Why don't spells work with the life on hit spell gem?

Life Leech does work on spells, just not LoH. However, Life Leech with multiple projectiles isn't that great. Do consider you'll need at least 2000 dps with your spell to even make the support gem worth a slot. And even then, it's not substantial healing.

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Torin wrote:

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Aplier wrote:

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RegulusX wrote:

Also, I said conceptually, not mechanically or literally. That gem should work with spells and the fact that it doesn't - and that everyone in-game was convinced that it should - shows how messed up this mechanic is.

Conceptually, maybe, but mechanically: imagine this situation. Freezing pulse+lesser multiple projectiles+great multiple projectiles+life on hit. This means your freezing pulse now has 7 projectiles that can all hit the same target. You're now gaining 7 times the normal amount of LoH per target hit, without having to change your build or even deal any real damage. Spells are much more accessible to classes than attacks are, and allowing would give all classes an easy, cheap burst heal that requires little sacrifice.

Conceptually, some things that make sense won't be possible, and some things that don't make sense will be possible, and this is true for all games. For the people who build around using spells, the life leech gem works for spells and scales off damage dealt.

Well technically you can put life leech here instead of Life on hit and gain 7x life per attack :D

The difference is that life leech is based off the damage you deal, as opposed to life on hit's flat amount. In order to gain any significant returns from life leech, you need to be dishing out decent amounts of damage, as opposed to the life on hit example I gave that anyone would be able to use even with level 1 gems. Also, with the damage penalties from the multiple projectiles you're doing only .35 normal damage per projectile at a total of 2.45 damage per cast. And again, that 2.45 more damage per cast won't do much for you with no dps.

For example, on my melee shadow, I just put together , which are all fairly well-levelled gems. For me, each projectile does 35-52 damage, which if all 7 hit means 245-364 damage. Even with life leech gem leveled to give 4%, this would only heal me for 10-15 health per target per cast. If I were to do the same with all gems at level 1 and a level 1 life on hit, damage would be irrelevant, and I'd be healing 42 damage per target per cast cast (and at 1/4 of the mana cost). That's an incredible imbalance for not requiring any investment into gem levels or cold damage.

Well now you know why life on hit does not work with spells, lack of hit chance + shotgun effect would make this skill op.

On the other hand an iron will freezing pulse marauder using blood magic and life leech could work without making it look op :D

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Torin wrote:

Well now you know why life on hit does not work with spells, lack of hit chance + shotgun effect would make this skill op.

On the other hand an iron will freezing pulse marauder using blood magic and life leech could work without making it look op :D

I assume you're speaking from experience, ^_^

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_Lokken wrote:

Yeah no

Attack does not inherently mean physical or magical. That definitely needs clarification.

No matter how you're killing monsters, you're attacking them.

Attack isn't some category of 'offensive abilities'. It is how you interact with the monsters period.

Physical attacks, magical attacks, aoe attacks, etc. If a gem says your attacks add life, then whenever you interact with a monster (i.e. you attack it) then you should get life back.

100% needs clarification and/or re-wording.

I'm glad that someone finally got it. I have no idea why people are telling me that it'd be an OP mechanic. I'm not asking that it works, I'm asking that they have better wording on their tooltips so that I don't have to constantly question why certain mechanics don't work when they seem like they should.

Attacks have attack speeds, spells have cast speeds.
That would be the first and easiest way to tell them apart.

I'm sure that more wording can be added later, but it's not needed for closed beta. Be sure to scour the mechanics thread a few times whenever you ask yourself "does X work with Y?", or the skill/support gem subforums failing that.

You can expect clarification regarding attack vs spell soon enough.

And I agree, it's been poorly handled so far.

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RegulusX wrote:

I'm glad that someone finally got it. I have no idea why people are telling me that it'd be an OP mechanic. I'm not asking that it works, I'm asking that they have better wording on their tooltips so that I don't have to constantly question why certain mechanics don't work when they seem like they should.

Well, after your question was answered by the very first reply, the thread kinda got derailed onto discussing the balance of having such an effect. And I find that it's not much of a constant questioning of why things do/don't work, once I learned the game's use of various words, it is perfectly clear if something will or won't work. Clarification on terminology and mechanics is something you gain through experience, you shouldn't expect to walk into something instantly knowing what everything will do. The first time you played pacman, and you ate one of those big pills by the corners, did you know that you could then eat the ghosts?

The ideal situation would be to change the shape of active skills between attacks and spells and to reflect a similar change in supports that are attack-only, spell-only, or both.

I believe most already have "attack" or "spell" in the description, and adding in a base cast time (which is info that needs to be on the gem) will additionally make spells stand out from attacks more.

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Aplier wrote:

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RegulusX wrote:

I'm glad that someone finally got it. I have no idea why people are telling me that it'd be an OP mechanic. I'm not asking that it works, I'm asking that they have better wording on their tooltips so that I don't have to constantly question why certain mechanics don't work when they seem like they should.

Well, after your question was answered by the very first reply, the thread kinda got derailed onto discussing the balance of having such an effect. And I find that it's not much of a constant questioning of why things do/don't work, once I learned the game's use of various words, it is perfectly clear if something will or won't work. Clarification on terminology and mechanics is something you gain through experience, you shouldn't expect to walk into something instantly knowing what everything will do. The first time you played pacman, and you ate one of those big pills by the corners, did you know that you could then eat the ghosts?

So far, every game has been the exact opposite. The learning curve for most games in the same genre disappears once you play and master one. Case in point: I've played around 5 ARPG's and all of them, besides PoE, have had the same system to them. PoE does, too, they just also took the time to label everything oddly and make peculiar distinctions.

I've played DoTA, and I picked up LoL and DoTA 2 no time. Why can't PoE stop shoving change for the sake of change down my throat? They're using the same system as Diablo 3 and many other predecessors, so why not use the same terms? We gain nothing by using new/different words.