Blood Mage Dominance, Ascendancy Power, and Lich

Sure. Blood Mage.

Meanwhile Infernalist at 10k/s Recoup has to be one-shot and obliterates all the same. Unlike Blood Mage, Mapping or Bosses doesn't matter. Recovery stays the same long as you keep casting.

Please don't tell me you think BM keeps up with uncapped Demon Form + Grinning immolation.

All 3 of the Witch options are good. It's Sorc that sucks.

Sorc is not bad….


Neither is “outside of lich and varashtra”


I like how these two are both saying competing things here lol

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spohanpiscanc#4457 wrote:

I am getting super tired of your misrepresentation of what is being said.

This will be my last response to you.

No problem. If you feel that I'm not understanding your point and you no longer want to continue this discussion I can respect that.

Perhaps I've misunderstood you. The general tone of this thread has been to nerf BM. If you don't feel that BM needs to be nerfed than I apologize for thinking that you did.

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spohanpiscanc#4457 wrote:

IMHO what needs to happen is a major adjustment of how spells.... then you can start looking at how to nerf BM top end, less crit dmg multi on the 15% crit node seems like a good idea to me.

However, when you say stuff like this, I interpret that as wanting to nerf BM, despite having said "rathpith globe" is a significant part of it's power:

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spohanpiscanc#4457 wrote:

The BM would suffer the greatest hit with the removal of rathpith globe

despite implying spells in general having problems:

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spohanpiscanc#4457 wrote:

IMHO what needs to happen is a major adjustment of how spells scale with levels, their mana costs...

Despite admitting that the "Overpoweredness" of BM would be very difficult to do in SSF:

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spohanpiscanc#4457 wrote:

This is why BM is op and never dies when scaled properly even tho pob defense numbers look like dogwater.

I cannot imagine getting there in an SSF environment, but in trade it is pretty much the goat

I interpret this as someone looking at evidence that suggest baseline BM isn't a problem and still wanting to nerf baseline BM.

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spohanpiscanc#4457 wrote:

then you can start looking at how to nerf BM top end, less crit dmg multi on the 15% crit node seems like a good idea to me.

But sure, maybe I've misrepresented what you've said.

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Mashgesture#2912 wrote:

Sorc is not bad….


Neither is “outside of lich and varashtra”


I like how these two are both saying competing things here lol

Varash is okay but takes a while to come online much like Infernalist.

I think the difference is Demon form will carry you on it's own till you can get there while Varash just straight up needs high level gems and focus. The other two Sorc aren't great though.

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spohanpiscanc#4457 wrote:

I am getting super tired of your misrepresentation of what is being said.

This will be my last response to you.

IMHO what needs to happen is a major adjustment of how spells scale with levels, their mana costs, base mana regen of the player needs to be much higher, base cast speed of all spells needs to be faster, penalty to movement while casting lower and most other caster ascendancies need some usable ES recovery ascendancy to name a few. then you can start looking at how to nerf BM top end, less crit dmg multi on the 15% crit node seems like a good idea to me.

Starts to make a lot more sense with these opinions when you see stuff like this though:

@darrenrob82#3531

With all due respect, you don't need to tell me how to properly and optimally build Lich.

I'm perfectly aware that Soulless Form and Eternal Life, and all the other skill tree passives and affixes related to it, are extremely valuable for Lich defenses. (It's almost like it's the ONLY defensive option for the ascendancy besides scaling curses...) Wow. Truly revolutionary. I haven't heard talking points like this being parroted by all the build guides for Liches I've seen over the months. /s

That isn't the point. I don't need you to tell me what my options are, or how to do things. What I want you to imagine is a world in which things could be. Such is the way of the original PoE game; if you wanted to build around a certain mechanic, i.e. mana, and scale your offenses and defenses from it, sure! It'll take some investment as any build does, but it's viable, doable, fun, and usually relatively painless even in HCSSF environments.

What I wanted to highlight in my original post was that we as players need more options. As it stands, scaling raw mana and mana regeneration for both offense and defense is a reasonable option for several archetypes, notably the Witches and Sorcs this thread has been discussing.

What I attempted to highlight was that for a Lich in particular, pure mana scaling is heavily cucked for defense while you get a boost in offense if you so happened to spec into Necromantic Conduit + MoM. Fun and powerful? Sure. Viable or optimal in HC and/or SSF environments? You and I both agree it isn't. But the point is I want it to be if I so choose, and if I have made the appropriate investments in gear and passives to do so. Is that really such an unreasonable ask?

No doubt BM is best caster atm. Discussion about its balance always comes down whether it should be toned down or other ascendancies tuned up. As someone said before, BM is among best designed ascendancies atm and i agree with that. Thats why i lean toward tuning up other ascendancies and scaling content a bit.

However, giving each ascendancy free nodes(in their current form) is not the way. 0.1 BM had to sacrifice ascendancy points for tech enabling ability. It felt very unfair and narrowed choices drastically. Everyone had to take sang, spell life leech and crit base. That was simply bad design and i`m glad GGG changed that.

So, if ascendancy got some tech enablers they could be considered free but not that many come to my mind. For example, among buff qualifying ascendancies there is definitely chronomancer. Which of its current abilities should be free? In my opinion none. While all of starting abilities fit time/chrono theme, none of them are tech enablers like sang. They`re just time/chrono oriented skills.

You're right. In the BM's case, having the 1st node be mandatory makes the most sense, and all other ascendancies as of 0.4 don't have a single first node that makes sense for them to be mandatory.

But this is beta, and the devs are always looking to improve (and thus change) ascendancies especially based on community feedback. Whether changes or improvements come sooner or later, I couldn't say. But GGG's track record is pretty good, and I'm sure their backlog of things to complete is massive.

+1

The Ninja HC and HCSSF build lists only show currently alive players.

Not sure the true impact that might have on ratios or numbers of things that people are trying to take away to support any arguments but I think it's likely something that should at least be taken into consideration. The actual numbers and ratios for HC/HCSSF could be much different than what's being made visible. I think it also doesn't include private accounts but that at least affects both SC and HC.

Imagine 200 people playing Bloodmage above level 80 and 50 of them are in HC, and 30 of them died at some point. You'd have only 20 on the Ninja HC list and 180 on the SC list.