Blood Mage Feedback - Experienced Player

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Sm0lin#7816 wrote:

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.

...Because most of us expected a functioning class. Even reading the descriptions before launch, I assumed there would be some tradeoff for the health > damage, at least from the tree.

Look at the part I bolded. Using your abilities will kill you. That's bad design. You aren't playing the class, you're actively working around its downsides.

The only synergy of any kind in the tree are the crit nodes. Crimson Power has a very slight synergy with the crit nodes. You would need about 600 ES on your chest to get 15% crit damage, and you would be using all your ascendancy points for that.

It just reeks of being undercooked, or a remnant from an earlier iteration of the game. There aren't even any life regen nodes in the Witch's area to go with the theme of losing health to fuel your spells, blood magic is obscenely far and while I haven't tested it, I've just heard tell that it merely kills you even faster.

None of the obvious, interesting choices are doable with it. Instead, you have a mediocre time mobbing and bossing is basically playing hobbled. That defeats the point of an Ascendancy that you undertake trials to achieve.

It's bad design all around.

^ Perfectly summed up.

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ciaomei#2428 wrote:

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?

Was just thinking of making a post about this myself.

Not only is the pickup radius terrible but also the duration of them.

Having to run up the ass of a boss or into every imaginable ground effect to pick up life remnants because the pickup radius is so bad feels awful; then as you try not to get killed by the boss or the 12 poison pools, exploding volatile fruits or the first-born guys who take 6 seconds to blow up whilst every life remnant within those effects decide to just vanish out of existence before I even get a chance to go pick them up without dying in the process feels just as bad.

I am enjoying the ascendancy but there are some pretty serious flaws that have been pointed out in this thread already. I especially agree with it feeling bad that Sanguimancy is a mandatory node because the Ascendancy basically becomes a 6-point Ascendancy with 3 notables while others get to enjoy their 8 points and 4 notables.

It would be much appreciated if the devs could add multiple choice paths to Blood Mage so it doesn't feel like we're wasting a notable skill point on something that could just be added into every first notable because it's not really strong enough to warrant being a notable honestly; at least not a mandatory one—I understand it from a thematic perspective but nah there has to be a better way to include the life cost fantasy without gimping the ascendancy out of being able to pick 4 notables of their choice.

This really needs attention! good post

I am working on a bloodmage right now and I definitely agree with many of the posts on this one and I disagree with a lot of criticisms on the game I see posted.

Does anyone know if damage taken recouped effects for life work with the sanguimancy? I could see that helping the skill a ton if it directly reduces the effects of sanguiumancy's self murder.
I have it upspeced, but I am using a unique that converts 25% of mana to life and a unique that gives 50% damage taken recouped as mana and it kinda feels like it's slowing the mana drain a lot, but not sure if this is just the natural regen I have or not.

So I am playing blood mage, and it can work if you get enough crit and are proactive enough at picking up blood orbs. I am running the fireball/ice wall gems right now and am usually running around with double hp while mapping. You can also run grim feast to do the same for your energy shield. A lot of the recoup nodes seemed like traps to me. Generating more blood orbs and running life on kill has helped me much more mapping.

I do think sanguimancy is in a weird spot early game though. Right now it's not even recommended to take until you have 4 points to spend in order to counteract the drawback. The blood orbs could use a little adjustment on where they drop during boss fights as well. For example, during the act 3 boss the orbs drop directly under him in the second phase, which makes them impossible to pick up if he never moves since the hitbox is so large. Bossing on the blood mage feels really weird in general right now

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.


theres a node to fix thats, that removes mana, an makes it so hp is the cost for spells

Somebody cook up a blood mage that can use the chaos node with 3% life cost per cast and the chaos support with another 10% life cost per cast and then I'll say the state of blood mage, chaos spells, and chaos on the tree is working.

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Chaos_Elixir#7304 wrote:

So I am playing blood mage, and it can work if you get enough crit and are proactive enough at picking up blood orbs. I am running the fireball/ice wall gems right now and am usually running around with double hp while mapping. You can also run grim feast to do the same for your energy shield. A lot of the recoup nodes seemed like traps to me. Generating more blood orbs and running life on kill has helped me much more mapping.

I do think sanguimancy is in a weird spot early game though. Right now it's not even recommended to take until you have 4 points to spend in order to counteract the drawback. The blood orbs could use a little adjustment on where they drop during boss fights as well. For example, during the act 3 boss the orbs drop directly under him in the second phase, which makes them impossible to pick up if he never moves since the hitbox is so large. Bossing on the blood mage feels really weird in general right now

I am cranking up crit pretty fast. The 15% base on some spells goes up pretty quickly and I think it'll work out soon enough and am gonna turn back on sanguimanncy soon.

To clarify, are you saying the recoup nodes are traps because they're not effective or because they don't work at all? I will probably test it soon as I haven't seen a clear answer, but I just want to understand the interactions.

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JabbatheHoff#1314 wrote:

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Chaos_Elixir#7304 wrote:

So I am playing blood mage, and it can work if you get enough crit and are proactive enough at picking up blood orbs. I am running the fireball/ice wall gems right now and am usually running around with double hp while mapping. You can also run grim feast to do the same for your energy shield. A lot of the recoup nodes seemed like traps to me. Generating more blood orbs and running life on kill has helped me much more mapping.

I do think sanguimancy is in a weird spot early game though. Right now it's not even recommended to take until you have 4 points to spend in order to counteract the drawback. The blood orbs could use a little adjustment on where they drop during boss fights as well. For example, during the act 3 boss the orbs drop directly under him in the second phase, which makes them impossible to pick up if he never moves since the hitbox is so large. Bossing on the blood mage feels really weird in general right now

I am cranking up crit pretty fast. The 15% base on some spells goes up pretty quickly and I think it'll work out soon enough and am gonna turn back on sanguimanncy soon.

To clarify, are you saying the recoup nodes are traps because they're not effective or because they don't work at all? I will probably test it soon as I haven't seen a clear answer, but I just want to understand the interactions.

I think they work, but if you can get enough crit chance and extra crit damage going you will solve most damage issues and hopefully start generating a lot of blood orbs at the same time. The life recoup doesn't give you any damage which is why I say they are traps.

Any life on kill is helpful too for mapping. If you slot cannibalism into life remnants or another aura, you get another 4% life on kill. Extra spirit on a chest or another item can help with running more auras or supports for them.