Possible Dark Pact bug/issue?

Basically, whenever I use Dark Pact on some monsters (in this case the boss of Shaped Dunes), I noticed that even as I'm Dark Pacting the enemy, I'm not leeching life from the monster (I do have Vaal Pact and I'm following a guide). I even have a friend who's also done the same build and examined the video and was surprised to see this issue. Is this truly a bug? And is there a way to fix it? I notice that I am able to leech life once Immortal Call gets proc'd and besides that, I cannot leech to save myself.

Video in question to replicate the case (At the beginning of the boss at 0:15 of the video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3D412bqzwk

If there's anything, please let me know or discuss it here. Thanks for looking into this!

Note: There is no leech/regen mod in the map. Also when I hover the boss (shown in the video), it doesn't have the aforementioned mod too so that's out of the question.

you don't do enough damage to sustain.

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biyte wrote:

you don't do enough damage to sustain.

I'd agree. A major clue is:

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NekiPoe wrote:

I notice that I am able to leech life once Immortal Call gets proc'd

There's this little passive a Berserker gets called "Cloaked in Savagery," which happens to increase your Leech amount by a factor of 10,000% when Map Hillock chunks away a bit of your Life.

A little back of the hand math: 8438 tooltip max chaos damage means your chaos damage multipliers are 8438/301 = 28.03, so 6% of your life times that would be 5658*.06*28.03*1.95 = 18555.47, putting your final damage per hit at around 24000 to 27000. At 1%, that's 240 to 270 life leeched per hit. Meanwhile, you're removing 5658 * .06 = 339 life per use. That's a net (339-240) to (339-270), or 69 to 99 net life loss per use. That seems to more or less match up with your video when you factor in Chaos Resistance, which would cut your Life Leech by 30% or so (not sure how much I trust poedb).

(For fun: 240 * .7 = 168; 270 * .7 = 189; (339-168) to (339-189) would be 150 to 171 net life lost per Pactsplosion)

His damage is perfectly normal, but clearly was not leeching anything at the beginning of the boss fight shown in the video.

It's definitely a bug that GGG needs to fix.

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ShinyFlash wrote:

His damage is perfectly normal, but clearly was not leeching anything at the beginning of the boss fight shown in the video.

??? You know that Dark Pact removes 6% of your maximum life upon cast, right? If he were not leeching anything, he should be losing 339 life per cast, not ~125 as the video clearly shows. The math is above. Vaal Pact causes Leech to be instant.

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adghar wrote:

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ShinyFlash wrote:

His damage is perfectly normal, but clearly was not leeching anything at the beginning of the boss fight shown in the video.

??? You know that Dark Pact removes 6% of your maximum life upon cast, right? If he were not leeching anything, he should be losing 339 life per cast, not ~125 as the video clearly shows. The math is above. Vaal Pact causes Leech to be instant.

Do explain, why wasn't he even leeching anything; not even 1hp
You can even watch the video frame by frame, life never went up.

His damage is perfectly normal, I myself did not experience that issue on dark pact with similar damage/life pool to his on Shaped Dunes at early levels.

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ShinyFlash wrote:

Do explain, why wasn't he even leeching anything; not even 1hp
You can even watch the video frame by frame, life never went up.

Except that he was... Game-calculation-states aren't the same as frames. Instant damage + instant leech = you only observe the net result.

If you believe that he truly isn't leeching, then there would be another bug at play here - the fact that 6% of his life isn't being removed with each cast, but instead an amount suspiciously similar to 6% minus whatever amount he should be Leeching. What a strange coincidence!

hmm... I see what your saying, and probably is definitely correct.
I'm certainly no math expert myself.

Perhaps, getting that last ascendancy "Aspect of Carnage" will help.

Yeah, leech is a constant source of confusion for players.

For the inevitable move to Gameplay Help and Discussion this thread will suffer: Technically, you have a few options in front of you, not just "don't do enough damage":

1) You could get more damage per use.
1a) I've heard that Spell Echo isn't actually the best for Dark Pact, for whatever reason. In this case, it probably isn't helping your "life profit margin" - Spell Echo is reducing the damage per hit you do while increasing the number of hits, which increases your Life cost. I don't really know what the best option to replace it with would be. Empower? Faster Casting? (same problem, but less pronounced) Culling Strike? Poison Support?
2) You could increase your leech amount. This is really difficult, though, as sources of x% chaos damage leeched are few and far between. Might want to search the wiki for that.

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adghar wrote:

Yeah, leech is a constant source of confusion for players.

For the inevitable move to Gameplay Help and Discussion this thread will suffer: Technically, you have a few options in front of you, not just "don't do enough damage":

1) You could get more damage per use.
1a) I've heard that Spell Echo isn't actually the best for Dark Pact, for whatever reason. In this case, it probably isn't helping your "life profit margin" - Spell Echo is reducing the damage per hit you do while increasing the number of hits, which increases your Life cost. I don't really know what the best option to replace it with would be. Empower? Faster Casting? (same problem, but less pronounced) Culling Strike? Poison Support?
2) You could increase your leech amount. This is really difficult, though, as sources of x% chaos damage leeched are few and far between. Might want to search the wiki for that.

You sir are amazing and I really appreciate the insight you provided good man! I'll take the time to research and gear up to be able to sustain. Finally got the final ascendancy points so I should be okay for the time being and thank you again!