Blood Mage - Sanguimancy

In a number of games that I have played before, typically blood magic makes spells quite a bit stronger at the risk of sacrificing health. The Sanguimancy node comes with quite a bit of cost versus benefits.

I would think if GGG is convinced that the spell gaining 100% of mana cost as life cost is the way this skill is intended, then it would seem thematic for the spell to gain damage based on life spent, somewhat like the archmage mechanic.

Currently the life cost seems very anti-synergistic since the most supported mechanics in POE 2 currently are ES, Mana, and lightning skills from what I can tell. You need to solve more problems with Sanguimancy allocated since you can't ignore HP, and if you don't spec into Blood Magic you also can't ignore Mana.

Speccing into blood magic doubles your life costs while also turning off many spell support gems since they require mana, which is a different problem as well.

Long story short it seems like this could use a bit more support.

It's REALLY strong but you need to know what you are doing before you take it. Also it helps to have it at a higher level, as that affects how much healing the blood orbs give.

As far as cost, first you can use staves etc that give spells with absolutely no cost at all. Second, of course, you can use minions. SRS by itself with a unique fire staff that fires flares and the orbiting fire (Forget the spell names I don't use it) can be setup to do quite decent damage, for free, and constantly summon SRS for you. Does mean no sceptre though sadly.

A main thing you want is decent crit chance. Some people even wait to put points into the tree till they can get the 15% base crit chance and a decent amount of bonuses from the passive tree.

You don't need THAT much as you can only get a blood orb every 2 seconds, so if you are hitting enemies with spells often, you will hit that with even a 20-30% crit chance easily. More is better though especially once you get the large boost to crit multiplier from your ascendency. Boosts your damage significantly.


Blood mage is DEF a high crit chance/damage focuses spellcaster over a primarily focused minion build. That being said, you can still have VERY high damage from your minions, while being extremely tanky.

The orbs cap at....410 I think it is over max healing a pop. That is alot of spell casting you can do (even with ones that are not free) before even spending half of that. If you spend less than 205 mana every 2 seconds, you have 205 extra healing every 2 seconds even vs a boss, that goes to a bit over double your max health normally. It's a great defensive setup (also makes avoiding 1 shots super easy).

You.....could.......double down and get rid of mana costs all together, but I would really not suggest doing that.

Anyway to me, blood mage is the best pure spellcasting build currently. Very high damage and can focus almost totally on offenses because you have a built in healing and max hp pool from your ascendency. You don't need mind over matter, don't need a high eshield, you just need damage, damage, damage, maybe some additional minion boosts (primarily offensive though), and crit chance (damage).

If you like damage, blood mage is for you lol. It even works for non-spellcasters honestly. You can't boost the base crit to 15% like with spells (nothing says you can't be a hyrbird bow/mace/xbow/q-staff user with spells as well though, and SRS and maybe a few other minions), but you CAN still get the great boost to crit damage multiplier, and any crits/kills count to gettnig you blood orbs (so massive healing etc).

Same dealio with any of the other attack types, focus on offense, offense, offense, some attack (and attack speed is great as well (cast speed is good I forgot tomention that) and you just destroy everything.