Suggestion: Leech to be based on base damage instead of damage dealt for PoE1 and PoE2

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Celd wrote:

Well you got me there. Indeed if we make it so we need more leech investments, that doesn't mean the melee will do any better with the current stats that are there. Balancing would be a different kind of can of worms if we would want to give melee an edge to leech mods. The problem here is that any class can become melee, and the good attack leech nodes are in the str + dex portions of the passive tree, and those do not differentiate between melee and ranged. But if we give an obvious separate advantage for melee leech into the passive tree, then we dilute build variety some amount, though I can't say if it would be significant. But I do know we want the passive tree to be generally helpful to many build archetypes, so its probably better to imagine the tree won't change.

The second option for balancing I can see is items. For example craftable melee leech nodes to jewels and weapons with explicits and corrupt implicits. Corrupt implicits was included so unique melee weapons could also be utilized. And/or have bottom base damage increased for melee weapons without moving the ceiling for high end builds to get better started with leech and general damage without needing such expensive and rare weapons.

It's all hypothetical, but yeah I wasn't fully expecting for my suggestion to work out of the box anyway. But I'm glad to be having these conversations. :D

If bottom left was stronger there may be more build diversity. Boneshatter being the only thing close to a well rounded bottom left build that is being played. Earthshatter berserker is alright but needs quite a bit of defensive investment to play into endgame. If you take all of the strength stackers and glass cannon general cry builds where does that leave bottom left in terms of melee diversity.

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Lonnie455Rich wrote:

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Celd wrote:

Well you got me there. Indeed if we make it so we need more leech investments, that doesn't mean the melee will do any better with the current stats that are there. Balancing would be a different kind of can of worms if we would want to give melee an edge to leech mods. The problem here is that any class can become melee, and the good attack leech nodes are in the str + dex portions of the passive tree, and those do not differentiate between melee and ranged. But if we give an obvious separate advantage for melee leech into the passive tree, then we dilute build variety some amount, though I can't say if it would be significant. But I do know we want the passive tree to be generally helpful to many build archetypes, so its probably better to imagine the tree won't change.

The second option for balancing I can see is items. For example craftable melee leech nodes to jewels and weapons with explicits and corrupt implicits. Corrupt implicits was included so unique melee weapons could also be utilized. And/or have bottom base damage increased for melee weapons without moving the ceiling for high end builds to get better started with leech and general damage without needing such expensive and rare weapons.

It's all hypothetical, but yeah I wasn't fully expecting for my suggestion to work out of the box anyway. But I'm glad to be having these conversations. :D

If bottom left was stronger there may be more build diversity. Boneshatter being the only thing close to a well rounded bottom left build that is being played. Earthshatter berserker is alright but needs quite a bit of defensive investment to play into endgame. If you take all of the strength stackers and glass cannon general cry builds where does that leave bottom left in terms of melee diversity.

The tree is fine man, it's not the one that needs that much balancing. All the nodes in the whole passive tree are in the same vague general value + utility ranges. It's the utilization target of the passive points with melee skills/items that needs fine tuning to make players play more melee.

Previously I meant that the build diversity can be damaged if we try to direct players towards certain playstyles with the passive tree nodes, whether close or near. You've probably seen what people do with the aura and reservation nodes in the tree? No matter where they start, they basically always go to as many as they can stretch to. Most of the nodes in the tree are generalists, meaning they can work with many different things. For example attack leech works with melee and ranged attacks. Specialist nodes are far fewer, and have more power in their niche, but are always sought after. But the second thing with specialist nodes is that it encourages players to plan their builds with them. If we put melee leech nodes to the bottom left part of the tree and it becomes a requirement for all melee leech builds, then the node is a band-aid for an underlying problem with leech.

Sorry for the long read. I was trying to keep it short, but it was even less comprehensible.

So bottom left is fine, do you think there is equal value in the defense of the inveterate wheel vs a 4 node life wheel? you just collect suffixes on your gear to cap suppression with lightning coil and have a 4k life pathfinder and you are tankier than a 6500 hp chieftan with 90 all res.

If you take boneshatter and strength stacker builds out of the equation what do you think the passive heatmap looks like?

I don't understand your point, because what im referring too, is the fact that a lot of the bottom left wheels are tied to melee physical leech which is strangling the build diversity you're referring to. There is nothing other than impale builds (Dead mostly) that you're able to utilize with physical specific scaling.

If you know something i don't go ahead and make a viable non jugg bottom left melee build without a bunch of niche, hard to find stuff like mageblood, fourth vow, xibaqua with 100k ehp and 50k max phys hit. that does at least 10-20m dps. I'll be eternally grateful. Because no one else in the community is wasting their time with it. I've been trying since the multi layered lightning strike buff in 3.19. We got a bone for 1 league when we had divergent trauma and that got deleted after 1 singular league.

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Lonnie455Rich wrote:

So bottom left is fine, do you think there is equal value in the defense of the inveterate wheel vs a 4 node life wheel? you just collect suffixes on your gear to cap suppression with lightning coil and have a 4k life pathfinder and you are tankier than a 6500 hp chieftan with 90 all res.

Spell Suppression and Lightning Coil damage taken conversion are the kings of survivability, but it does sound like the example chieftain had problems against physical damage. Last chieftain I did was in Blight SSF, where half of the defense was from Ignite Proliferation Support, high life pool and regen and the rest was skill issue. It did take Uber Elder down, but since then there's been many ups and downs to the tree. :D

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Lonnie455Rich wrote:

If you take boneshatter and strength stacker builds out of the equation what do you think the passive heatmap looks like?

I don't understand your point, because what im referring too, is the fact that a lot of the bottom left wheels are tied to melee physical leech which is strangling the build diversity you're referring to. There is nothing other than impale builds (Dead mostly) that you're able to utilize with physical specific scaling.

Nah man I'm not saying things are all fine, but that the tree is mostly fine. But I'll admit now I did not notice more than half of the leech nodes down there were for physical attack, and that is shit. I would expect a change to generic attack damage leech would help with build diversity. This could be the reason for me not being easy to understand, because we had different leech nodes on mind. :D

Heatmaps shows the results of perceived meta by the community collective, and can be really monotonous in certain places. About 90% juggernauts, mostly boneshatter, using Lust for Carnage. But even then that is very high of course and tells us about the lack of diversity in the physical damage high end builds for the node. For a more balanced build diversity, I would expect a node like Vitality Void, which has general attack damage leech, would be better. It has more varied diversity.

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Lonnie455Rich wrote:

If you know something i don't go ahead and make a viable non jugg bottom left melee build without a bunch of niche, hard to find stuff like mageblood, fourth vow, xibaqua with 100k ehp and 50k max phys hit. that does at least 10-20m dps. I'll be eternally grateful. Because no one else in the community is wasting their time with it. I've been trying since the multi layered lightning strike buff in 3.19. We got a bone for 1 league when we had divergent trauma and that got deleted after 1 singular league.

Sorry man, can't do that. I'm the guy that wanted a build to freeze enemies with a General's Cry, to spam 5 more warcries, and to do it with a Debeon's Dirge. I got to T16s, but many of the bosses and enemies were immune to interrupts and would not freeze because Debeon's had shit damage modifiers, and I did not realize the General's Cry gave 30% less damage dealt to make freezing even harder before it was too late. :D My last relatively succesful build was in Sentinel league, when I had a Pathfinder Flicker Strike Perfect Agony poisoner, who could do normal pinnacle bosses ok. I have not done Ubers, because I have some attitude problem for reaching to them.

Painseekers could have solved your freeze problem.

lust for carnage vs vitality void can only be argued if you're going precise technique and the attack speed there is very good. it also allows you to path to harvester of foes and soul of steel more efficiently without making a square on the bottom.

solving mana on left side ele melee, youre stuck using fuel the fight.

Chieftan losing the 20% phys taken as really hurt its phys defense.

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Lonnie455Rich wrote:

Painseekers could have solved your freeze problem.

Painseekers could have. Though it was a high crit chance build with very high crit multiplier for the high cold damage crit spikes to freeze, and I was using Southbound gloves for the added increased maximum life. The increased freeze duration was nothing to be scoffed at either. I think I was at some point trying double and triple damage modifiers, but I can't remember if they felt beneficial. I was keeping my eye on Expeditions End, but I remember it would have needed some defense fixes if I had used it.

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Lonnie455Rich wrote:

Chieftan losing the 20% phys taken as really hurt its phys defense.

It was probably one of my favorites as a SSF chieftain character, because other sources for it were hard to come by randomly.

I know it's an old post by now, but I had an balancing idea that could be part of any potential leech rework. Specifically with what I've originally suggested in this thread: Max 1 leech instance, and leech instance duration is 1 second by defaults.

My attempt is to make leech so we do not need hard to understand maximum, total, and maximum total leech modifiers, aka current caps, to the leech mechanic. The idea is to make leech manageable and balanced and to require investing in it if wanted to utilize it better. If we most commonly have only 1 leech instance, then scaling attack speed and shotguns does not scale leech, and if leech duration is 1 second, then you cannot make a big hit and ride the leech safely for a longer duration with Petrified Blood. In my opinion these caps are a lot easier to understand and manage when comparing to the current caps.

Now we can have possibly meaningful modifiers that affects leech: leech duration; leech effectiveness (possibly in combination with the duration, as in duration could in theory just prolong the gain rate, thus be part of slower leech); the number for leech instances; faster leech rate.