I have a build based around always being at full focus, capitalizing on the enchantment power gems which apply at full focus. Right now, max focus reduction plagued enchantments do not lower the total focus, but instead lower how much of your total you can fill. In my case, instead of it lowering my total focus of 100 to 77 and allowing me to still fill my focus bar and get the benefit from the gems, instead I can never reach full focus and can only fill it to 77/100. I was trying to use the plagued enchantment to lower how much focus I need to be at full, but effectively disabled all my gems. This felt counter intuitive and frustrating, having wasted many fallen embers trying to specifically get max focus reduction, rerolling focus cost increase many times which would have been compatible with my gems anyway.
I imagine max health reduction and the full health gems will have the same issue. Also when playing coop, max health reduction is counter intuitive when trying to heal your teammates because it’s not clear why their health stops filling up, wasting your focus.
Just now realizing that reduced max health could be used to stay permanently in low health state. Gives me some build ideas.
i think this is intended for exactly that purpose, but im not sure.
This is pretty much the current meta. Mottled Black Pearls give 100% enchantment at low health (>50% hp reduction is the trigger) and is the effective version of what you were intending to build. This is the largest enchantment increase you can get on any piece. Just note, that 100% bonus will also apply to negatives, so if you’re running plagued those will need mitigated or careful thought.
I agree with most of your sentiments that it is somewhat unintuitive that it isn’t your actually max hp and how it displays differently. Having like a greyed out part would make it easier to tell.