One of major problems of the game - life leech

The Problem solution to this whole Sponge playstyle (where ES will always win against life in any case) is to reduce every ES node by half and remove the more nodes behind CI. Immune to chaos damage is good enough of a perk. The second step is to take all base ES values on gear and half them. In the next step remove vaal pact and nerf acuities = balance.

This is just in case that GGG wants to keep life so incredibly shit. Then lets make it fair and nerf ES to shit too (ES would still be better in my example but not by THAT much it is now).

And inb4 "leech hus nu connection to ES" - yes it has - sponge playstyle.

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zzang wrote:

reduce every ES node by half and remove the more nodes behind CI. Immune to chaos damage is good enough of a perk. The second step is to take all base ES values on gear and half them. In the next step remove vaal pact and nerf acuities = balance.

This way they'd better delete ES.

Either leave ES high as is but remove VP, or leave VP in game but equalize the ES to life values. Not both at a time.
The latter got the terrible downside that most of the ES builds would be plain awful without VP and very high direct damage, they will become niche and very rare. ES totemers/summoners would be non-existent.

Another solution is to leave VP in game but greatly reduce its effectiveness, as it was.
Though IMO it's way better to straight up kill it.

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grepman wrote:

you really think promoting incompetence because it provided job security (I mean, what the hell ?) is like, a good thing ?
?

my point is that its not really incompetence, if its intentional job security and its doing what it intended to do then from that perspective its good design. If you think this sort of dastardly thinking isnt widespread from the computer world to the medical world then think again mate.

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grepman wrote:

fair enough- I knew an aegis going to be brought up. the one 'tank' build that doesnt need leech. the one build that restores your ES INSTANTLY (and scales off block and armour) as well. any other builds in your mind ?

oh I do leech and I do need leech, Id just rather have regen from zo to run bloodrage so I dont get the node and Id rather have gloves with 200es, accuracy and attack speed than use the gloves, I rate those things as more important to the build than instant leech.

Any other builds? Well any other builds that either want zo or dont want to spend the points to get to vaal pact, I personally dont have any others that fit that bill as my other ci are essence drain that is also zo but has no leech anyway, a shadow claw cyclone who does have vaal pact and surprise surprise, broken bladevortex say no more.

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grepman wrote:

how much leech do you have ? you should have zero problems against any and all packs with 6 figure phys dps just off atziris promise. with bosses naturally you will have less leech but really, shoudlnt be anywhere as low as what he says. 3k es per SECOND of a boss with mirror level gear ? huh ?

I had blood drinker converted to es using energy from within, 0.2% on gloves and a 1% amulet, so 1.6% leech overall, which is everthing I could realistically get as a ci. I would attack a pack of 20 mobs, kill every single one instantly, entire pack would shatter to bits and my es wouldnt even move enough for me to see it, did as good as nothing at all. I posted many times asking if es leech was bugged. Im impressed hes getting 3k es per second, I was getting about 3 pixels of es off packs of mobs with a mirror level dagger.

So I went and got a 400pdps crit claw because I basically couldnt leech as a ci melee without running bloodrage + vaal pact at the same time and losing all my es constantly. so now I have 400pdps claw, converted blood drinker, soul raker, leech on ring, leech on gloves, vaal pact, 3.6% total leech which is the equiv of 18% leech by the old values and how good is it? Well I can notice I actually have leech now. I use cyclone, it fills up my es pool at maybe half the speed a life based build with a loh gem and normal leech would fill up, with a 400pdps claw. If vp was given 50% effectiveness that would essentially be leech completely fucked for that build, i dont rly play it anyway because cyclone itself has been fucked and imo is virtually unplayable used as a main skill now days unless ur a max aoe duelist or something, but ci melee like that in general who are not using loath banes with half a million dps would be fucked in general if leech was the only way they were sustaining in combat. Ashes has 1.2 million dps and hes getting 3k return, a normal build in a league with a binos or something with no legacy crit amulet etc is going to be lucky to reach 120,000 dps as a ci melee and is going to be getting 300 es return from the same leech setup. My marauder is regenning 440 per sec and apparently thats useless... its like 50% more than that leech total.


edit:



http://plays.tv/video/580a4ca6a0225098a6/loltbh

I recorded a vid for you, its a cyclone ci with a claw and 3.6% leech, like I said thats 18% by the old values, with a 400pdps weapon. its 106k dps cyclone, this is the gear and tree





its not a 540 pdps mirrored claw, its got a legacy crit multi amulet, no mirrored rings, but its probably the best gear you are ever going to get in a league environment for this sort of build. So in the vid Im going to go into a map, take off arctic armour and stand in a bunch of mobs until Ive taken some damage, then cyclone a bit to leech back so you can see what vaal pact leech with an insane amount of leech % for a ci build looks like. Its kind of hard to take damage and my es recharge kicks in so fast that Im never going to be able to leech to full before my recharge starts zooming up, but that in itself should tell you something about how much im leeching. I dont instantly fill my es pool, its nothing even remotely close to that as you can see.

One other thing from this video, I use bladevortex with echo and blind to blind mobs. My tree and gear is all out claw attack, theres a little generic phys in the shadow start and a bit of generic crit from power charges, but if I stack up my vortex I can essentially clear packs just as fast if not faster with a 0 damage support blade vortex on a claw attack specced tree than I can using a 400pdps crit claw and a 6L full damage supports cyclone because bv does enough damage and has much bigger aoe.... its fucking stupid how much they fucked cyclone and how ridiculous BV is. Now consider a Bv with a tree that has a ton of spell crit and spell damage and then add in a full 6L of damage supports for BV and put a vinktars on it so that its getting probably double or more actual leech than I am getting from this physical claw build with physical attack leech where half my damage is elemental. This is what we are dealing with here. Does VP look broken on this build? Only broken thing Im seeing in this video is that bloody bladevortex in all honesty.

Dont let videos of people with 700k dps conc effect reave using legacy mirrored gear and loath bane daggers attacking very large packs fool you into thinking leech for ci attackers is amazing, its not, its absolutely shit. Im not defending this one build I have...

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1234566

I got builds coming out of my ears, theres barely a thing in this game outside of totems and summons you can nerf without hurting something Im doing. I have a BV char in there that I enjoy playing, I actually play it a lot, I dont play this cyclone at all because cyclone is so shit for clearing maps that a 0 link spell with no tree can almost do a better job. But Im saying bv should be nerfed and vp left alone because this is my experience of builds, vp is not op on these sort of builds, its pretty much overshadowed by es recharge which apparently is shit? Its not, its probably better than vp leech if you have a measly 400pdps crit weapon and havent spent 1000 exalts on a mirrored dagger setup playing in a legacy league where theres 0 game balance anyway. I have a dragon dagger, its 460pdps there abouts, what leech % can you get with a dagger? like 1/3 of what that claw has if ur not running bloodrage, how much leech back on a 100k dps build with 1/3 of the leech the build in this vid has do you think ur getting? you cant even notice it, it feels like its a bug because you cant even notice that you have any leech at all.

Leech for life builds however is amazing, Im not having any trouble watching my life just shoot way up with vitality void leeching my elemental and my physical with increased leech rate etc. Life builds get more damage, you can use rats nest, abyssus, run bloodrage with no problems, youget more tree damage and when u go vp u can instantly fill your life back on some builds without needing a 540 pdps crit dagger. My hybrid arcer instantly fills her 5k es back with 80k dps arc off the back of warlords mark alone on packs with acuity gloves, how its sooooo much better than what ur seeing in the clip? well... reasons, lower pool so it looks better, more actual damage going on than tooltip suggests due to hitting more targets and shocking them, like a vinktars does.

Compare all this to bv vinktars where ur es just instantly fills, instantly, take another 8k damage and bang, split second ur full again, its not even remotely the same thing, at all, vinktars bv is a whole other world of 10x more effective absolutely ridiculous leech going on and its not vp, its that broken spell with that broken flask. And while we are at it that broken surgeons subclass, but I feel like almost every subclass is sort of broken so its kind of whatever, its the "im now immortal" flask thats making it as broken as it is I guess, just like vp.

imo imo imo, I know you all disagree. Ask yourselves when the last time you played a bunch of different ci attack builds and actually thoroughly tested all this shit out was, whens the last time you put a few 100 hours into doing that? Me and Ashes have, anyone else here talking from actual experience? Ashes has around 10x as much damage as all the dagger ci ive played and when he says hes getting 3k leech back a sec I believe him because thats about 10x more than I was getting in all honesty. I dont really rely on the leech so much with my dagger witch tho because yeah I have aegis, and a load of regen from zo, and I have armour, and I block attacks and spells, and Im an occultist with wicked ward & vile bastion, all those other things that make me actually way more tanky than some build thats just relying on vp leech.

YE GUYS UHM LETS REMOVE ALL THE LIFE LEECHS AND ALL THE CI AND ALL THE PATHFINDERS

If VP and sponge gameplay is in the game, ES values realistically achievable should be about 20-40% higher than life values. In practice, ES values are 50-100% higher than life values, which sucks.

However, VP and sponge gameplay make ES blue life. There is no difference at that point, which is what they stated they do not want to have. If you ask me, VP and GR together are a pretty mediocre idea, and VP alone is a pretty mediocre idea as well. LL is defense for more offense, which is a stupid design concept.

first: GGG mentioned in one of their videos around 2.0 or 2.1 that CI attack/melee builds are abominations that were not planned for.

second: isnt the leech calculated from damage DONE - so damage wasted by overkilling thrash mobs is wasted and irrelevant? im not sure but your results are.. strange to say the least. and it does look like a bug. recently GGG confirmed that armour in some (frequent enough) circumstances does not work vs projectiles - maybe this is another thing youve discovered.

third: you say that life builds can admire their life shooting up with life leech rate and other stuff. cool story. but a) life build is in most cases dead already b) to take all these goodies you enjoy you need a weapon that can carry you. you live in a world few ever entered: guild-fed, mirror-tier gear for .01%. everything works with stuff like that. and you ofc play only the best skills because why use thrash

you claim that it isnt the gear that carries you. well.. and that it costs '1c' here and there. well.. ive tried to copy your builds (i also play ar/ev hybrids since like forever because i know that it is the strongest combo) but.. these builds do not work with 10c/piece items. it is too little dps or too little defences + no chance to pick the 'cool nodes' no matter what. it is as simple as that. try to make budget versions of your builds and tell us how they fare. note that 'budget' means 250pdps claw not 400pdps one.

fourth: this VP stuff matters vs bosses. where risk of getting mauled is real and life regen/classic leech is a nice bonus but it in most cases cannot cope with incoming damage. not to mention that it is 'the richer you get (higher life pool) the more effective your leech is'. it might be cool with 7k hp but to make an attack build like that you need a weapon that will carry you hard enough to pick this life. otherwise you are stuck at around 5k at best. making all regen based sustains several% worse. so again - its effectiveness depends solely on quality of a weapon you have (ability to invest less into damage and thus more into sustain)

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herflik wrote:

Everybody who played a bit of RPG games know how powefull life leech mechanic is. Most today games remove it in oder to keep some balance and sensibility in the game.

Life leech means only one thing in game - get tons of damage, life steal 50% + of your hp per second. Life leech just give you free defense, in radiculous amounts even when the x% leeched is low.

GGG tried to balance it with all the changed - caps to life per second. Its nice move, but totally useless when you have insta leech keystone and uniques - it didnt touch the most OP of leeches.

Due to that GGG need to balance the game in order to counter this OP mechanic. There is only limited amount of things they can do. One of them is already in the game - insta deaths (high burst damage) on mobs. If they kill you in 1 hit, you wont have time to leech. But lets be honest, thats just as radiculous idea as the insta life leech itself.

I would suggest few possible changes:
- remove insta life leech - the overtime one is ok, since it got limitations
- introduce limitation to insta life leech - like 5-10% of max life (and ES too) per second/cast
- create mob suffix that make them immune completly or partialy to life leech (most bosses should have it)

I agree completely with your sentiment, however, as someone who prefers to play melee playstyle characters, this would simply encourage a death sentence to an already marginalized type of gameplay in PoE: melee is already barely viable and LL is one of the few options that allows it to be so -

99% of the "difficulty" mechanics in this game involve kiting or avoiding some instagib mechanic by a boss, even if the character is powerful enough to destroy the rest of the monsters in a map without any issue, and LL is one of the mechanics that allows a player to maintain the proximity they need to deal damage at all. It is a common theme in Diablo and other aarpg's that melee is overlooked and undertuned but considered "balanced". Melee should be able to complete the same content as ranged builds, and LL is one of the things that barely allows it to do so at greater difficulty because the dps and survivability of the style does not scale with the difficulty of the content as well as ranged and other abilities, its simply not paid attention to. Hell, there is STILL a bug where monsters/bosses simply ignore armour rating (oops!) for certain attacks. If LL is going to change, it will have to go hand-in-hand with this trend of keeping melee as an afterthought in this "infinetely customizable" but in reality, hardly viable, melee build system.

The thread change to what it always change to.
The result on the end is simple - people defend what they abuse themself, because its psychological factor aswell

If somebody defend then it only means that it is valuable for them, they gain from it. If we created any thread writing that "most useless skill in the game should get nerfed", probably nobody would even bother to respond since it have no value to even bother protecting it.

The size of this thread is proof of instant-leech being broken.
Why do people protect it from being nerfed?
I can play without it, they cant? Well why? They got 100 other stats that they can invest in.
Oh they are not so powerfull like insta leech? Cant do the same job without it?
Thats also proof that it is op. If you have problem in loosing something then it means something is wrong with it. Otherwise you would just easly swap your tactic to something that already exist and is equal to what you loose. Most stats should be on equal power level, thats what balance means.

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herflik wrote:

The thread change to what it always change to.
The result on the end is simple - people defend what they abuse themself, because its psychological factor aswell

If somebody defend then it only means that it is valuable for them, they gain from it. If we created any thread writing that "most useless skill in the game should get nerfed", probably nobody would even bother to respond since it have no value to even bother protecting it.

The size of this thread is proof of instant-leech being broken.
Why do people protect it from being nerfed?
I can play without it, they cant? Well why? They got 100 other stats that they can invest in.
Oh they are not so powerfull like insta leech? Cant do the same job without it?
Thats also proof that it is op. If you have problem in loosing something then it means something is wrong with it. Otherwise you would just easly swap your tactic to something that already exist and is equal to what you loose. Most stats should be on equal power level, thats what balance means.

Dude you haven't read a single fucking argument here have you?

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

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grepman wrote:

you really think promoting incompetence because it provided job security (I mean, what the hell ?) is like, a good thing ?
?

my point is that its not really incompetence, if its intentional job security and its doing what it intended to do then from that perspective its good design. If you think this sort of dastardly thinking isnt widespread from the computer world to the medical world then think again mate.

I just hope you're wrong. I cant speak for medical field, but can do so for computer field. Most of computer-related shit was being short sighted and trying to cut corners today, pay dearly for it later and not being able to realistically scale down the road. Nowadays protocols take scaling into account and make sure it takes extraordinary effort to brute force something or run out.

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http://plays.tv/video/580a4ca6a0225098a6/loltbh

I recorded a vid for you, its a cyclone ci with a claw and 3.6% leech, like I said thats 18% by the old values, with a 400pdps weapon. its 106k dps cyclone, this is the gear and tree

thank you for the video; I mean it.

"

Compare all this to bv vinktars where ur es just instantly fills, instantly, take another 8k damage and bang, split second ur full again, its not even remotely the same thing, at all, vinktars bv is a whole other world of 10x more effective absolutely ridiculous leech going on and its not vp, its that broken spell with that broken flask. And while we are at it that broken surgeons subclass, but I feel like almost every subclass is sort of broken so its kind of whatever, its the "im now immortal" flask thats making it as broken as it is I guess, just like vp.

I dont disagree with vinktars being op as well, especially the one that adds lightning damage (screaming 'anyone use me') however, it wouldnt work at all if you didnt have instant leech. youd just hit the cap all the time. Id nerf vinktars as well, down to about 10% leech and remove added lightning damage variants.

"

imo imo imo, I know you all disagree. Ask yourselves when the last time you played a bunch of different ci attack builds and actually thoroughly tested all this shit out was, whens the last time you put a few 100 hours into doing that? Me and Ashes have, anyone else here talking from actual experience? Ashes has around 10x as much damage as all the dagger ci ive played and when he says hes getting 3k leech back a sec I believe him because thats about 10x more than I was getting in all honesty. I dont really rely on the leech so much with my dagger witch tho because yeah I have aegis, and a load of regen from zo, and I have armour, and I block attacks and spells, and Im an occultist with wicked ward & vile bastion, all those other things that make me actually way more tanky than some build thats just relying on vp leech.

look I understand that you have more experience with these builds- I dont contest it.
I just dont consider the logic of 'vp is ok because it helps build x otherwise build x is shit' or ash's logic which is 'vp is good because reflect is shit and if I cant do reflect maps my build is shit' ( I need the jackie chan 'wtf' picture here)
it doesnt work like that. its the same argument we've had about EB back then, really

I deal with mechanics in vacuum. the concept of VP or -any- instant leech is op as fuck in a game where damage values are rising through the roof. vinktars can be controlled with values, the core concept of VP cannot, especially as damage keeps on going up

the question of CI attack builds, if its really a problem, can be tuned separately from VP.