belly of the beast is one of my favorite armors. Tied Best in slot for rangers/duelists. with The perfect form, and kaoms for bow builds.
2.6 hyrri's ire is pretty amazing as well. Although no life still. specific builds.
ES is superior people are definitely a bit biased. That statement seems to revolve entirely around Vessal of Vinktar. And to a lesser extent Atziri's promise.
Atziri's does at least function as an interesting design element. almost a KEY to the endgame. it has a specific drop location and a very high drop rate, or 100%?. so, it practically acts as a quest item, to give leech needed for mapping. Vessal is just broken op and trivializes most of the content, removing most of any actual gear, skill or itemization choices.
I transitioned my Occultist witch to CI last night. Its going WAY better then the EK CI pathfinder.
I didn't fully understand exactly how each of the ES mechanics work. Still don't a few.
First, the balance of life leech, vs regen+flasks.
Recovery is built around a hp/sec balance.
Leech is naturally capped at 20% of max health. And then, at a RATE of 2% of max health/sec. So, if you have 5000 life, all sources of leech combined can only heal 1000 hp/s, and will be capped at 100hp/second by default. Compare that to your dps.. 60,000? 200,000?
My frostblades life pathfinder. average hit 31k, 295k dps. 1.6% of AD leeched as life. 496 life per hit. 10 attacks per second. so, that 500hp is capped at 100hp/s, and thus will take 5s to heal. and that rate lands right at 1000hp/s.
no matter how much leech you have, it thus takes 5s to leech from 1hp to full. Now, there are specific passives, etc which will increase those rates. vitality void. +5% of max life per second to maximum life leech rate. 20% increased life leech per second.
This is then intended to be balanced with life regen and flasks.
Life regen is generally pretty low. 1-5% is normal, in a life build. My frostblades life. 3.6% life regen. 180hp/s.
Enduring cry. hugely underrated for its regen. 48-394 hp/s.
Stone golem 33-105 life regen. (rare to use)
Vitality aura. .7-1.65% life/s/ kek. no one uses.
so, end cry is a staple. My life pathfinder is running around with 570 hp/s in regen, naturally.
And then combined with leech for 670-1570hp/s regen.
The next step is then flasks. life recovery from a flask.
Eternal flask. 2080 life over 4s. 520hp/s. unmodified. (flask effect, flask recovery, instant flasks, etc all speed this up, make stronger.)
so then 1190-2090hp/s combined regen from regen/leech/flask. that is how life is balanced with armor/evasion. your max life is balanced with damage reduction/avoidance, and the ability to recover that life back up before taking another fatal blow.
(instant life flask. My life pathfinder cheats a bit. instant life is a prefix, surgeons charge on crit is a prefix. only a pathfinder can refill an instant life flask in combat. my life flask actually heals 1572 instantly, then 917 over 2s. effectively replacing vaal pact, as I will talk about next.)
Vaal pact, and why its loved.
Vaal pact makes life leech instant. and removes life regen. it is the keystone for understanding that balance. it very clearly presents it. you get instant leech, and life regen is removed, so there is no balance of hp/s regen. and there is only live/die.
Because vaal pact is instant it removes the leech cap entirely. instead of my 496 life per hit being leeched over 5s. it would be 496life immediately. And, the 10hits/s would then be 4960 life in one second, not over 5.
Then when taken with ES, the life regen aspect is nearly pointless. ES doesn't usually have life regen in the first place. so there is no penalty at all. Its a win/win. you keep your ES recharge, and get the faster ES leech.
