Opinions on life steal?

[Lawrence]

Has anyone found life steal useful at all?

Way back when the EA first released, there used to be items that gave 5%, 10%, 25% life steal. With the high amount of damage you can do, you quickly became un-killable.

Over time it seems they reduced life steal. The item that gave 25% was reduced to 5%, some relics gave 3%, but with the high damage again, it was still useful.

Now I'm only finding 1%, 2% life steal which apply to melee only? Couple that with the massive reduction in damage, even with a whopping 5% life steal, and 150 damage per hit, there appears to be no point in using it.

Any thoughts?

It seems there is an attempt to balance a lot of overpowered mechanics, but in the end I feel like they are instead making many once-interesting mechanics useless.

[SzargontheCultured]

Hopefully the devs will see this since it does seem one of them browses thru quite often, as i was disapointed with these changes as well as the thorny greatsword that drained life in exchange for high lifesteal was amazing

[Takichi]

The Problem is, its hard to tell, if they completly REDUCED that in an Attempt to Nerf it or if they simply Relocated this Stats onto Items of Act 2 or 3 in an Attemt to simply Rebalance the Stats Location Wise.

[Lawrence]

Originally posted by Takichi:

The Problem is, its hard to tell, if they completly REDUCED that in an Attempt to Nerf it or if they simply Relocated this Stats onto Items of Act 2 or 3 in an Attemt to simply Rebalance the Stats Location Wise.

I'm not sure either, it's possible. But I guess my point is why have an item with 1% life steal at all if it effectively does nothing. Similar to the +1 armor ring or the +0.2 hp regen ring. It's fun to find items with these interesting effects and bonuses, but sometimes I find a hidden item, see the stats and ask, what is the point of this?

I'll chalk it up to place-holder items they are still messing with. Hopeful for 1.0.

[Drako110]

Not sure, you can build yourself around it but it's rather meh.
The further I got with it, was getting the upgraded life steal spell + sword that buffs your LS by like 3%, and didn't see any increase to be worth mentioning.
You can still use the light cast as a back up since it eats your HP instead of your mana tho.

[Utlanning]

The best use of lifesteal I've found is the homing spell, great for the floating skull enemies.

[Pendragon]

So far in my play through as a 2h fighter, I only had a "talent" to pick in the related tree with a meager 2/3/4 % which seemed useless to me.
I think the whole mechanic / trees could use another overhaul/balance pass.

[silent88]

Found a cloak of retribution that enhances lifesteal, I think it was for 5%. Guessing such items would stack. That could get out of hand quick if what they enhance were already borderline OP.

[Lawrence]

Originally posted by silent88:

Found a cloak of retribution that enhances lifesteal, I think it was for 5%. Guessing such items would stack. That could get out of hand quick if what they enhance were already borderline OP.

I tried stacking lifesteal, even with 15% lifesteal doing 100-200 damage per attack, the healing you get does not appear to be worth it. Enemies do enough damage that it seems better to just stack full power and kill them before they hit you.

[bobbie046]

If you are going to use magic you need to invest in spirituality and spell power talents, blood transfusion and life transfusion can drain an enemy very fast, and if you invest in magic stun, they can't hit back

[Aigle1705]

the good druids tomb holds an amulett "anabelle - heal 15hp per kill"
quite nice once strong enough

[Balgin Stondraeg]

Originally posted by Aigle1705:

the good druids tomb holds an amulett "anabelle - heal 15hp per kill"
quite nice once strong enough

And in the flooded mine there's a mace that heals 10hp per kill. It can be obtained relatively early too.

[Fragtastic]

Under Practicality -> Healing skill tree, you can unlock "Revengeful Restoration" which gives you 5% of max health back with any hit if within 2 sec after taking damage.

Pretty sure there's an amulet and a cloak that has life steal. Combine them together and you can get quite a useful amount back. Maybe even life steal weapons stack with these.

[Lawrence]

Originally posted by Fragtastic:

Under Practicality -> Healing skill tree, you can unlock "Revengeful Restoration" which gives you 5% of max health back with any hit if within 2 sec after taking damage.

Pretty sure there's an amulet and a cloak that has life steal. Combine them together and you can get quite a useful amount back. Maybe even life steal weapons stack with these.

That talent is definitely the most consistent healing source you can get, but it's not relative to the damage you do. I'm specifically talking about life steal, since it seems like one of those features that the devs tried to "balance" out of existence.