Life Steal stat not working as expected

Wicked Feedback
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1

Current build:

30 Percent Life Steal (gem with shield + plague ring)

Wind of Death has 5% health on damage dealt plus molten gem wiht 100 percent at low health. (I assume max health)

Testing:

Health: 72 / 360

Wind of death with gem: 10% health on damage dealt

10 percent life steal on shield + 20 percent from plague ring = 30 percent of damage returned as health

Example Damage Dealt: 727 (critical)

Expected Health Removed on Damage: 10 percent of 360 = 36 hp

Expected Heath Returned on Damage: 727 x .3 = 218.1

Expected Health gain: 218.1-36 = 182.1

Observed Health Return: 19

New Health after attack: 91

Over the course of play on average I take more damage than I heal… and average health pool of 45 / 360.

Please see videos for seeing this in action.

2

the lifesteal we see is internally being multiplied by 0.3 - it’s secretly nerfed.

it’s in patch notes (the breach patch) but isn’t reflected in the UI yet. you can look it up

so your 30% lifesteal is actually 0.3 * 0.3 = 0.09 = 9%

so your ~727 attack should cost 36hp and heal for ~65. you saw hp go from 72 to 91 which is a ~55 heal.

the tiny difference here i think is down to how different sources/types of lifesteal work together. but it’s close enough for that to explain your findings !

i was also confused using the same sword, same build. in the end after testing i found that hitting a plagued target gives you 8% effective life steal which is pretty good compared to the 12% gem which is actually 4% after the secret nerf.

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3

Thank you for that thorough response! That definitely changes things on my end. Shame the UI element doesn’t reflect that. Wow… such a hard nerf.

4

I think your point is still valid, because this means that the tooltip is displaying incorrect information. Us knowing what it does internally does not change that fact, so I can’t imagine why this was considered a solution.

5

It’s a hard nerf because of the potential synergy with affixes.

You can get 30%+ increased healing from affixes alone, then you can get 50-75% regainable health from gems.

Then lifesteal itself scales with the current damage creep. If I can cast a rune that hits for 2-4k damage, and do regular attacks that crit between 300-600, that’s a self-healing that exponentially scales.

So they nerfed the base lifesteal from the gem to account for the gear affixes.

On a plate 70% DR built I can pretty much draintank most of Echo Knight outside maybe his 4-slash spin into overhead smash. I mean facetank him while trading with my 2H or 1H attack spam.

Plate/mesh with lifesteal is really OP.

Cloth and leather far less so since cloth will see you 2-3 shot and leather probably dies in 3-4 hits from echo knight. It’s a huge difference in damage intake, and life steal works best when your damage intake is not spiky.

6

all extremely valid. if 30% lifesteal was actually 30% you would have unlimited sustain way too early. you still do.

but the real issue here is UI clarity. things like that should say “gives minor lifesteal” and “gives moderate lifesteal” and “… major lifesteal”

then we stop gaslighting ourselves and accept that ok this is little, this is more, this is more again

OR A LIST OF ALL ACTUAL REAL DAMAGE MATHS IN THE REPO PLZ : D

that would be truly revolutionary for an arpg

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