Bloodmage Chaos Build Feedback
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Feedback for the Feedback Forum! I'd like to detail some observations I've made while trying to progress as a Blood Mage, trialing several chaos builds. I did have some reservations going Chaos from the start because from my PoE1 experience, chaos frequently can take longer to kill or get online, but I forged ahead anyway. Here are my thoughts after nearing the end of Cruel A3.
DoT focus: (Note, obviously I wasn't going to go the crit route here) -Ordinarily dots allow a person additional mobility after a quick few casts, but I feel in PoE2 the normal benefits are actually flipped into burden. Unless the packs are white, ED/Contagion doesn't feel sufficient to rely on for damage. Meaning, you need to toss in a curse and likely your totem or a ritual. Trying to stack 4 spells while also dodge rolling as needed in between casts creates an eternity before you are dealing real damage. Cast times on DoT skills & curses could be significantly reduced to make things feel smoother. Unfortunately cast speed/skill speed on the tree is too punishing to obtain as it means sacrificing damage elsewhere, which brings me to my next point. I feel as though most games would have shorter cast times on these DoT skills to make up for having to cast more of them. -Chaos damage does not seem to scale very well. You can go full damage on the passive tree and it is still incredibly slow, especially on boss fights. I got a pretty solid +3 wand as soon as I could from trade, and the next level or two were the only ones where I felt like I could be on to something. It dropped off significantly in short order. -DoT supports in the current state have too much punishment on them. 20/25% less duration, 8+ second cooldown, 50% less area, etc. tied to the supports create a situation of very little benefit. At one point I was staring at my gem tab in disbelief because there are just so few DoT compatible support gems I actually want to use. I'd say that there are about 3 that feel like they make an impact to damage and that has to be stretched for 4 or 5 skills that can create DoTs. Hexblast focus: (a little more crit focused, but not far enough along) -Hexblast is an intriguing build. After feeling like I was in quicksand with DoTs, I moved to Hexblast. This one feels a little smoother. The damage of this seems to be in a better place, still leaving something to be desired when you compare it to other builds you see out there, but it is still pretty fun. I don't think Hexblast can really come online until the crit ascendancy is obtained, which I have yet to achieve. If I were going to continue playing, I would keep moving towards a crit Hexblast build. BloodMage Ascendancy: When I picked Witch, I knew that there was not a ton of synergy with Chaos at the moment. I figured I was going to be slow with Chaos DoTs so maybe the life steal & free Progenesis would mesh well. I was wrong. -Sanguimancy is brutal. The orbs frequently spawn in zones that cannot be traveled. An example that you can likely picture is with that A2 skeleton boss that comes out of a hole. The orbs will spawn in the hole, and you cannot grab them. On top of that issue, what spell caster wants to run through the boss hitbox constantly to grab orbs?? In packs, you frequently need to wait until they are dead to retrieve your orbs. I propose a solution later for this. I do have no doubt that an end game crit build generating these orbs like crazy probably feels great, but in campaign, I'd pass. -Vitality Siphon cannot keep up with the life I lose to casting spells. So overall, 4 Ascendancy points feel like a net negative. I have played around with a lot of skill tree options, and honestly, the best my character feels is without Sanquimancy and any proceeding Ascendancy node. --I even experimented briefly traveling down to get 20% instant leech + increased leech, just to see how well it counteracts Sanquimancy. I still could not keep up with the life cost of my spells. Once again, the Crit that I do not yet have is likely having a huge negative impact to the archetype, but if the Crit node is required so that you don't tank your hp from Sanquimancy, shouldn't the nodes be swapped for one another or maybe the crit divided between the two nodes? Ideas for Ascendancy: -Sanquimancy - reduce the life cost added to skills. Maybe 25-50%? In addition to this, I think that the orbs would be vastly improved if there was an animation that looked like you were drawing blood from the target, and the orbs were pulled out and dropped within a 5-meter radius of your character, not the target. -Vitality Siphon - this feels so negligible that I don't even know what to do. If it were to be buffed, I could see it become OP, but as is it doesn't even counteract Sanquimancy for me. Also, is this only healing off of hits? I don't know how it is intended to work, but I feel like if it was including my DoTs I wouldn't be experiencing what I'm experiencing. Maybe it could increase damage while leaching, leach ES as well, or some other added benefit to spruce it up a little. Big shout-out to GGG for making a great looking game. I'm taking a break because my chosen path was a little too grueling and I have burn out, but I will definitely be back. GGG is always making tweaks, and I have full confidence that they'll do something (could be to any part of the game) to draw me back. Last edited by Fingerpuppet#1100 on Dec 16, 2024, 1:55:48 PM Last bumped on Dec 18, 2024, 3:45:47 AM
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" Good feedback here. Also followed the same progression, the campaign was a nightmare with ED/Contag because of the low damage. Eventually moved over to stacking mana + block to get the damage stacking bonuses from "Offensive Stance" and "Arcane Intensity", then started converting the build into intel stacking. Even at 2000 mana (with Eldritch battery being completely bugged btw) - the dots still do almost nothing. Hexblast does some damage, but is fairly useless on bosses and tanky rares; also these chaos dot builds can basically not complete any map where a rare has life regeneration with a stacking defensive modifier like chaos resistance. The Bloodmage first ascendancy large node makes no sense, you need to invest a massive amount in recovery to keep your life and mana up; and in doing this you are not able to get enough damage for chaos abilities. |
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The most recent patch fixed some issues with chaos dot, its still weak but definitely better. I love playing it, its a very engaging play-style, but I've also played the monk ice invoker and there is no comparison. The monk has higher survivability, dmg, movement, it is just vastly superior.
I hope they will address the glaring issues with the bloodmage. It doesn't have any significant synergy. For the life leech you would need to go bone spells and crit but bonestorm is painful to use. Even with it's punishing channel time the damage is subpar compared to instant cast elemental spells or monk attacks. Sunder the flesh sounds good but all of your bone spells already have high base crit chance making it pointless for a bone build. The life leech is nice with it but only marginally. The amount leeched is still almost imperceptible. Chaos dot bloodmage is even worse. it would be a very easy fix if they would remove the hit requirement from life leech. But as it stands now life leech is pointless with a chaos dot build. The improved base crit chance is great for ED but doesnt work with your other dots and only affects the hit portion of ED, not its dot. The right side of the tree is very nice with 25% reduced spike dmg and a huge health buff. But they only make you tankier and chaos dot needs some source of increased dmg. 10% of dmg as extra physical dmg is great for the bone spells but for chaos it's pointless. You NEED armor reduction if your doing physical dmg and since your not going crit with chaos dots the 15% chance to bleed on crit is pointless. All in all I think the bloodmage could be nice with some minor tweaks. Not sure if bone will ever be worth it to me, bonestorm is just too painful to clear with. Even though the Monk is several orders of magnitude more powerful than my bloodmage chaos dot build I'm going to stick with the chaos. I know it's strange, maybe masochistic, but for some reason it's just more fun to play than the monk for me. |
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Honestly: it's always the same and this wouldn't change.
PoE2 comes with a big illusion package: a BIG skill tree, LOOOOTS of variety...and like PoE1 there's just NOTHING behind it - just very specific builds to lean on and the rest of options are utter bs, like the blood mage chaos dot. GGG had the big opportunity to start fresh. But they can't. They're obsessed by their own mistakes. Skills/Support skills don't explain themselves for any new player to know exactly what they do. Nor do the calculations behind the scenes. So, instead of opening up the second iteration for a new audiences, Chris Wilson's 'VISION' is just a re-release of the dead end he constructed with poe1, part two is for already poe1-infected high nerds that already know what to do - there's absolutely nothing fresh here, but stronger bosses, longer walking and no crafting. I chose witch for no particular reason. The first leveling was nice, i had much fun. Then on cruel came the barrier. I chose nearly all chaos on the skill tree with no impact at all. I searched the web for the whys. And people told specific ways to level this class. 'SRS', you know, every poe1 player nods, 'SRS for leveling', they say. Why? Because it has been this way ALL THE YEARS of poe1. And as i said, poe2 is absolutely nothing new for anyone. I came back cause i hoped for freshness. I came back, because Chris Wilson told interesting stuff about poe2 that made me curious. But here i am. I didn't chose a hyped-brutal-deluxe-meta. And i hit a barrier. I'm on 100 hours still in act 3, because there's no power in this build. One hundered hours wasted. 40 hours fun, 60 hours pure struggle. I will never play this campaign again, not for a new season, not even to test another char, cause another char will be the same as my blood mage: As soon as i start, there will be fun. And when the barrier hits, i have to look into what builds GGG made actually work and how to 'fix' my build the way THEY want me to play it. It's always been that way. And this is why the audience of poe1 was very limited. But now it's clear that poe2 works that way, too. I regret to have spent money on that, cause i fell for GGG's personal Todd Howard. But he just can't deliver a better game giving freedom and explaining itself and getting rid of cringy mechanics. He just can't. |
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