(Edit: Gutted the post to not confuse people after doign math for an hour ;)
Doing this on HC breach and have no problems. My starter was a summoner which i got bored at when entering merc so i tried this. I have no idea what people mean by ES gear being expensive. As long as you dont care about links/sockets anyway. Leveling top notch es i get for 1c a piece and something like 500 ES chest that can help you enter maps etc cost me 3c. Thats affordable to me ;)
Anyway for anyone strugling to get "es gear" my tip is just to look for cheap (1-3c) pieces and dont look for resistances or life on em. Just pure highest ES. Get the other stats from jewelery etc.
On hc essence worm was 8c when i got it so thats rather cheap. Maybe not 38 lvl first char cheap but ya. If your still leveling as life at that point u dont need discipline so just running hatred alone is fine with a mana pot. Its not ideal but works for first char.
Tested:
Well nevermind. A simple look ingame says it most clearly is 30% more dmg for each blade instance. Meaning the gem description is wrong/misleading. I mean its 30% increased BASE damage i guess ;) Oh semantics ... So the only clear "nerf" to BV in 2.5 was the hit rate in regards to procs etc.
Ermm so it got a 22,5% buff as far as damage goes? Seems to be the case.
Here is a nice plot: (green is essence purple is breach X-axis is # of BV stacks Y-axis is base dps for a lvl 8 gem)
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