar to match it.

It's all so F'ing confusing!

I just want to know the best way for me to get more life per hit with less delay. Focusing on increasing my Main hand life leach from physical attacks doesn't seem to be working all that well once I got it to about 4% and now I'm left confused and wondering if I would have been better off doing something else instead like going for life on hit. Least that seems more straight forward. You hit something, it gives you life back. No percents of this and caps of that or rates instead of actual leeching of life to work out.

Sorry for the partial rant but I don't like having try and get my head round needless convoluted maths in order to try and play a game. I want to play the game not fail to work things out on a calculator for half the night.

What build is this for? how much damage do you do?

Life leech mechanics without instant leech through legacy vintkar's, VP or acuity is not really very powerful because of the life leech rate cap. It's not worth trying to optimize LL, just grab one of the 3 above and win the game.

Instant leech is nearly mandatory for builds trying to reach 95+ and dont have some kind perma immortal method.

"

Nephalim wrote:

What build is this for? how much damage do you do?

Life leech mechanics without instant leech through legacy vintkar's, VP or acuity is not really very powerful because of the life leech rate cap. It's not worth trying to optimize LL, just grab one of the 3 above and win the game.

Instant leech is nearly mandatory for builds trying to reach 95+ and dont have some kind perma immortal method.

Untrue. The Duelist Slayer can triple his leech rate. There are also avoidance options that allow you to skip VP and other methods of instant leech.

As to the OP, you can understand leech by seeing it as a flask. Leech can either apply instantly or over time.

If it applies over time, you can increase the rate by either "x% of life added to maximum leech rate". Think of this as a "flat physical damage" mod on a weapon. It is the basis of your leech rate. You are normally limited to 20% of your life per second. The other type of increase is "x% increased leech rate", think of this as "percentage increased physical damage".

20% of life added to maximum leech rate would be equivalent to 100% increased leech rate. Your base leech cap is 20% of life/mana, so adding another 20% is an increase of 100%.

This is where you determine whether or not you have sufficient leech rate to survive. The Slayer adds 10% of life to leech rate and gets 100% increased, so his leech cap is 60% of his life per second. This is a HUGE difference.

If you deal 10k DPS and leech 6%, you would have to deal 20k DPS in order to leech the same amount with 3% leech. In order for you to drop leech amount, your DPS must go up. If your DPS goes down, you must increase leech amount. 6% of 10k is not that much. So keep this in mind when deciding to alter your leech amount, especially by dropping a leech support for a damage support.

Hey, thanks for the reply.

I'm a juggernaut marauder and my tool tip says my double strike does 10,295.1 dps.

From what you're saying it seems like your advice is that vaal pact is mandatory otherwise without it life leech is crap and reaching higher levels without life leech is ill advised?
Can I not switch to life on hit or is that even worse than having no vaal pact?

"

d4rk5oul wrote:

Hey, thanks for the reply.

I'm a juggernaut marauder and my tool tip says my double strike does 10,295.1 dps.

From what you're saying it seems like your advice is that vaal pact is mandatory otherwise without it life leech is crap and reaching higher levels without life leech is ill advised?
Can I not switch to life on hit or is that even worse than having no vaal pact?

Would be easier to feedback if we can see your character on your profile. Are you running armor? Are you stacking high amounts of endurance charges? Do you have fortify up? Those would be the 3 main selling points of a juggernaut, in which case your defensive focus would rather be more on damage reduction and regen instead of trying to rely on life leech.

If you do want to use life leech though, vaal pact is for instant leech, the main point of instant leech being that if you get smacked for 80% of your life bar, you can heal back up instantly if you have enough leech and dps, instead of waiting for the leech to kick in over 1-4 seconds. This is generally significantly more useful than sustained leech, but it's not to say that life leech is crap without it.

Regardless, in general you probably do not want to waste a LL or LGOH slot on your main damage skill, could consider running blasphemy + warlords mark instead, or picking up the leech nodes on the tree.

"

Untrue. The Duelist Slayer can triple his leech rate. There are also avoidance options that allow you to skip VP and other methods of instant leech.

As to the OP, you can understand leech by seeing it as a flask. Leech can either apply instantly or over time.

If it applies over time, you can increase the rate by either "x% of life added to maximum leech rate". Think of this as a "flat physical damage" mod on a weapon. It is the basis of your leech rate. You are normally limited to 20% of your life per second. The other type of increase is "x% increased leech rate", think of this as "percentage increased physical damage".

20% of life added to maximum leech rate would be equivalent to 100% increased leech rate. Your base leech cap is 20% of life/mana, so adding another 20% is an increase of 100%.

This is where you determine whether or not you have sufficient leech rate to survive. The Slayer adds 10% of life to leech rate and gets 100% increased, so his leech cap is 60% of his life per second. This is a HUGE difference.

If you deal 10k DPS and leech 6%, you would have to deal 20k DPS in order to leech the same amount with 3% leech. In order for you to drop leech amount, your DPS must go up. If your DPS goes down, you must increase leech amount. 6% of 10k is not that much. So keep this in mind when deciding to alter your leech amount, especially by dropping a leech support for a damage support.

:( the only part i think i grasped fully was the last bit.

What's a slayer? I thought it might one of the big skill points but i cant see one called that.

Increasing dmg to compensate for leech i think i understand. I'm still not sure about the rest of it though. However i think after reading what you just said i might have gained a little bit more insight.

If i understand it correctly there some sort of delay to the amount of life i leech. Meaning if i leech 600 life per hit from 10k @ 6% the 20% cap stops me from actually getting 600 life back till a number of seconds have gone by even if i keep hitting stuff my life isn't going to go up any faster only the time i'll be leeching the life for will?

If that is true then what can i do to get more life quicker? Making my leech go up from 6% to 7% doesn't seem like it will do anything except add on more time to the delay i'll be leeching back the life when what i really need is more life per second returning to me right then and there. What stat do i need to get to do that? Is it the life leach rate modifier?

"

LightningStars wrote:

Would be easier to feedback if we can see your character on your profile.

How would i go about making that happen?

"

Vipermagi wrote:

Natharias, you're misunderstanding what Increased Leech Rate does.

By default, each Hit Leeches 2% of Max Life per Second. This stacks up to a maximum of 20%.
Increased Leech Rate applies to the 2%. It does not affect duration, however*.
Increased Maximum Leech applies to the 20%.


* = 5k Life, 1000 Damage, 10% Leech.
Default Leech rate: 5000 * 0.02 = 100 Life/sec
Hit Leeches 100 Life: 100/100 = 1 sec duration

Adding in 100% Increased Leech Rate would increase the 100 Life Leech/sec to 200/s, but it would keep the original 1 second duration. This means you need fewer Hits to reach the Max Leech Rate.

I think what might be tripping me up is what things translate too in game.

0.4% of physical attack damage leeched when applied to what you've just said above suggests to me it increases the 2% or what would be on my char list the stat of Main hand life leech from physical attacks?

When something says 36% life leeched per second it increases the life leech rate modifier stat in my char window. Is this what you call above the Increased leech rate? Meaning it takes the 2 divides it by 100 times it by 36 to give 0.72 and now a total of 2.7% Main hand life leech rate from physical attacks?

Or maybe looking at the calcs you did it takes the actual life gained after the 2% is done of say 100 and then increases it by 100% to give the 200 you showed above?

I think Increased maximum leech I get. If the cap is 20% it makes it so that 2% we've been talking about can go up to 21, 22, 23% etc?

Slayer is a Duelist ascendancy.

I haven't read the thread in super detail but I think I've read enough to know that people have been taking a numbers approach so far. I think I want to try an explanation that limits numbers.

Like Natharias alluded to, leech happens over time by default.

"X% of damage leeched as Life" is principally an amount. it's some value that will be given to you over time like a life flask amount or a yearly salary distributed as paychecks.

"Life leech rate" is just that, a rate. It is the speed of your recovery.

Life Leech effects can stack, which means you will likely notice your life leech accelerating as you fight. Each time you Hit, you're stacking 1 leech effect on the enemy, and each 1 effect occurs at the life leech rate.

So, in sustained combat, the life leech rates will just add up and add up.

"Maximum life leech rate" sets a cap or speed limit on your leech, assuming the leech effects last long enough to reach that cap.

With that I would HOPE the numbers fall in place. 50% increased life leech rate would turn the rate from 2% to 3%, 10% increased maximum life leech rate would raise the speed limit from 20% to 22%