New player questions about Life Leech.

[Jaynoble55]

Ok so the title says it all. I am playing a duelist with alot of points put into various leech nodes. I planned on going with a melee lifedrain build but Life Leech seems so underwhelming. It cant heal any real damage at any rate to make it worth investing points into.

I understand the slayer gives you a nearly constant leech but unless the leech itself gets much better as I level I dont see the point. As it stands I think my health regen heals me faster than a leech. I must also add that im at around 40th level and have a nice epic two hander + really good epic gear that was donated to me. So I dont think its a gear issue.

My question is thus, what am I doing wrong here? There is a whole mastery dedicated to this mechanic and I cant seem to get it to work. What % numbers should I be looking at attaining before the leech can give in-combat healing? I think im at 8% leech rate and I can barely notice it.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

[Rikkore]

it's hard to give advice if you dont post your build.

if you have low damage then than can also affect the rate you leech. if you're doing slayer the overkill damage is usually what you really on. hematophagy is also a good boost to leech rate. total recovery from life leech is also a pretty good mod. You can probably fit in a carnage heart to make it way better. if you're at 40 I'd recommend just leveling up and increasing damage and defenses.

[Jaynoble55]

Originally posted by Rikkore:

it's hard to give advice if you dont post your build.

if you have low damage then than can also affect the rate you leech. if you're doing slayer the overkill damage is usually what you really on. hematophagy is also a good boost to leech rate. total recovery from life leech is also a pretty good mod. You can probably fit in a carnage heart to make it way better. if you're at 40 I'd recommend just leveling up and increasing damage and defenses.

Sounds like a reasonable piece of advice. Thank you for it.

[Mindtroverted]

By default, a single hit of dmg can't heal more than 10% of your max health. Every hit will create a leech instance which can potentially heal 10% of your max health OVER 5 SECONDS, meaning you can by default heal only 2% of your max health with every hit. Therefore, high attack speed and skills with multiple hits will work better with life leech than slower skills and two-handed weapons focused more on dmg.
Of course, there are nodes on the tree that increase these numbers.
Maximum recovery per life leech increases the maximum leech per hit from 10% of your max health by a %.
Total recovery per second from life leech increases the rate at which leech is applied from the default maximum of 2% of your total life per second by a %.
Maximum total recovery per second from life leech increases the default maximum leech per second from the default 20% of your max health by a %.

In short; use skills which prioritize number of hits and atk spd over dmg and equip faster weapons. Don't take just % life leech nodes. Also take nodes that increase your maximum total leech per second and per instance as well as your leech rate.

[Brian9824]

Originally posted by Mindtroverted:

By default, a single hit of dmg can't heal more than 10% of your max health. Every hit will create a leech instance which can potentially heal 10% of your max health OVER 5 SECONDS, meaning you can by default heal only 2% of your max health with every hit. Therefore, high attack speed and skills with multiple hits will work better with life leech than slower skills and two-handed weapons focused more on dmg.
Of course, there are nodes on the tree that increase these numbers.
Maximum recovery per life leech increases the maximum leech per hit from 10% of your max health by a %.
Total recovery per second from life leech increases the rate at which leech is applied from the default maximum of 2% of your total life per second by a %.
Maximum total recovery per second from life leech increases the default maximum leech per second from the default 20% of your max health by a %.

In short; use skills which prioritize number of hits and atk spd over dmg and equip faster weapons. Don't take just % life leech nodes. Also take nodes that increase your maximum total leech per second and per instance as well as your leech rate.

Yep Mindtroverted summarized it very well. Nodes like Vaal Pact greatly enhance the rate of heal and amount of heal and synergizes well with builds like Cyclone which hit very fast.

Also you have to keep in mind life leach will scale far more then life regen where as life regen doesnt really get buffed that much.

[Eddie]

The guys above me explained the mechanics well, but to give a practical example, my current cyclone slayer has 6,180 hp and can regen 46% of that per second from life leech. This essentially gives me 2842 regen per second as long as I hit things, and I can add flask healing on top of that in emergencies. If I were ever to reach crazy amounts of hp, like 8k, I would have 3680 regen per second.

[Jaynoble55]

Thank you mindtroverted and the rest. I guess I need some respec stones as I have quite a bit already in two handed damage nodes. But I think I understand it now alot better. I only have one question left, is slayer a semi-competitive mastery? I havent seen much on youtube about it. But seriously guys, many thanks on the information!

[Mindtroverted]

I'm playing Slayer myself and I have taken all 4 leech Ascendancy nodes. I'm using Cyclone + Faster Attacks + Life leech support + Life gain on hit support to sustain myself. I have a claw with instant leech and I can leech more than my whole Life pool per second. I feel like Slayer is pretty good. I'd say he's in the top 3 Ascendancies right now. He's got good Ascendancies and you can build him very differently with Crit being a possiblity as well as just focusing on phys dmg and bleed. He's got a solid defensive option with the leech nodes and the nodes that give you extra Endurance Charges if you increase your Frenzy Charges. You can go Evasion on him and it'd work, you can go armour and it'd work. He's pretty versatile. I like that.

[Tyrendian89]

Originally posted by jaynoble55:

Thank you mindtroverted and the rest. I guess I need some respec stones as I have quite a bit already in two handed damage nodes. But I think I understand it now alot better. I only have one question left, is slayer a semi-competitive mastery? I havent seen much on youtube about it. But seriously guys, many thanks on the information!

my guess would be that you (or we^^) should take a good look at your gem setup first - that's a more likely culprit for mediocre performance than a few misplaced points in the passive tree...
Which main attack are you using, and what do you have supporting it? Because if you dont do good damage, you also arent gonna get good leech... :-)