Viability of BM keystone in solo play

Interesting discussion, thanks for the input everyone.

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DamageIncorporated wrote:

Um...wth does Bloodmagic have to do with solo vs group?
Yes it's "viable" I use it on every melee character I've rolled.

What it has to do with solo vs group is that if you're running the blood magic keystone, you aren't going to be running percentage based auras. This is the major downside to the keystone, obviously. If you run with a group, you can rely on them to carry the auras (since most people do), so you lose nothing and still get your extra socket to fill with whatever you want.

In solo play, you can't rely on anyone else to carry the missing auras.

I guess ultimately, BM is viable, especially with good gear.

But in terms of being optimally efficient, you're trading off very powerful auras for an extra socket on your main skill. The question comes down to: is there anything you could put in that socket that will provide a greater benefit than 3-4 percentage auras combined?

I guess the answer to that depends on build and gear. If you already have a ton of survivability without % auras, then you might be better off with the extra socket. But for most people, I think even with a 5L, the numbers seem to favor the BM gem rather than the keystone.

You can run something like:

Main skill + life leech + blood magic + two other supports of your choosing

If you can do without leech, then you get another socket to use, so that already kind of makes up for being forced to use a socket on BM. Even so, it's not bad, unless your skill needs 3 very particular supports to be effective at all.

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Mystrl wrote:

Viable? Yes. Optimal? Not even close. I ran bm keystone up until level 83 before switching to bm gem and the 4 additional auras are amazing. I get more dps 40k armor with granites overcapped resists 9 extra stat points (don't need the 15% ones to stay overcapped anymore with purity) movespeed the option of getting an addition 150 regen/s and all for the cost of a gem slot.

QFT

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Shippal wrote:

Very viable. And it supports a 6L. Just make sure to have lots of life nodes (duh) and take the auras that have static amounts--Grace, Wrath, Anger.

with Iron Reflexes and Grace with lots of life leech and life gain on hits. My marauder is lvl63 with 3.2k hp running 3 auras ( Grace, Wrath, Anger) I use life flasks with armour or evasion with it and granite flask and enduring cry. Attack speed is 1.78 just to let you know.

BM keystone is almost mandatory if you are doing a LA/Shock character. Mana does not cut it when LA costs 114(5 link) and your APS is 3-4.

When you get a 6L you can drop the keystone and throw a BM gem in your armor, but honestly there are plenty of LA spammers that will get by using only anger/wraith/grace on low 70 maps.

If your build can benefit from the extra sockets instead of using BM gems then maybe it would be worth it. I have yet to have a build like that though.

In my opinion there is only one thing coming from percentile reservation auras that is truly awesome, and that is the extra maximum resistances bonus from Purity. Vitality is not mandatory, Haste is not mandatory, Hatred is made up for with the additional gems you can use, and Determination is not mandatory either - even if you are building physical damage and are worried about reflect, you can still work around it.

This just leads to an obvious conclusion that Purity is OP. As for the BM keystone - I think it is viable (I have a level 75 character with BM keystone).

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VenatorPoE wrote:

In my opinion there is only one thing coming from percentile reservation auras that is truly awesome, and that is the extra maximum resistances bonus from Purity. Vitality is not mandatory, Haste is not mandatory, Hatred is made up for with the additional gems you can use, and Determination is not mandatory either - even if you are building physical damage and are worried about reflect, you can still work around it.

Purity is indeed amazing. As far as the other auras not being mandatory, if you were talking about passing up just one of them, then sure, I could see it going either way. But with a full mana pool you can run at least 3 of those auras together, and 4 if you're willing to take a reservation node.

Look at Determination alone. Let's say you have two steel skin clusters. That's +100% armor. Throw determination on top of that and your +100% armor bonus turns into +230%, assuming you've got inner force as well. That's one aura that more than doubles the effectiveness of 6 armor nodes.

Was thinking about respeccing BM for a long time on my LS templar and finnaly I did it. I'm so much better off tbh with vitality+determination+hatred instead of 1 socket on my LS.