(Life Leech) for casters

Grim Dawn Gameplay Discussion
1

I am lvl 85 Shaman/Solider with Storm Totem and Wind Devil as my main attacks.

I am doing Ultimate and I pretty much kite my way through.

There are weapons and Devotions that add life leech % to attack powers. But since Storm Totem and Wind Devil are not considered attack powers, is there anyway to life leech?

I took Solider as my secondary because I needed health and defense. But then if I can’t life leech fast enough, I can’t beat some of the bosses that can one or two shot kill me.

Also, this game is particularly weak on Health Regeneration. With over 1000 Physique and Solider and Shaman’s Health Regeneration (and Devotion), I am barely doing 100 life regeneration per second. My total health is around 14000, so a couple hundred of life regeneration per second is pretty much useless.

Grim Dawn really need to provide a way for caster-built characters to survive in Ultimate level games. Health regeneration should be at least 500-1000 per second to replace life leech attack powers.

Any thoughts on how to get life leech for non-attack powers?

2

Life leech won’t save you from boss damage. I mean, it will, if you have over 100% attack damage converted to health or massive reduction to life leech resistance, which is impossible for your build, mostly because you focus on a pet.

If you want to survive, you need either Wendigo Totem or potions, of course you have to cap your resists too.

3

How about getting Ascended Vestment and Word of Inquisitor Abalon, invest in Devouring Swarm and convert circa 80% of its Vitality damage to Elemental damage?

4

I ended up taking War Cry (6 skill points invested) so I can reduce enemies damage.

And that seems to work a bit better!

5

You can take the dryad devotion but it really needs the cooldown on the proc lowered to be beneficial.

Personally I think the game is balanced around damage absorption and reduced target’s damage. If you don’t have neither of this on a build, you will notice huge damage spikes.

6

Damage absorption from shield and some powers right?

Shaman and Solider doesn’t have either… Solider has War Cary to reduce enemy’s damage (that’s what I am using).

I just finished Act 4 Ultimate… the final boss. It’s not bad… died like 7 times.

7

You have options available to you.

Shaman has Wendigo Totem for consistent sustain but it isn’t enough on it’s own. Like Duck_King said above, supplemental heals like Dryad help here, Giant’s Blood (with CDR) is nice too, masteries like Inquisitor or Occultist get on-demand heals for more and so on.

Leeching through weapon damage is also doable. For a Wind Devil/Totem character, you could pick up one of the Seal skills (Stormfire, Chain Lightning or Chillspikes) to use in between summons and some attack damage converted to health. Devotion skills like Flame Torrent, Blizzard, Guardian’s Gaze etc. also deal weapon damage that you can use to leech more with. Finally, if you really crave more, there’s the option of using a Haunted Steel for 8% ADCtH passively and Bloodthirster for 8 seconds of 30%+ ADCtH.

Basically, health sustain is something that needs to be built up alongside your other defenses and on pure damage casters thought about moreso than attackers.