I think it’s costly and it just doesn’t seem to do as much damage or replenish your health as effectively as Siphon Souls or Sigil of Consumption.
Further more, it’s easily interrupted by being stunned, frozen, etc. 
Its a leveling skill same as stormbox or to a certain extent, Dswarm. U put one point into it and leave it there DO NOT put all ur points into it. Its very shitty less u make a build specifically to make it work like the totems build. Its pretty nice in the early game as it heals and deals damage at the same time. Pretty cool skill to have for the starting area
I’m making a build focusing on it actually, I’m just hoping it would be more deadly by now :o
I concur, underwhelming. I am building around it too with devouring swarm as a rebuff. Drain essence lacks a good sound to it as well it seems like doing nothing. I keep telling myself not to give up on my necro build but…skeletons die fast the bone spear thing is a last ditch aoe skill. The only thing I like is the curse that makes them run but then I can’t drain them.
Only level 25 now, I curse, lay down entangling vines to slow, debuff with swarm then drain once they are coming back bone spear them. Brairthorn and skeletons slowly pick them apart. Who knows maybe I’ll learn to like it? In the meantime hunting new items and blueprints with commando. Must say mythica thorn girdle and mythical wyhmscale boots have become the new empowered dreadnaught boots…I’m sick of finding them.
Back to OP, buff skill and give it a better noise when casting
It does apply weapon % chance to trigger skills for some reason, does anyone know if it’s a bug?
only skills with a weapon % damage component usually benefit from your weapon stats and skills.
it does it every 0.3 seconds too.
Do you have any item augment that does it ?
I don’t have that problem though(not yet at least)
I agree, I haven’t thought about the sound before, and come to think of it, a new sound would be really nice. 
This skill really needs to be buffed, in my opinion
High mana consumption is manageable but it should deals more damage to worth the hassle.
btw, is there a way to move this post to Gameplay Disscussion ?
I think I’ve posted on a wrong category.
L53 Necro here. My 2 Cents: Range is too short, poor graphics, too high mana cost, needs to increase life steal by 50%. Perhaps increase the number of targets it can hit?
Just the random 2handed sword with a 8% chance to throw a lightning ball that you find at the start.
That means, if you use a better weapon, say something with a 50% chance to trigger, you could potentially have it trigger 2-3 times per second on top of the damage Drain Essence already does. Seems exploitable.
Dunno if it’s the same with Aether Ray and Flames of Ignaffar.
The weapon skill explicitly says % chance to trigger on attack, and skills such a Drain Essence with no weapon damage scaling weren’t considered attacks previously and didn’t trigger such weapon skills afaik.
Could it be the vitality decay dot that triggers the weapon skill? I’m pretty sure something like that happens to me with every character using dots. I just confirmed I can trigger those attacks with bloody pox, which doesn’t have any weapon damage.
I strongly agree about life steal increase, It would make necro life steal build much more viable 
This is the only spell in the game that I enjoy. I mostly stick to melee sword and board builds. After playing around with it I agree with one thing for sure - Its range in the base game is crap.
In my mod I boosted the range to 20 yards and for the 2nd passive I made it effect 2 extra enemies ( Total of 3 ) within the 5 yards. The results of these 2 adjusts? beautiful.
All skills I can think of that trigger on attack trigger on ANY attack, this is normal. The only exception are weapon pool skills, which specify that they only activate when using a default weapon attack.
“On attack” skills aren’t really OP and can’t activate numerous times per second because they have cooldowns which are stated in the skill description (the skill on the weapon you’re talking about has a cooldown as well).
I think its life steal percentage should be increased also
even if we can’t drain many enemies at once, but more life steal would help us to stand our ground and face enemies more easily. 
A life steal conjurer could easily facetank most bosses and enemies without much hassle but a cabalist or ritualist can’t and that say a lot that the flaw could be in this skill