Life Steal the only way to move forward?

right now all i can find is that either life steal or tank/health regen is the only way to get through this game if your going pure fire damage or ice or lightning you are boned in most battles.

what am i missing if i want to go pure fire damage with no life steal, is that a possible build? or am i just dreaming... going full spell damage impossible here?

What does the damage type have to do with leech or especially regen? You can leech from pure elemental damage just fine. And regen is a whole different mechanic.

If you want a pure fire damage build that doesn't leech or regen - ask in General or Gameplay. I'm sure there are such builds, using max block/dodge, life gain on hit or simply flasks. But this is a wrong forum for it.

ive already read post saying that life steal only works with weapon damage, this game still hasn't found a balance find it, for now i have to go melee/fire or just start a new character

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sunshinex3 wrote:

ive already read post saying that life steal only works with weapon damage, this game still hasn't found a balance find it, for now i have to go melee/fire or just start a new character

that is only partly true

all "normal" mods for items and normal passivs only work for attacks

however there are a few exceptions to that, these are:

some ascendency notes that clearly state "elemental dmg leeched" or "spell dmg leeched"

itemmods that clearly say "elemental dmg leeched",curently obtainable from catarina mastercrafting, some uniq items and items currently obtainable in the vaal tempel (maybe some currupted mods too i never checked for those)

the only option for spells to leech mana is the manaleech gem as far as i know

Lifeleech gem works for spells. Leech from Warlord's mark works for spells (the most common way to get it). Elemental / fire/cold/lightning leech works for spells. The only things that don't work are the ones that specifically state "attack damage leeched as life".

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sunshinex3 wrote:

ive already read post saying that life steal only works with weapon damage, this game still hasn't found a balance find it, for now i have to go melee/fire or just start a new character

'Life steal' works with spell damage just fine. And attacks can be pure elemental as well.

Perhaps you should learn more first, instead of making opinions about the game balance based on some one post you've read somewhere.

there is one golden rule for poe that can help you a lot if you are "new" and its a very simple one in top of that :

"read the whole text of an item/gem/mod/currency/questitem" in most cases this will tell you if things work or what to do with them.

There is a last option as well. Energy Shield Recharge (not talking about regen )

Xirgil's crank builds etc as an example