Absolutely love your style - zero bullshit, perfectly in-depth yet concise, and you have a good voice for this sort of thing - sounds like you might want to consider getting a heaftier microphone though!
I do intend to get a new microphone, now that I see there's demand for stuff like this. If anyone is an expert on good, inexpensive mics for content like this, I'm all ears.
@@sergeantminor256 I personally use the snowball ice microphone, and it was fairly cheap, but I don't remember exactly how much I paid for it, just that it was a great contender In the price range I was looking at
@@sergeantminor256 Check out Linus tech Tips vids about streaming setups, there are some really good mic recommendations there. I don't remember any from top of my head :P
Part 1's expectations did not disappoint. This video was awesome! Straightforward, in depth, interesting, and knowledgeable. I can't think of specific POE things I want to learn from you, but I'm excited to see more!!!
I decided to try and remodel one of my old Flicker Strike builds around this gem. This video explained a lot of questions I had that weren't too evident on their own. Good shit. RUclips needs more videos like this. Might post later with results.
My thoughts on petrified blood is as follows: Since you get effectively a 10% less 'damage taken' (actually life loss), and an implicit slayer leech, this is a defensive layer that rewards life recovery investment, through regen and leech. 10% less life lost means a roughly 11% more to effective life recovery. Not only that, but it lets you put an aura on your life since your life above 50% is largely meaningless. This skill does two things: it enables viable non-ES low life builds, and it serves as a trade of effective life pool for effective life recovery. I feel petrified blood low life will be an interesting way to gain additional damage for spellcasters without the investment typically required (esp for SSF where the enabling uniques may not have dropped for you yet). I also feel it is a good way to trade in effective life pool on builds that have spare life in order to empower their recovery. I can certainly imagine builds that want to utilise low life uniques may also consider taking this, such as starkonjas + dreadbeaks/replica last resorts. Also consider that lori's lantern's 'Damage from Enemies Hitting you is Unlucky while you are on Low Life' is a powerful modifier, that can serve as additional damage reduction especially against attacks that have large damage ranges. I have personally wanted to make a similar build using a watchers eye (unaffected by vuln) + cowards legacy setup, but that requires two specific uniques - now I can do it without that investment.
In my opinion, this is a very reasonable take on the skill as a whole. In particular, thanks for pointing out some other synergies, such as Starkonja's and Lori's Lantern. I have considered these, but I have to cut the video off at some point or I'll ramble on forever!
From what you said , looks like you arent taking into account the dmg that is being done to the upper half of your life. How would petrified blood mechanic work when you take a hit at already 50% life? ( since you are reserving 50% ) Because the HIT being inflicted to you : 60% is gonna go through regardless (even under 50% life) then 76% of that last 40% HIT dmg will be spread. How are you defending against that initial 60% hit dmg that goes through anyway ?
@@marledanimefan7186 I believe the person you're responding to is assuming that there is no damage done to the upper half of life, because the plan is to remain at low life by default. Regarding the 60% that does go through, I believe the plan is to just accept that it goes through. It does mean a net reduction in effective HP against one-shots, compared to a regular full-life build, but that's being accepted as a compromise for low-life benefits.
@@marledanimefan7186 I'm assuming that hp is already gone to begin with? If you watch the video you can see that for example if you have 1k hp at the petrified blood threshold, it would take 1666 damage to kill you in one shot (as 60% of 1666 is just about 1000). so compared to the hp pool you would have without petrified blood of 2k, you have an effective hp pool (vs one shots) of 1.67k, or 83.5% of the normal amount. This 'lost' 16.5% hp is the cost of petrified blood. As such, assuming you are at the 50% threshold all the time, compared to a typical life build being at the 100% threshold, you can get killed in one shot by hits 16.5% weaker than what the full life build could take. HOWEVER if you already have enough of a life pool to defend against most one shots, and you instead want to reduce the overall damage you take, then the 10% damage reduction of petrified blood becomes a worthwhile tradeoff. Especially since with larger life pools it becomes harder to maintain them at full. So lets assume that the one-shot factor is accounted for, due to higher life values, or additional defensive layers. If the lower life value isn't exposing you to a one shot (partially due to the 60/40 split) then what remains is the 10% less life lost. This works out to an 11% increase in how good your recovery is, since if you recovered 1k life it would normally be able to handle 1k damage, but now it can handle 1.11k damage (as 90% of 1.11k is 1k). As such, petrified blood as a defensive layer is saying 'i can afford to lose 16.5% of my life pool against one shots in order to boost my recovery by 11%'. Of course, this is usually not the case, and you will be slightly worse off, but not by much. The interaction with leech is highly notable however. If you 'overheal' via flasks then you actually end up more resilient to one shots than you were before though, but I don't think this is the primary use case. Petrified blood is however NOT a defensive layer, it enables you to deal more damage through low life bonuses. For a small hit in your ability to defend against one shots (when treating the 50% threshold as your effective max hp) you gain access to powerful boni such as pain attunement, last resort, starkonja's, dreadbeak, lori's lantern, and plenty more. Think of it like the berserker's aspect of carnage. 10% increased damage taken for 40% more damage, vs patrified blood giving 16.5% less life, pseudo 10% less damage taken, pseudo 'life leech not removed at full life', and low life bonuses such as 30% more spell damage. Aspect of carnage is a great way to trade survivability for damage, and this is too.
Right so petrified blood mechanic is not supposed to be used as a stand alone life defensive layer. Its just gonna be an add on to LL characters who stack ES or go the mana route and its effectively another ( averaging) 11% HIT dmg reduction against the low life they have when a big hit gets through the ES and whats left hits the life left. Ok now makes sense . Also explains why people go agnostic and MoM to negate as much dmg to life as possible and those have proven to be some of the meta builds. Thanks for the explanation!
A synergy I've seen with Blood Thirst is Doomfletch Prism, where the Blood Thirst buff counts as weapon damage and is tripled by Doomfletch. This could work in a BA ignite Elementalist build where Golems provide a lot of life regen for Petrified Blood.
@@pp_hermy4854 Wind Ward will indirectly help mitigate life loss from Petrified Blood, but only because it lowers damage taken from hits. There's no specific interaction between Wind Ward and the over-time life loss from Petrified Blood. Wind Ward will help equally against the instant portion and the over-time portion.
@@sergeantminor256 it's not my idea I saw it from a forum, but yes I will try this as my starter :) worst case I just do what everyone else does and use the normal BA Elementalist build with Xoph Nurture
I really hope a helmet enchant or alternate quality gives the 40% a bit of a boost.~ Thank you so much for these videos! I enjoy hearing someone else talk about an issue I'm currently pondering about.
I am planing to have some fun with physical damage over time with use of the new skills as a champion. Probably i will fail, because I will start tomorrow with that but hey, it is just fun ^^ Great video! Thanks!
Thanks for this. I'm still gonna go ahead with my planned phys DoT LL starter that uses Petrified Blood and no ES scaling (SSF, aiming to use Divine Flesh). I argue that with good enough life recovery, the DoT portion can be largely negated from anything besides big slams, hits you should manually dodge anyway. If the difference between LL + Petrified Blood vs Full life comes down to surviving big fuckoff slams like e.g Shaper or Wasteland boss, you should never get hit by those anyway. I think unless people find a way to reliably scale generic buff effect (Ichimonjis for example), this type of no-ES LL setup will never be HC friendly.
thank you for explanation. that was really helpful. and i love your explanation style. in depth, direct and you make it simple when you talk. i have another question : whats that text font on the screen? i really like that, i want to use that in my powerpoint presentations
With the Replica Heartbreaker on a Champion w/ Pain Attunement etc. you can probably squeeze out some ridiculous phys-based spell damage. Also Pillar of the Caged God with Sweep & Bloodthirst probably slaps quite nicely as well.
Sounds interesting, but from what I can gather there isn't any other source of spell impale chance except replica heartbreaker, so you'd just be hard stuck at 40% which doesn't sound very good at all.
The keystone for armor has double the effect but damage reduction of any type is 50% seems like you could invest in less defense and take more life with PB. If you use a lvl 5 empower with PB and glancing blows with a daresso's courage, you can tank sooooo much damage. Or item with +2 socketed gems and get a lvl 28 PB, you can tank any hits so easy.
12:06 oh yeah it has became immortal archtype with new cast when stunned builds use immutable force & bloodnotch jewel together with warlock(affliction) nodes.
petrified blood is actually either making you more squishy and deal more dmg with low life mechanics nd aura on your hp, or actually gain a big buff to your tankyness by not reserving life and using an instant life flask before you get hit, with an active play style using a flask and a guard skill before a hit you might be able to tank crazy hits
Only class that can make a player tanky-ish with petrified blood realistically would be a Slayer as a slayer could aura stack on their mana + 49% of their hp + fortify+armor stacking with all that you could probably mitigate a big enough chunk of that 60% damage and overleech the rest of the damage like it is nothing. You know, until they nerf the leech again cause you know slayers aren't allowed to be immortals.
@@MarkFin9423 no lead tooverleach if you don't reserve more than 50% of your life, leech instance won't stop cause they didn't reach your max unreserved life, actually slayer only defence is 10% reduce dmg while leeching and leech only works with attacks. and the whole point of having some life empty is that you can use an instant life flask while on low life when things get scary, instanly go back to full and then you have 120% of your max hp vs burst basicly if you can outsustain the dot, if you can't you press your flask again etc, that's super tanky no aura give you that amount of tankyness unless your whole build is based on armor stacking or this kind of stuff. and it allows you to use pain attunement so that's both tanky and a big boost in dmg
@@MarkFin9423 there is also a node on the tree that give you life flask regen and life on kill for skill that uses mana so you can easily sustain that mechanism
@@MarkFin9423 ascendancies that are the tankier with that are probably pathfinder with agnostic/ mom, inquisitor with hybrid regen, jugg for obvious reasons, and elementalist with golems buffs and ele aegis. basicly the same tanks as usual outside of aura stacking that won't use it
Pretty general question. Does energyshield mitigate the cost of spells? If so this would annoy the mechanic of reaching low life(e.g. Adrenaline from slayer)
Not sure if this answers your question, but if you use a skill costing life, energy shield does not protect your life from that life loss. Energy shield's default behavior is to take non-chaos damage before life. Life costs are not non-chaos damage, because they aren't damage at all. I understand the confusion, especially since Eldritch Battery makes ES protect your mana from mana costs. However, this is because EB has a specific line that says "Spend Energy Shield before Mana for Skill Costs" which is separate from the line causing ES to protect mana from non-chaos damage. In short, no, having ES will not interfere with your ability to easily trigger Adrenaline as a Champion.
Yeah, i was in discord last night when the gem info dropped with some friends and everyone was trying to find ways to abuse it. Since i'm not the smartest egg on the shelf or whatever is called ... I just realized you get 9.4%/9.6% HIT dmg negation. For 35% mana i dont really think its worth it. Flesh and stone seems like the better choice .. or even skitters for that matter. But i hope the PoE savvy's will find ways to abuse the petrified blood mechanics. I hope that keeps ggg's attention away from the massive buff to bladestorm lol !!
Great vid, but just a heads up that reserving auras with Arrogance with Petrified Blood active will reserve them from the remaining half life. EDIT: I'm wrong...ignore me
Can you clarify what you mean by this? I've seen several people reserving their life with Petrified Blood, and it seems to reserve from the top half of life first, just like normal.
Are you sure about the leech part? I tested it right now and it works differently, if I have 50% of my life reserved and I leech, if I am at 50% life, the leech still goes on, you can do that by looking at your life regen. I have 300 life regen per second, after I attacked a pack of monsters I went to 700 life regen, then, upon reaching my 50% life, with 50% reserved with an aura, I still had 700 life regen for the next couple seconds
In comparison, that doesn't work whitout the life reservation, if i have 100% of my life, with my 300 life regen, (and petrified blood), if I attack, I'll lost life because of petrified blood life cost conversion above low life, then my regen will go to 700, but as expected, upon reaching 100% life, I'll go instantly back to 300, which doesn't hold true with 50% life reserved
@@P3rvenc I'm not quite sure I understand the second scenario, so would you mind clarifying what exactly you mean? Regarding the first scenario, that is not how I expected it to work. Are you sure you're not reserving 49.9% of life or something like that? As long as there's any gap between half life and unreserved max life, persistent leech should work. Mark_GGG himself watched this video and told me it was good. If there were any factual errors, I'm sure he would have corrected them. Maybe it's not working as intended?
On the new reap skill because spell damage only scales the dot portion, would a gem like unbound ailments benefit the skill more than increasing pure phys damage? Really enjoying your content man keep it up.
Spell damage scales both the hit and the DoT for Reap. The default behavior of spell skills is for _hit damage_ to be affected by modifiers to spell damage. Technically, only damage from spell _hits_ is considered spell damage. _Damage over time_ from spells is _not_ spell damage, even if the spell only does damage over time (e.g. Scorching Ray). This includes ailments inflicted by spells. Poison and Ignite inflicted by spells are not affected by spell damage. Whenever a spell gem (e.g. Scorching Ray) specifies "Modifiers to Spell Damage apply to this Skill's Damage Over Time effect," that means it's given a special exception, where spell damage modifiers apply to the DoT effect _on the skill gem itself_ (and not other DoT effects like ailments or Decay). However, spell damage _also_ applies to the hit portion of the spell (if it has one). With regards to Unbound Ailments, the DoT portion of Reap is not considered an ailment. "Ailments" refer to bleeding, poison, ignite, chill, freeze, shock, scorch, brittle, and sap. Of those, the "damaging ailments" are bleeding, poison, and ignite. All the rest are "non-damaging ailments." Unbound Ailments will only affect these debuffs and do nothing for either the hit or the DoT listed on the Reap gem itself. If you want to scale the inherent DoT effect of the skill, you'll want to use things like Brutality, Efficacy, Controlled Destruction, and Swift Affliction. You may also consider Cruelty, Maim, Lifetap, or even Empower.
Steelskin is better when you hp pool is lower. Immortal Call is better when you have decent hp pool. You can search the reasons from yourself but to keep things easier that's it.
"1.5% of Total Physical Damage prevented from Hits in the past 10 seconds is Regenerated as Life per second" Petrified Blood does not prevent _damage_ from hits. It prevents life loss. What _does_ contribute toward this regeneration is any mitigation that reduces the initial hit (e.g. armour, endurance charges, fortify).
Nice video, shit for me tho! I thought overleech would work with having life reserved over 50% aswell. SInce that wont work, I dont feel it worth to run it in on my spell caster. if it would be 30% I wouldve probably taken it but like this, it just doenst seem worth it. It simply would be awkward with flasks recovering me over 50% hp and loosing my my pain attunement.
I am still seriously considering it for my caster. The gem itself also adds a life cost to your spells, so you will go back to half life/low life eventually. Sure, in a panic flask to fill, but all you lose is pain attunement for a bit.
How would Petrified Blood interact with the Strength of Blood keystone? Would it kill the pseudo "life leech effects are not removed at full life" mechanic that you described in the video?
With Strength of Blood, your recovery from leech always fails to apply, even when you're not at 50% life. Your leech instances will still not be removed as long as your life remains below its unreserved maximum. In short, the combo works just fine. You just need other ways to recover life that aren't leech.
Go for it, but please be aware that Immortal Ambition was nerfed in 3.14 by the change to how life leech recovers energy shield. Leeching to your ES will be very slow. However, it is my understanding that ES recovery from Pious Path _does_ work with Immortal Ambition. It will just appear a bit slower because for Immortal Ambition's ES loss per second (haven't tested it myself though).
What's the behaviour if i have a total of 1000 life, are on full life and take a 750 damage hit with petrified blood? Does the full hit go through because im not on low life, or will the first 250 damage go through as normal, and the remaining 500 damage go through petrified blood?
As the other user said, there's a bit in the last video about this case specifically, but the short answer is that you would instantly lose 650 life and degenerate 76 over four seconds.
What about flask life recovery? Is it removed at full life only like leech, or at full reserved life? So if I have 50% life reserved, is the flask life recovery removed when my life reaches 50% or will it stay because I never actually reach "unreserved full life"? I'm guessing it probably gets removed.
Flask life recovery is the only type of life recovery that actually succeeds in recovering the top half of your life. Just like leech instances, flask uses expire when you reach your maximum unreserved life. Flask uses do not expire when reaching 50% life with Petrified Blood. In fact, your life will continue to recover above half instead of being capped there.
Not directly, no, because it isn't considered "damage" at all. It's "life loss" based on the initial hit damage. It is indirectly mitigated by those defenses, since reducing the initial hit will make it remove less life in the first place, but once the amount of life loss is determined it cannot be modified.
@@sergeantminor256 later on I did saw the 3rd one... I am trying this in a raider evasion/dodge cap eli hit character, I do feel the difference on the one-shots, but the dots are a problem mainly poison and ground degen. not sure it's made for these type of builds.
@@overshare7 DoTs are always a problem on Petrified Blood builds, but chaos degen is pretty easy to trivialize if you can get positive chaos resistance. I find that 30-40% chaos res is enough to basically ignore most chaos damage in the game.
raider bloodseeker can get 10th thound's of instand leech. i would like one gem plx (in my current setup my raider has 2.200 leech/s with crap gear (200.000dps)
There isn't anything about the skill that makes you specifically more vulnerable to chaos damage. If chaos damage is a problem for you normally, then Petrified Blood certainly won't solve that problem. However, I don't think using Petrified Blood will introduce a new vulnerability to chaos damage that didn't exist before.
Is the recover % life on kill mods from etc. Warlord/elder mods on chests affected by petrified blood? What about surging vitality. I assume both dont work above 50%.
You are on low life whenever you're at or below 50% life. Petrified Blood prevents going over 50% life without flasks, so you're always on low life unless you use a flask. If I'm understanding you correctly, then "overleech" refers to persistent leech, where leech instances don't go away even when they aren't recovering life. Since Petrified Blood prevents you from filling your unreserved life with leech (as long as you reserve less than 50% of life), it prevents leech instances from being removed prematurely, giving you persistent leech.
Hello! In PoE it's important to understand the difference between "increased/reduced" and "more/less." Heart of Flame gives *increased* fire damage, but Pain Attunement gives *more* spell damage. All "increased damage" modifiers add together to make one multiplier, so if you have two 60% increased damage modifiers, that's 1 + 0.60 + 0.60 = 2.20x All "more damage" modifiers are separate multipliers, so two 60% more damage modifiers will look like (1 + 0.60) * (1 + 0.60) = 2.56x "More damage" is almost always better than an equivalent amount of "increased damage." Likewise, "less damage" is almost always worse than "reduced damage."
The reflected damage is still based on your maximum life, not unreserved life, and also not just the lower half if you have Petrified Blood. However, the life loss from the reflected damage can still be split by Petrified Blood, provided that it is affecting the lower half of your life.
hi there, may i know if the DOT damage of petrified blood that is lost over 4 seconds could be absorbed/redistributed to other sources other than life by other mechanics such as mind over matter or energy shield?
No it cannot, because Petrified Blood only performs the split _after_ it is determined how much damage is being dealt to life vs. how much is dealt to other HP pools.
If you're talking about guard skills that redirect damage to a new buff HP pool (e.g. Steelskin, Arcane Cloak, Molten Shell), then they interact in the same way as MoM, which I did an example of in Part 1. First, your guard skill will redirect a portion of damage to its own buff, during the "taking damage" calculation. Then, during the "losing life" calculation, any life lost below 50% is split by PB. If you're talking about guard skills that simply lower damage taken (e.g. Immortal Call), first the damage will be reduced, then any portion dealt to the lower half of life is split by PB. Regardless of what kind of guard skill it is, the guard skill calculations all happen _before_ Petrified Blood does anything.
Also, would increased duration increase the length of the debuff? If so, would it stretch the damage out over the longer duration (reducing the damage per second) or would it increase the total damage over the duration? ie. base of 100% over 4 seconds stretched to 100% over 5 or base of 100% over 4 stretched to 125% over 5. (with 25% increased duration)
@@N1NJ4P1R4T3 Replica Voideye or Crest of Desire with the normal (superior) quality gem seems like a high opportunity cost for relatively little gain. With the anomalous quality gem, it could be worth it, but only on a build with ridiculously high recovery. I'd weigh the opportunity cost of these options vs. just using a level 4 Enhance and taking the higher mana reservation. I don't think skill effect duration has any effect on the duration of the over-time life loss from Petrified Blood. I can't confirm that, but it's what my instinct says. You might want to test it.
@@sergeantminor256 Hmmm. It looks like it doesn't have a buff or a debuff, so I'm not sure if any manipulation is possible through increased duration or through temp chains..... darn. Yeah, I was looking at using an anomalous gem to increase the damage prevented. I forgot to specify, haha. I'm planning on testing it on a chieftain with absurdly high regeneration. I'm hoping to just smooth out any "one shots" that are possible when you don't have insane gear. I'll try to remember to report back after I have the gem (expensive) and have done some testing.
As far as I can tell, the only interaction Petrified Blood has with Chaos Inoculation, is to add a base life cost to all skills that cost mana (since you are always above half life while alive), thereby killing you the instant you use a skill. The rest of Petrified Blood's effects do nothing for a character that can only ever have 1 or 0 life.
Well, life leech can't apply recovery to the top half of your life pool, but life leech instances are not removed at 50% life. So, you get persistent leech.
Builds with Petrified Blood should probably still take at least one life flask, just not to _maintain_ full life. You can use it to heal when you get too low or to momentarily top off life before taking a big hit. This doesn't seem to be how GGG used it in the reveal, but they're known to use "Frankenstein" builds and play suboptimally in their marketing.
@@sergeantminor256 I'm just being an idiot. But yes, that makes sense. I see this skill best used with either leech or Indigon, along with First to Strik, Last to Fall. Possibly even the Fortify line in Champ. There's lots of possibilities. Hopefully someone with lots of time on their hands test all this out, hah! From what I've heard, getting 1-shot is the problem with this skill when approached with average defensive layers.
My verdict on this skill as is: Basically worthless except edge break cases. The cool idea here was the "Half-Life" playstyle. Creating an extra mitigation source for life builds. Not a weird defensive mechanic for a build achetype that doesn't care about any of this, and will probably just reserved for a Purity instead of using this. Because that's much stronger than this ever will be. Pretty lame. We changed the whole way an archetype works, to achieve basically nothing. When I started down this rabbit hole I looked at items like replica Last Resort and Lori's Lantern and thought about the ways I could use them in a cool way. Kinda this whole patch in a nutshell for me. It was all nerfs.
If you stop thinking of it as a defensive layer, and more of an enabling tool, you'll start to appreciate it more. It essentially allows you to play low life with what is effectively a HP pool that's 83.5% of what a full life build is. 83.5% of 6k HP is 5k HP. 83.5% of 8k HP is 6.7l HP. Those aren't bad life numbers, but of course it's less than the full 6k or 8k HP, so why would you use it? Partly for all the myriad benefits low life builds can access (huge damage multipliers, extra magic find, etc.), and partly for the boosted recovery you get from stuff like leech (effectively Slayer overleech). Those are some compelling bonuses, even if it isn't as tanky as full life. There's also some janky shenanigans you can use it for, like easy Adrenaline triggering. It's not there to make low life tankier, it's there to make low life palatable (without having to go Shavs or Ivory Tower). Sure you're a bit squishier (although some low life tools like Lori's Lantern actually give you a bit more defense as well), but Aspect of Carnage does that too - and low life is more flexible.
Thanks petrified blood professor!
Absolutely love your style - zero bullshit, perfectly in-depth yet concise, and you have a good voice for this sort of thing - sounds like you might want to consider getting a heaftier microphone though!
I do intend to get a new microphone, now that I see there's demand for stuff like this. If anyone is an expert on good, inexpensive mics for content like this, I'm all ears.
@@sergeantminor256 I personally use the snowball ice microphone, and it was fairly cheap, but I don't remember exactly how much I paid for it, just that it was a great contender In the price range I was looking at
@@Noire-bd8wd Alright, I've got one on the way! Thanks for the recommendation.
+1
@@sergeantminor256 Check out Linus tech Tips vids about streaming setups, there are some really good mic recommendations there. I don't remember any from top of my head :P
This was by far one of the best explanations I've seen on a Poe mechanic. I can't wait to see the leech explanation video.
Mark my word ... One day you will become Greatest PoE's teacher.
Absolutely amazing, crystal clear breakdown of difficult mechanics, useful for both new and veteran players like myself. Keep em coming!
Part 1's expectations did not disappoint. This video was awesome! Straightforward, in depth, interesting, and knowledgeable. I can't think of specific POE things I want to learn from you, but I'm excited to see more!!!
I decided to try and remodel one of my old Flicker Strike builds around this gem. This video explained a lot of questions I had that weren't too evident on their own.
Good shit. RUclips needs more videos like this. Might post later with results.
Thanks a lot for these video. In depth mechanic videos for Poe, are always needed, and are quite often uncommon. I look forward to more.
Brilliant breakdown. Thank you for this. And for putting the relative utility of the skill into perspective.
My thoughts on petrified blood is as follows:
Since you get effectively a 10% less 'damage taken' (actually life loss), and an implicit slayer leech, this is a defensive layer that rewards life recovery investment, through regen and leech. 10% less life lost means a roughly 11% more to effective life recovery. Not only that, but it lets you put an aura on your life since your life above 50% is largely meaningless.
This skill does two things: it enables viable non-ES low life builds, and it serves as a trade of effective life pool for effective life recovery.
I feel petrified blood low life will be an interesting way to gain additional damage for spellcasters without the investment typically required (esp for SSF where the enabling uniques may not have dropped for you yet). I also feel it is a good way to trade in effective life pool on builds that have spare life in order to empower their recovery. I can certainly imagine builds that want to utilise low life uniques may also consider taking this, such as starkonjas + dreadbeaks/replica last resorts. Also consider that lori's lantern's 'Damage from Enemies Hitting you is Unlucky while you are on Low Life' is a powerful modifier, that can serve as additional damage reduction especially against attacks that have large damage ranges. I have personally wanted to make a similar build using a watchers eye (unaffected by vuln) + cowards legacy setup, but that requires two specific uniques - now I can do it without that investment.
In my opinion, this is a very reasonable take on the skill as a whole. In particular, thanks for pointing out some other synergies, such as Starkonja's and Lori's Lantern. I have considered these, but I have to cut the video off at some point or I'll ramble on forever!
From what you said , looks like you arent taking into account the dmg that is being done to the upper half of your life. How would petrified blood mechanic work when you take a hit at already 50% life? ( since you are reserving 50% ) Because the HIT being inflicted to you : 60% is gonna go through regardless (even under 50% life) then 76% of that last 40% HIT dmg will be spread.
How are you defending against that initial 60% hit dmg that goes through anyway ?
@@marledanimefan7186 I believe the person you're responding to is assuming that there is no damage done to the upper half of life, because the plan is to remain at low life by default.
Regarding the 60% that does go through, I believe the plan is to just accept that it goes through. It does mean a net reduction in effective HP against one-shots, compared to a regular full-life build, but that's being accepted as a compromise for low-life benefits.
@@marledanimefan7186 I'm assuming that hp is already gone to begin with?
If you watch the video you can see that for example if you have 1k hp at the petrified blood threshold, it would take 1666 damage to kill you in one shot (as 60% of 1666 is just about 1000). so compared to the hp pool you would have without petrified blood of 2k, you have an effective hp pool (vs one shots) of 1.67k, or 83.5% of the normal amount. This 'lost' 16.5% hp is the cost of petrified blood.
As such, assuming you are at the 50% threshold all the time, compared to a typical life build being at the 100% threshold, you can get killed in one shot by hits 16.5% weaker than what the full life build could take. HOWEVER if you already have enough of a life pool to defend against most one shots, and you instead want to reduce the overall damage you take, then the 10% damage reduction of petrified blood becomes a worthwhile tradeoff. Especially since with larger life pools it becomes harder to maintain them at full.
So lets assume that the one-shot factor is accounted for, due to higher life values, or additional defensive layers. If the lower life value isn't exposing you to a one shot (partially due to the 60/40 split) then what remains is the 10% less life lost. This works out to an 11% increase in how good your recovery is, since if you recovered 1k life it would normally be able to handle 1k damage, but now it can handle 1.11k damage (as 90% of 1.11k is 1k).
As such, petrified blood as a defensive layer is saying 'i can afford to lose 16.5% of my life pool against one shots in order to boost my recovery by 11%'. Of course, this is usually not the case, and you will be slightly worse off, but not by much. The interaction with leech is highly notable however. If you 'overheal' via flasks then you actually end up more resilient to one shots than you were before though, but I don't think this is the primary use case.
Petrified blood is however NOT a defensive layer, it enables you to deal more damage through low life bonuses. For a small hit in your ability to defend against one shots (when treating the 50% threshold as your effective max hp) you gain access to powerful boni such as pain attunement, last resort, starkonja's, dreadbeak, lori's lantern, and plenty more.
Think of it like the berserker's aspect of carnage. 10% increased damage taken for 40% more damage, vs patrified blood giving 16.5% less life, pseudo 10% less damage taken, pseudo 'life leech not removed at full life', and low life bonuses such as 30% more spell damage. Aspect of carnage is a great way to trade survivability for damage, and this is too.
Right so petrified blood mechanic is not supposed to be used as a stand alone life defensive layer. Its just gonna be an add on to LL characters who stack ES or go the mana route and its effectively another ( averaging) 11% HIT dmg reduction against the low life they have when a big hit gets through the ES and whats left hits the life left.
Ok now makes sense .
Also explains why people go agnostic and MoM to negate as much dmg to life as possible and those have proven to be some of the meta builds. Thanks for the explanation!
Great content! Cant wait for upcoming videos. Kudos
A synergy I've seen with Blood Thirst is Doomfletch Prism, where the Blood Thirst buff counts as weapon damage and is tripled by Doomfletch. This could work in a BA ignite Elementalist build where Golems provide a lot of life regen for Petrified Blood.
That's a very cool idea that I haven't heard of before. Do you plan to test this idea in 3.14?
perhaps go deadeye for mirage archer tornado shot and for the gale wind defense node to negate some of the dot damage from petrified blood?
@@pp_hermy4854 Wind Ward will indirectly help mitigate life loss from Petrified Blood, but only because it lowers damage taken from hits. There's no specific interaction between Wind Ward and the over-time life loss from Petrified Blood. Wind Ward will help equally against the instant portion and the over-time portion.
@@sergeantminor256 it's not my idea I saw it from a forum, but yes I will try this as my starter :) worst case I just do what everyone else does and use the normal BA Elementalist build with Xoph Nurture
I really hope a helmet enchant or alternate quality gives the 40% a bit of a boost.~
Thank you so much for these videos! I enjoy hearing someone else talk about an issue I'm currently pondering about.
The lab enchants and quality bonuses are already up on PoEDB if you don't mind being spoiled.
@@sergeantminor256 Oof I'm seeing that now. A bit of a bummer but ty for letting me know.
Amazing lesson, very well explained.
Nice. Thanks!
I am planing to have some fun with physical damage over time with use of the new skills as a champion.
Probably i will fail, because I will start tomorrow with that but hey, it is just fun ^^
Great video! Thanks!
Very informative, great job!
Thanks for this. I'm still gonna go ahead with my planned phys DoT LL starter that uses Petrified Blood and no ES scaling (SSF, aiming to use Divine Flesh). I argue that with good enough life recovery, the DoT portion can be largely negated from anything besides big slams, hits you should manually dodge anyway. If the difference between LL + Petrified Blood vs Full life comes down to surviving big fuckoff slams like e.g Shaper or Wasteland boss, you should never get hit by those anyway.
I think unless people find a way to reliably scale generic buff effect (Ichimonjis for example), this type of no-ES LL setup will never be HC friendly.
Clear explanation, thank you
thank you for explanation. that was really helpful. and i love your explanation style. in depth, direct and you make it simple when you talk.
i have another question : whats that text font on the screen? i really like that, i want to use that in my powerpoint presentations
Good work, thanks for sharing. Keep it up.
With the Replica Heartbreaker on a Champion w/ Pain Attunement etc. you can probably squeeze out some ridiculous phys-based spell damage. Also Pillar of the Caged God with Sweep & Bloodthirst probably slaps quite nicely as well.
Sounds interesting, but from what I can gather there isn't any other source of spell impale chance except replica heartbreaker, so you'd just be hard stuck at 40% which doesn't sound very good at all.
The keystone for armor has double the effect but damage reduction of any type is 50% seems like you could invest in less defense and take more life with PB.
If you use a lvl 5 empower with PB and glancing blows with a daresso's courage, you can tank sooooo much damage.
Or item with +2 socketed gems and get a lvl 28 PB, you can tank any hits so easy.
Amazing video. You could make a huge channel off of doing more content like this
12:06
oh yeah it has became immortal archtype with new cast when stunned builds use immutable force & bloodnotch jewel together with warlock(affliction) nodes.
man, you sound exactly like Mark when he discusses mechanics with others
Honestly, with how specific the terminology in this game is, it's probably impossible to be technically correct and _not_ sound like Mark...
I feel like I'm going to go through all of the trouble to make this work and then they're going to patch one change and destroy it
Great content!! Thank you!
Great video! Give us more!
WE need more Videos!
I see high level poe content, I like :) Keep it up ;*
petrified blood is actually either making you more squishy and deal more dmg with low life mechanics nd aura on your hp, or actually gain a big buff to your tankyness by not reserving life and using an instant life flask before you get hit, with an active play style using a flask and a guard skill before a hit you might be able to tank crazy hits
Only class that can make a player tanky-ish with petrified blood realistically would be a Slayer as a slayer could aura stack on their mana + 49% of their hp + fortify+armor stacking
with all that you could probably mitigate a big enough chunk of that 60% damage and overleech the rest of the damage like it is nothing. You know, until they nerf the leech again cause you know slayers aren't allowed to be immortals.
@@MarkFin9423 no lead tooverleach if you don't reserve more than 50% of your life, leech instance won't stop cause they didn't reach your max unreserved life, actually slayer only defence is 10% reduce dmg while leeching and leech only works with attacks.
and the whole point of having some life empty is that you can use an instant life flask while on low life when things get scary, instanly go back to full and then you have 120% of your max hp vs burst basicly if you can outsustain the dot, if you can't you press your flask again etc, that's super tanky no aura give you that amount of tankyness unless your whole build is based on armor stacking or this kind of stuff.
and it allows you to use pain attunement so that's both tanky and a big boost in dmg
@@MarkFin9423 there is also a node on the tree that give you life flask regen and life on kill for skill that uses mana so you can easily sustain that mechanism
@@MarkFin9423 ascendancies that are the tankier with that are probably pathfinder with agnostic/ mom, inquisitor with hybrid regen, jugg for obvious reasons, and elementalist with golems buffs and ele aegis. basicly the same tanks as usual outside of aura stacking that won't use it
Pretty general question. Does energyshield mitigate the cost of spells?
If so this would annoy the mechanic of reaching low life(e.g. Adrenaline from slayer)
Not sure if this answers your question, but if you use a skill costing life, energy shield does not protect your life from that life loss. Energy shield's default behavior is to take non-chaos damage before life. Life costs are not non-chaos damage, because they aren't damage at all.
I understand the confusion, especially since Eldritch Battery makes ES protect your mana from mana costs. However, this is because EB has a specific line that says "Spend Energy Shield before Mana for Skill Costs" which is separate from the line causing ES to protect mana from non-chaos damage.
In short, no, having ES will not interfere with your ability to easily trigger Adrenaline as a Champion.
@@sergeantminor256 Yup, that helped, thank you very much. I thought about EB, but did not know the full wording :)
Like and subbed. Thank you.
Yeah, i was in discord last night when the gem info dropped with some friends and everyone was trying to find ways to abuse it. Since i'm not the smartest egg on the shelf or whatever is called ... I just realized you get 9.4%/9.6% HIT dmg negation. For 35% mana i dont really think its worth it. Flesh and stone seems like the better choice .. or even skitters for that matter. But i hope the PoE savvy's will find ways to abuse the petrified blood mechanics. I hope that keeps ggg's attention away from the massive buff to bladestorm lol !!
Great vid, but just a heads up that reserving auras with Arrogance with Petrified Blood active will reserve them from the remaining half life.
EDIT: I'm wrong...ignore me
Can you clarify what you mean by this? I've seen several people reserving their life with Petrified Blood, and it seems to reserve from the top half of life first, just like normal.
@@sergeantminor256 I was wrong, the extra length of spikes threw me off when I had Vitality on Arrogance with PB. Sorry for the confusion.
Are you sure about the leech part? I tested it right now and it works differently, if I have 50% of my life reserved and I leech, if I am at 50% life, the leech still goes on, you can do that by looking at your life regen. I have 300 life regen per second, after I attacked a pack of monsters I went to 700 life regen, then, upon reaching my 50% life, with 50% reserved with an aura, I still had 700 life regen for the next couple seconds
In comparison, that doesn't work whitout the life reservation, if i have 100% of my life, with my 300 life regen, (and petrified blood), if I attack, I'll lost life because of petrified blood life cost conversion above low life, then my regen will go to 700, but as expected, upon reaching 100% life, I'll go instantly back to 300, which doesn't hold true with 50% life reserved
@@P3rvenc I'm not quite sure I understand the second scenario, so would you mind clarifying what exactly you mean?
Regarding the first scenario, that is not how I expected it to work. Are you sure you're not reserving 49.9% of life or something like that? As long as there's any gap between half life and unreserved max life, persistent leech should work.
Mark_GGG himself watched this video and told me it was good. If there were any factual errors, I'm sure he would have corrected them. Maybe it's not working as intended?
On the new reap skill because spell damage only scales the dot portion, would a gem like unbound ailments benefit the skill more than increasing pure phys damage? Really enjoying your content man keep it up.
Spell damage scales both the hit and the DoT for Reap. The default behavior of spell skills is for _hit damage_ to be affected by modifiers to spell damage. Technically, only damage from spell _hits_ is considered spell damage.
_Damage over time_ from spells is _not_ spell damage, even if the spell only does damage over time (e.g. Scorching Ray). This includes ailments inflicted by spells. Poison and Ignite inflicted by spells are not affected by spell damage.
Whenever a spell gem (e.g. Scorching Ray) specifies "Modifiers to Spell Damage apply to this Skill's Damage Over Time effect," that means it's given a special exception, where spell damage modifiers apply to the DoT effect _on the skill gem itself_ (and not other DoT effects like ailments or Decay). However, spell damage _also_ applies to the hit portion of the spell (if it has one).
With regards to Unbound Ailments, the DoT portion of Reap is not considered an ailment. "Ailments" refer to bleeding, poison, ignite, chill, freeze, shock, scorch, brittle, and sap. Of those, the "damaging ailments" are bleeding, poison, and ignite. All the rest are "non-damaging ailments." Unbound Ailments will only affect these debuffs and do nothing for either the hit or the DoT listed on the Reap gem itself.
If you want to scale the inherent DoT effect of the skill, you'll want to use things like Brutality, Efficacy, Controlled Destruction, and Swift Affliction. You may also consider Cruelty, Maim, Lifetap, or even Empower.
@@sergeantminor256 this was really helpful thanks so much. Best of luck in the league
my dream is : i will make a game with this deepth of mechanic, i will enjoy it to my heart content
Oh man I would love if you could go through more defensive skills, I still don't understand when to use immortal call or steelskin
Steelskin is better when you hp pool is lower. Immortal Call is better when you have decent hp pool.
You can search the reasons from yourself but to keep things easier that's it.
Спасибо учитэл!
How does it work with Juggernaut's Unbreakable notable? The last line seems decent with Petrified Blood
"1.5% of Total Physical Damage prevented from Hits in the past 10 seconds is Regenerated as Life per second"
Petrified Blood does not prevent _damage_ from hits. It prevents life loss.
What _does_ contribute toward this regeneration is any mitigation that reduces the initial hit (e.g. armour, endurance charges, fortify).
@@sergeantminor256 Gotcha, thanks :)
Nice video, shit for me tho! I thought overleech would work with having life reserved over 50% aswell. SInce that wont work, I dont feel it worth to run it in on my spell caster. if it would be 30% I wouldve probably taken it but like this, it just doenst seem worth it. It simply would be awkward with flasks recovering me over 50% hp and loosing my my pain attunement.
I am still seriously considering it for my caster. The gem itself also adds a life cost to your spells, so you will go back to half life/low life eventually. Sure, in a panic flask to fill, but all you lose is pain attunement for a bit.
How would Petrified Blood interact with the Strength of Blood keystone? Would it kill the pseudo "life leech effects are not removed at full life" mechanic that you described in the video?
With Strength of Blood, your recovery from leech always fails to apply, even when you're not at 50% life. Your leech instances will still not be removed as long as your life remains below its unreserved maximum. In short, the combo works just fine. You just need other ways to recover life that aren't leech.
@@sergeantminor256 Thanks for confirming my suspicions.
don't forgot life recover on flask use node on pathfinder and scion!
Im gonna try petrified blood on inquisitor with soul tether and corrupted soul
Go for it, but please be aware that Immortal Ambition was nerfed in 3.14 by the change to how life leech recovers energy shield. Leeching to your ES will be very slow.
However, it is my understanding that ES recovery from Pious Path _does_ work with Immortal Ambition. It will just appear a bit slower because for Immortal Ambition's ES loss per second (haven't tested it myself though).
You use it on evasion builds
What's the behaviour if i have a total of 1000 life, are on full life and take a 750 damage hit with petrified blood? Does the full hit go through because im not on low life, or will the first 250 damage go through as normal, and the remaining 500 damage go through petrified blood?
Check the first video. The damage that brings you below low life will be affected by the split into direct and damage over time.
As the other user said, there's a bit in the last video about this case specifically, but the short answer is that you would instantly lose 650 life and degenerate 76 over four seconds.
What about flask life recovery? Is it removed at full life only like leech, or at full reserved life? So if I have 50% life reserved, is the flask life recovery removed when my life reaches 50% or will it stay because I never actually reach "unreserved full life"? I'm guessing it probably gets removed.
Flask life recovery is the only type of life recovery that actually succeeds in recovering the top half of your life. Just like leech instances, flask uses expire when you reach your maximum unreserved life. Flask uses do not expire when reaching 50% life with Petrified Blood. In fact, your life will continue to recover above half instead of being capped there.
Can the dot dmg be mitigate via immortal call or other less phys dmg taken sources?
Not directly, no, because it isn't considered "damage" at all. It's "life loss" based on the initial hit damage. It is indirectly mitigated by those defenses, since reducing the initial hit will make it remove less life in the first place, but once the amount of life loss is determined it cannot be modified.
@@sergeantminor256 ok thanks!
This content is great man! I love this stuff.
not sure this was mentioned anomalous version has 45%|140% doesn't go to 46% at level 21
I went into detail about the Anomalous gem in Part 3. Part 2 was made before the league launched at the alternate gem info was known.
@@sergeantminor256 later on I did saw the 3rd one... I am trying this in a raider evasion/dodge cap eli hit character, I do feel the difference on the one-shots, but the dots are a problem mainly poison and ground degen. not sure it's made for these type of builds.
@@overshare7 DoTs are always a problem on Petrified Blood builds, but chaos degen is pretty easy to trivialize if you can get positive chaos resistance. I find that 30-40% chaos res is enough to basically ignore most chaos damage in the game.
raider bloodseeker can get 10th thound's of instand leech. i would like one gem plx
(in my current setup my raider has 2.200 leech/s with crap gear (200.000dps)
I imagine Chaos damage is still a major problem with this as well.
There isn't anything about the skill that makes you specifically more vulnerable to chaos damage. If chaos damage is a problem for you normally, then Petrified Blood certainly won't solve that problem. However, I don't think using Petrified Blood will introduce a new vulnerability to chaos damage that didn't exist before.
Is the recover % life on kill mods from etc. Warlord/elder mods on chests affected by petrified blood?
What about surging vitality.
I assume both dont work above 50%.
That is correct. Neither works because it's not a flask.
Bloodthirst makes it sooo op
How are people still keeping their low life benefits while overleeching ? Are you overleeching even if you can't go over 50% ?
You are on low life whenever you're at or below 50% life. Petrified Blood prevents going over 50% life without flasks, so you're always on low life unless you use a flask.
If I'm understanding you correctly, then "overleech" refers to persistent leech, where leech instances don't go away even when they aren't recovering life. Since Petrified Blood prevents you from filling your unreserved life with leech (as long as you reserve less than 50% of life), it prevents leech instances from being removed prematurely, giving you persistent leech.
Hi sir, im kinda new. Could you tell me why wouldnt the nodestone "heart of flame" wouldnt be better than "pain attunement"? thanks
Hello! In PoE it's important to understand the difference between "increased/reduced" and "more/less." Heart of Flame gives *increased* fire damage, but Pain Attunement gives *more* spell damage.
All "increased damage" modifiers add together to make one multiplier, so if you have two 60% increased damage modifiers, that's
1 + 0.60 + 0.60 = 2.20x
All "more damage" modifiers are separate multipliers, so two 60% more damage modifiers will look like
(1 + 0.60) * (1 + 0.60) = 2.56x
"More damage" is almost always better than an equivalent amount of "increased damage." Likewise, "less damage" is almost always worse than "reduced damage."
How does this affect the berserker ascendancy that hits you for your maximum ( not max inreserved) life as reflected damage?
The reflected damage is still based on your maximum life, not unreserved life, and also not just the lower half if you have Petrified Blood. However, the life loss from the reflected damage can still be split by Petrified Blood, provided that it is affecting the lower half of your life.
hi there, may i know if the DOT damage of petrified blood that is lost over 4 seconds could be absorbed/redistributed to other sources other than life by other mechanics such as mind over matter or energy shield?
No it cannot, because Petrified Blood only performs the split _after_ it is determined how much damage is being dealt to life vs. how much is dealt to other HP pools.
@@sergeantminor256 ty for reply.... damn there goes my build
How do Guard skills interact with this?
If you're talking about guard skills that redirect damage to a new buff HP pool (e.g. Steelskin, Arcane Cloak, Molten Shell), then they interact in the same way as MoM, which I did an example of in Part 1. First, your guard skill will redirect a portion of damage to its own buff, during the "taking damage" calculation. Then, during the "losing life" calculation, any life lost below 50% is split by PB.
If you're talking about guard skills that simply lower damage taken (e.g. Immortal Call), first the damage will be reduced, then any portion dealt to the lower half of life is split by PB. Regardless of what kind of guard skill it is, the guard skill calculations all happen _before_ Petrified Blood does anything.
...
What will aura effect do?
Nothing. Petrified Blood is not an aura.
What are you thoughts on Replica Voideye or Crest of Desire on a character with extremely high regen?
Also, would increased duration increase the length of the debuff? If so, would it stretch the damage out over the longer duration (reducing the damage per second) or would it increase the total damage over the duration? ie. base of 100% over 4 seconds stretched to 100% over 5 or base of 100% over 4 stretched to 125% over 5. (with 25% increased duration)
@@N1NJ4P1R4T3 Replica Voideye or Crest of Desire with the normal (superior) quality gem seems like a high opportunity cost for relatively little gain. With the anomalous quality gem, it could be worth it, but only on a build with ridiculously high recovery. I'd weigh the opportunity cost of these options vs. just using a level 4 Enhance and taking the higher mana reservation.
I don't think skill effect duration has any effect on the duration of the over-time life loss from Petrified Blood. I can't confirm that, but it's what my instinct says. You might want to test it.
@@sergeantminor256 Hmmm. It looks like it doesn't have a buff or a debuff, so I'm not sure if any manipulation is possible through increased duration or through temp chains..... darn. Yeah, I was looking at using an anomalous gem to increase the damage prevented. I forgot to specify, haha. I'm planning on testing it on a chieftain with absurdly high regeneration. I'm hoping to just smooth out any "one shots" that are possible when you don't have insane gear. I'll try to remember to report back after I have the gem (expensive) and have done some testing.
with all this information, i cant wait for my build to still suck
Do you think petrified blood be good in cwdt loop builds?
It's an aura so it doesn't work
For builds that abuse cwdt to repeatedly cast their spell, it's the same as using it in a normal build
My English is not so good. U mean with this video. Lvl 1 quali 0 is better than a 20 20?
No, 20/20 is still better. The 40% does not increase, but the 100% still decreases, which is good.
@@sergeantminor256 thx! We need a updatet video für the anomalous version xD.
I was already planning on it! I'm sure I will do it soon. I'm just enjoying playing the new league right now :)
what about ci?
As far as I can tell, the only interaction Petrified Blood has with Chaos Inoculation, is to add a base life cost to all skills that cost mana (since you are always above half life while alive), thereby killing you the instant you use a skill. The rest of Petrified Blood's effects do nothing for a character that can only ever have 1 or 0 life.
Life leech stops when you reach 50% of your health with petrified blood, tested myself
Well, life leech can't apply recovery to the top half of your life pool, but life leech instances are not removed at 50% life. So, you get persistent leech.
"No use of Flasks to maintain Full Life" - Has 2 life flasks -_-
Builds with Petrified Blood should probably still take at least one life flask, just not to _maintain_ full life. You can use it to heal when you get too low or to momentarily top off life before taking a big hit. This doesn't seem to be how GGG used it in the reveal, but they're known to use "Frankenstein" builds and play suboptimally in their marketing.
@@sergeantminor256 I'm just being an idiot. But yes, that makes sense. I see this skill best used with either leech or Indigon, along with First to Strik, Last to Fall. Possibly even the Fortify line in Champ. There's lots of possibilities. Hopefully someone with lots of time on their hands test all this out, hah! From what I've heard, getting 1-shot is the problem with this skill when approached with average defensive layers.
My verdict on this skill as is: Basically worthless except edge break cases. The cool idea here was the "Half-Life" playstyle. Creating an extra mitigation source for life builds. Not a weird defensive mechanic for a build achetype that doesn't care about any of this, and will probably just reserved for a Purity instead of using this. Because that's much stronger than this ever will be. Pretty lame. We changed the whole way an archetype works, to achieve basically nothing. When I started down this rabbit hole I looked at items like replica Last Resort and Lori's Lantern and thought about the ways I could use them in a cool way.
Kinda this whole patch in a nutshell for me. It was all nerfs.
If you stop thinking of it as a defensive layer, and more of an enabling tool, you'll start to appreciate it more. It essentially allows you to play low life with what is effectively a HP pool that's 83.5% of what a full life build is. 83.5% of 6k HP is 5k HP. 83.5% of 8k HP is 6.7l HP. Those aren't bad life numbers, but of course it's less than the full 6k or 8k HP, so why would you use it? Partly for all the myriad benefits low life builds can access (huge damage multipliers, extra magic find, etc.), and partly for the boosted recovery you get from stuff like leech (effectively Slayer overleech). Those are some compelling bonuses, even if it isn't as tanky as full life. There's also some janky shenanigans you can use it for, like easy Adrenaline triggering. It's not there to make low life tankier, it's there to make low life palatable (without having to go Shavs or Ivory Tower). Sure you're a bit squishier (although some low life tools like Lori's Lantern actually give you a bit more defense as well), but Aspect of Carnage does that too - and low life is more flexible.