I've read several posts lately mentioning the blood magic rune but little mention about how it works and its current limitations or bugs. I just finished running some tests in Inferno mode to verify some of the information floating around and decided to compile it here and make a general post about it.
1) The life steal from blood magic does not show on your character sheet as extra life steal.
2) The life steal from blood magic behaves exactly as life steal in terms of suffering from the 80% penalty. I did some in game tests using Arcane Orb with Tap the Source and Celestial Orb runes to compare results. The math is that I gained 162 life from a 54k Arcane Orb - Tap the Source attack. 127/40000*100% = 0.3% which is 20% of 1.5. If instead the life gained were modified by the LoH coefficient, I would have gained more life since the coefficient for Tap the Source is 33%. I also have another screenshot showing a 146 life gain from a 43k hit, as well as a screenshot from my celestial orb tests. I'll post the screenshots a bit later.
3) The life steal from blood magic does not work with Archon beam. It is really easy to test for yourself, just remove all life regen, LoH, Life Steal, or any other forms of life gain and spam the beam when you are not at full health.
4) Reported by mlhaynes4 in post #4: Wicked Wind does not gain any life from Blood Magic Rune.
5) I have not tested other spells but have heard blizzard and hydra yield no gains. Preliminary guess based on first screenshot below is that the damage caused by Sparkflint also applies the life steal from the rune. I'll update later if I do any tests on other spells.
Hopefully this will help people decide if it is worth dropping the Force Weapon rune in favor of Blood Magic. If you're in Archon form most of the time, it is likely not worthwhile. If you use a lot of Arcane Orbs and want a bit more life steal, then it might be worthwhile.
EDIT: screenshots added
146/43123*100% = 0.339%, though if you add the 43123 and 5823 you get 0.299%. I think the 5823 damage is from sparkflint, which leads me to believe the Life Steal applies to sparkflint damage too.
Did a few tests of my own because I was wondering how this rune would be for CM/WW build that I run with archon.. very disappointing that not only does life steal not work with archon beam, but it doesn't work with wicked wind either.
like most discussion, blood magic is probably more useful in certain scenarios, but due to the way that LOH works it's much more worthwhile to pick up extra damage and just rely on your LOH
like most discussion, blood magic is probably more useful in certain scenarios, but due to the way that LOH works it's much more worthwhile to pick up extra damage and just rely on your LOH
Depends how much dps you have, and If you are using archon I guess?
using orb, after about 35k dps, LS of 3% outstrips LOH of 800. Add another 1.5 to your 3% and you have 4.5%, That turns out to be pretty useful
I'd much rather be stealing HP then gaining a few extra k in DPS, you will survive far longer with HP regen abilites then you will with slight DPS increases. Speaking from experience, my wiz is 102k with force weapon, 98k with Blood magic. I have zero life regen, so with force weapon, after I've popped my pot, I have no way of regaining HP except for the luck of globe drops. I die quite a bit with that build, maybe 4 - 5 times in a farming run. 20 elite packs Act III. More if I catch a pack of phase beasts on a waypoint or entrance...
As opposed to using BM, I can kite all day if low using orb and regain enough HP to nuke em down. The loss of 4 -5 k dps, I don't even notice it, but I do like the surviability. Farming act III with LS == zero deaths. You can effectively manage your hp pool far better, stay engaged in combat with champs for longer, not have to rely on luck of globe drops. BM is awesome with enough dps, at least with an orb spamming build
like most discussion, blood magic is probably more useful in certain scenarios, but due to the way that LOH works it's much more worthwhile to pick up extra damage and just rely on your LOH
Depends how much dps you have, and If you are using archon I guess?
using orb, after about 35k dps, LS of 3% outstrips LOH of 800. Add another 1.5 to your 3% and you have 4.5%, That turns out to be pretty useful
I'd much rather be stealing HP then gaining a few extra k in DPS, you will survive far longer with HP regen abilites then you will with slight DPS increases. Speaking from experience, my wiz is 102k with force weapon, 98k with Blood magic. I have zero life regen, so with force weapon, after I've popped my pot, I have no way of regaining HP except for the luck of globe drops. I die quite a bit with that build, maybe 4 - 5 times in a farming run. 20 elite packs Act III. More if I catch a pack of phase beasts on a waypoint or entrance...
As opposed to using BM, I can kite all day if low using orb and regain enough HP to nuke em down. The loss of 4 -5 k dps, I don't even notice it, but I do like the surviability. Farming act III with LS == zero deaths. You can effectively manage your hp pool far better, stay engaged in combat with champs for longer, not have to rely on luck of globe drops. BM is awesome with enough dps, at least with an orb spamming build
I agree. I plan to switch to the blood magic rune myself. I only lose about 2k dps (I'm around 50-60k in my MF Act 1 farming gear) compared to gaining over 50% more life gain. If I were using the WW Archon spec, I'd definitly drop the blood magic rune for the extra dps, but I use a lot of orbs and only have Archon for about every other elite since it falls off pretty easily for me in Act 1. I even have some life regen on gear (intentionally picking it up as I upgrade my MF set) but when you practically kill yourself in 2-3 casts, life regen doesn't help a lot. The extra Life Steal can make a lot of difference though and hopefully means I can nuke the mobs before I kill myself.
Random side note: I'm really starting to hate Illusionist with reflect damage and my Celestial Orb. Hitting like 10-20 mobs that have reflect damage kinda hurts, even with 2.7% life steal.
Random side note: I'm really starting to hate Illusionist with reflect damage and my Celestial Orb. Hitting like 10-20 mobs that have reflect damage kinda hurts, even with 2.7% life steal.
My advice. Turn off celestial, I tested celestial against TTS (Tap the source), trying to figure out which provided the most life steal + damage, I noticed the same thing, an orb piercing and reflecting the crits, far out, that hurts, but only getting 2 casts is even worse. You cast twice, lose all your hp, kite until AP has regen'd, not fun.
Switch to TTS for a while, the orb causes huge amounts of AOE damage when it explodes, hits multiple targets, and on crits (still not 100% sure on this) it causes a stun on the entire mob, it could also be >100k damage causes the stun, I need to figure that out. So with TTS I'm getting off 5 -6 orbs, stunning pretty much everything preventing them rushing me, passive 30% slow with temporal flux, gaining stupid amounts of life from the AOE explosion, and so long as I don't cast hydra, reflect damage elites are a non event
I think you will find that that build more effective with life steal, and way more fun to play as it's faster.
My build is primarily
Magic missile - attunement (left mouse)
Arcane orb - Tap the source (right mouse)
passives
- Temporal flux
- glass cannon
- illusionist
I like attunement because I can DPS while gaining AP, stutter step the shit out of any elites and blast them with orbs. With life steal, it's epic.
It's a little offtopic but I simply do not like TTS for Act 1. For Act 3 maybe, but for now I'm still doing A1 because it is fast, easy, and very low stress. I use Astral Pressence instead of Temporal flux because I don't need to kite much at all and I have Teleport - Wormhole to get away fast enough to toss another orb or two to finish off anything. I find it much faster to kill things with CO because I can toss 1-2 orbs and clear a whole room. With TTS it takes many more because it blows up on the first mob but those 20 yards further back don't get hit. Basically for Act 1 AP is not an issue at all and CO has more utility (really great for shielding/invuln mobs). It's only real drawback are the reflect damage mobs with either minion or illusionist, which I hope Blood Magic will help a bit more on.
Yeah I can see how it would be OP on act I with that much dps. I solely farm III though, I never get anything sell-able from act I and II and consistently get a few 2 - 5 mill items in act III from 1 - 2 runs.
Not a fan of the lower acts, it could just be RNG though, but I doubt it
Personally not a fan of the Blood Magic rune in general. It's good at two times, when you first get it and once you don't have to worry about DPS without it. Those 4k off of your 102k won't do much... but when I'm losing 2k off of my 50, it hurts.
I've done some research on the rune and there are some people claiming that it is not reduced by 80% in inferno, but your tests are pretty conclusive. Great post.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
1) The life steal from blood magic does not show on your character sheet as extra life steal.
2) The life steal from blood magic behaves exactly as life steal in terms of suffering from the 80% penalty. I did some in game tests using Arcane Orb with Tap the Source and Celestial Orb runes to compare results. The math is that I gained 162 life from a 54k Arcane Orb - Tap the Source attack. 127/40000*100% = 0.3% which is 20% of 1.5. If instead the life gained were modified by the LoH coefficient, I would have gained more life since the coefficient for Tap the Source is 33%. I also have another screenshot showing a 146 life gain from a 43k hit, as well as a screenshot from my celestial orb tests. I'll post the screenshots a bit later.
3) The life steal from blood magic does not work with Archon beam. It is really easy to test for yourself, just remove all life regen, LoH, Life Steal, or any other forms of life gain and spam the beam when you are not at full health.
4) Reported by mlhaynes4 in post #4: Wicked Wind does not gain any life from Blood Magic Rune.
5) I have not tested other spells but have heard blizzard and hydra yield no gains. Preliminary guess based on first screenshot below is that the damage caused by Sparkflint also applies the life steal from the rune. I'll update later if I do any tests on other spells.
Hopefully this will help people decide if it is worth dropping the Force Weapon rune in favor of Blood Magic. If you're in Archon form most of the time, it is likely not worthwhile. If you use a lot of Arcane Orbs and want a bit more life steal, then it might be worthwhile.
EDIT: screenshots added
146/43123*100% = 0.339%, though if you add the 43123 and 5823 you get 0.299%. I think the 5823 damage is from sparkflint, which leads me to believe the Life Steal applies to sparkflint damage too.
121/40497*100% = 0.299%
162/54210*100% = 0.299%
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
Depends on your build. My wiz uses blood magic, but I also have a weapon with 2.9% life steal, total of 4.4 couples with BM 2.9 + 1.5 = 4.4
My orbs crit for 150 - 300k
(.044 * (300k+150k / 2)) * .20 =
9980 * .20 = 1980
1980 on average life steal, this does not include when it hits mobs and crits in mutiples. I've seen numbers in green as high as 8k on mob crits.
Blood magic all the way.
Depends how much dps you have, and If you are using archon I guess?
using orb, after about 35k dps, LS of 3% outstrips LOH of 800. Add another 1.5 to your 3% and you have 4.5%, That turns out to be pretty useful
I'd much rather be stealing HP then gaining a few extra k in DPS, you will survive far longer with HP regen abilites then you will with slight DPS increases. Speaking from experience, my wiz is 102k with force weapon, 98k with Blood magic. I have zero life regen, so with force weapon, after I've popped my pot, I have no way of regaining HP except for the luck of globe drops. I die quite a bit with that build, maybe 4 - 5 times in a farming run. 20 elite packs Act III. More if I catch a pack of phase beasts on a waypoint or entrance...
As opposed to using BM, I can kite all day if low using orb and regain enough HP to nuke em down. The loss of 4 -5 k dps, I don't even notice it, but I do like the surviability. Farming act III with LS == zero deaths. You can effectively manage your hp pool far better, stay engaged in combat with champs for longer, not have to rely on luck of globe drops. BM is awesome with enough dps, at least with an orb spamming build
I agree. I plan to switch to the blood magic rune myself. I only lose about 2k dps (I'm around 50-60k in my MF Act 1 farming gear) compared to gaining over 50% more life gain. If I were using the WW Archon spec, I'd definitly drop the blood magic rune for the extra dps, but I use a lot of orbs and only have Archon for about every other elite since it falls off pretty easily for me in Act 1. I even have some life regen on gear (intentionally picking it up as I upgrade my MF set) but when you practically kill yourself in 2-3 casts, life regen doesn't help a lot. The extra Life Steal can make a lot of difference though and hopefully means I can nuke the mobs before I kill myself.
Random side note: I'm really starting to hate Illusionist with reflect damage and my Celestial Orb. Hitting like 10-20 mobs that have reflect damage kinda hurts, even with 2.7% life steal.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
My advice. Turn off celestial, I tested celestial against TTS (Tap the source), trying to figure out which provided the most life steal + damage, I noticed the same thing, an orb piercing and reflecting the crits, far out, that hurts, but only getting 2 casts is even worse. You cast twice, lose all your hp, kite until AP has regen'd, not fun.
Switch to TTS for a while, the orb causes huge amounts of AOE damage when it explodes, hits multiple targets, and on crits (still not 100% sure on this) it causes a stun on the entire mob, it could also be >100k damage causes the stun, I need to figure that out. So with TTS I'm getting off 5 -6 orbs, stunning pretty much everything preventing them rushing me, passive 30% slow with temporal flux, gaining stupid amounts of life from the AOE explosion, and so long as I don't cast hydra, reflect damage elites are a non event
I think you will find that that build more effective with life steal, and way more fun to play as it's faster.
My build is primarily
Magic missile - attunement (left mouse)
Arcane orb - Tap the source (right mouse)
passives
- Temporal flux
- glass cannon
- illusionist
I like attunement because I can DPS while gaining AP, stutter step the shit out of any elites and blast them with orbs. With life steal, it's epic.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
Not a fan of the lower acts, it could just be RNG though, but I doubt it
Thanks for posting this, I've been thinking about switching to blood magic. Going to see if I can make it work.