Suggestion: Melee Keystone for Low Life/pet blood/bloodthirst

I was asking myself under what circumstances I'd ever use Bloodthirst support over the last several leagues repeatedly trying to make something that was worth the effort; and I keep coming to the conclusion that the juice is just never worth the squeeze outside of Pillar of the Caged Gods. Its also the case that Physical damage is once again the least scalable damage since the nerfs to Bleed and Impale and "overwelm" became a thing.

Besides buffing the support gem which it could use, I'll get to that; What it needs is some more low life synergy opportunities for melee so along that line how about:

"Low Cunning" Keystone thematically you're more dangerous when on low life. Something like Higher Maximum Phys damage the lower your life is. with a baseline that rewards 50-55% a decent amount. This doesn't need a downside because like Blood Magic its already encouraging being at a disadvantage to obtain the benefit.

Speaking of Bloodmagic: it should get the Warlock 50% reduced reserve, AND KEEP the more % health. As this just barely makes it worth the loss of all your Mana reserved auras and pretty much forces Low Life onto any Bloodmagic build (pretty much already the case just almost never worth it).

Bloodthirst is tricky because of Pillar, which its pretty okay with right now. So IMO the way to buff this support is to give it Increased % physical damage when on Low life, and increase this slightly per maximum health you have. This would make it somewhat like Transfiguration of Body which IMO is very safe to add synergy to as its very seldom highly valued or sought after. Geting both might actually lead to some Melee builds that don't suck (in terms of return on investment relative to much better easier to scale playstyles)

Finally I think one or more opportunities to get % more maximum life, and/or opportunities to slightly scale the Low Life threshold from 55% with the life mastery to as high at 60 or even 65% with say Medium life cluster notables or some such would be a safe addition.

ES based builds would get too OP
Wirh progenesis and PB you can get pretty tanky too while in low life
So there wouldn't be much of a trade of

I feel like “more damage as your life gets lower” should really be a Berserker ascendancy node if it’s going to exist.

(Edit: oops, my bad: I suggested Pain Attunement already covers this ground in the keystone list but I forgot it’s limited to spell damage)

personally i would change it to

Bloodthirst Support:
Supported Attacks deal 0.07% - 1.4% more Damage with Weapons for every 100 missing life while on low life

2500 missing life will give more or less the same than Elemental Damage with Attacks Support.


sure there are some shenanigans to obtain absurd amounts of life but those builds usually lack defences or big sources of increase Damage with Weapons to be able to reserve most of its life and make use of the big more damage multiplier.

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alhazred70 wrote:

Speaking of Bloodmagic: it should get the Warlock 50% reduced reserve, AND KEEP the more % health. As this just barely makes it worth the loss of all your Mana reserved auras and pretty much forces Low Life onto any Bloodmagic build (pretty much already the case just almost never worth it).

i would go the other way, make BM less about quantity and more about raw power.

blood magic:
*Removes all mana
*10% more maximum Life
*Skills Cost Life instead of Mana
*Skills Reserve Life instead of Man
*Spells you use yourself gain Added Physical Damage equal to x% of Life Cost, if Life Cost is not higher than the maximum you could spend
*attacks gain Added Physical Damage equal to x% of Life Cost, if Life Cost is not higher than the maximum you could spend
*auras that reserve life gain 1% increased effect every "x" life they reserve

Look up rage vortex builds with the jewel from exarch. with eternal youth. The tech is there. There is just no point in playing a true melee with it. Voidforge is one of the best use cases for it. If you took out the "with weapons" you could use the unarmed gloves with it. GGG adds text and conditions to pretty much every melee psynergy that would make unarmed builds actually powerful compared to other builds.

In fact, outside of uber exarch ball phase. There is no benefits to playing melee at all over equally built ranged builds.