One of major problems of the game - life leech

I think instant leech has been covered enough. I'd like to discuss non-instant leech.

As implemented in PoE, non-instant leech isn't even really leech. You could replace it across the board with "regenerate x% of your maximum Life per second if you've Hit recently" (and "x% increased Life Regeneration if you've Hit recently") and no one would really notice. It's taken utterly for granted that rate cap, not DPS, will be the limiting factor.

If non-instant leech was not actually conditional % life regen in disguise, it would be just about as problematic as non-instant leech. The appeal of instant leech isn't actually the instant part, it's the ratecap-busting part.

Leech - true leech - is a pretty problematic mechanic overall. It allows offense to double as defense and skews everything towards the aforementioned sponge gameplay where OHKOs are the only viable enemy strategy. I don't know if I'd go so far as saying it has no place in ARPGs, but that place needs to be so tightly controlled as to make it niche - definitely not a gear affix, definitely not a support gem. Maybe only on certain active skills, which are deliberately designed to be ass otherwise; think Glacial Hammer.

"Regenerate x% of maximum Life if you've ______ed recently," though, is okay. So non-instant [DrEvil]"leech,"[/DrEvil] as it's in the game currently, is [DrEvil]"okay."[/DrEvil] Misleading as fuck in wording, but okay in practice.

the logic of 'there is only one build right now that can reach N now therefore its the build problem and not the mechanic problem' is leaving me utterly speechless.

todays its BV and vinktars
tomorrow its something else

the fuck is the difference ? instant leech is broken in this game for large enough N. we are starting to hit that N. when average damage in the game was like 1/100th of N, we could afford to be ostriches and stick our heads in the dirt and pretend the problem doesn't exist. now we cannot.

and honestly, its not the build, really. didnt ino facetank shaper with WI leeching back every time ? not even close damage to BV and without vinktars, and it still works. doesnt quite leech 15k per cast but still works.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

I think instant leech has been covered enough. I'd like to discuss non-instant leech.

As implemented in PoE, non-instant leech isn't even really leech. You could replace it across the board with "regenerate x% of your maximum Life per second if you've Hit recently" (and "x% increased Life Regeneration if you've Hit recently") and no one would really notice. It's taken utterly for granted that rate cap, not DPS, will be the limiting factor.

If non-instant leech was not actually conditional % life regen in disguise, it would be just about as problematic as non-instant leech. The appeal of instant leech isn't actually the instant part, it's the ratecap-busting part.

I fully agree here. non-instant leech IS regen. I actually said as much in this thread (I believe its this thread). 20% life regen without taking into account conditionals/mods/etc is the same as life leech provided you're hitting at least once per second.

the more conventional regen is considered useless outside of the lab, the more useless non-insta leech is.

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

Ok, you got a character who can trivialise non boss content with leech, I believe it, so do I, so do many ppl I know, wouldnt even dream of disputing a claim like that. But I also have chars who trivialise it with armour+evasion by taking virtually no damage at all through 99% of the game, ones that do it via regens, evasion acro coilers, builds doing it off evasion + es recharge, aegis spell blockers, all manner of shit. Everyone and their dog with a decent endgame build using any of the main forms of defense can trivialise non boss content right now.

Totem users for the most dont get any leech, your build doing something that no totem character can possibly do? Trappers? Miners? I feel that if you showed me a video of what content your build can do with vp we could go and find 20 non vp builds that could comfortably do the same thing.

Okay, let's put it like this: Because the attack isn't stunning me and because it isn't one-hit-KOing me, I can stand in the spectral wolf attacks of two T15 Dark Forest Rigwalds, outleeching the damage, with 4.7k HP. My 11k ES Bladefall Miner (not a slouchy build by any means, used to kill Uber with zero problems, also has tri-curse empowered Blasphemy including Temp Chains and Enfeeble) has problems with a single one of those bosses. Certainly I cannot facetank them.

Now, which other characters do you know that can park in a dual spectral wolf attack of two T15 Rigwalds? I would think that an Aegis blocker could do it, given that it is not DOT.. Anything else?

I dont consider regen useless, its been great since forever imo. I remember when regen was 'broken' because high es zealots tanks were in the spotlight, about 6 months ago armour was too op and needed nerfed, right now its vp. Heres the reality, not much has changed for armour, evasion, es or regen since 1.0, theyre all good and as good as theyve ever been, and leech is probably worse now overall than it has been with instant leech escaping some of that recent nerf obviously. This is not what i read tho, you lot flip flop from X is op and needs nerfed to X is now shit and this other thing is too op and then its something else and really nothing changes but what build is in the spotlight at the time, you get yourselves all hyped up, I dont rly buy most of it. Ya we do 5x as much damage as we did 2 years ago, and the leech % values are like 5x lower than they were 2 years ago... non instant leech got capped, instant leech didnt, and having no regen to counter bloodrage is now a much, much bigger deal that it was before.

If BV and Vink were not in the game none of you would be talking about vp imo.

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Char1983 wrote:

Okay, let's put it like this: Because the attack isn't stunning me and because it isn't one-hit-KOing me, I can stand in the spectral wolf attacks of two T15 Dark Forest Rigwalds, outleeching the damage, with 4.7k HP. My 11k ES Bladefall Miner (not a slouchy build by any means, used to kill Uber with zero problems, also has tri-curse empowered Blasphemy including Temp Chains and Enfeeble) has problems with a single one of those bosses. Certainly I cannot facetank them.

Now, which other characters do you know that can park in a dual spectral wolf attack of two T15 Rigwalds? I would think that an Aegis blocker could do it, given that it is not DOT.. Anything else?

Ok so I went and bought a dark forest to try it out. Im not sure what the spectral wolves are, if thats the barrage of black wolf things he fires or the little individual wolves that get summoned, but I went in with an armour + evasion marauder and neither of those things did any real damage to me at all. There were times when I just stood there and took the barrage thing to the face without moving and i might have lost about 500 life by the end of it, sometimes it did literally nothing. The corrupting blood that wolf form he turns into put on me was fairly severe, even just 2 stacks of it was enough that I felt the need to purge it with a life flask, but that was the only reason I used a life flask through the fight. I didnt bother activating fortify, blinding him or using my taste of hate/granite of iron skin at all during the fight and it was still completely trivial, I could just facetank through everything but the corrupting blood without using anything more than endurance charges and my base defenses.

Id have to try it out but Im fairly certain an aegis blocker could afk it, a self bone offering necro blocker could afk it, a block + regen char could afk it, the armour + evasion build I used didnt rly take any damage, when attacking back I would say a lot of decent melee builds could just leech or loh through it without vaal pact. A regen tank like the dyness style builds could afk that easy. So yeah, block, armour, evasion, regen, loh and normal leech can probably handle it when done right along with ur instant leecher and the one thats going to have a problem is a pure es build with none of the above going on, I can see why that sort of build would suffer. Word on the street is that pure es builds are op as fk right now tho so Im not sure we should be shedding any tears for them.

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grepman wrote:

the logic of 'there is only one build right now that can reach N now therefore its the build problem and not the mechanic problem' is leaving me utterly speechless.

todays its BV and vinktars
tomorrow its something else

the fuck is the difference ? instant leech is broken in this game for large enough N. we are starting to hit that N.

the factors are the damage and the amount of leech you have. If you cut our damage in half thats the same as cutting the amount of leech we have in half which is the same as putting a 50% effectiveness on vp. We are starting to hit that N thanks to a skill having double, maybe triple the damage it should have and managing to use a flask to give itself horrendous amounts of leech, 5x as much or more than it should be having as a spell caster on top of its damage being magnitudes higher than makes any sense. Imo attacking the damage being done, the amount of leech available and the effectiveness of vp is the same thing, its all down to which one attacks the problem with the least amount of damage to bystanders that are not the problem, and the answer there is that of the 3 vaal pact is the last one they should be attacking.

You talk as if outside of bv and vinktars everyones on the verge of doing what that combo does and I think that without those 2 were very far off that. Its not that I dont get what you are saying, I just dont think theres a bunch of stuff on the verge of reaching N, and even if they are then Id take out that flask and even nerf the leech gem before I did something rash like massively attacking vp, or removing it as I feel like ur suggesting?

the block/ev/ar values your chars use are possible ONLY because you can invest almost nothing into damage nodes (thanks to mirror-class weapons)

try to reach the same values with Breath of the Council or Scaeva (that have like HALF of your weapons damage). you wont get that far. your damage will be not enough to safely avoid being swarmed OR your defences will not reach the 'there yet' threshold that makes them effective in endgame

yet cheap builds can invest pretty much nothing into defences, pick VP and be 'safe' as long as 1shot does not happen.

surely, multi-mirror builds (dynes) can beat that, but we really knew that already..

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

the factors are the damage and the amount of leech you have. If you cut our damage in half thats the same as cutting the amount of leech we have in half which is the same as putting a 50% effectiveness on vp. We are starting to hit that N thanks to a skill having double, maybe triple the damage it should have and managing to use a flask to give itself horrendous amounts of leech, 5x as much or more than it should be having as a spell caster on top of its damage being magnitudes higher than makes any sense. Imo attacking the damage being done, the amount of leech available and the effectiveness of vp is the same thing, its all down to which one attacks the problem with the least amount of damage to bystanders that are not the problem, and the answer there is that of the 3 vaal pact is the last one they should be attacking.

You talk as if outside of bv and vinktars everyones on the verge of doing what that combo does and I think that without those 2 were very far off that. Its not that I dont get what you are saying, I just dont think theres a bunch of stuff on the verge of reaching N, and even if they are then Id take out that flask and even nerf the leech gem before I did something rash like massively attacking vp, or removing it as I feel like ur suggesting?

a good design is preventing problems down the road. most of those computer limitations (year 2000, low bit encryption, etc) I used, were designs that were not good designs that looked far ahead. and it cost millions of dollars to fix those problems reactively and not proactively, all because of shitty design

now, GGG is known to be reactive, rarely proactive in design. fine. instant leech is extremely powerful mechanic that is already rearing its ugly head. it can only be balanced by cost (like ive said, 50-60 nodes of investment. BOOM. but even that might be ok because we have fucking ascendancies)

in terms of whether I suggest removing it, well - who knows. there might be better solutions.
making it a niche but interesting keystone like the new EB is definitely a solution imo

funny, I remember you and I were arguing about old EB back in the day. I asked you (and others who rallied FOR old EB) to name one life based caster build back then that would be better off NOT using EB. dont believe I got an answer.

so Im asking you right now, what CI build (forget BV, Vinktars and so on) that does direct damage, is better off NOT taking VP ?

not only it is extremely amazing as a sustain mechanic, it also deals with reflect. its a panacea from a shitton of things.

which are these situations in which you would rather NOT take vaal pact as a CI toon who CAN leech ? please give examples

you guys keep saying that vaal pact is broken, it is NOT

my flicker strike used to leech 7-8k ES from a single monster before the leech change ( more than 1 year ago), and rare physical reflect monsters was not an issue at all, never died from them with 10k es and 40%block

now with the same build, so many times i kill rare phys reflect monsters and i end with 2k es, so losing 8k es from it, and if the map has vulnerability and the monster the extra dmg aura i probably die to it.

what's the funny thing? is that i have 1% more leech and 30% more evasion and i get hit 5x times harder than before the leech change.

after the leech change, vaal pact is very well balanced, vinktar/pathfinder is the problem

if you nerf vaal pact to like 40% instant leech, every attack build would die to rare reflects, and reflect maps will be impossible to do

if you nerf vaal pact, then remove reflect COMPLETELY from the game, or leave vaal pact as it is, it is very well balanced now.

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InAshesTheyShallReap wrote:

if you nerf vaal pact to like 40% instant leech, every attack build would die to rare reflects, and reflect maps will be impossible to do

if you nerf vaal pact, then remove reflect COMPLETELY from the game, or leave vaal pact as it is, it is very well balanced now.

reflect's original intent was to cap your damage output.

VP not only makes your damage your defense (instant leeching through shit), it also basically trivializes the only damage cap in the game.

oh yeah, VP isnt broken at all. it just helps you bypass shit you dont want to play around. brilliant.

like Ive said in this very thread. playing around reflect rares is perfectly possible - by slowing down, using different gems, different skills or simply ignoring them.

the fact that you don't want to do so doesn't justify instant leech (any form of instant leech, not just VP) being in game nowadays or being called 'NOT op'

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sidtherat wrote:

the block/ev/ar values your chars use are possible ONLY because you can invest almost nothing into damage nodes (thanks to mirror-class weapons)

try to reach the same values with Breath of the Council or Scaeva (that have like HALF of your weapons damage). you wont get that far. your damage will be not enough to safely avoid being swarmed OR your defences will not reach the 'there yet' threshold that makes them effective in endgame

yet cheap builds can invest pretty much nothing into defences, pick VP and be 'safe' as long as 1shot does not happen.

surely, multi-mirror builds (dynes) can beat that, but we really knew that already..

that build has over 500% increased damage on the tree without counting jewels, I have 14 damage notables. What does swarmed mean? that char can literally afk most stuff, its impossible to really swarm it, I think ur vastly over estimating how much damage trash can do to a char like that. A scaeva has over half the dps the sword Im using has, it wouldnt be a problem. I have more damage on my disfavour version than my 1h version and only 5k less armour.

Weve gone here before, you can get the same defenses for 1c per slot and then get a scaeva for 1c and do exactly the same thing except instead of being able to kill rigwald in a few minutes it would take another few minutes. He doesnt actually do any damage so its not like theres some kind of risk in taking a little longer.

You dont need multiple mirrors to make an es regen tank.

For every 100 mobs that can 1 shot a build whos invested nothing into defense theres 1 mob who can 1 shot a build thats invested well into defense, so I dont think that "as long as..." is as trivial as ur making it out to be, i think those builds will have a /deaths # that will speak to that.