I’m looking to put together a build that uses life leech as one of the defensive strategies as well as a relatively sizable portion of its damage. I have found quite a few items/components that add damage% to life conversion (not what I’m looking for), a couple items that have life leech retaliation, and obviously the constellations which add life leech and life leech%, but I’m looking for items that will add either flat life leech damage or % bonus to life leech.
Obviously, using life leech as a sole source of damage isn’t viable because of bosses’ high resistance to it and the lack of enough -all resist (and the lack of any -life leech resist that I know of); however, there is enough life leech damage and +% in the constellations to give it a somewhat hefty bonus, so instead of simply using it as an afterthought, I wanted to make it a larger portion of my damage than I’ve seen in most builds. Unfortunately, there isn’t enough there alone, and all damage% isn’t plentiful enough to bring it to high enough values, to really make a dent from what I can tell.
Are there any items that add life leech damage/%? Also, is there anything that gives enemies -life leech resist other than -all resist from BWC’s Agonizing Flames, Manticore’s Acid Spray, Essence of Ch’thon Augment, etc.?
Haunt Relic has -lifeleech resistance, but no Lifeleech exclusive build would work well. Its has virtually no mastery support for it, the closest being that Nightblade’s Nightfall node on Shadow Strike has a very small value of it innately. Meanwhile, many enemies have innate resistance to it, especially bosses.
I just realized the search box at Graceful Dusk allows for any word contained in any item anywhere, including flavor text, modifiers, and affixes. I always thought it was simply for item names only, making it relatively useless. This is a total game-changer for looking into build viability, as a quick search for “life leech” showed me items with flat damage, percent damage, set bonuses containing the stat, and even which prefixes, suffixes, augments, and components contain it.
With the Constellation Wiki allowing text searching functionality, this has made my altoholic nature really take over. I’m afraid that the next few days will be a regression to the showerless Hot Pocket and Mountain Drew phase of my existence while I theorycraft like a madman. Totally worth it.
This brings up a new issue/question: According to this post, which appears to be the authority on the subject, reductions in all enemy resists, both flat and percentage-based, do not seem to affect life leech. While the leech isn’t specifically mentioned, the author lists all damage types affected by “reduced target’s resistance,” and leech isn’t there. Does anyone know one way or the other whether the resist reduction mechanic has any interaction with leech?
That’s how you realize there is like 3 weapons worth it as a source of life leech (Damnation, Empowered Thirsting Maw, Empowered Bloodreaper’s Cleaver).
This build might very well be better off with a well-rolled rare bonescythe (70% LL + …) of voracity (420/3 LL + …). Trogs, here I come to murder you while praying to RNGesus! I’ve never really farmed much for rares, but it appears there might be at least three MI items with specific affixes, along with a few non-infrequent rares with specific affixes themselves (Demonic [medal] of Butchery… I wonder how long I’ll have to farm for an exact prefix/suffix combo).