Plague Bearer / Plague Nova - Life Leech bug

The spirit gem Plague Bearer (active skill: Plague Nova), despite dealing Physical damage, is not applying Life Leech, even with 15k physical damage stacked up.

I'm currently with a Ritualist, trying to use the life leech from the spear, since it states "Leeches 5.27% of Physical Damage as Life", differently from my rings that say specifically Physical Attack damage and seems to not be meant to spell damage (considering this spirit gem is a spell of course).

Also, why the Malady and Lacerate support gems doesn't fit on Plague Bearer? It's a physical hit, it would make sense that it's poison chance could be converted into bleed or get a bonus chance to bleed.

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Ramiko#4950 wrote:

I'm currently with a Ritualist, trying to use the life leech from the spear, since it states "Leeches 5.27% of Physical Damage as Life"

This is a local weapon stat, only attacks with this weapon leech what it says. Plague Nova doesn't deal attack damage as you noted. It deals secondary damage which is pretty rare for skills.

As for supportability restrictions, it's hard to say for certain. Many potentially useful supports for Plague Nova can't be socketed to the gem. The devs haven't reacted, although there were enough similar reports. It still can be a low priority issue or maybe it's just balanced around that.

So in this specific case, only some rare cases like blood mage spell leech would work? kinda weird, but makes sense