So many low life uniques....

The main idea is that Low Life is simply a sad gimmick which is very rarely used except for some very situational builds such as shavs sporkers.

Why there are so many uniques that have mediocre low life status effects is beyond me.

Even if you consider the low life effects of items like Araky Tikki smth like a life saving ability it's always pretty skletchy because usually deaths come from large spikes which take you from high HP to 0 instead of a slow drain. Its how the game works.


I'd love it if GGG would give us an answer adn rework some of the lack luster uniques just a little bit.

"

Fruz wrote:

So are you implying that there is no source of chaos dmg dealing 1600 flat dmg ?
I doubt it, I haven't been dealing with chaos at higher levels for a while since I'm playing with a CI char, but I doubt that no monster can do this. And even then, a single crit or a quick assist of 2 chaos mobs and BAM you're dead.
400HP left without shavronne's is pure suicide.


Sacrificing damage ? Oh please ....
Dmg is mostly about the linked gems unless you play a crit build, and If you rely on ES to survive, then you even have the luxury to take some dps nodes since nothing else in the tree will consistently increase you survability ( you can take couple of chaos resistance nodes, thats right, how points have you invested in that ? not many ).

So .... sacrifice what ???

Well lets consider the cost of reaching and sustaining low life here for a minute. Auras take 60% of your mana, blood magic has a 196% modifier. You MUST cut this value down to a 65% reservation. This will require investment in aura nodes. You also need to invest in chaos resistance in order to avoid getting killed by chaos damage. The nodes on the west side of the tree are out of the way for low-life builds. That costs another few points to reach.

Low life builds are also gear dependant, so you need additional energy shield passives to hold the same survivability threshold other builds would normally have. This also costs additional points. All in all you are either very squishy or will have less damage nodes (read: none) than a normal spell caster. Pain Attunement is simply an equalizer, returning that damage to you. That is my experience with low life builds.

I have not played higher than a level 72 map yet. However so far the highest chaos damage I have taken is a critical hit from the Wharf boss. The map had 35% increased damage, and the boss also had a yellow that boosted crit chance and damage of allies. This blow did 395 damage to me with 61 chaos resistance. I feel perfectly safe moving on to higher maps if that is the best the unique map boss could do under those circumstances; because that means no rare or magic mob is ever going to one-shot me.

It would be cool to see some items or skills that have gradual progression. Something like:

Kaom's Fury
Attack Speed is increased by 1% per 2% of missing health

Something that's not as binary as low-life/not-low-life.

"

Epicly_Curious wrote:

[...]

It it true that getting low life needs a little tuning if you use a 60% reservation aura ( you could run purity or even clarity for more flexibility ).

395 from a critical hit seems low to me for such mods but it is possible I guess. I still thinking that it is really risky, if you get 2 or 3 simultaneous chaos hit, it could be lethal, you mst need more focus than man other builds with that.

I remember Invalesco proposing a RF build based on health + a ton of ES ( without Shavronne's ) a while ago before shavronne's low life RF uilds became popular, and he was saying that his 2k health was a minimum to be sure to survive if I'm not mistaking, that's why less than 500 really seems to be too risky to me.

One simply needs to avoid getting hit by two or three hits simultaniously. I fully believe low life melee is impossible under current circumstances for that reason. However I also think evasion is much stronger than armor for low life gameplay because it helps you avoid multiple chaos hits simultaneously. I've seen video's that demonstrate the Wharf Boss will do 100 chaos damage on average with 75 chaos resistance; and the only boss I think would one-shot me is the Weaver, whom I'm not ever going to fight simply because their boss chamber is suicidal to any build without insane amounts of sustain or AoE. I'm not going to claim low life is easy, but it's definitely managable, and the reward DOES pay off.

It's not viable for Hardcore/Nemesis due to the inherent risk; but this does not necessarily reflect badly on the build.

"

PathOfNerfs wrote:

It would be cool to see some items or skills that have gradual progression. Something like:

Kaom's Fury
Attack Speed is increased by 1% per 2% of missing health

Something that's not as binary as low-life/not-low-life.

Very interesting

"

PathOfNerfs wrote:

It would be cool to see some items or skills that have gradual progression. Something like:

Kaom's Fury
Attack Speed is increased by 1% per 2% of missing health

Something that's not as binary as low-life/not-low-life.

this

bump again.
too many uniques are dumpster worthy because of this.
low life is really an extreme gimmick in this game.

I have 0 interest in building around low-life. Yet, it seems every other unique that drops for me has low-life modifiers. I hate these items.

I wish devs would reconsider and make low-life mod into something which scales gradually with the amount of life you are missing.