I took one look at blood mage ascendancy ...

[Mac]

.... and i just proclaimed outloud; wtf, who designed this garbage?

Forcing mana to life means that, and that alone, has forced me to ignore this entire thing, i'm literally forced to go infernalist as there is literally no way i could even remotely keep up with the health drain - Seriously??

I'm sure for 100% spell users, this has its merits .... with spell leech - you know, something you get for your SECOND ACSENDANCY xD - but i'm not, im a minion build, its why i chose witch to begin with, and not only am i met with no minion tree, but 1 of the 2 im forced to ignore.

I know its early access, but this game has been in dev for what, how long, how many years? and not only that, they have had a decade of knowledge of whats good and bad design wise from poe1, this is just .... horrendous, like, not a single person even vetted this it feels.

AND THEN

I looked at infernalist, and i realised ... that the only node that i should get, is infernal hound, everything elses negative impact means i can't pick them, i have no chaos res at the moment, so i can't pick physical to chaos node, that will make me insanely weak against 90% of the normal enemies, those that hit you with physical attacks.

So, 1 tree is dead, and the other has only 1 option i can actually pick without it making the ruthless poe1 experience of poe2, even more ruthless lol.

I just gotta ask, who actually looked at this as a dev and thought, yes, yes this, this is exactly what the game needs.

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To all blood mage builds, change my mind, let me know your experiences, because i gotta say this, the game does not make me think its even remotely capable of early, yes, under lv30, you know, lv22 trial experience the game has been setup for you to do, could even REMOTELY keep up with having the mana cost, drain your health pool instead, a health pool you can't make stronger because life nodes, aren't on the tree, or even that much life regen! lol

I need to know your experiences, because looking at this, this is beyond silly that devs even thought that this is what the game needed.

And yes - im sure they didn't give us the minion ascendancy because minion builds would have dominated the game the moment it cam............NEVERMIND, THATS EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED ANYWAY.

[ClAyMoRe*]

Originally posted by wulfster42:

Originally posted by Panthaz89:

I can assure you as someone who picked blood mage it is very weak and you have to compensate for the downside with regen otherwise you will just end up draining yourself against bosses. It's funny to hear from people who haven't play it say " you have leech" well not really late game monsters apparently have leech resistance so if you aren't doing a million damage per hit you won't see any real returns and I'm sure on bosses this dumb stat is even higher so another mechanic that helps the one button builds rather than something with actual thought.

Do you even play a bloodmage? Leach is worthless because it doesn't work for over max health. Same with life regen, and even your health flask (although there can be other affects on it that are useful and it can help in a "you should have been instakilled but due to having over 2x normal max health you survived) situation (Def get instant or instant when low health mod on your flask).

You don't need any of that as long as you are actively attacking at least 2-3 times a second (from spells/weapons whatever) and have a semi-decent crit chance (or are killing lots of enemies that works too).

Blood mage ranks on the top of my best ascendency chart....beating out Titan by a significant amount. It's insanely powerful with very little prep/equipment and it works with almost any build (just as long as you can do crit hits with it).

Gonna make a post about the best ascendencies in a few minutes actually.

Idk about that, you can count amount of Bloodmages in top 1000 in Standard on 1 hand.
I have not heard anyone saying bloodmage is strong, or in good shape besides you.
And if it as easy as you say, there would be way more of them.

[Panthaz89]

Originally posted by wulfster42:

Originally posted by Panthaz89:

I can assure you as someone who picked blood mage it is very weak and you have to compensate for the downside with regen otherwise you will just end up draining yourself against bosses. It's funny to hear from people who haven't play it say " you have leech" well not really late game monsters apparently have leech resistance so if you aren't doing a million damage per hit you won't see any real returns and I'm sure on bosses this dumb stat is even higher so another mechanic that helps the one button builds rather than something with actual thought.

Do you even play a bloodmage? Leach is worthless because it doesn't work for over max health. Same with life regen, and even your health flask (although there can be other affects on it that are useful and it can help in a "you should have been instakilled but due to having over 2x normal max health you survived) situation (Def get instant or instant when low health mod on your flask).

You don't need any of that as long as you are actively attacking at least 2-3 times a second (from spells/weapons whatever) and have a semi-decent crit chance (or are killing lots of enemies that works too).

Blood mage ranks on the top of my best ascendency chart....beating out Titan by a significant amount. It's insanely powerful with very little prep/equipment and it works with almost any build (just as long as you can do crit hits with it).

Gonna make a post about the best ascendencies in a few minutes actually.

Yeah I play blood mage in maps if you don't rank stormweaver as one of the top ascendancies and are calling witch better sorceress than that's even sillier other than Infernalist taking over hardcore due to minions and safeness rather than efficient clear speed which spark stormweaver they completely dominate every other ascendancy without even trying hard. If something is working for blood mage it is probably beyond broken for stormweaver because they have easy access to shock and don't have to rely on crit also blood mage has a the right side of the tree for being tanky so going all out crit is not the only option for blood mage.

[Wonroc]

Bloodmage has been rough to say least. Im 87 bloodmage all ascendancy with about 14k dps on main spark skill. Yes weak, trying

[Ashyne]

Can anyone tell me what happens if I use blood mage and the key node that makes me have 1 life only? Will I still be able to use skills or die with every cast?

[RodHull]

Against all common sense I picked blood mage (found the idea of infernalist a bit boring)

And so far my fears were misplaced. I usually have around x1.5 to x2 of my actual life pool cause I'm constantly overfed on blood globules. I use detonate dead and profane ritual its insanely fun to play, easiest act 2 boss kill of any of the characters I leveled so far.

Once I can get sacrifice I will drop the silly flame skulls thing most likely and I will just use my own minions as suicide bombers to create chain reactions, doing base extra physical and bleed with spells and being able to leech life with spells is very strong. It just requires a bit of thought to build around.

That said yes clearly the missing 3rd ascendancy is going to be minion focused. It's likely the most straightforward and will need the least testing

[Rogue]

Hexblast is pretty op for bloodmage and clean (you can see the field clearly instead of all the spell effects and on death effects). If you are afraid of life loss due to the life cost, use a non mana based skill like detonate dead ( Level 1 gem works at full power and since you hardly need to spend mana, mind over matter works too...) where your damage scale off % health of corpses/minions. She can deal ultra crit damage, basically bosses die in first or 2 seconds.

Remember she's crit based, so you can sacrifice some base damage (using lower level gems , inspiration support gem, etc) for lower mana cost and focus on crit. E.g
lv 14 comet -> 94 cost , 726 -> crit -> 726x3 = 2178
lv 20 comet -> 198 cost , 1514 (non crit)
lv 20 comet with inspiration ->118 cost, 1514 -> crit -> 1514x3 = 4,542

With crazy crit gear, maybe reach x7 ? not sure. Anyway, I did my 3rd and 4th ascendancy run back to back since I one shot the first 3 bosses of the trials. Zarokh is tanky, but I only have to deal with his time stop bubbles once.

fyI: Blood mage is the first class to be nerfed...

[Rogue]

Originally posted by Ashyne:

Can anyone tell me what happens if I use blood mage and the key node that makes me have 1 life only? Will I still be able to use skills or die with every cast?

Should be unable to cast...