Blood Rage

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Zanyu wrote:

Just wondering, wouldn't it just be easier to have blood rage to continuously drain your health until you turn it off? A toggle mechanic, like auras...

... it is just kind of annoying to recast because it fell off when you're running around looking for mobs..

Good point. I have another idea though, what about giving us a small movement speed buff while under Blood rage? It'd make it easier to maintain it for non-CI builds. We are not all rich you know ....

Well, if you link it with Increased Duration gem, duration (assuming you have enough dex to max it, and skills are quality) will be more than enough...
But, togglable meachanic will really help if you dont want to kill yourself with it...

Currently this skill sucks as a life based character because of the chaos resist penalties. In merciless, assuming -60% chaos resist, you lose ~6% life per second. It's hard to balance this, you have to spec heavily into life regen and/or get lucky with gear to up your chaos resist to decent level. The skill is best used as CI, since there is no hoop to jump through to make it work. What the heck?

How about making the skill do "Drains 4% of life or ES per second". It's not chaos damage, it's degeneration, the inverse of life/ES regen. It's not affected by chaos resists.

Life users would be able to use this skill without needing insane specific gear/passives in merciless and maps, and ES/CI who want to use this would have to build into it with things like Zealot's Oath.

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Thalandor wrote:

Currently this skill sucks as a life based character because of the chaos resist penalties. In merciless, assuming -60% chaos resist, you lose ~6% life per second. It's hard to balance this, you have to spec heavily into life regen and/or get lucky with gear to up your chaos resist to decent level. The skill is best used as CI, since there is no hoop to jump through to make it work. What the heck?

How about making the skill do "Drains 4% of life or ES per second". It's not chaos damage, it's degeneration, the inverse of life/ES regen. It's not affected by chaos resists.

Life users would be able to use this skill without needing insane specific gear/passives in merciless and maps, and ES/CI who want to use this would have to build into it with things like Zealot's Oath.

(any type of) damage in a per second basis, is degen, is DoT, is inverse regen, is drain, is rate of loss.
your other part of that suggestion is to just make it plain damage, which will nerf CI users, 3.75 regen is pretty easy to get on the passive with that adjustment. the duelist only has to spend 27 skill points minimum to get 4.5% regen (among other stuff like hp boosts, damage boosts, and some res and stats).
there is a single node of chaos res between ranger and dualist, then one between templar and witch and one plus a double between witch and shadow (but might as well get ci that is right next to it). a single 8% node cuts off a decent amount of self damage (from 6.4% hp/sec to 6.08 or 6 to 5.7), the life leech is supposed to counter the degen, considering how much you're given that is.

edit for below poster, showing math:
75% resistance to chaos damage is
4% * (1 -.75) = 1% hp/sec of chaos damage level 1 blood rage
3.75 * .25 = 0.9375% hp/sec chaos damage lv 21's actual value (i'm assuming from progression pattern.

Any high-lvl hp-based character should invest into chaos resist, up to cap of 75% (as well, as other resists), or you will be raped by certain mobs. So, that chaos damage per sec isnt that awful.

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MortalKombat3 wrote:

Any high-lvl hp-based character should invest into chaos resist, up to cap of 75% (as well, as other resists), or you will be raped by certain mobs. So, that chaos damage per sec isnt that awful.

Hmm k, so how many high level life characters have you made? Cause I've made plenty with great gear and getting >0% chaos resist is a challenge in itself, capping it is near absurd. Also you don't need to cap it to take on chaos mobs safely.

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soul4hdwn wrote:

your other part of that suggestion is to just make it plain damage, which will nerf CI users,

That's the point, why should CI get to use BR for free? CI is already better than life.

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3.75 regen is pretty easy to get on the passive with that adjustment.

For the duelist/marauder, and somewhat templar. Now try as a ranger or shadow. You can do it, at the cost of a very limited build versatility. And you'll need more than 3.75.

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the life leech is supposed to counter the degen, considering how much you're given that is.

True enough. Problem is you need to hit something for that to happen, and you don't have 100% control over the BR duration. If you're in a WTF situation and running for your life, dripping HP is not good.

For me, balancing the DoT with enough life regen is not an option, because I want to live! Chaos resist penalties prevent me from doing that. If you are playing maps, you should know you're double screwed over with any combinations of "Chaos Damage over Time" map, Half-regen and No Regen maps. If you can't do these mods, you basically can't do half of the rare maps in end game.

edit: well of course you can just not use blood rage for these maps, but then whats the point of building into the skill? And I'd assume someone who builds into BR needs the leech the skill provides, or needs the frenzy charges to have the rest of his build work effectively.

bow offencive build all dex classes can use for minimal blood rage penalty, finished by time maps start (about lv 63). however doesn't grab frenzy passives.

or

defensive/balanced version of above that costs more points (about lv 71) contains frenzy boosts but slightly less damage.

both has access to iron reflexes but only the second gets benefit from it right away. all can run elemental bow due to "projectile damage" covering both physical and elemental. both would eventually only take .3% hp/sec in damage with crap gear (as in, no chaos res from equip). damage for both should be fine even with an average bow.


i am trying to show, that it isn't impossible to get what you want without sacrifice or gambling with drop randomizing. edit: it is perfectly acceptable to trade out chaos res nodes for armor with good resistances.

In my opinion the reduction of % HP damage per level should just go down more so that this is more viable for life users. I mean, any life user wanting blood rage will (almost always) want it for the life leech, which means they're doing physical damage. Physical reflect is already so much harsher than elemental reflect because of how armour works, and vaal pact just has too much of an opportunity cost for life users. As such it'd be nice to see blood rage be more viable for life users to help with physical reflect. It won't protect them from being 1-shot, but less % life drain would help a ton. I don't see any reason why Blood Rage can't be tweaked this way, since it won't affect the CI users at all, and it's already a huge pain for life users to use.

I feel like this synergizes way too well with CI physical based builds to keep the Chaos Damage per Second degen as high as it is now. You're basically giving every CI Physical build a TON of life leech for the price of a green socket.

I would say the life degen should be lowered, or the progression of the gem should lower the degen a lot more.