POE2 - Honest Thoughts on Bloodmage after 87 Levels

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• Video

[@Lumiinyaa]

Blood mage doesnt gain power through ascendency. It gains more problems.

[@TheGanonuribe]

It's the 1st node. Why punish the character in exchange for nothing? The extra HP is not a guarantee. If the witch scaled the damage based of HP or something like that from the first node, I would be happy to take the penalty

[@SloRush]

I never understood the point in forcing suinganmancy, even hitting maps it felt like I punished myself for ascending

[@paxtonjolly7975]

@@SloRushokay, I actually like the idea of a forced node that enables the rest of the ascendancy, but you should get that forced ascendancy and feel very powerful after. Atm you are forced to take the worst ascendancy node in the game lmao

[@ExcessumGaming]

I could tell you that before playing.

[@Micromation]

I started lqughing out loud when I learned that even though your spells cost life, they STILL cost mana 😂😂😂

[@dmdiablo4]

Hey dude pro tip you can remove all your ascendcent points to basically just be a witch again ok hope this helps

[@PohxKappa]

Lmao

[@dodang_9147]

@@PohxKappa I am pretty sure blood mage 1 dimension class with exactly 1 build. this build is curses. Essence drain and Contagion are spells that have limited duration but thanks bloodmage, you get unlimited duration curses. The minion in your build is chaos totem which i believe is level 9 spirit gem. it scales off minion damage and number of curses on enemy which in your enemy. that's basically class and i am not joking when i say that playing ANYTHING ELSE besides this is bad because the way this build is structured where it minimizes # of casting for maximize total damage output. Whisper of doom doubles # of allowed curses on the target. so we have 4 curse spells. Contagion x2, Essence drain x2, Ritual x2, the totem(every 10 second?) and chaos curse. this is 10 spells. once you cast these 10 spells, your damage is capped. it cannot go higher and you need cast NOTHING else. that is also why blood mage gains critical rate, so it can uncap its damage. the negative of class is specific there so that this class doesn't abuse 15% critical chance bonus to have absurdly busted damage multipliers. it's specifically designed for you to NOT spam cast spells and take most minimalist approach to spells. The totem is minion build which is why it has all those minion passives. personally, i think it's insanely strong class but it's super one dimensional. you really can't play anything else but what class excel at is borderline too strong.

[@johndubois2229]

Yea I had to do this just to survive after my 4th point. How am I weaker after ascending twice - the idea is insane. So glad I rerolled right away. I wanted to go back because i like the game play and was going to start back up but this video says it all. Along with this comment, the fact that that is a good option is ridiculous

[@masonhales]

Actually you can spend 1 point on the first minor ascendancy node!

[@nailgun7258]

@@johndubois2229honestly I just kept my 2 ascendancy points and worked on the skills I wanted to use and my passives. I’ve been killing it with bone storm mixed with flame wall/raging spirites and contagion

[@gringoboy701]

Keep up the good opinion pieces. All the detailed feedback will help them polish up the class design before launch next year.

[@lucagenovese7207]

Yes, this. Great way to share opinions i likes the vid a lot! Have fun

[@CyberBnnny]

Agree, and I enjoy that the tone was not just whining but constructive.

[@thecooljohn100]

@@CyberBnnny Yes. Lots of people hating as if this wasn't the whole point of early access. They are letting us help shape the ascendencies. Some will say they were just lazy and we are working for free, but I think it's better for them to be finishing the last bits of the game with our feedback.

[@cosmolosys]

I hope they will watch this, or do we have to make forum posts?

[@sabersaurus7018]

Lol launch next year, get real.

[@avereth]

Blood mage is a descendency. I'm trying to make chaos spells work.

[@rzkmonster]

i tried to do physic + chaos. i'm 69lvl, can do 1 tier maps, but i dont want to, because there is no proper aoe options it definetely feels like half of gems we need are not in early access game currently delivers elemental builds only in a proper way, even melee for warrior without any elemental additive feels weak so i guess i'll just wait for big patches or even for the release to make that build work

[@SSPARROWW]

Until I got hexblast I was never getting crits for health orbs. It was honestly horrible. I beat act 3 and then made a merc character

[@The_5th_God]

I go fire chaos. I get the orbs occasionally because of gear. Crit on my weapon.

[@RossMellow]

I wish Blood Mage converted the Bleed DoT to a Chaos DoT instead of staying physical as an ascendancy, it would make the Chaos DoT build better and actually feel like a worthwhile unique tree

[@avereth]

@@SSPARROWW Hexblast seems like the way to go atm since essence drain doesn't drain anything and is still mega slow and non piercing even though the poe 1 upsides are gone. My concern is as maps get higher being close enough to hexblast might become an issue. Maybe if I go to 2 curse, keep a defensive on blasphemy, and depsair as a regular curse to apply and hexblast from afar.

[@NOAH-oq3xb]

I agree with literally everything you said. But I genuinely don't understand how they thought Blood Mage was in any form a complete ascendancy. There's so many holes and competing elements for the class that it feels genuinely incomplete

[@SeventhSolar]

I think they rushed out the design to have 12 ascendancies ready for EA.

[@mrtoothless]

6 years of constant development... They're hacks that don't know what they're doing. They've always been hacks that don't know what they're doing.

[@Andreas_Mann]

Dude it’s literally early access. They will iron it out

[@RobRuckus65]

@@Andreas_Mann Will they though. Or is this how they intended it to play.

[@andzreal]

Same for Chayula monk, literally 2 ascendecies I wanted to play and they both are super incomplete/broken in a bad way.

[@chilidoghamsalad9952]

Also how the blood orb disappears right as you finaly get over to it. I love that.

[@Tiagocf2]

I love that against bosses the blood orb spawns close to them or even inside them, so you have to risk yourself to take it, and sometimes you can't even reach it because it spawns out of bounds

[@mariomcp]

I suggested they make Sanguimancy simply an INNATE part of the class and let you instantly start having fun with points. The labs are too difficult to make people have to do their 2nd and 3rd trial to start actually getting power. I also do agree it should be 50% life, 50% mana, but yeah. Make it so that you simply get Sanguimancy when you pick the class and then can spend 4 points as you please.

[@uS0ra]

plus most people feel like you need to get leech as their second node so youre not really having fun with points until 3rd ascendancy

[@martins2246]

T hat would be THE biggest ascendency change in 1 & 2 and they are oddly uniform given a lot of poe curveballs. poe could have n-teenth ascendencies per class...but they went crazy with the wildwood ascendencies .

[@idiom555]

This man. I can get my third ascend to save my life on my blood mage and it sucks so much ass.

[@Dudeabides422]

@@uS0ra when I first tried leech it was either broken or so bad that I literally couldn't tell the difference with it on or off. I swapped over to the progen node and that feels pretty good with recoup.

[@arkannon1682]

Yeah that's the fix I want. I don't care what they do to fix sanguimancy. I don't want to use any ascendancy points on it anyway and get both my right side and left side nodes. No amount of power will be worth the pacman/ pick the globe gameplay

[@Rook986]

Vitality Siphon should also say: Life leech effects not removed on full life. You deal x% increased spell damage while Leeching

[@sabat3332]

Nah, just use your anoint to get that for only 350 exalts!

[@NemisCassander]

I was thinking that you could put 5% Life Leech on the first node along with Sanguimancy, and the second node makes enemies lose their Leech Resistance, and maybe apply your Leech to DoTs.

[@bartoszbartosiewicz1123]

It should give your leech life overflow

[@sabat3332]

anyway vitality siphon is so far the best ascendancy point in blood mage so actually having to pick it doesn't hurt at all

[@Stainlesssteele4]

I feel like they designed Blood Mage around physical spells, then shipped with half of them missing. I got mine to A3C and ended up rerolling an infernalist; Bonestorm was very powerful, it absolutely deleted bosses, but when it came to clear speed, it was slow and tedious. Bonestorm's cost is low enough that I could counter it almost entirely with mask of the stitched demon, but thats the *only* physical damage dealer. Exsanguinate and Reap are both in the database, and I assume they'll synergize way more with blood mage, since reap applies crit weakness now.

[@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx573]

Also think that's the issue, yes. I'm playing physical spell Bloodmage and while Bonestorm is fun in general, in some situations it's just not great and there's nothing else to fall back on. It's also sometimes awkward to use, half of the spell gets stuck in the environment at times, which makes sense visually but gameplaywise it's really awkward, there are a lot of narrow places in the world

[@zeriel9148]

The whole game feels like 70% of it is missing. The decision to launch EA with most skills missing is bizarre. If they weren't ready to ship the other half of the game, they shouldn't have launched EA. It's truly weird that there's all these skills we've seen in preview builds that aren't in EA. They could have just waited a year or two more. No one would have really cared. Diablo 4 isn't competing with them for hardcores, there is no competition for their target market... but they might MAKE their own competition by pissing off their customers so much that they get soured off the company and PoE as a whole. This has been the story of the last decade honestly. People hype up these battles of games, but games that are actually good and get sequels have more to fear from their own failure than competition. Diablo's greatest enemy was their own product being mediocre. Now PoE 2's biggest enemy is itself. The story repeats.

[@radumotrescu3832]

@@zeriel9148 I was going to say that 50% is missing, but yeah, its more like 70-80% now with the nuking of Cast on X trigger gems.

[@zeriel9148]

@@radumotrescu3832 I think if we just look at the amount of "coming soon" stuff that is explicitly in the UI ingame right now it's more on the level of 50%. And the campaign. But if you look at it overall... it does tend to be more than that, because you have missing ascendancies even on the classes they released. So we're missing half the classes, another ascendancy on the classes we have, and all kinds of "gravy" that was probably meant to be there by release, like more endgame modes, yada yada. Entire techs they talked up and were in e-celeb/media preview builds like mounts, etc.

[@XBluDiamondX]

I think to some extent, Hexblast should be a decent choice. Hell, the suggested support gems for it suggest you may want to consider +crit effects. However, not only the ascendancy is crap, Hexblast is utter garbage as it is.

[@bakuguy131]

Blood mage was miserable to start on Edit: after finishing the video I 100% think that either ascendancy 1 needs to simply convert mana cost to life. no point to double dip into the cost, it makes no sense, or it needs to be combined with spell leech

[@Oathiel]

I think it makes some sense to leave mana be. But a split would be better, just so we dont have to invest so heavily into mana regen if we already pay with life. On top of that, taking blood magic makes you pay twice the mana cost with life and mana cost nodes on tree dont affect life cost, which makes no sense at all to me. Also it feels bad that all the seemingly interesting mechanics like overcap, life cost, and life leech all seem to condtradict each other in some way instead of boosting each others effectiveness.

[@nailgun7258]

There’s actually a node far right in the passive tree that does that I’m making my way over there. It takes away mana and uses life for spells which isn’t a downside to blood mage

[@bakuguy131]

@@nailgun7258 That is true, but then why am I playing blood mage and not just infernalist/stormweaver with that same node? The double dipping is the weird part imo

[@Tiagocf2]

it feels weird running out of mana with a BLOODMAGE

[@ShadesGamin21]

I am a dedicated deadeye player, I cannot bring myself to play anything else, but since my friends wanted to play I made a witch just for fun and chose bloodmage cause it sounded silly and I thought it would be funny to pretend to die casting spells while trolling my friends. They're having fun which is great, just about to get to cruel, my deadeye is well into maps at this point and I can't help but laugh every time I play the bloodmage because I thought I was going to be joking about killing myself, but I am ACTUALLY killing myself casting spells. So my current role is stacking ES with MOM w/ Eldritch battery and being a revive bot for my group. They're having fun, I barely get hit and take so little damage I just tank everything and revive them when they die to mechanics. If this is what the class was for then 10/10

[@cccbbbaaa110]

they did put a lot of group play node so maybe you are correct

[@Tiagocf2]

I'm on act3 with bloodmage witch using a unique wand that converts 25% of mana cost into HP cost so this way I can kill myself even faster. I use 1 curse and lose 60% of my HP 😂

[@Shamall]

Yep, had to put my bloodmage on the shelf for now.

[@SSPARROWW]

I beat act 3 after lots of pain and overleveling and went straight into a new merc charac

[@michadybczak4862]

I disagree. Blood Mage feels different with my Hexblast, early crit build. Even without crit it worked well. Basically, the first ascendancy leaves you at disadvantage if you don't have enough dmg. Basically, you hurt yourself when casting more than enemies do. Once you get dmg high enough, you finally can generate enough remnants to heal you. So one hexblast is costing you less, then the amount of damage you do around. This increases the chances to get remnants. Having crits improves that. Adding leech with 2nd ascendancy basically fixes the life issue, because YOU GAIN MORE FROM LEECH then your spells cost, providing you hit something. It's enough to hit, one tiny monster to sustain the cost of the spell. Basically, Blood Mage forces you to do a lot of damage, have high crit and be effective with your dmg per mana ratio. Elemental builds suck at this. They can be powerful but cost a lot, especially Spark, that is everything but effective. That is why Sorcerers builds go to mana stacking builds, because they need a lot of mana anyway. That is not the case for Blood Mage that avoids elemental builds. You can choose either chaos (Hexblast) or physical dmg from spells (have higher crit chances so you don't have to relay on the last blood mage ascendancy and utilize more defensive nodes). All your problems are not with Blood Mage, but with builds that don't complement or synchronize with it. Really, I forgot that Blood Mage has life cost, unless from some reasons I miss to hit enemies (when being defensive in sekhema trials and do dmg often with Essence Drain from afar). And even if my health gets depleted, hitting one enemy heals me completely, WITHOUT LIFE REMNANT. It is east to get life overflow with the right build. Blood Mage is awesome and most of the time I have life and ES overflow, which makes me more tanky, even without investing much into ES (which I can't since I have to go crit). Sure, in some situations I can die easily, so I am not invulnerable. 20 enemies hitting you with poison at the same time will kill you quickly if you don't move. You also have to have Area of Effect to be effective with Hexblast, because the more area you do dmg, the more dmg you do, more life remnants, fewer enemies can hit you and that snowballs. So once again, leech covers more than enough for spell cost if you hit anything, while life remnants give you life overflow. The only bad thing is, that you loose all overflows when changing area or visiting the camp, so you have to build it from the beginning each time, but that happens quickly. If not, then the area is hard and you are reaching the ceiling of your current build, showing that you need to upgrade your dmg. By the way, I am lvl 75 and I never regretted the choice of taking Blood Mage. Sure, at the beginning I did have a problem, but once I realized what is happening, I went shopping and solved that ;). Just did 3rd ascendancy and after getting 4th, I could rework the tree for crit dmg.

[@roofields8468]

This is the only reply that’s truth.

[@No1Munch0907]

life orbs need to drop closer to the player because some bosses just sit on top of the orbs (Act III boss), making it physically impossible to collect

[@voidprism_studios666]

They should just slowly come to you the closer you are to them, just like XP globes in MOBA's And I even noticed that the wither remnants do this...Its the little things...

[@r.d.6290]

I can't get rid of the feeling that they copypasted this mechanic as-is from Last Epoch and D4. They both have flawed execution of that, especially that hurts in D4. Why not bypass the process of picking up orbs? Just make them auto pick from any distance and make some cool syphoning effect.

[@zalaquin]

@@r.d.6290yeah like a bloody vein or something

[@Tiagocf2]

I'm about to fight Act 3 boss, thanks for the insight on what i'm about to suffer

[@sPARTANeMPEROR]

Bloodmage cost should be only life & mana should be converted into life regen If u want more life regen u can stack mana there are lot of mana & energy shield node

[@abbyabby3746]

the problem is GGG absolutely hate people solving mana so there's no way they would do that unless if it was in a really crappy form, for example chayula monk or fire mana infernalist

[@Brotdem]

exactly! "gain a free lifetap on every skill" sounds like a very interesting unique playstyle! that might not even be enough to validate an entire "ascendancy fantasy" but its a unique start!

[@rod99ttett90]

​@abbyabby3746 I got a unique helmet early that doubles my mana regen. It's literally impossible for my blood mage to run out out of mana.

[@LegionsPaladin]

idk if anyone will see this, and i theres over 900 comments that i havent read, but i play crit strike arc blood mage, the way i kinda bandage some of these problems is i use life tap, inspiration to make arc cost only life, then i grab mind over matter and treat my mana pool as my health pool with mana remnants to get the double mana pool, i find a lot of use out of choir of the storms with this build since crits ignore lightning resistance, then i have lightning conduit cast on crit meta gem as well as orb of storms, i havent tried to get my 4th ascendancy yet but i dont have a lot of over all poe knowledge so idk how to scale damage or ehp very well so ive been just clearing T15 waystones for now while i learn the stuff

[@wolvie90]

"Fed up with Blood Mage" hits home. My CoF BM had just hit maps, everything was finally together and I had a general plan that would use all 8 ascendancy passives synergistically and handle both damage and defense, then the patch hits and the build is completely dead. Combine this with the fact the Blood Mage central gimmick just doesn't feel good and I've dumpstered that character.

[@miapocalypse3364]

respec into internalist

[@Brotdem]

yea, can I just ask, what did you expect the "fantasy" of bloodmage to be? surely not this right? what about ONLY lifecosts, as in "get a lifetap on every skill for free", then it makes sense right? or even give US the bat-demon-vampire transformation instead of interfalists lol

[@wolvie90]

@@Brotdem The general idea is solid, it's just the execution is not great. They could get it there by simply tweaking numbers and make the blood orbs easier to collect. It has all you need, damage via life scaling and one of very few ways of getting a high life pool as a ranged caster. It also comes with inbuilt Progenesis which is one of the most overpowered defensive mechanics in the previous game. Combine this right now with a garbage spell selection and yeah, you end up with a lackluster class.

[@wolvie90]

@@miapocalypse3364 Ascendancy choice cannot be respecced.

[@KjKase]

@@miapocalypse3364 I wish

[@Zw1ggy]

Appreciate all the content, really helping me navigate the game

[@I_Am_Empyrean]

They need to delete the leech node and shove it onto the first node, or they need to rearrange nodes so you're not forced into taking the 1 node. There's a lot in this game that clearly feels like GGG just didn't playtest it properly.

[@marcellsipter7651]

Its an early access... We are in testing and experimenting phase

[@mrfreeman2911]

I think GGG has a bad design philosophy. They have a boner for punishing players. They want us to like and play ruthless, but the players don't want to, so there is a conflict.

[@JamesSmithTexas]

Diablo 4 mogs this game in every way

[@M00nlord]

Look at me. I am the beta-tester now.

[@riveteye93]

​@@mrfreeman2911 lmao Pearls before swine

[@Einkil123]

People keep saying that its a descendancy for the first 2, but it gave me one of the smoothest leveling experiences Ive had to date in either PoE1 or 2. So far in maps though its feel a bit painful, but I also have bad gear and not enough damage scaling since I was trying out %damage taken from mana.

[@yukariyoshisaki6333]

i wanted to love blood mage so hard i love the idea of throwing a fireball at something and it inexplicably starts bleeding but its just such a nothing burger atm its a bit of crit and the rest is just mitigating the shitty ass mandatory node also compared to most of the other ascendancies there just isnt a whole lot of interesting stuff going on its legit just left side damage right side mit it almost feels like one of the really old league of legends passive trees

[@Brotdem]

same :( what did you expect the "gameplay fantasy" to be? did you also expect something like 100% of skillcosts are lifecosts, or that our class gets the "vampire-demon" transformation instead of infernalist? :D

[@skellumfh]

What I think would be kind of cool would be making the remnants' health deplete from taking damage only (as opposed to paying life costs), essentially as a one-time absorb shield. This would make it something anambiguously good to pick up life orbs if you can sustain your (normal) life pool some other way (Vitality siphon, flasks, regeneration). On a more general note, maybe some of the small passives in the ascendancy, especially the first one, should have either leech or regeneration. That would fit thematically and go a long way to make life costs in boss fights less punishing. Alternatively they yould make remnants restore life flask charges in addition to their current function.

[@dsinemoi1mouton]

interesting idea. Subtle and has potential. The only downside I see is the mechanical clarity for newer players.

[@tateseyler]

Yeah separating out overcapped life somehow and adding a modifer like "Life costs are taken from undercapped life before overcapped life" would go a long way in fixing the ascendency and reward good gameplay.

[@dsinemoi1mouton]

@@tateseyler Hmm, on a second thought, I think they won't do that. Otherwise it wouldn't be fair to consider the whole thing the same like pool. And so the benefit from stacking life alltogether would sound kinda off. I don't think they will do that

[@ANDELE3025]

@@dsinemoi1mouton Make either of the hp segments in a transparent skull over the hp globe, like the claw on petrified blood.

[@R3TR1BUT1ONz]

Your hair looks nice af my guy, keep up the great content!

[@TheModdedwarfare3]

How about sanguimancy is the very first point and then remove the small nodes before the first notables so then you can get sanguimancy and another notable, most likely leech on your first ascendancy and then you can also have another notable after 4 labs to solve some power issues.

[@thedarklord8595]

I kinda disagree with his take. He says that as bloodmage you cant run blood magic on the passive tree because you would just die. I'am literally running blood magic and having a blast with the build rn. Also Crimson Power on the ascendancy tree is definitely not mandatory. Go sunder the flesh all the way.

[@S34Mii]

Very good research and discussion points. I hope GGG sees this and goes back to the lab themselves to see what needs to be changed/reworked

[@setcamper]

Yep, 100% agree and I quit the class middle of Act 6. There's zero identity- I was playing a Sorc with no defenses and no regen, and I was often actively killing myself while chugging mana pots... and that was before the CoF nerf. Props to you for continuing but the class needs a lot of work.

[@martins2246]

the identity part bummed me out. I thought there would be arcane or something for chrono....more blood spells. Just jamming ele skills on there was a big let down.

[@Brotdem]

yea theres legit NO WAY that anyone is happy with this "identity", how was this shipped to early accesss lol, it feels like a placeholder "insert blood-ascendancy here". where IS our identity? why not 100% of skillcosts are lifecosts instead! I LOVE the idea to have one ascendancy that gets a free lifetap on every skill instead of just one :D

[@jaredlol1]

I also started bloodmage because CoC with 15% base crit sounded fun. But pretty much exactly what you said. I was struggling doing maps when I realized I could have just played stormweaver gotten the crit triggers and been way stronger. Instead o had 4 ascendancy points that more or less amounted to 3% increased life…

[@Partimehero36]

I feel like half cost mana and life is a good thing to try, but we need some combination of: 1. More life 2. More/better recoup/leech 3. Better access to bleed Maybe they completely change the first node and put it at the bottom, make the first node location the starting point, and make it so that whatever node you take first applies the life cost (hopefully reduced). This way we could start from 1 with spell leech. Idk, just spitballing.

[@czaja995]

"Maybe they completely change the first node and put it at the bottom" this will not work, in this case you could just not take this node and and it would make rest of the nodes to strong, I think Sanguimancy and Vitality siphon should be combined into one node as first node, this would offset drawbacks from first node at the beginning, but they would need to create new node that would replace Vitality Siphon.

[@anders8204]

I think the identity would be cooler if it just gave us wholesale mandatory lifetap and then have the entire rest of the tree do things based on Life, max Life and HP regen. From damage auras based on HP regen, to gaining energy from using hp to cast to growing armor based on Life. Let us be the caster with 0 mana who actually wants to focus on stacking STR.

[@thecooljohn100]

I'm about to hit maps with Blood Mage and I can agree that it definitely feels like an underbaked ascendency. I'm glad that they're doing this 6 month early access period in which the community will help them bring these underwhelming assscensions to life!

[@luminaxar]

I gave up on it after 45 hours. Biggest pain & struggle and I didn’t even make it through the campaign on normal before getting hardstuck because I ran out of resources.

[@set-tes4316]

The first node could spawn life remnant only on monsters deaths but the rest of the passive get an actual payoff : if you're above 75% of your health get more damage (or convert a percent of healthpoints to damage for each X hp beyond 75%), get 0-10% spell leech based of your current hp (lowest at 100% or more, highest at 0% health). The second node instead could be : double the life cost, life leech and bonus damage of life remnant.

[@stephencorwin9776]

Armour Breaker (totem) + Sunder + Blood Barbs on Bloodmage has been very fun. Huge guaranteed crits which produce huge bleeds and ignites

[@AndradeLukas042]

This sounds like a great build. I'm playing Bonestorm critical and it is working great. I ascended yesterday and I felt like my life doubled. I'm having no problem keeping overcap whatsoever.

[@MLG1014]

Ya I genuinely think people are speccing blood witch wrong. It's a physical / armor shred build with critical chance and damage as the focus. It's not meant for magic at all lol. When you have decent critical chance, you just get nonstop sustain. The big issues with blood mage is bosses that are on separate platforms, as the orbs spawn incorrectly. But aside from hexes (which cost a ton), I don't have any issues whatsoever with overall costs. But I also have equipment with health Regen. It's just a vampiric mage.

[@bartzhang391]

Can you link your build? using the maxroll build planner, by armor breaker totem u maent ancestral warrior totem right?

[@bartzhang391]

@@MLG1014 You can only get blood orb from crit once every 2 secs so it's not nonstop sustain

[@MLG1014]

​@@bartzhang391 The biggest drain on health is hexes. The only problem I've had with bosses so far are the ones off platforms where I can't access blood orbs. still, every 2 seconds vs bosses is still very doable lol. Idk. I think it's problems are massively overblown.

[@EwokPanda]

Blood Mage is this game's "Hurt Me Plenty"

[@saunorine]

4:25 classic ggg creates a problem and sells you a solution nobody asked for

[@Sammysapphira]

Thats literally what makes builds interesting. Why do you think rf does self damage?

[@fakmanchannel2020]

But rf gives you increased dmg, and this is spell. You can avoid him all game and play something else. But this is ascendancy, if you don't wanna power up your character, you just can avoid run trial, but there's no point at all. You just skipping points, that actually, can power ups you ( in other ascendancy) but not on the bloodmage​@@Sammysapphira

[@Oathiel]

@@Sammysapphira Also, to add on to fakmanchannel2020, you solve 80% of other problems while solving he RF degen problem (defense, fire res, life recovery etc.) In case of Bloodmage on top of life cost problem you get: - an inconsistent recovery (locked behind RNG, Crit Chance, Bad Positioning), - still have to invest heavily into mana to sustain it, - no good defensive or dmg benefits, because all the other nodes are extremely underwhelming (especially considering that you only have 4 ascendancy points to spend instead of 6, not counting last trial) BTW. RF cost with even normal cap fire res and low regen investment is literally nothing in comparison to Life cost of skills on higher links and levels as a Bloodmage.

[@nickalexander1967]

Another pretty crippling issue is that the damage you inflict on yourself from casting spells also prevents the regeneration of your Energy Shields leading to you missing out on a very large facet of your defensive options since you essentially have to step doing anything and only avoid attacks to even have a chance at regaining any of your shield beyond the first couple hits your receive.

[@Razz0912]

I agree with your point, leech needs to be consolidated into the First node and allow for overleech. Otherwise I dont see any point of ascending.

[@thomasgrimm1664]

Thanks for breaking down the problems!

[@oskarius93]

I'm incredibly frustrated with my Bloodmage experience. Tried Chaos dmg for lvling but it seemed incredibly weak even going full glas cannon and rocking all chaos nodes on tree did terrible damage. Rerolled CoF on day 3 and it was working fine but was left without currency/gold after tweaking the build for maps. Boom bricked and no easy way to respec. I'm going to reroll another class and if buffs happen I'll pick up the Bloodmage later on

[@XBluDiamondX]

As did I. Initially ED/Contagion, then tried out Hexblast (which I think is meant for Blood Mage). Total trash. Then, of course, I respec into the CoF only to get the experience of the patch. So I think I'll just drop this Witch entirely until significant changes come. Which is sad, because I struggled to get to Act 2 Cruel and never had a glimpse at the end game.

[@HolyMoly69364]

I am blasting on EDC with Corpsewade boots, the poison spreads with contagion now and you just run a Skeletal Brute with Sacrifice on bosses and they just melt. Hexblast to oneshot normal and magic mobs while mapping and watch the poison delete everything.

[@aidendunkley-wy2su]

@@HolyMoly69364 should make a build for this. i would love to see it.

[@Oathiel]

@@HolyMoly69364 Will not believe it unless I see it lol I started with EDC but it fell off with dmg in cruel even when going full glasscannon. Also when I tested before poison didnt spread at all with contagion (Although It should according to contagion wording)

[@HolyMoly69364]

@@Oathiel Read the .1.0D Patch notes then.

[@NoOne-fe3gc]

That sums up blood mage perfectly... "How do you like blood mage?" "I cast lightning spells...." I liked blood mage so much I reroled a Titan. The worse thing is I was really into trying to do a warlock DOT everywhere thing, but not enough dots for that

[@CAMMMFRR]

There is zero power to the build plain and simple. First node needs to some combination of the following. More spell damage, Less skill cost, Less damage taken. Getting your first ascension should feel great! I'd be stoked to get % more spell damage and % less damage taken when I grab this node to start bloodmage. Instead I just kill myself for 80 levels and never receive a single power boost as most skills have almost 15% base crit anyways.

[@gima123123]

Great thoughts and video!! I'm playing infernalis variation of witch and it sucks as much as bloodmage sadly. I thought I should reroll and take bloodmage, but after watching your video, it seems that witch is just sufferring very heavily from ascendancies. I can list all the problems of infernalist just so people don't go rerolling to end up in the same place. Main problem with infernalist is not that you lose something, but more that you do not have any nodes besides first 2 that do anything. Breakdown of infernalist skills: 1. Moves other types of damage to Fire damage. If you got 75% of all, this gives you nothing. 2. 6hp to mana, gives you nothing unless you play specific mana builds 3. 25 life to spirit, useful for minion build, but gives you nothing for mage build. 4. 8 life to energy shield, literally just reduces your overall life pool, unless you have some specific energy shield uniques? 5. Demon form is currently bugged? It removes your weapons when you transform so you lose bonuses that you have on them. So if your weapon is decent, you lose damage when transforming. 6. Demon form specific, but demon form is not working. 7. on itself, makes you not have mana and use health instead. This makes you have not 2 pools (mana + health) and 2 flasks (mana + health), but 1, which just reduces your resource and gives nothing back. 8. 30% of the time, you get higher ignite chance and magnitude, but even without it, your every spell usually ignites. 9. Gives 20% damage 30% of the time, which is 0.2*0.3=0.06=6% damage boost so that's same as a small node, but you need to take 7 which costs you heavily. 10. The one and only good node. First 2 points go here, you get a strong tank pet + flat 20% dmg reduction. Maybe the idea is that this single skill is enough for the whole tree? 11. Gives you 30% damage boost which is nice, however if you go crit build, you would constantly take 15% damage which is even more that demonfom gives you and that 30% crit can be taken just from a regular node. So, seems like if you want to do mage, neither infernalist nor bloodmage works. Maybe going Titan and jus building mage would end up making you stronger, because of the OP ascendancy nodes it has and being not that far away from witch skill tree.

[@NemisCassander]

The first node you mention converts 25% of Physical damage taken to Chaos, no? Seems like an obvious combination with Chaos Inoculation?

[@Thar1979]

All good points and you are spot on that this is currently minion oriented. I play minions - lets call it zoo - minions spawn the globules for health and I use only right side of the ascendancy for defenses and extra hp.

[@leonhewitt4744]

This is exactly what I’m doing.

[@Baitacaquence]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts with the community, I'm playing with her and I'm suffering from the same things you mentioned.

[@EmbraceMadnezZ]

The worst ascendancy designs I experienced in EA were bloodmage and pathfinder. The pathfinder felt unfinished overall and the bloodmage was so awful that I still don't understand what GGG was thinking of designing like this.

[@ashuri6476]

POHX? I remember you from the Skyforge days, loved your content and ill have to stick around for your POE content too, keep it up man!

[@samuelturcotte1486]

The game is FILLED with positive+negative item/skill/passive but more often than not the negative side is bigger and you THEN have to build around the positive effect which isn't even that good. I am so confused.

[@DustinHarms]

Great thoughts, really hope GGG sees and takes this feedback into consideration. Pretty much echoes my experience (though I'm doing a completely different playstyle with my BM).

[@BlahBlahFreeman]

This is exactly why I didn't start Bloodmage. I was convinced there was no way you'd be able to sustain the first Asc node. What they should do IMO is: 1.) Buff the first minor node before Sanguimancy to +10% life. 2.) Consolidate Sanguimancy and Vitality Siphon, but reduce it from 10% to 5-8% Leech. 3a.) Change Vitality Siphon's node to increase the health gain from Life Remnants by 3x if an enemy dies while bleeding. or 3b.) Change Vitality Siphon's node to allow Leech from Sanguimancy to apply to OverHealth. 4.) Consolidate Open Sores and Blood Barbs. Allow for Elemental Damage against Cursed enemies to have bleed chance. 5.) Gore Spikes should to be per 30 Life. 40 was too extreme of a nerf. 6a.) Crimson Power needs to be before Grasping Wounds or 6b.) Grasping wounds needs to provide a significant spell damage increase or spell crit chance increase while losing health. I feel like that would at least make the Ascendency feel more thematic and cohesive. That would make it so the first Ascendency is more sustainable. Vitality Siphon's node could either accomplishes the same goal of adding sustain, but could lean into the life remnant gimmick. Open Sores is a pointless node that no one will realistically take because the others are so much more impactful, so group it with Blood Barbs and now the Bloodmage has the innate ability to inflict Bleed, and gets rewarded for it if it could supplement the new Vitality Siphon if they went that way. Gore Spikes is the only real Damage node for Bloodmage, it should be incredibly strong. Switching Crimson Power means you could still stack life for Gore Spike, or turning Grasping Wounds into the second damage node meaning you could get the benefit of Crimson Power's life stacking, for the trade off of Gore Spike's crit damage multiplier for a crit chance or flat spell damage increase. If Bloodmage was like this, I'd be playing her immediately. Every node could have such a big, enjoyable impact to the class and actually feel like the Ascendency evolves as you get further along.

[@Oathiel]

Sir, how do I send you to GGG Headquarter?

[@BlahBlahFreeman]

@@Oathiel I appreciate it. 🙏 I hope GGG does something similar to my ideas. Bloodmage needs a lot of love to make her feel fun to play.

[@SephonDK]

I took Open Sores, it's really good. :l

[@BlahBlahFreeman]

@@SephonDK And you should. You should experiment. See how you like it. But then try taking literally any other node and compare the experience and I doubt that you'll find Open Sores to be a valuable option by comparison. It's not that double curses is bad. On paper it's strong. It's just that in practice it's less valuable than literally every other option, either immediately or ultimately.

[@LightMidnight-y2j]

The course part shouldn't even be on this ascendancy. It should have been 2 crit nodes, 2 bleed nodes, 2 defensive nodes and maybe 2 minion nodes. Curses have absolutely nothing to do with Bloodmage.

[@nick94claus]

Can't wait to see your warrior play through!

[@__-dj3sq]

At Level 50 with this ascendancy :( I wish I never played this game

[@grendelicious]

LVL 44 feel the same way

[@wuddih]

Lvl 76 and they took away "cast on ... ", so now its unplayable.

[@zackeryh250]

It’s a beta and it’s been out for less than 2 weeks. Y’all need to calm down. The purpose of the beta is to break things and fix them

[@sven-o]

Level 50 is 2 days of playing, chill

[@steel5897]

The game is so early GGG doesn't even know what a well tuned baseline for power is yet, some builds will fall way short and others will be so broken they need immediate fixes. It's expected of early access of a game this complex. I agree with the people saying they should give timed free respecs when they do big balance patches, but the patches themselves including nerfs are a necessity, they need to develop the game as fast as they can to make it amazing as fast as they can too, they can't not do stuff just because it might hurt player feelings in the short term. The game itself must come first. Giving detailed and useful feedback is awesome but the "I'm gonna uninstall screw this game" dooming is incredibly regarded.

[@BlackVincentChaos]

I also started with the blood mage. I'm not even through the 6 acts yet. When I first got the first two ascendancy nodes it actually didn't feel too bad while progressing through the areas, but as I had no crit yet I had severe problems with sustaining life on bosses. And the more I progress through the story, I feel more and more gimped. I've been going for the bone skills, cause I wanted to match that blood mage feeling, but there are literally no interactions between them and bone storm is the only one that really is usable for single target but you channel forever and pay life while channeling. At this point I really gotta agree with you. Blood Mage just feels incomplete and I kinda regret it now :(

[@geist5213]

There's so much to talk about on this ascendancy man. Ascending just to get something that makes your character harder to play in general really blows, and the overcapped life (and I wish there was a visual indication for how much you're overcapped) didn't actually make me feel tankier until I started properly stacking ES as an additional buffer to the overcapped life buffer. I don't think merging Sanguimancy and Vitality Siphon is too much to ask, since ascending *should* be some sort of gain, and like you said, now you're just breaking even, as long as you're actually hitting stuff. It'd free up two points for you to at least be able to pick up Gore Spike or Grasping Wounds if you happen to go deep in the other half of the tree. AND you're less pressured to restrict yourself to high base crit chance spells now that leech can sustain you if you're not critting enough to lean on globules. Also, it'd be nice if globules spawned on crit landed some distance away from the target, because some bosses are literally too large, or exist in a chasm where you can't pick them up anyway, which compounds the bossing issue without Vitality Siphon. With all of this we haven't even touched on the way Open Sores and Blood Barbs just such dead nodes considering the other offerings on an already point-starved ascendancy. I think Blood Mage is made to be a late-game spell crit powerhouse but it's just so rough early. I'm now trucking along in cruel acts with Bonestorm to chunk bosses/rares and Detonate Dead for anything else but I'm pretty sure I'd be more effective had I picked Infernalist playing virtually any spell archetype I wanted instead of being shoehorned into crit or just using the ascendancy for still-caster-tier defensives. Maybe I'm downplaying Blood Barbs too much?

[@SephonDK]

Open Sores is really good for melee blood mages, where the left part of the tree isn't useful. Bosses can be slowed in PoE2. Permanent temporal chains is insane on bosses, plus whatever the extra curse you take if you do the passive notable. Having to recast and hit with curses cuts into your time dps'ing and dodging. The current ascendancy setup is nowhere near as pidgeon holed on a design level as Pohx indicates here. Now, the numbers may be off, that's true. What Blood Mage requires is life and crit chance. But remove the necessity to go spells, and the ascendancy opens up. It's probably fine to make the first node 50/50, or whatever the numbers best work as, but I think it's important to keep the ascendancies relatively open.

[@strikeplays2957]

dude, you are speaking out ouf my soul

[@AntonNaumovich]

bloodmage is playable with bone spells/crit with generating power charges using Pin+Resonance. However, blood cost of spells are way too high

[@kekitech]

Playing bloodmage aswell, I started a bit late and I don't really really wanna broadcast the tech I came up with, but you might wanna have a look at not using blood magic and instead stacking mana cost conversion on jewels and going mom. That's been working pretty well for me. I play it with Giant's blood and use the midnight braid belt for 50% recoup as mana and the alkem eira shield for "damage blocked is recouped as mana", my main damage so far is corrupting cry on seismic, triggering the stun proc with shatter and then hammer of the gods for a fat bleed and ignite proc.

[@martins2246]

to say "it is playable" is the half full version of "this is bad arpg gameplay"

[@mvpmvp2980]

i dont understand why theres almost 0 life in the passive tree. i saw bloodmage tree and thought going hard on life/crit stacking would be cool but then you look at the tree and theres only like +6% life on the whole tree (+another 6% from ascendancy)

[@predulle]

F cold crit bloodmage

[@LightMidnight-y2j]

The Vitality Siphon node should be a part of the first node. Its not up to debate. You spend life and you restore by doing damage. This is the baseline of ANY iteration of blood mage in any game.

[@Malbott]

Preach Phox, preaaach!

[@specialmag7]

Omg ! I just realized what you are saying about blood magic. I was planning to use it. Good thing I haven't ascend yet. I think I'll go Infernalist unless they fixed the blood mage before.

[@Beskar44]

I agree with everything you said ! I am playing bloodmage as well, I am focusing on phys spell damage, crit, and spell casting speed. I am still in the campaign but it feel so slow to clear mob packs without proper elemental damage and aoe spells. Bonestorm feels good against bosses but in my opinion it take way too much time to cast for the damage output. I will go for frost spell next with eye of winter for crit exposure and experiment with cast on crit. With this spell combo I don't need the 15% base crit chance so I will focus on right path of the ascendency.

[@RufioGamerPlays]

They should give us a respec option, especially for players who only have time to focus on one class. The game is still in early access, so this feature should definitely be available. But hey, discounts on shop items are apparently more important during early access. Great video, man!👍👌

[@PROPHYZ]

Listen to this dude and we will have an insane good game in no time. Awesome feedback, that's what it's all about.

[@KarshinHoy]

66 Blood Mage here. And just started maps. Sanguimancy needs another bonus like, STR, INT, DEX provide another +1-2HP, to help scale health and blood orbs. They need to grant Blood Magic for free without the double penalty. And Vitality Siphon should overheal the same with blood orbs. Curses are too expensive to cast, with too short a duration that blasphemy feels like a requirement, and they should redo the curse ascendancy node into something different like granting a blood blasphemy that reserves 5% life for a free curse aura. There isn't enough physical spells (let alone physical spells that bleed) to combo with blood mage and there needs to be a spell that generates corpses for corpse explosions and corpse consumption.

[@Tiagocf2]

There's a spell that let you use your minions as corpses, have you tried it?

[@tylerulfmann4586]

@@Tiagocf2 >60 spirit reserved This is meme tier corpse utility on top of making your summons slower and removing a decent majority of your summons I’m genuinely baffled by sacrifice design in the earlier path of exile you use desecrate and could create effectively feed back loops to infinitely circle back to make more corpses In comparison it just makes all other options have these weird series of down sides that feel like you can’t mitigate what is a core part of your build

[@Mugi-v7w]

First acendancy point change to bloodmagic and have life remnants vacuum to you and for 4 points change the spell leech to 50% chance to siphon a life remnant on hit

[@joshk6929]

This class needs a prioritized rework in the next huge patch, ABOVE ANYTHING ELSE.

[@ChakoExile]

Gore Spike does work. I tested it and it seems that the extra damage it generates is dealt as a separate tick, hence why it does not show up in the tooltip. That probably means it gimps your ailments, kind of hard to test that one out. Not really sure why they went this route, it was either easier to code or they assumed people would find some way to abuse it if it was just a single dmg instance. The way i fixed most of the issues you mentioned is by going for sunder totems and like 6k base life (with 12k overflow "potential") The build is gimmicky, as it has 0 resistances. Which i know, sounds like a meme. But, it's fun and it works, running juiced T15 ++ pretty easy and it negates most of the downsides of the ascendancy.

[@MrAridious]

I agree with your points. I played as a Blood Mage melee using Quarterstaffs. Got hard locked in Act 3 and had to roll a different character to get a weapon upgrade and skill gems to change things around. The biggest issue is basically taking the Blood Magic keystone at around level 20 without any viable means of sustain. I like your idea of a 50/50 split but I think the biggest buff to the class would be if the bottom of the heart was connected so you could take 5, 6, & 8 for example.

[@SephonDK]

First other guy in these comments I saw talking about melee. Hi! The issue with most of the feedback in the comments is that they narrow the ascendancy down to spells, which I think is an unfortunate way of going about it. Pohx skipping permacurses is unfortunate here. I've found it surprisingly useful, and it's not good that an ascendancy designed to be open is talked about through the lens of one iteration of it.

[@kehjjN]

the 50%/50% solution would be so good, and it would also feel like a buff not a nerf as 100%/100% cost on life remnants

[@garethdunne3443]

You deserve a medal for playing 87 levels, righteous fire now please GGG.

[@GrindinRyan]

Great points, definitely some design issues with the class. Like it wants to support a bleed elemental caster, but like you said you have to go crit to sustain against single targets. I think the bleed node needs to also include "bleeds leech life" so you continually recover while draining out the opponent, fits thematically as well

[@Kethryweryn]

Finished the campaing and early mapping with blood mage. This is a very good video that explains all the issues very well. I did the exact same tries you did for builds. I'm wondering if something with attacks could be built instead of spells, but I'll just reroll stormweaver archmage instead of paying yet another respec.

[@diamondsword7972]

I’ll be honest, blood mage was the ascendancy I thought looked the coolest before the early access went live. I really wanted to play a class revolving around spell crit and leech because it seemed cool. Upon playing the actual game for about 3 hours, reading the tree and seeing the actual state of leech, I could tell the class would never work and was very disappointed, but I’m so glad I went into something else and didn’t try to push through and make it work

[@TheMiojox]

Blood mage: instead of having bleed spells, you just cut yourself and bleed all over the battlefield.

[@Ippotsuko]

the recent patch really did help bloodmages survivability with the leech fixes, i no longer have to use hp pots as if they are mana pots in boss fights just because of the 2 leech nodes in the siphon branch. one bone storm can heal for like 1/3rd of my life which is way more than the bone storm costs. combine this with later on getting the hp lost over 4 seconds instead of instant can let you be actually quite tanky with good sustain since you'll no longer die to something that would hit you for 5k damage. as a bone storm build i also don't care about sunder the flesh being so far down since bonestorm already has 15% base crit.

[@Beskar44]

Hi, I'm also working on a bonestorm build, but I'm having trouble with the small mob packs, it's too slow and tedious to kill them. I feel find against bosses though. How do you get around this problem? And I'm curious about your support gems for BoneStorm too if you don't mind?

[@Ippotsuko]

@@Beskar44 i'm also not feeling too great against packs of mobs, using profaned rune to generate power charges and bone cage with echo has helped make it feel a bit better but if you're already using both of those then you're in the same spot i am. i do keep the profaned rune at a lower level for lower hp costs, but power siphon could fill the same role i just haven't gotten a good enough phys damage siphon wand.

[@Beskar44]

@@Ippotsuko ok I have a similar setup then with a siphon wand in my off hand

[@Ippotsuko]

@@Beskar44 found something that did help a bit more with wave clear, slotting in detonate dead and throwing echo + mag effect on it (also added ambush to it).

[@Beskar44]

@@Ippotsuko OK I will try that but I don't think it will scale well with my curent build

[@zalaquin]

I’m doing a fire mace build with blood magic. I don’t know if I’ll be able to survive but that’s the plan

[@StormOverKrynn]

thanks for this Pohx

[@leonhewitt4744]

Yeah I hear you on this. I rolled B Mage because the theme looked awesome. I agree the class feels unfinished and needs addressing for sure. I’ve rolled minions for my build and taken the right side of the ascendancy tree, so all the tanks stuff. I get to pick up the blood orbs without having to spend my life to get them.

[@xMaidinChina]

My biggest concern is when I hit cruel or maps. I don’t feel as gimped and I’m enjoying blood mage but I’m considering going into another class maybe monk or ranger given how I don’t see myself passing cruel with this class 😅 bosses take forever and I rely on weaving in and out while my minions do the bulk of my dmg. I should have picked the easy choice for internalize instead but it is what it is. I’ll just wait for bm to get reworked or buffed before I touch it again. (Hopefully sooner rather than later)

[@dxshindeo]

Well explained, thanks

[@815TypeSirius]

Works great on mace shield str stacking. Not that I ever get much overfilled life. But the convert hits to dot is stupid strong for survival.

[@SephonDK]

Thanks. People really need to look at options other than spells for this ascendancy.

[@NemisCassander]

@@SephonDK That's certainly an option, but it seems odd to tell an Ascendancy called a 'Blood MAGE' to pick up a big hammer to hit things with.

[@815TypeSirius]

@NemisCassander its supet intended for spells. several nodes are spells only... but its poe so that doesnt matter. i am in cruel 1, slow but the point is the last time i felt weak was act 1 boss. i do need dmg nodes though. thankfully i just got 2h in 1h and mace tree js right there then off to every leech and bleed node.

[@CoffeeTheFreshmaker]

First node needs to allow overflow from any healing, not just remnants and they need to merge the leech and remnant node. Also need to convert half base mana cost instead of add it as extra like you suggest.

[@albertblack7421]

thx for video pohx. nice job.

[@lostpoe-vw3ho]

They can just make firs node give you two ascendancy points and it would fix many issues. And in late game if you somehow scale life sustain outside of leach node, you can go both left and right side of the tree or at least do first crit node and es -> life node at all times.

[@KosmatyWilczek]

As someone who played blood mage from the start and just started mapping. Crit nodes DO NOT WORK, which completely destroys my idea for a build. I feel extremely punished for picking blood mage. I love the concept but by picking sorceress I would gain multiple advantages without almost any big disadvantages. Terrible class currently. I would love some changes. Quitting poe2 for now unfortunately, too exhausted trying to fit into a build which may change next day.

[@mattk38918]

Just finished my first ascendancy yesterday to go blood mage and immediately got weaker in the exact ways you described. It definitely needs a lot of work, but I’m still excited to experiment with it in EA to see what can be done with it. Been experimenting with DOT based builds to reduce the life cost, but I’m new to the POE franchise, so who knows if that will amount to anything or not 🤷‍♂️

[@jontay4199]

Yeah, either 50-50, or some kind of boost to your damage for eating at your health for it- which is very on theme for what blood magic should do

[@DreadPyke]

3:47 Maybe I am mistaken, but if you grab Blood Magic on the tree as a Blood Mage, you do not pay double life per cast. The way I believe it works is that your Blood Magic node changes your Basic Mana costs to Life Costs. Meaning your skills now have NO basic mana cost. Now, the ascendancy skill for Blood Mage Life Remnants no longer applies as your skills have no basic mana cost. (Life Remnants: Skills gain a basic life cost equal to basic mana cost). Thanks to Blood Magic node, since you have no mana costs, your skills do not obtain an additional life cost due to Life Remnants. You only need to pay the life cost associated to Blood Magic for the skills. This was my understanding though, maybe I wasm't following you in the video but I always was under the impression Blood Magic was too good not to grab for Blood Mage as a result. Maybe I am wrong? Bit new to POE so I may have misunderstood the tooltips.

[@PohxKappa]

You do pay double, It's been confirmed. You can also test with a lifetap support gem since it has the same wording as lifetap

[@Mignon15]

That 1st node should be a 0 point upgrade that you can then branch out. The tree actually looks beautiful. But yeah, they should have made an exception for Blood Mage that you default start with that. A forced ascendancy is dumb, especially when you hear "Blood Mage", it should be free by default.

[@mdjv]

Great video ! I felt the same about the shadow monk, i feel like it miss something or i didnt get the class, i try it and immediatly reroll to make another monk xD

[@calebhuizenga5123]

Good feedback. Blood mage definitely seems like a class that still needs some work

[@cooper-black]

Kinda wild to me that there's a blood mage class in the game that's even depicted using some kind of blood magic, but there aren't any actual blood magic spells at all.

[@joseluisdossantoscruz1102]

What buggs me is that I was hopping some kind of red waves, orbs, blood tsunami, built on life regen/steal. But blood mage is just an elemental mage with a cool name. :(

[@sagi3933]

Bloodmage changes to make her better without losing the identity of the ascendancy: - Make Sanguimancy better ("Skills cost life instead of 50% of mana cost") and an optional point to specc, not mandatory! - Swap positions between Crimson Power and Grasping Wounds to give an easier in on life-stacking - Swap positions between Gore Spike and Sunder the Flesh to enable to opportunity to go crit without fully investing into lifestacking (for example, by avoiding to choose Sanguimancy which is the best way to overshoot the crit bonus by overshooting life) - Give Blood Barbs a generic 30-50% chance to bleed on hit (making it easier to build around without relying as much on special gear) Those changes might overshoot a little all combined, but I think it would help the identity and playability a lot without making Bloodmage too strong.

[@ParallelPlayPals]

Hey mate hope you stick at bloodmage cause i appreciate the content. It defo sucks tho mate that sangumancy node is awful. Its my only ascendancy points rn too. Bloodmage is really cool i was having a lot of fun but i really started dying alot as i leveled up and my spells starting costing more so i looked at other ascendancys and then just wished i had picked a different class cause every other ascendancy gives you a benefit it seems, instead we just got a playstyle. So i understand the wish to reroll.

[@ryanwidmer5311]

My theory is they want you to be going hybrid minion + phys spells too and probably what I try and respec to before ditching it for a new character.

[@nozomashii821]

Wth dude, Pohx?? I used to watch your videos on archeage daggerspell stuff when i was like 13 lmao. blast from the pass

[@Brotdem]

I mean im suuuper casual, so I dont know if I can talk on this at all, but like you I just read the ability to ascent to something called "bloodmage" and chose it on that "fantasy", without reading up or spoiler myself on the available power. But now im very confused: what is the "fantasy" that were being sold here? There is no "exsanguinate" like in PO1 yet, so I dont even get to fight with my blood, I just can empower my normal skills with blood, but I dont even do that, I just have to pay more with no upsides lol :D I would be very curious to know what you guys expected the bloodmage identity to be. You suggested 50/50 costs, but would just 100% lifecost alone not be balanced and interesting? Like "get an additional lifetap on every skill for free"? that doesnt seem op does it? it makes unique spellcombos possible, that other ascendancys might not be able to throw together since they can only use ONE singular lifetap right? And one more thing, did anyone else expect the flying-dracula-batperson-demon transformation to be located in the bloodmage ascendancy instead of the infernalist? it looks JUST like a vampire no? I am so confused why thats associated with fire instead of the blood-drain fantasy :D i thought we get that one and the fire-people get a hellhound transformation for all i care :D since transformations are a thing here, why not?

[@BlurredVision18]

Bone Spells and Offerings, like in the image of the ascendancy, she is a support damage dealer for minions.

[@embDBA]

I agree with you 100%. Playing blood mage is painful right now (no pun intended) it just feels like I'm trying to make something work that clearly doesn't want to work.