Upcoming changes to Leech

sounds very interesting. i always liked the idea of builds with heavy leech and regen. I do hope this will bring changes to Blood Magic eventually as well (a good combo could be achieved here)

Leech is difficult to balance because it is a winmore mechanic. The whole point of stacking leech is to be able to snowball and trivialize encounters, either by granting sustain (not a problem with the ridiculous number of flask charges in PoE) or by out-healing incoming damage.

You'll never be able to balance leech. Either accept it's part of a GG build or leave it as a noob trap novelty.

I dont want to complain - neither do I want to judge before having tested this - I just feel like stating my oppinion with regards to this.

First of all : Another nerf to mana ? I am sure casters havent been hit by enough nerfs yet and will appreciate it.

Second : I have a feeling that the main problem with leech is that you misvalue it.

I suppose you think that we leech back too much live so that we can just tank bosses and can circumvent the neccessity to learn boss strategies. I disagree. Life leech was in a good spot right now. It was not possible to leech back life fast enough to regain as much life as most hard enemies do damage ( half life or less with a single hit, some even one shotting many builds ) otherwise people wouldnt run around with at least two life flasks all the time. But it was barely enough for melee characters to get along. A lot of normal map bosses are already dangerous enough for most people to skip them in maps because the risk / reward ballance is broken.

The problem here possibly rather is the boss design - especially with regards to team play. In other games bosses involve strategies, e.g. big rooms, kill some guarding stones before you can damage the boss, multiple phases, bosses / their mini boss adds drop health at certain points. In PoE any bosses merely are a pure gear check and as soon as that gear check is passed the bosses become trivial and almost no strategy is involved anymore which has nothing to do with the leech rate - you cant fix missing complexity with nerfs / adjustments to life leech rate IMHO.

Just as an example I would like to add a video of one of the best boss fights in a game - epic music, several stages - this is only the boss fight itself but even the way to the boss is epic with several levels and stages and neccessary strategies ( unlike e.g. the way to atziri which is just a mass mob killing ), you might want to check that out seperatly if you want.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzkOsxFpse4

( BTW - notice how in this boss fight you actually see where the meteors will impact and you have time to react and reposition - unlike Kaom where just a whole area is being bombarded - again more a gear check than something involving a strategy )

You already nerfed mitigation ( e.g. Ondar's guile, ripped MoM and AA ) as well as DPS ( e.g. rip reduced mana ). Personally I have a feeling that you also increased the physical damage enemies do since playing melee with fortify I seemingly took as much damage as before without fortify meaning that any builds without fortify, e.g. ranged builds, will take even more damage now ( not to mention that fortify is mandatory for melee now and nerfs melee damage ).

While your intention is to make the game harder we will see if you overachieve your goal with the sum of all those changes / nerfs. I would rather welcome a more complex enemy / map design that is more than a gear check.

Note that I love A4 right now anyways.

"

AdFinitum wrote:

I dont want to complain - neither do I want to judge before having tested this

...goes on to do exactly that.

You understand that the point of the closed beta process is to determine that exact answer before GGG puts the changes, as they have them at this very moment, into live servers right?

I see this so often on these forums, like overprotective moms stating back to their children what they just said:

GGG: We're doing a closed beta to gather data from players at specific times and with specific volumes of people in order to get the proper trends and information we need in order to balance the game for release.

Forum Poster 82038: I hope you guys are really taking into account how the game is now versus what it's going to be. [Insert passive aggressive comment regarding nerfing their favorite build]. All these changes will change the game and I hope you don't overnerf/overbuff [insert favorite skill/creatures].

Ugh...

"

komlosi wrote:

Nice to see more options for improving leech rate. Keep up the good work guys!

Edit: What's up with the negativity? I don't understand...

people fear what they cant understand

"

Evarsor wrote:

people fear what they cant understand

People HYPE what they cant understand.

Great changes to leech! I am just excited for more changes in the passive tree too.

Wait, you said you thought we might like these yesterday.

I don't like it. You are nerfing it, not buffing.

What is wrong with you guys?

We're back to leeching from multiple sources? YAY! Can't wait! :D

I love how everyone (myself included!) moaned when they changed from multiple source leeching to single source, and how we still have moaners when it's being changed back.

Can't please everyone I guess :)