Life Leech: A mini Guide

[c0mad0r]

Life Leech, a general description

Life leech is a Game Mechanic in Enshrouded that allow users to regain some health by dealing damage to enemies.

Why use life leech instead of potions?

Potions will always be better than life leech, but life leech not only reduces the amount of potions needed to stay alive, it increases survivability in situations where taking a potion (where you pause your actions to drink it) isn't always an option; thus increasing survivability. Life Leech is, albeit opinionatedly, very useful for single players and is especially useful in boss fights.

The two types of Life Leech in Enshrouded

• Guaranteed Percentage: All weapons containing life leech offer a guaranteed percentage as stated by the tooltip when upgrading the weapon: On Hit Leech 5% damage as health

What guaranteed percentage does: Every attack that hits an enemy from a weapon with "Life Steal" will in fact recover 5% of that attack's damage as health. So if your effective hit is 486 on an enemy, you recover +24 health with every attack.

• Chance Percentage All rings containing life leech offer a chance percentage as stated by the tooltip: 6% or 8% Life Leech Chance

What Change Percentage does: Every attack that hits an enemy while wearing one of these rings has a percentage CHANCE to recover 50% of your attack as health.


So let's do some testing on the following:

Ring of Endless Life: Legendary +6% Life Leech Chance
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3413333957

Gemini Ring: Epic +8% Life Leech Chance
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3413334146

I went into Deepcut in Kindlewastes and attacked both a boss and 4 mobs, recording the session then counting the number of times the leech processed (proc'ed) using one of the above rings, then repeated it using the other.

Results

• The Gemini Ring gives an 8% CHANCE to heal yourself for 50%.
  
• The Ring of Endless Life gives a 6% CHANCE to heal yourself for 50%.

Again, on weapons life leech (Life Steal) works as advertised : if you have 5% life leech, you gain HP equal to 5% of the amount of damage you're dealing.

Example of one such weapon:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3414744466

The following level 40 weapons have life leech, there are probably more, but this is what I have found:

Lightforged Axe, Champion’s Axe, Frostwing Axe, Twin Soul Mace, Misfortune Mace, Crystal Knives, Mandible Crusher and Avalanche Starter

Life Leech : The Verdict

Life leech is immensely powerful and often not really considered by many due to the constant push for max damage, but survivability is in fact just as important as damage. If you prefer not to use a weapon such as one of the ones listed above to give you guaranteed life leech for survivability, consider using one of the aforementioned rings to at least reduce the need to use potions and increase survivability during boss fights.

Build Options

• Max life leech : 2 x Gemini Rings + 1 x Weapon with Life Leech
  
• High life leech : 2 x Gemini Ring
  
• Weapon life leech 1 x Weapon with Life Leech
  
• Min/Max life leech : 2 x Rings of the Ancients + 1 x Weapon with Life Leech

QUESTION1 Do ring bonuses stack?
ANSWER1 Absolutely! One of each ring or two of the same type will in fact stack!

QUESTION2 Where do I find the Gemini Ring?
ANSWER2 Moth's Grove north of Springland’s Spire. A mini boss Fell Banshee there will drop one unconditionally every time it spawns.

QUESTION3 Where do I find the Ring of Endless Life?
ANSWER3 That ring is found in Nomad Highlands in Gold Chests and is rather easy to get after a few minutes of farming any of the gold chests there.

If you do not believe in this information, don't argue, go test it yourself or go on the Enshrouded Discord and ask the same thing I did, you will likely get the same answers as I did. If you did not, I would love to hear what you heard!

Have fun out there!

[Titanica (MAGA) (MASA)]

Wow

[thelittlegear]

There's nothing "mini" about this, you should place it on the guides section! Top notch!

[Kappa]

Nice guide!

Life leech is cool.
I played since the beginning a melee class and sticked with life leech all the time.

I just leave here some extra tips:
To make the skill shine I tried different approaches, ending up also enhancing it past the rings/weapons.

1) the tank feat heal on crit is essential, as it gives extra healings based on your crit chance and hp pool.

2) poisoned daggers are the way to go:

- faster attack in the game ( though less dmg, they can crit more, triggering heal on crit more often )

- poison trigger lifesteal, which makes you come back from the dead if the enemies got you down ( it can proc even on a streak, reading you n times )

3) hp pool is essential ( withstand more hits and gives higher heals from crits ), so going deep into warrior/tank trees to get defensive stuff and constitution points is mandatory ( don’t worry about wasting points in STR to get what you want )

4) warrior extra crit chance with melee weapons ( along with extra cut/sharp dmg ) would give you more crits and heals.

5) warrior armor is also mandatory ( extra physical defense and crit chance on helm piece), but just get the -700 stamina delay boots from the hunter sets which are broken for any melee.

6) get 2 gemini rings asap. You’ll never change them for anything else.

[Nigel]

Nice info - thank you for this guide.

One question: are those rings viable for archers and mages, too? Or are they only something for melee fighters?

[Therin]

Originally posted by Nigel:

Nice info - thank you for this guide.

One question: are those rings viable for archers and mages, too? Or are they only something for melee fighters?

Yes - I religiously use them on my mage.

[Therin]

Outstanding post, @c0mad0r! I have been a huge fan of life leach as you know, but never knew until you told me that the same type of ring does indeed stack.

That's a really good find that the Endless Life actually has a bit bigger payoff over the Gemini. I'd never have thought that before. And the irony after just getting my second haha!

I agree with @thelittlegear that it deserves to be in the Guides. The tips from @Kappa are great too. IF you do post it in the guides, consider asking to include some of that info and then just cite him?

[Dragonfly42]

Wow, thanks! I will be changing my rings.

[c0mad0r]

Originally posted by thelittlegear:

There's nothing "mini" about this, you should place it on the guides section! Top notch!

Hahaha! Thanks @thelittlegear and @Therin!

After spending a few hours testing this, counting all 348 hits I did plus leech hits and plugging them into a google spreadsheet to do the math, I'm kinda burnt typing for now. I'll probably make this into a guide at a later date though.

This thing started because I was sure something felt off when I changed from my Lightforged Axe out for the Greater Golden Twinflame Sword and kept dying more often.

I just didn't realize the Lightforged Axe life leech PLUS the gemini ring I was using were stacking and working that well.

Hope this guide helps!

[Nerevar]

there is some important bit missing from the OP (if i missed it please point it out) :

how many sessions of testing did you actually do to draw the 50/75% chance conclusion? its not listed there.

while life leech is useful health regen works just aswell and water aura does not take alot of investment to be strong especially in a mage/melee hybrid it cuts down on potion use by alot aswell.

then there is cases like the dragon where life leech is essentially outright useless.

health regen is found on gear pieces youll wear. you dont need rings to get it to a fair amount. unlike life leech where your options are fairly limited as only rings and weapons have it currently.

personally i found life leech to be not as useful as people claim as its just too easy to avoid dmg in this game and blocking/parrying is insanely strong and easy to do to full negate or grossly reduce dmg taken. and enemies who can end you in like 2-4 hits its better to avoid thier attacks than trying to tank trough em.

i guess it also depends on what settings someone plays on. on higher difficulty settings this is alot less useful sadly.

[Kal]

Just checked what I have on, I have 2 Rings of Eternal life. Its amazing when fighting multi enemies. I usually end the fights with almost full health. (warrior) Edit: My weapons also does Leech on hit 5% damage as health

[Sgt.JESUS]

Great thread OP, i never understood why that not legendary ring gave more life leech than the yellow one, your explanation makes a lot of sense, i still prefer the newer rings though.

[Faceplant]

I don't think you've used it to it's full extent.

Originally posted by Nerevar:

while life leech is useful health regen works just aswell and water aura does not take alot of investment to be strong especially in a mage/melee hybrid it cuts down on potion use by alot aswell.

I may be missing something here, but I'm pretty sure that health regen is nowhere near fast enough to compare to leaching. Combat only takes a few seconds. I don't know of any regen that works that fast.

Potions do, of course.

Originally posted by Nerevar:

then there is cases like the dragon where life leech is essentially outright useless.

This is for a melee build, which, you're right, is mostly useless against the dragon (at least for most), so you re-spec as an archer, get the job done, and move on.

Originally posted by Nerevar:

health regen is found on gear pieces youll wear. you dont need rings to get it to a fair amount. unlike life leech where your options are fairly limited as only rings and weapons have it currently.

Those are mutually exclusive, so you can do all three. I think I'm missing your point.

Originally posted by Nerevar:

personally i found life leech to be not as useful as people claim as its just too easy to avoid dmg in this game and blocking/parrying is insanely strong and easy to do to full negate or grossly reduce dmg taken. and enemies who can end you in like 2-4 hits its better to avoid thier attacks than trying to tank trough em.

Again, these are mutually exclusive. You can avoid combat when using leaching gear.

There are tradeoffs, but leaching is a huge benefit in most combat situations for a melee character. There are very few mobs that can end a strong melee character in 2-4 hits, and many of those are not an issue, since you can end them faster.

Originally posted by Nerevar:

i guess it also depends on what settings someone plays on. on higher difficulty settings this is alot less useful sadly.

That's likely the case.

[Faceplant]

Originally posted by Kal:

Just checked what I have on, I have 2 Rings of Eternal life. Its amazing when fighting multi enemies. I usually end the fights with almost full health. (warrior) Edit: My weapons also does Leech on hit 5% damage as health

Exactly!

I often find myself running INTO combat when I get banged up so I can heal some of the damage back.

[coslie]

Don't want to be contentious, but that's not consistent with what I have observed. Last run, when I had 1 ring of endless health and no Battle Heal and no other source of leaching, I'd notice I'd occasionally heal for 1/2 of the damage I'd caused. Which surprised me, because I'd thought it was 100%.

Once I had battle heal and another ring, I was seeing consistent heals, with occasional large spikes. But without a proper combat log, it's hard to pin down what was doing what. I never got around to swapping the Gemini ring in, and it'd be hard to compare with all the noise.

Just now I started a new character (could've just respecced instead I guess) and gave it one of each ring. I didn't think it was proccing at all, so I put on both. Now I'm assuming the issue is that for small heals it won't show the number. Watching the health bar I noticed it was occasionally jumping up a bit, flashing green. If it had just been 6% (or even 14%) of the 7 wand damage it would've been imperceptible, and it certainly wasn't firing 75% of the time.

IMO the ring of endless life is a 6% chance of a 50% leach. Don't know about the Gemini yet. I'll level up a bit and test some more when I get the time.



Do you have Battle Heal? That'd totally mess up your experiment. And I really wish there was a combat log. Games never seem to have them anymore.

[Kal]

To be fair, I'm a warrior who has a lot of damage mitigation on my armor already. So even small heals make a bigger difference then other classes with less damage resistance. Pretty sure it is the weapon leech that makes it a powerful combo.