What does new life leech mean for you? Analysis and Discussion

***PLEASE at least read the conclusions before posting***

Most of the worry over the changes to life leech come from a misunderstanding on how the life leech mechanic works.

Here is the Wiki info for life leech:


Please note the "if you leech a large amount of life during a battle, you may find that the regeneration continues long after the battle is over."

So, life leech has previously been and continues to be applied at a rate of 20% HP per second. This means that if you AoE a pack of mobs, you will be healing for 20% HP per second but the large amount of damage gives the heal a long timer which means you will heal long after the mobs are dead.

Also note: "Similar to flasks, the regeneration from leech will stop if you reach maximum life."
-> This means that with the 20% hp per second model that has always existed, most people were wasting queues anyways as they would hit max life and kill all queued heals.

---So what has changed?---
Life leech from multiple hits can no longer queue. This means that once the timer on your current life leech expires if you are no longer hitting monsters the leech stops instead of continuing due to the queue of leech in the old system. You will still heal for 20% health per second just like before.

You never healed faster in AoE, just longer. You will still heal at the same rate but you will not be leeching for long periods of time after the mobs have died.

As long as you are constantly attacking, you will be constantly leeching at a rate of 20% health per second.

---So what does that change?---
1) For the most part: nothing. *

2) However, fights that involve chaos damage, bleeding, or burning will raise in difficulty. The actual fight against the mob will feel the exact same but when the mob dies and your current time for life leech is over there will be no heal queued behind it. Persistent damage will be much scarier now that you can't heal for several seconds after a fight unless you get one massive hit in before the fight ends.

3) Builds that rely on lots of smaller hits will notice the difference mentioned in 2). They will still not notice a difference in fight, but because there is no queing and their small hits = short healing timers, they will stop regaining health once a monster dies even faster than heavier hitting and slower builds. This means that they are more likely to die from persistent damage.
-> In some rare cases if you are a build that relies around small quick hits and either your damage isn't high enough or your leech % isn't high enough (or a combination of the two) you may actually not continuously leech throughout your skill. If your leech only lasts .03 seconds and your skill only hits every 0.05 seconds than there is 0.02 seconds of downtime where you aren't leeching. This actually provides an interesting scenario where mathematical min/maxing of damage and life leech % can be done to ensure 100% uptime on leech regen.


***Conclusions***
So there you have it. For much of the gamer base you will likely not notice a difference in the new life leech outside of fights that have damage that persists once the mob dies.
For specs that rely on small hits, you will be more susceptible to death against burning, chaos, and bleed damage once the mobs you are attacking die.

*Thanks to demivion I have become aware of a situation described above in 3) where min/maxing will now be possible with life leech in quick hitting builds. This is actually exciting if you like math.
*This is especially true of shotgunning spells that do lots of extremely small damage. These specs may be hit by the new changes now that there can't be a queue and you will have downtime in leech which results in not obtaining the full possible 20% hp per second.

-As for other spell casters, it is going to depend on the relation ship of your damage to a single target, how fast that damage is occurring and how high your max life is. If your spell can do a decent amount of single target damage and has decent hit-time than you should be fine.

It looks like GGG is actually trying to push life gain on hit (with attacks at least) and not have everyone mindlessly go for life leech every time. I'm not sure what the gameplan is for spell casters that hit with lots of small damage.

Artanthos has pointed out that spell users who use fast hitting, low damage spells may consider using the unique Cybil's Paw to acquire some life gain on hit.

It was also pointed out that Vaal pact's value has potentially skyrocketed with the change to life leech (at least for certain specs). Instant application of even low leech means that fast hitters and multitarget hitters will not be affected by the lack of leech queue and they are still able to use HP flasks.

It may also appear that GGG would like us to value % life regeneration more. Health based spell casters may want to get as much % regeneration as possible.

add to number 3, if your hits are small and fast enough they will actually stop leeching in between each cast

The leeches on my incinerate will only last between .0316 and .127 seconds (stage 0 to 3) but my cast rate is only every .14 seconds. So no matter what I'll have some downtime in between each spell.

It's because certain spells rely on shotgunning in order to do good DPS. They have very low individual damage but in this new leech scenario, shotgunning doesn't work since it happens simultaniously like melee splash

kiting

slower gameplay

utilize other life sources (regen/lgoh) ?

flask flask flask

Lets try it out, thats what it means, overcoming obstacles is the fun part about this game.

"

demivion wrote:

add to number 3, if your hits are small and fast enough they will actually stop leeching in between each cast

I will add this in.

"

pichapie wrote:

kiting

slower gameplay

utilize other life sources (regen/lgoh) ?

flask flask flask

Like I keep trying to say, for most builds you will not be noticing a difference come next patch unless there is a form of persistent damage after a monster dies.

I have 4k hp and self cast incinerate with GMP+ll doing 100 dmg per second to 18 targets. Under the old scheme, I think I used to get say 5% of health leached. 5% of 1800 is 90 per sec.

Do I still get 90/sec leech?

"

Zaanus wrote:

I have 4k hp and self cast incinerate with GMP+ll doing 100 dmg per second to 18 targets. Under the old scheme, I think I used to get say 5% of health leached. 5% of 1800 is 90 per sec.

Do I still get 90/sec leech?

No, if you can not do enough damage to a single target to keep your leech running than your regen will suffer.

With 18 targets being hit per second, it is both nonsensical before and after the patch to use anything but life gain on hit. (Lv 15 gem = 34 LGOH x 18 = 612 life per second)

"

Jamezuh wrote:

"

Zaanus wrote:

I have 4k hp and self cast incinerate with GMP+ll doing 100 dmg per second to 18 targets. Under the old scheme, I think I used to get say 5% of health leached. 5% of 1800 is 90 per sec.

Do I still get 90/sec leech?

No, if you can not do enough damage to a single target to keep your leech running than your regen will suffer.

With 18 targets being hit per second, it is both nonsensical before and after the patch to use anything but life gain on hit. (Lv 15 gem = 34 LGOH x 18 = 612 life per second)

You do understand lgoh doesnt work for spells right?

Edit: I believe my math is basically correct, so what does the new leech mean in terms of hp/sec leeched in the above situation?

my bad but i was speaking from a melee standpoint since i enjoy that class the most