Bloodmage first ascendency notable - don't take it early.

I have to say I got slapped by that blood mage ascendancy.

The concept is really cool and I see this having great potential, yet the first 2 ascendancy points are a straight up downgrade that makes especially bosses harder than they already are. Watching not only attack patterns, dodging them and dealing damage but also watch your own HP drain and collect health orbs is unnecessarily stressful while it doesn't grant you a noticable upgrade.

To put it in the nutshell I don't notice how this first ability does anything for me besides making things harder and that you can not change ascendacies afterwards makes things worse.

I would love to play blood mage but to receive only negatives as positive aspects of this "ability" are not noticable feels not like an upgrade like it should be. To make this ability the forced and only ability to take with blood mage first ascendancy points while the ability works just like a bad aura that even requires spirit saddens me endlessly as I don't want to play fire mage and minion focussed builds.

The Blood Witch class is absolutely broken, the first node is just a negative effect for the character that breaks the build you played, the character stops killing bosses and spends banks on restoring health from the fact that you cast skills. It is impossible to get a crit at the beginning of the game and the blood spheres still do not give enough health and you can not always pick them up on bosses. The ascension class should give pluses, not minuses that completely break your game, why this has not been fixed yet I do not understand.

Same here, you outright kill yourself with spell casting with the first node. Grimro has this issue too, he's also lvl 80++ like me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj494rPoWRA

Yeah, blood witch during levelling is harsh on bosses. Better to unspec the ascendancy nodes. I think the crit side can overcome the downsides on bosses, but you're not going to be able to use that during levelling.

It is ridiculous to have an ascendancy where it's better to unspec the nodes to do better on a boss. Definitely needs a rethink.

Do not take this ascendancy in general before it's fixed.
If the ascendancy would properly work without being as bugged as it is then it would be in a more playable space.


Speccing out of the first node will not get rid of the hp costs and speccing then back into it will simply add the hp costs of skills on top of the already existing hp cost, essentially doubling the hp costs.

Since leech or rather leech resistance is not working as intended and therefore resulting in basically no leech at all you wont be able to conteract the hp costs.
The only way to somehow sustain your hp when using meta gems is running cannibalism support on remnants.

The crit dmg node is not working at all. Simply wont give any additional crit dmg no matter the skill.

The base crit chance node is only working for maybe a third of all spells. Most spells base crit wont get adjusted.

The 25% dmg prevented node is not working for some hit dmg types.


So currently 5/8 of the ascendancies notables of the blood mage are either in some major way bugged out or straight up not working at all. If you pick blood mage as of now you are hindering yourself so much more than getting any benefit out of it whatsoever. Outside of all the bugs the ascendancy has a cool concept but it certainly needs some kind of rebalancing since mana costs in poe2 are honestely a bit too insane later on, especially for meta gem based builds like CoC. And those are also the kind of builds that should be enticed to go for blood mage.

GGG fix it, fix it, fix it.

It is a big joke how blood mage was released, was this tested at all?

The first node should not be mandatory, it is too much of a downside, makes the game unplayable.

Or rework the first node to give more direct benefit/lessen the penalty.

Instead of a 1:1 life to mana ratio, make it 1:2 or 1:3.

Fix and give the spell life leech to the node.

The node needs to be a net positive rather than at best a net neutral or what it is now, a net negative.