Life Leech vs Life on Hit

All I can say is that Life on hit and life leech being two different mechanics might not occur immediately to every new player... so they might be confused upon taking Ghost Reaver...


Now the Ghost Reaver tooltip is pretty clear indeed: Life Leech restores Energy Shield instead of Life

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Vipermagi wrote:

It's not about balance, but about wording. That's the entire point.

Imbalanxd feels it is not obvious that Ghost Reaver does not work on Life Gain on Hit. However, Ghost Reaver's description includes the exact words "Life Leech" and mentions absolutely nothing about Life Gain on Hit. If GR would convert Life Gain on Hit, the description would mention Life Gain on Hit. It does not.

Then, the case is made that the differences between Life Gain on Hit and Life Leech are not obvious. However, as has been pointed out, both modifiers use entirely different wording and have entirely different functionality from one-another. The only phrases they have in common are what resource is obtained (which is only to differentiate between ex. Life Leech and Mana Leech) and the word 'Attack'. Life Gain does not include the word 'Leech', and Leech does not include the word 'Gain'. Because they're different, separate modifiers.

All correct. I then went on to show how life gain on hit and life leech differ in the exact same way to constant physical damage modifiers and percentile modifiers. Both have different wording and are applied differently, but affect the same resource: physical damage. However, both constant and percentile physical damage modifiers are considered to be the same thing.

The term "leach" is simply a verb, which could be used interchangeably with drain, steal, extract, filter, and many other synonyms. In this specific case, leach is a sort of "proper verb", in that it refers to the act of leaching life which is a specific mechanic, and as such, the term leach should be capitalised. And it is, however the problem is that 90% of all words used in skill tree descriptions are capitalised. Go have a look, its quite astounding really.

What this results in is that the meaning is lost amongst 100 different official terms, and thus the true meaning of any of them cannot be accurately conveyed. Some of them are easy to convey, such as the fact that Fire Damage is different to Cold Damage. Some of them are less obvious however, like life on hit being a different kind of life gain to life leech on hit.

I agree, the whole confusion with Ghost Reaver could be avoided if all the different life-gain-on-attack-effects granted Energy Shield instead of life.

I like the CI+GR combo, so more life becomes useless once I hit CI.

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Imbalanxd wrote:

If claws turn into life leech in later levels anyway, then why aren't the early level claws as well? If the game constrains additions of fractional health, then make it constant life gain as it currently is, but just make it a form of life leach as well. The need for the differentiation is not immediately obvious to me.

Well, when you're level 5 and doing about 15 damage per hit, a 1% life leech isn't going to help you at all, whereas a +3 or +8 damage per hit is equivalent to 20-50% "life leech".

Then again, when you're level 50 and doing 600(?) damage per hit, a 20-50% life leech from the claw alone would be pretty ridiculous. Consider 3 or 8 life per hit as a proportion of your level 5 life pool, and 150-300 life per hit when you're level 50, combined with increased attack speed, whirling blades or ethereal knives+pierce+fork, plus other life leech passives.

I personally think the % life leech is there to reward players who plan their characters so as to maximize their DPS and life gain, rather than simply hand it to them on a higher level claw.

To make it clear, your suggestion about combining the effects of "life gain on hit" and "life leech" for the Ghost Reaver node is a valid one that deserves consideration in the context of that passive node.

Yes, I was confused about this at first, but with a simple search, I learned, and moved on. You really like making big deals out of nothing, don't you? The whole world doesn't revolve around you, and nothing should be suited to how you like it. That's just how the system works, and there's no reason to change it. If you don't like, well too bad.

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tinghshi wrote:

Yes, I was confused about this at first, but with a simple search, I learned, and moved on.

Well...I agree. But things will turn hairy around the forums come OB unless we can help players before they make the kind of mistakes that get them all riled up and blaming the game.

There are a lot of things that are clear if you keep in mind the idea that GGG is very very specific about their wording and how things are named. If there was a constant loading screen tip to remind players of this, it might help :)

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tinghshi wrote:

Yes, I was confused about this at first

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tinghshi wrote:

That's just how the system works, and there's no reason to change it.

Does not compute.

Unless the game is specifically trying to confuse players, then you just mentioned a very good reason to change it. Or am I expected to search up every node on the tree just to make sure there isn't some pedantic double meaning behind its wording?

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aimlessgun wrote:

There are a lot of things that are clear if you keep in mind the idea that GGG is very very specific about their wording and how things are named. If there was a constant loading screen tip to remind players of this, it might help :)

Very much agreed. Adding it to a list of easily implementable things to help new players in-game.