GGG bamboozled me pretty good with Blood Mage.

[FrickinBrian]

Blood Mage doesn't play anything like how I imagine a Blood Mage to play. No life leech, no aggravated bleeding bonuses, no blood spikes, no "signature skills" whatsoever. Just blood orbs and extra HP cost for skills with no bonuses. The class feels really unfinished.

Infernalist gets a friggin' demon form...

Idk. I think that a lot of the ascendancy needs more flavor and more thematic spells, not just passives and special bonuses.

[Haethei]

it is literally unfinished, it is early access, nothing is finished

yes they do have life leech, a huge amount at 10% for a damage type that normally has no access to leech (spells). i heard it is currently bugged and not functional right now though. this passive alone provides a ton of strength to blood mage defensively, but i know people are worried more about 1-shot deaths than sustain. this is where "grasping wounds" and "crimson power" are also insanely strong defensively for burst damage

they do have a bleed synergy passive: the ability to bleed enemies with any type of elemental damage. it doesnt provide any actual "chance to bleed" on its own, but it enables new possibilities which is really good for an ascendancy passive. hitting an enemy with a fireball for ignite + bleed damage and building damage over time passives sounds pretty neat to me. both ignite and bleed benefit from large single hits to make stronger dots, and blood mage also has plenty of crit synergy

only thing i dont really care about is the infinite curse duration passive. its not useless, just not amazing and doesnt really fit the blood mage theme. i think it will be better in a chaos ascendancy (presumably the missing third one for witch)

[CountCapacollo]

Originally posted by FrickinBrian:

Blood Mage doesn't play anything like how I imagine a Blood Mage to play. No life leech, no aggravated bleeding bonuses, no blood spikes, no "signature skills" whatsoever. Just blood orbs and extra HP cost for skills with no bonuses. The class feels really unfinished.

Infernalist gets a friggin' demon form...

Idk. I think that a lot of the ascendancy needs more flavor and more thematic spells, not just passives and special bonuses.

What? Literally just get crit and use any of the main spells. It comes online at level 24-25 if you've already specced appropriately.

Acting like you're playing Acolyte of Chayula or something.

[FrickinBrian]

I'm aware it's early access. Tons can change, so I am holding out hope for more interesting skills to be available for all classes. Passives are great, but abilities that can be used in real time really drive home a class fantasy.

Blood orbs overfilling life is okay, I guess, but why not make picking them up a requirement to active blood magic and curses.

Make a curse that literally boils the target's blood - a 50/50 fire and bleed dot.

edit - I just think the classes need more "zazz"

[FrickinBrian]

Originally posted by ybgbgl:

What? Literally just get crit and use any of the main spells. It comes online at level 24-25 if you've already specced appropriately.

Acting like you're playing Acolyte of Chayula or something.

None of the witches skills have any sort of blood theme or effects. It just seems like a weird choice. The only reasoning I see is "blood orbs = blood mage."