Blood Mage Feedback - Experienced Player

Hello GGG, firstly I wanted to say thanks for making an absolutely amazing game.

I don't have most of the issues I see mentioned here, the difficulty felt hard but fair, loot was not a problem with me as I was familiar with the crafting system, vendors, and the online trade platform.

What took me by surprise is the absolute shambles that the Blood Mage ascendancy is in. I was really excited to play this class, I already had a build in mind (Crit Arc Witch), and when I finally got my first two ascendancy points, I basically bricked my character. There is just not enough life/mana sustain early game to make this node mandatory. After having a horrible runs, I unspeced my ascendancy as it felt like a detriment.

After finally getting my 3rd and 4th ascendancy points, I quickly speced into Spell Leech, thinking it would offset the ridiculous cost of spells. Boy, was I wrong! From my initial tests, it seems that the spell leech is drastically lower than what is advertised. The build was fine when clearing mobs, but as soon as I would face a boss it became basically impossible to kill any boss. I would burn through my life flasks just trying to sustain my spells way before the boss even did enough damage for me to actually have to use them.

I completed Act 3, with struggles, and based on my experience I don't think 10 additional ascendancy points would fix the core issue of this ascendancy.

My proposed fixes:

1. Make Sanguimancy not mandatory. This node literally bricks early game characters, when most classes get a huge power spike after ascending, Blood Mages get gimped.

2. If the first point is not an option, reduce the ratios of life+mana cost. Something along the lines of requiring spells to fulfill their cost by using half of your life and half of your mana as a resource. If a spell costs 60 mana, make it cost 30 life and 30 mana. Making it cost 60 life AND 60 mana seems backwards.

3. Spell leech seems to not work as intended, I'm sure you are aware of this issue, but I will still note it down.

I'm interested if anyone else has had the same experience as me playing Blood Mage?

I do, you can't play as intended for now, every Witch build are flat builds where Ascend is not required and they all share 80% of the same passive skills tree, so in a word ---> class needs a deep rework, it's a shame for a brand new game with 5 years thinking.

Game offers 2 builds playable and extendable to a point and 3 other flat builds that don't use ascend... Great.... -_-'.

And Blood mage is not in it, the only "blood mage build" are just flat build, like comet or fire wall combo.

GGG Where are the 10, 15 builds viable per class promised in your bragging interviews???

Yes, GGG they released a non-working class and haven't fixed anything yet.Although maybe that was their plan. Playing the blood witch you yourself will bleed from one place...

I'm surprised by the amount of posts complaining about Blood Mage. I have phenomenal time playing it. My build is Blasphemy with 2 curses and Hexblast as main damage skill. I basically roll into the middle of monster pack, press Hexblast once and they all die giving me instant life overflow. Clear speed is literally insane.
In boss fights I use Hexblast only when I grab enough overflow, otherwise its high cost would drain my life and kill me in few seconds. So instead I spam Chaos Bolt from my wand, because guess what, it has no mana/life cost.
It's so surprising to me, because I don't consider myself experienced player like you, I never made my own build in PoE1 and I can't understand why people can't make this class work, when even I can, really.

I play the same Chaos ,but it's a flat build don't need to ascend for this, i use your build without anu ascend points, HEx + bolt for single target.

This is showing why the class is not working at all :), even you can progress, that the minimum hahahah, but considering the class it doesn't work.

People complain that class is unplayable, because they kill themselves casting high cost spells, regardless of gameplay situation. That's the topic, not build variety or anything. I also don't understand how ascendandcy is not useful for you. I find walking with constant twice the hp and crit dmg it gives me quite useful, but that may be because I'm not pro enough to notice it's bad.

Bump.

I am also playing Hexblast with 3 Curses,as well as a blood mage. the damage really isnt that great.

I have a Staff with 50% Crit chance for spells
127% Inc Spell Damage.
120% Inc Chaos Damage.

I am running the Blasphamy which is where my 3 curses come from, I am also running the Wither aura, along with Clarity and Vitality.

My biggest gripe comes that, even with me catering fully towards damage, The char is still super weak, if you compare DPS to any other class blasting through maps.

My Hexblast flat Damage is about 3200, i mean, come on, and then only one curse pops?

And dont get me started on me playing a Blood mage having mana issues.

I had to spec 13 nodes into mana regen and less mana cost, uhm, i am a blood mage, for some reason GGG thought it would be smart to match the cost of skills with life and mana. So now i have two things to take care of.

I Seriously hope they let Hexblast explode all curses. It wont even be close to other skills even if thats the case.

The pickup radius of the Life Remnant is a problem. Players have to move almost onto that Life Remnant to pickup it.

It makes those Life Remnant unpickupable when fighting large or stationary bosses.

I doubt did GGG ever tried Blood Mage themselves?

I'm not saying there aren't builds that make Blood Mage more playable early game, like the Hexblast one mentioned, I'm bringing to light core fundamental issues with the design of the class. Hexblast is cool for early mapping, but as soon as you reach higher-tier maps, well, I'll let you find out for yourself.

I've also made my Crit Arc Witch work by opting to use Inspiration, speccing into the Life Regen nodes at the Templar start area, getting +% of life regained on kill in 2 jewel slots, picking up the spell leech, and ensuring I have life regen on my gear. That still doesn't mean the class feels good to play when you are basically gimping yourself by HAVING to spec into Sanguimancy, which early game 90% of people won't understand how to circumvent correctly.

Definitely needs a reword of some sorts, but it is early access after all, so I'm sure changes will be coming soon and by the time the full game is out, I'm sure they will have figured out how to fix Blood Mage.