Balance of Grim Feast vs Blood Remnants (Bloodmage)

Let me compare the two on my lvl 75 bloodmage with lvl 15 grim feast:

Blood remnants spawn with 25% on kill and give 301 life, grim feast spawns with 50% chance and gives 112 ES. So 33% stronger recovery on blood remnants but less reliable spawn chance.

When comparing the secondary effect (crit vs minion death) I would rate them overall similar in power viable for different types of builds, maybe with a slight edge for blood remnants again.

If we compare the resource they both recover and overflow, Grim Feast is currently better because ES is pretty strong right now. The ability to invest in ES on the tree and not in life allows for way higher energy shield than life. So you benefit more from the overflow of ES, because you can get more eHP from it. And it also makes you immune to bleeding and other effects that can only be applied to life.

When it comes to the cost of the two abilities, it becomes a blood bath (pun intended). Grim Feast is practically free with 30 spirit and one gem slot and available for every build. Blood remnants are a forced mechanic on bloodmages that costs you one ascension and doubles your skill cost. You've introduced it as a mechanic that is special to bloodmages and I really like the idea behind it but in a game where Grim Feast exists, it's not special but only punishing.

The increased recovery from blood remnants is fully mitigated by the additional life cost of skills, leaving you with an abilitiy that is at most as powerful but in my opinion worse than Grim Feast. Ascending should be an increase in character power and should shape the identity of a build. For blood remnants, I don't see that. The best way to deal with them is ignoring life and stacking ES as every other caster does relying on Grim Feast for recovery and blood remnants just for the life cost, making it a net zero power increase, waisting an ascencion and removing a bunch of synergies from the other ascendency nodes.

As long as Grim Feast is practically free, blood remnants need to be way stronger or the bloodmage ascendency becomes unattractive. Let me add some ideas of balance changes that would balance it in my opinion:

1. Remove Grim Feast or make it part of some ascendency as well. Not a fan of this solution but it would remove the issue.
2. 33% spawn chance of blood remnants on kill, 1s cooldown for crit, increase overflow cap from 2x to 3x max life. That makes it a more reliable source of recovery against both packs and bosses and leans more in the crit archetype that you've chosen for bloodmages.
3. skills cost life equal to 150% of base mana cost (no mana cost), convert all mana to life (otherwise MoM is forced which is not fun). That would lean way stronger on the blood style of the ascendency and the fact that you sacrtifice your own blood to use a skill.

Have a nice christmas break and I hope that my feedback helps you make PoE2 even better.