Lifetap and Mana Reservation

ah, yes that is something i did not know. So the points on using it to reserve life are invalid. But the overall point remains the same.

You can't simply ignore the blood magic buff that is being provided to the linked skills. This is a MASSIVE buff in-and-of itself. Whether or not the AURA reserves life vs mana doesn't really change why it can't possibly work the way you want it to.

If you can gain the blood magic buff without it affecting item-gained auras such as aspects it would be extremely OP for the reason I mentioned above. The only change in my argument is that it affects the mana reservation of the aspect instead of life. This is meant to curb the power creep that would come with being able to combine the upsides of blood magic, with no downsides to gear-based mods.

Without this functionality, the system is VERY easily abused (like your minion helm example) with any build that utilizes both a blood magic setup and an aspect.

Now with the trigger skill cost changes, many people are using more blood magic setups to autocast, with the downside being that your choices on where to put your aspect is restricted. This is simply good design. It all goes toward crafting your endgame skill AND gear setup.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

If you can gain the blood magic buff without it affecting item-gained auras such as aspects it would be extremely OP for the reason I mentioned above.

Please explain this further. I can't see your point yet. You need to spend a certain amount of life (depending on the level of the gem) with a skill linked to the lifetap support gem to gain the lifetap buff. Quote from the gem itself: "Supports any skill. Minions cannot gain the Lifetap buff." So reserving any amout of mana more would not impact this at all nor could you gain the buff by linking it.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

Without this functionality, the system is VERY easily abused (like your minion helm example) with any build that utilizes both a blood magic setup and an aspect.

Also please explain. Give me an example of how it could be abused.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

Now with the trigger skill cost changes, many people are using more blood magic setups to autocast, with the downside being that your choices on where to put your aspect is restricted. This is simply good design. It all goes toward crafting your endgame skill AND gear setup.

So your point is that this is intentional and meant to restrict your choices.
This is your first argument that makes sense to me but I doubt it is intentional by GGG. My best guess is that they implemented cost and reservation multiplier as one variable and making it just affect one or the other would have been extra work - maybe even having to split the variable into two. This is why it says "Cost & Reservation Multiplier:" on every gem and not just one or the other. Even on Arrogance which can never change the cost of a skill since it only supports skills with a reservation.

Let me give you an example to proof my point. Try linking any active skill gem with arrogance. It won't work. It won't show up in the skill menu and it won't increase it's mana cost. Why would it? It's just for skills that reserve.
So why isn't it that way the other way around? If you argument was the real reason it should be the same the other way around, shouldn't it? But it is not!

the point I'm trying to make is on the blood magic aspect of both gems, NOT the lifetap bonus.

Blood Magic alone (the ability to use life instead of mana) is a HUGE HUGE buff in certain circumstances. Using your helm as an example, spectres using blood magic to cast is basically NECESSARY for charge generators. Without blood magic, they can't do this. This has nothing to do with lifetap.

Now, if you were able to give that BM (NOT LIFETAP) buff to other skills, without having to worry about how it might affect itemization, it means that you can use far stronger items with no risk. Ex: being able to craft the aspect on your strong minion helm. Before there was Arrogance or Lifetap, this was ALWAYS a conundrum and hurdle you needed to figure out when creating a build that uses a blood magic gem anywhere in it.

Now, with the split of the original blood magic gem into two separate, BUT STILL BLOOD MAGIC, gems with different buffs and utilization, it expands how you can use and set up blood magic links BUT it maintains the limiters that have ALWAYS been in place when dealing with blood magic setups. No limiters = power creep = big no no.

I am trying to point out that your problem is NOT with lifetap or arrogance really: it is ACTUALLY with blood magic as a function. And this is where the roadblock is. You keep trying to bring it back to LIFETAP but you can't just ignore the BLOOD MAGIC buff. Whether or not you are using arrogance or lifetap, whether or not you are intending to support an aura or support a skill, the fact is you are introducing BM into the mix which HAS to affect the item as a whole otherwise it can be abused with implicit auras or aspects. GGG DEFINITELY thought about this when introducing the new gems, because functionally this was how the original blood magic functioned and served as a limiter. They are not in the business of removing limiters of any kind.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

the point I'm trying to make is on the blood magic aspect of both gems, NOT the lifetap bonus.

Blood Magic alone (the ability to use life instead of mana) is a HUGE HUGE buff in certain circumstances. Using your helm as an example, spectres using blood magic to cast is basically NECESSARY for charge generators. Without blood magic, they can't do this. This has nothing to do with lifetap.

Ah now I see your point. Referring to the ability of using life instead of mana as "Blood Magic Buff" is quite misleading when there is an actual buff in the game generated by the Lifetap gem that is also called lifetap. Since you referred to Arrogance and Lifetap as Blood Magic before I thought you were talking about the Lifetap buff.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

Now, if you were able to give that BM (NOT LIFETAP) buff to other skills, without having to worry about how it might affect itemization, it means that you can use far stronger items with no risk. Ex: being able to craft the aspect on your strong minion helm. Before there was Arrogance or Lifetap, this was ALWAYS a conundrum and hurdle you needed to figure out when creating a build that uses a blood magic gem anywhere in it.

Now, with the split of the original blood magic gem into two separate, BUT STILL BLOOD MAGIC, gems with different buffs and utilization, it expands how you can use and set up blood magic links BUT it maintains the limiters that have ALWAYS been in place when dealing with blood magic setups. No limiters = power creep = big no no.

I am trying to point out that your problem is NOT with lifetap or arrogance really: it is ACTUALLY with blood magic as a function. And this is where the roadblock is. You keep trying to bring it back to LIFETAP but you can't just ignore the BLOOD MAGIC buff. Whether or not you are using arrogance or lifetap, whether or not you are intending to support an aura or support a skill, the fact is you are introducing BM into the mix which HAS to affect the item as a whole otherwise it can be abused with implicit auras or aspects. GGG DEFINITELY thought about this when introducing the new gems, because functionally this was how the original blood magic functioned and served as a limiter. They are not in the business of removing limiters of any kind.

Hmm. Well if they did not want to remove these limitations. Why did they? Why does Arrogance not increase the cost of other skills linked with it that are not intended for it (like attacks for example)? Blood Magic support did. They removed that barrier. And it's not the first time. Remember the old "reduced mana cost of skills" before it was replaced by the enlighten rework?

Edit: It was called Reduced Mana Support and was replaced by Inspiration Support if you had any lying around.

I was trying to make the point that Blood Magic IS a buff, that's why i kept saying blood magic and not lifetap. Totally different buff.

The reason Arrogance works the way it does is because there aren't intrinsic item-only skills that would be affected by it. If it affected skills as well, you could simply un-link.

The problem only exists one-way with Lifetap and item-granted auras. This is actually another indicator that GGG DID think about these things when designing the two gems. They realized that the issue would only be one-way, hence the difference in the two gems.

Oldschool reduced mana and enlighten was a WHOLE other issue. This was a design mistake, and the devs nerfed it because it simply wasn't working the way they intended it to. They DO change limitations, if it involves a nerf, rather than a buff. Reduced Mana to Inspiration was a direct result of mana cost of skills being less important, and no one used reduced mana after 2.0. Far less gems in the game back then meant that GGG could tweak nearly every support gem based on overall usage.

The reason for the split was because of the addition of life-based skills at the time and the desire to see more life-based attack patterns. This wouldn't have been a desirable option with the plain oldschool blood magic gem.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

The reason Arrogance works the way it does is because there aren't intrinsic item-only skills that would be affected by it. If it affected skills as well, you could simply un-link.

Not true:

Ashcaller
The Whispering Ice
Bloodbond
Moonbender's Wing
Clayshaper
Asenath's Chant
Gorgon's Gaze
...

also Fire Burst weapons created with Essence of Hysteria

It's exactly the same the other way around. That's what makes it so unintuitive.

I wasn't saying there weren't item-based skills...i was saying those skills are basically not affected by the blood magic tag. It offers no major benefit or detriment to any of those skills.

Auras, however, provide massive buffs. They can affect every build.

There isn't a single item-based non-aura skill (with a cost) that would become stronger if Arrogance were to affect it. It is very much a one-way street affecting reservation skills granted by items. I very much see this as one of PoE's greatest itemization faults.

Plus, The skills that are worth using on items (fireburst pre-3.15 as an example) have no inherent cost and therefore blood magic wouldn't even affect them anyway.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

I wasn't saying there weren't item-based skills...i was saying those skills are basically not affected by the blood magic tag. It offers no major benefit or detriment to any of those skills. Popular skills like Fire Burst had no cost and still have no cost, so blood magic doesn't do anything anyway.

Auras, however, provide massive buffs. They can affect every build.

There isn't a single item-based non-aura skill (with a cost) that would become stronger if Arrogance were to affect it. It is very much a one-way street affecting reservation skills granted by items. I very much see this as one of PoE's greatest itemization faults. The skills that are worth using on items (fireburst pre-3.15 as an example) have no inherent cost and therefore blood magic wouldn't even affect them anyway.

Lifetap also does not affect Aura skills. So there is also not a single aura skill that would get stronger. It just increases the mana cost reservation. And so could Arrogance - but it does not. It's very inconsequential and does not seem like it is intended to work that way.

I agree with the mana cost of Fire Burst part but that could have been intentional. A 340% effectiveness of added damage could allow for some shenanigans with archmage maybe?

I also don't see the cost in terms of gearing. I do not want the aspect on that item in the first place. Nobody does. I just put it there because it was convenient. Anybody actually doing some endgame gearing would have a way better helmet and would never want to put an aspect on there.

It's totally not about having to put your aspect on a specific item. Finding a good item with a free suffix to put an aspect there is really easy. It's about consistency and intuitive design.

well, archmage doesn't support trigger skills...

You are getting hung up on the specific buffs of the skills themselves, while I am talking about the itemization buffs.

Here is my point, as simple as possible: If lifetap support did not affect mana multipliers of aura mods on gear, it would open the possibility to have any kind of lifetap setup on ANY piece of gear, regardless of the mods that it has. This is, in itself, a BUFF to higher end gameplay because it removes the limitations of certain aspects of gearing. You can sort of think of this as a major exploit that GGG preemptively fixed. Pre 3.14 blood magic support is the proof of this concept and design.

There are many builds that, without perfect gear, struggle to find a place for their aspect. If they can't get them on jewelry, it generally has to go on Helm/Glove/Boot, at which point it then MIGHT interact with lifetap setups you may want to have for: guard skills/movement skills/etc. It's forcing a gearing choice and also a skill choice on the player that you would otherwise not have to worry about. It gets especially harder when there are so many good mods on specific gear that further limits your choices (such as the minion helm).

This is NOT the same as Arrogance + item-granted usable skills. These are already crafted in such a way where either the blood magic effect would have next to no noticeable change, or zero interaction already by design. This has NO effect on itemization. If you truly care about buffing or using the skill associated with ANY unique item, you certainly aren't socketing reserved auras in the gem slots...Therefore, there is no need for Arrogance to have the same description and effect as Lifetap. This is now a streamlined, clearer gem to use when linking reservations with no exploit-ability. Pre-3.14 blood magic never had any meaningful effect on these types of skills to begin with.

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"well, archmage doesn't support trigger skills..."

True but before 3.15 no triggered skills had mana costs.

I agree it is an additional challenge on gearing. I just highly disagree that this was intentional. Implementing it in such a way is unintuitive and inconsistent. If the goal was just to make itemization harder there would have been thousands of better ways to achieve this. Like they did with fracture and influence. This was not their goal. It's just a relic that can (maybe) easily be fixed. I fear we simply disagree on a fundamental level and should probably just leave it at that.