When I first started playing, Lich seemed like a really cool class pathway - I mean, who doesn’t like blood magic and spreading corruption and contagion on your enemies?
When I saw the passive tree I was excited to get started - so much INT stacking, sacrificing HP for permanent Low-Life status, and compensating the lower life with higher ward… and then the issues began…
WHY OH GOD WHY does Death Seal remove all ward? WHY OH GOD WHY does Reaper Form degrade ONLY your current HP and not your current ward?
The class feels so at odds with itself it is absurd. It basically is trying to shoehorn you into Life Stacking and using Death Seal with Health Cap node for any Low-Life stuff… It’s frustrating to see Ward on passive and skill nodes and see that they amount to absolutely nothing on the Lich Build because you’ll be focused on more HP for reaper form and death seal.
Which leads me into my other issue: Damage over time for acolyte sucks. It just plain sucks, and critical chance and critical multiplier is always the superior option every time. It’s annoying to see drop hundreds of mana worth of DoTs onto an enemy, only to see the damage be the fraction of a critical hit from a marrow shard or hungering soul - and that’s comparing within class. Damage over time for poison and other ailments from other classes just completely mog acolyte damage over time because it stacks so much faster, I mean what is the Lich class even good for then if it is worse at direct damage compared to mages and worse at damage over time compared to druids or rogues?
The class needs a serious overhaul and revisit towards what direction it needs to go. My suggestion is making Death Seal and Reaper form at least compatible with a Ward only build via nodes or some other tweak, and by addressing how DoT calculations work for things like Spirit Plague, Drain Life, and Wandering Souls because quite frankly they suck right now.
PS. Spirit Plague is bugged and doesn’t allow allocation towards certain nodes.
(Sorry for the negative tone, I really want to like this game and class, but it feels so pathetically weak compared to other classes… for reference my Lich is in Empowered Monoliths, and I have a Necromancer that is at 600 Corruption, which my Lich would NEVER even come close to being able to do, so it is not a lack of gear or gearing options!)