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

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adghar wrote:

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%

at the very least this was a great help to me, definitely helped me wrap my head around some of the similar-yet-different terms for leech.

now to figure out the difference between "increased X" and "more X"...

Ok so time and amount. That seems to be the basic calculation.

6% Main hand life leech from physical attacks affects the amount of life I'll get back with the max cap being 20% of my total life.

50% Life leech rate modifier affects the amount of time it takes to get the 6% life leeched back.

What I'm still not clear on is how they interact with each other in terms of multiple hits and stacking.

If I do 10k dmg at 6% life leech then I would assume I get back 600 life a second per hit?

What happens if I hit 4 mobs though? Do I now get back 2400 life a second? And then it keeps going up till I reach what would equal 20% of my life per second?

Or do I get back 600 life a second 4 times with them queued up so the end result is I get 4 seconds of life regen at 600 per second? And then if I increase the life leech rate modifier to 100% does that mean I would now get 1200 life a second over 2 seconds or would it perhaps even be 1200 over 4 seconds?

The last one makes much more sense given how in no way does it look like my health bar is getting 2400 life a second even if I hit 10 mobs.

Assuming the 4 seconds at 600 and 2 seconds at 1200 is right is there a cap on the life leech rate modifier? Can I have it go passed 100% to say like 150% or 200%?

Or am I still a nub and haven't grasped it at all?

.

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Entropic_Fire wrote:

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adghar wrote:

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%

Isn't 10% increased maximum life leech rate additive with the base 20% for a cap of 30% total life leeched/s?

No. I think you're thinking of "+10% of maximum life per second to maximum life leech rate"

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Entropic_Fire wrote:

Isn't 10% increased maximum life leech rate additive with the base 20% for a cap of 30% total life leeched/s?

No, increased is only additive with increased. The mod you are thinking of would have to be phrased either as:

"10% additional maximum Life Leech Rate"
or
"+10% maximum Life Leech Rate"

This is somewhat similar to the issue people had with increased critical strike multiplier, where people would gain 10% increased critical strike multiplier, see 150% go to 165%, and be confused.

A common mistake is equating dps with damage. A while ago that might have been okay. Not anymore...

Let's keep things at default values for simplicity first.

No matter how much your leech amount is, each Leech Effect (i.e. each Hit) will only occur at one speed: 2% of your maximum Life.

This means if you have 4,000 maximum Life and deal 999,999,999 damage in one Hit, you will begin to leech at the rate of 80 Life per Second. Hit is measured per enemy, so if you use your Skill once and Hit two enemies, you gain 2 Leech Effects which stack and let you recover a total of 160 Life per Second.

If you use the skill again, it would stack to 2 leech effects in the case of 1 enemy or 4 leech effects in the case of 2 enemies. That would be 160/s or 320/s. On the 3rd skill use, 240/s or 480/s.

The leech effects continue to stack up until you have 800/s (10 Leech effects) at which point you stop gaining leech effects.

Note that by default, all Leech Effects are removed once you reach Full life. You need to be a Slayer with Endless Hunger allocated if you need Leech Effects to persist after reaching Full Life.

It becomes more complicated of course when you aren't dealing with near infinite damage. Let's take it to the opposite extreme.

Suppose you have 2% leech, 4,000 life and deal 4,000 damage per hit, at the rate of 1 attack per second. You deal one Hit, which gives you the leech amount of 80. Like with the 999,999,999 example, no matter what, each Leech Effect occurs at the rate of 80/s. So, this leech effect will occur at 80/s, but when will it end? Well, we said the amount was 80, so, it should end after 1 second.

This means that, against a single target, you'd only ever recover 2% or 80/s. Because the next time you attack, the first leech effect will wear off, and you'll just replace it with a new one. Against 2 targets you could get 4% at once, or 160/s, which is made of two 80/s effects that each expire in 1 second. So if you just hit once vs two enemies, you'd recover 160/s for 1 second and then stop.

You can see that at such low leech, damage, and target values maximum Leech rate is useless. As you get higher DPS higher Leech Amount, and increased Targets, it's more likely your maximum Leech Rate will become important. For example, with the 4,000 damage Hit example, you would hit the cap if you were hitting 20 enemies in a single blow; increasing maximum leech rate would allow you to get more leech from the 21st enemy.

EDIT: That is, 21st enemy in 1 blow.

Now the tricky part... suppose you deal 8,000 damage in one Hit instead (still 4,000 max Life and 2% leech amount). Like with 999,999,999 and 4,000 your leech occurs at 80/s. The only thing that going to 8,000 damage does is change when the leech effect wears off. 2% of 8,000 is 160. If the rate is 80/s, how long does it take to reach 160? That's right, 2 seconds. So your leech effect lasts 2 seconds.

This means that against a single target, while you still have 1 attack per second, you can recover 4% (160/s) against the boss in a sustained fight. The first second you recover at 2%, the second second you reach 4%, the third second the first effect runs out but you replace it right away so you stay at 4%. This is what I mean by acceleration.

That should be enough to improve your understanding a lot, but if you're hungry for more math, consider what happens with a Hit of 2,000. The amount is only 40, but the rate is 80/s. What does that mean? Easy. The leech effect lasts 0.5 second, or half a second.

What about if you go back to 4,000 damage per hit, but attack 2 times per second? This is similar to dealing 8,000 damage per hit. You hit once to start a 2% or 80/s effect, ending in 1 second. At 0.5 second you hit again, stacking a second leech effect, and so you've reached 4% or 160/s. At 1 second, your first effect fades, but is replaced by your next hit, keeping you at sustained 4% or 160/s assuming you continue to Hit.

What happens when you increase leech amount? Keep calm and look at the 8,000 damage example. A higher Leech Amount just means your leech effects last longer.

4,000 Life, 4,000 Damage in one Hit, 1 attack per second. But this time you have 6% of Damage leeched as Life. This means each Leech Effect has 240 amount leeched. As always, leech occurs at 80/s. How many seconds does it take to reach 240 amount at 80/s? 3 seconds. So each of your leech effects last 3 seconds. If you attack once per second, and fight 1 target, you can "accelerate" up to 240/s made of three 80/s effects. In second 1, you leech 2% or 80/s. In second 2, you leech 4% or 160/s. In second 3, you leech 6% or 240/s, and your first leech effect expires at the end of that second, just as you replace it with a new one.

Suppose you are fighting 4 targets with the info from previous paragraph. In second 1, you leech 8% or 320/s, in second 2, 16% or 640/s, but what happens in second 3? You hit the leech cap of 20% or 800/s, which means some of your leech was "wasted."

EDIT: That is, if you continue the pattern, you would have reached 24% or 960/s. You could only do that with +4% max leech rate and/or 20% increased max leech rate.

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Notice how universal that 80/s was. The only way to change that is with increased life leech rate or increasing your maximum Life; if you had 5,000 max Life instead of 4,000 your rate per leech effect would be 100/s.

EDIT: You could also reach rate per leech of 100/s by keeping 4,000 maximum Life but getting 25% increased leech rate instead.

By default, this means you can have max 10 Leech effecs at a time, but if you increase rate without increasing maximum, this goes down. For example if you had 100% increased leech rate with no maximum leech rate increases, each effect is twice as fast, so it takes half the amount to reach the cap (5 leech effects; 5 × 2 × 2% = 20%, the default cap).

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My bad, didn't realize I gave a nonexistent mechanic as an example. Made more sense for it to be increased, since leech rate is increased instead of additional.

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adghar wrote:

A common mistake is equating dps with damage. A while ago that might have been okay. Not anymore...

Not going to spam it all again but wanted to put a reference first...

By golly i think i actually understood that!

I would just like to check to make sure and ask a couple of specific questions mostly based around translation to in-game stats.

So...

Life leech rate modifier. That's the stat in my char window i currently believe is the stat your talking about at this part of your explanation?:

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adghar wrote:

Notice how universal that 80/s was. The only way to change that is with increased life leech rate

If we stuck with it being 80/s because of the 4k life then making Life leech rate modifier go up to 100% would make the leech rate become 160/s i assume/hope?

Expanding upon that assumption:
Taking the 'Lust for Carnage' big skill point thing gives me 1.2% of physical attack damage leeched as life and 20% Increased life leeched per second.

Ignoring the 1.2% for the moment am i right in thinking the 20% Increased life leeched per second will make the Life leech rate modifier go up in my char window AND more importantly also increase the 80/s to something more as a result? (Depending on what the Life leech rate modifier stat changes too once the 20% is applied)

If this is the case i shall re-ask a previous question of if it is possible to make my Life leech rate modifier stat in my char window go passed 100% to say 120% or 150% AND more importantly have an effect on the 80/s? Example would be if i have it at 100% the 80/s becomes 160/s and if i could get it to 200% it would become 240? Or is 100% the limit?

Similarly if i was take the big skill point thing called 'Hematophagy' part of its stats include +5% of maximum life per second to maximum life leech rate. Is this something that would increase this part of your explanation?:

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adghar wrote:

EDIT: That is, if you continue the pattern, you would have reached 24% or 960/s. You could only do that with +4% max leech rate and/or 20% increased max leech rate.