Viability of BM keystone in solo play

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ExiledToWraeclast wrote:

what char and build are you running? depending on that there might be something that works out.

LS marauder

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dualestl wrote:

No,not being able to use anything besides Anger/Wrath and Grace which also come at the cost of 300-400 life is a huge drawback.
You used to be able to do it in closed beta (late game wise) but now not having Purity/Vitality/Determination/Hatred makes your life much harder especially if youre playing solo and dont have anyone to "share" their auras with you.

Why was it more viable in CB? Was there some major change that was made to how BM worked?

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zheavy wrote:

As for OP, yes it's very viable. i'm playing BM LA ranger, and used to play groundslam BM marauder before that[lvl 78]. My ranger is almost lvl 86, i have near 11k armor, running 2 lvl20auras and 1 lvl 19, reserve 379life only. my dps is really high and i have no issues whatsoever, i'm quite happy with BM and have no issues at all with life, i can spam any spell/skill with high attackspeed [2.5-3aps depending on frezny charges] and never worry about life going down.

Mainly, I'm worried about having enough survivability without purity or determination. This is more of a concern to me than DPS. How do you get 11k armor, without determination?

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realatomicpanda wrote:

Why was it more viable in CB? Was there some major change that was made to how BM worked?

Well it was how monsters dint have as much health and dint deal so much damage in maps,you dint need the bonuses from the percentage based auras.
It was very manageable to do maps with around 2k - 3k health as a melee class without using any of the percentage based auras.Whereas now its much more difficult.

And also before the resistance penalty per difficult.You didn't need to run Purity for the much needed extra resistance bonus.

What is the advantage (if any) of blood magic? I mean honestly why use it? All it does is remove mana and force you to use health. There is no increased life regen to go along with it, reduced skill cost percentage to help you along, or anything. So other than being a build novelty, why do people use it?

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mteriba wrote:

What is the advantage (if any) of blood magic? I mean honestly why use it? All it does is remove mana and force you to use health. There is no increased life regen to go along with it, reduced skill cost percentage to help you along, or anything. So other than being a build novelty, why do people use it?

Because it *allows* you to use health without increased cost and taking an extra slot like the support gem. Grace, Wrath and Anger all take less then 400 life for me. I would never be able to have that much mana reserved and still cast my skills which take ~300 mana/s.

So unless you have one of those uniques to give yourself Blood Magic temporarily, the keystone is really good.

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mteriba wrote:

What is the advantage (if any) of blood magic? I mean honestly why use it? All it does is remove mana and force you to use health. There is no increased life regen to go along with it, reduced skill cost percentage to help you along, or anything. So other than being a build novelty, why do people use it?

To add on to what lqc said (which are all correct), having one main resource pool to manage instead of two means that you don't have to worry about managing/regenerating two pools (i.e. life AND mana regen).

In fact, don't take my relatively inexperienced word for it, but IMHO Blood Magic is THE way to go unless you:

a) start too far from the node, or

b) really need to use the % auras (and it's quite possible to make builds which are effective without the % auras).

I would never roll character that cant use % auras, the lack of auras is terrible.

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_avenged_ wrote:

and it's quite possible to make builds which are effective without the % auras).

Nope

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dualestl wrote:

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_avenged_ wrote:

and it's quite possible to make builds which are effective without the % auras).

Nope

What a detailed explanation!

Blood magic keystone can be helpful for leveling in normal/cruel since you don't have to bother about mana, but after this it's totally useless , at least for physical damage build since a single 2% mana leech piece of gear keep you full on mana .

I think blood magic is good for softcore to play fun , but for hardcore, mana pool is mandatory for optimize your build

Basically I will try to break it down my systematically then the previous posts.

By using auras you gain this :

more ias from haste
and about 20% more dps from hatred

BUT: you need 5L 6L to support the huge mana costs of those support gems and link a blood magic gem in

This scenario is ideal because you can gain armor was well by running determination


By using Blood Magic you gain this:

The ability to use 4L's like 5L's and 5Ls like 6Ls because you already have blood magic intrinsically

you require less intellect/mana nodes so all your affixes on items can go towards
elemental damage and hp

This scenario is easier to obtain and far cheaper.

I would argue that since you can treat a 4L like a 5L the 1 gem advantage already makes up more than 20% of hartred. that is unless you have a 6L which of course favors auras.