Malachai's Simula Blood Magic trick being removed. Why I'm disappointed.

Someone recently recently posted this to /r/pathofexile, but due to its 50/50 upvote/downvote ratio it may not see the light of day. I really agreed with most of what is said here and I think the developers should take some of this into consideration. Any build that physically attacks with a melee weapon, bow or wand is gimping themselves by not using Wrath and Anger. These two auras provide a huge amount of damage, even if you're not specializing in weapon elemental damage. Here is the post from reddit:

"For those who don't know: There is currently a "bug" that makes it so that your auras are snapshotted when used. There is a unique helmet, Malachai's Simula, that gives you Blood Magic while equipped. So you can equip the helmet, use flat-cost auras in your boots or gloves, then take the helmet off. This will make it so that you can use auras such as Grace, Anger and Wrath on your life pool without them reserving twice as much with the Blood Magic gem.

It's no secret that at present, life builds are dwindling in popularity compared to CI and low-life builds.

Just about any non-spell casting build would be severely gimping themselves by not using Wrath and Anger. The character I'm in the process of making is a pure physical Cleave build. But do you know how much dps I lose from not using Anger and Wrath? 2,500. I can't just simply not use Wrath and Anger. All it means is that now it's going to make my life pool even smaller than it already is. I have invested 30 points into life nodes and every piece of my gear has a near max life roll. Yet my effective HP pool is still less than half of that of a CI build which invests a similar number of points into ES nodes.

Normally I would only have to reserve 380 of that life in order to use Grace, Wrath and Anger. Now, not only will I need to instead reserve 760 life (almost 1/6th of my estimated total life once I'm level 85), but I now have 4 less gem slots to use. Two more blood magic gems and two more reduced mana gems since I can no longer remove them. Being a melee build, I rely on defensive skills and defensive auras to survive. Now I need either drop Leap Slam (how am I going to get away from mobs about to kill me?) or drop Immortal Call. Or not use a curse and Decoy Totem, both of with are simple necessities. What an awful situation this puts me in.

My other option would be to drop 3 auras. As far as I'm concerned, Hatred, Determination and Purity are required for this build. Melee are already at such a massive disadvantage, I can't simply not use something that adds an extra 25% of my physical damage as cold, or something that gives me another 50% armor, or something that further mitigates that brutal elemental damage in level 75+ maps.

So, what? Do I just not use Grace? My ability to survive falls through the floor as soon as I remove Grace. This would also mean not using Wrath and Anger. As I said before, those two auras add 2,500 dps to Cleave. I can't afford to lose 20% of my dps.

What about a Spork build though, or a CI Discharge build? Do they need to reserve 20% of their energy shield just to do sufficient damage? Do they need to stack defensive auras to stay alive? No, and no. Offensive auras (aside from Haste) don't affect spell casters. They don't rely on Wrath, Anger and Hatred simply to be able to do the dps required in high level maps. And more importantly, they don't need to be standing directly in front of a group of enemies to damage it. Sporkers can be in another room, and Dischargers can usually one or two-shot the pack in a huge radius around them.

This just puts life builds that rely on these auras in a really awful spot. I'm not saying bugs such as this shouldn't be fixed, but there needs to be something that balances things out. This post wasn't fully thought out. I just read the "aura change clarification" by Mark. I haven't even got this build to endgame yet. I was so excited about the performance improvements in the patch, and after reading this, that excitement turned to dread. After investing in a Soul Taker, a 6L chest and 11 different 20% gems, it turns out the build I planned won't even work.

I think this was a rare case of case of the presence of a bug being good for the game, until you guys find a viable way to balance out the disparity of life builds that deal physical attack damage. I agree that the Alpha's Howl bug should be fixed though."

I'm with ya here. I mean, I kind've knew it wasnt specifically intended, however it came off to me as "clever use of game mechanics". I really thought their goal was to nerf low-life builds, however the only thing that got nerfed was full life builds. Low-life will still be able to go low-life, while regular HP builds who used BM helm/chest are either going to lose more life, or lose auras.

Its just making CI that much more appealing. I've been contemplating all night just saying screw it, and convert my main from HP to ES. Every patch i keep expecting to hear some sort of HP reworking, buff, what have you, but now i'm beginning to lose hope.

Will this break the game for me? Hell no. GGG has done an amazing job at providing a f2p game that is worth me putting hours and hours a day into. But, this decision really hit me hard. As HP, i already have 50% less than what someone with CI would have as EHP.

I would like to be able to cast my aura and move around my blood magic gem. Perhaps they could just disable that functionality on the unique helm.

"

TrajenKrookel wrote:

Just about any non-spell casting build would be severely gimping themselves by not using Wrath and Anger. The character I'm in the process of making is a pure physical Cleave build. But do you know how much dps I lose from not using Anger and Wrath? 2,500. I can't just simply not use Wrath and Anger. All it means is that now it's going to make my life pool even smaller than it already is. I have invested 30 points into life nodes and every piece of my gear has a near max life roll. Yet my effective HP pool is still less than half of that of a CI build which invests a similar number of points into ES nodes.

I think what we really need to do is increase melee damage effectiveness, from level 10 to level 90, such that the new melee damage without Wrath or Anger or Hatred is roughly equal to the old melee damage with Wrath and Anger (and maybe Hatred, or maybe half of Hatred). This would mean the same damage performance for melee with less reservation and less sockets used.

The one thing I will not get behind is reversing the anti-bug policy. Melee weren't the only ones aura-stacking, there were wanders and archers and summoners too, as well as Shavronne's users; they can all stand to play more fair.

Keeping it so Grace actually costs (and thus isn't an auto-include) sits well with me; I wouldn't want to make any changes there.

GGG wants you to spend the points you would've spent on the new and improved armor and damage nodes into mana nodes.

"

boof wrote:

GGG wants you to spend the points you would've spent on the new and improved armor and damage nodes into mana nodes.

Not really; they want to stop mindless aura stacking. Which is fine, but they need to compensate for that by increasing base damage.

Implying that GGG cares about life vs es balance

"

Xendran wrote:

Implying that GGG cares about life vs es balance

Actually, this is the problem right here. ES and hp shouldn't be balanced against each other. They're polar opposites. CI has 1 hp, while life builds stack hp. They can never be balanced against each other.

They should have their own qualities. Like they used to. ZO should prevent leech. GR should prevent regen, not recovery, and infused should prevent leech. Further, GR should be melee dmg only. CI characters should rely on recovery. That's the whole fucking point of CI in the first place. To be immune to chaos, but you forgo some of hp or hp/hybrids benefits.

CI should ALWAYS have a higher raw eHP than life though. Each one should be made to work within the game, and NOT be compared to the other. They should have different mechanics making them not directly comparable. Again, as it used to be.

"

Actually, this is the problem right here. ES and hp shouldn't be balanced against each other.

Balance doesn't mean what you think it means.
Balancing life with ES doesn't mean making them the same. At all. There is no way to infer that it does unless you create your own definition of what balance is in a game, and that definition would be wrong.

It means making them balanced with eachother in terms of viability. ES and HP could be utterly and totally opposite and you would still have to balance them.
Because balance is the balance of everything. Not making something identical to something else.

The problem with ES isn't that you have more raw EHP. It's that the raw EHP vastly outweighs any advantages that life is supposed to have, making life substantially less viable than ES.

"

GOSUsharpie wrote:

. I've been contemplating all night just saying screw it, and convert my main from HP to ES. Every patch i keep expecting to hear some sort of HP reworking, buff, what have you, but now i'm beginning to lose hope.

Make the change to CI. My old Bow Marauder has been remade as a bow witch, and it's many many many times better than the life version.

Rolling with 3k+ ES since level 50, GR and Vaal Pact by level 60.