I am looking for more of the practical side of using this gear.
- What builds is it good for / not good for?
- Other than stacking life, what else should you use for defense?
- What is the real advantage vs. staying max life?
Thanks.
I’m no expert on low life builds, but I’ll try to answer as best I can. 
- What builds is good for / not good for? What is the real advantage vs staying max life?
A first criterion is intelligence scaling. Nearly all classes/masteries, and thus all builds, end up getting at least one attribute to at least 5/10, and that attribute has an innate effect. The innate effect of intelligence is ward retention, which is essential for LL (low life) builds. As a result, the Acolyte is an ideal candidate.
One large pro of going LL is the considerable ward generation acts as sustain. You don’t need leech, life regeneration, life on block, chance to find potions… I ended up enjoying transitioning from life to low life on a necromancer build, for instance, because playing around minions, I didn’t have any real way to regenerate my life consistently. On the other hand, if you’re playing a physical Rip Blood build, you’ll already have so much life sustain from the build itself that it would be sort of a waste.
One of the most important reasons to go LL, in my opinion, is that some passives / skills benefit, sometimes greatly, from the fact that you’re LL. For instance, the Lich has a lot of things that depend on you being low life, that reduce your life regen, that drain your life over time… If you’re playing LL, you can mindlessly grab all those nodes and reap their valuable benefits. Another example is Marrow Shards, an Acolyte skill which costs life to use, instead of mana. Since its cost is a percentage of your current life, you can spam it as quickly as you want, and grab all the “increased life cost” nodes in Marrow Shards’ tree, without ever worrying about it.
- Other than stacking life, what else should you use for defense?
All the ward retention you can. All of it. Since intelligence gives ward retention, and scales your damage if you followed what I said before, getting lots of it is crucial. In the Acolyte/Lich trees, on every piece of gear you can. Catalysts (like the Bloodrust Catalyst at level 70-ish) are off-hands that give lots of intelligence, as well as ward per second, so they’re amazing for that.
Some very generic defensive layers are also always useful, like getting some resistances. Getting around 65-70% in all resistances (except poison, which seems a bit less important right now) should be doable on pretty much all builds, and is very beneficial. Critical strike avoidance is also easy to underestimate in high level echoes.
That’s all I can think of right now. I’ll edit if I think of something else
2 Likes
While Exanguinous, Last Step Of The Living and Shroud Of Obscrurity are Low Life Ward Builds, that’s not the only way to play low life.
Lich can also play Low Life with the use of Death Seal (which denys you ward).
There is no real “build” utilitzing those playstyles, you can literally play anything playing lowlife, as long as you use those uniques or skills that allow you that playstyle (Like the above mentioned Death Seal)
If you playing Low Life via those uniques, you pretty much want alot of Int and/or Ward Retention, to reduce the ward decay and allow yourself to generate more ward.
Other than that you can pretty much get 1 or 2 additional defenses in. But it really depends on the build. Wards buidls generally don’t need super crazy defenses, if yo uward generation is solid.
If you don’t utilizte those uniques and play a non ward Low Life build you definitely want endurance to cover your entire “low life pool” and get 60% endurance.
I wouldn’t say there are any advantages, it’s just a very particular playstyle.
Most of the conditional stuff that gives you bonuses while on low life have very high numericaly values, since it’s something you need to invest heavily in to make it work.
Random question:
Does Soul Barrier proc when constantly at low life?
(Lich passive: “When you drop below half health, you are granted ward. (12 sec cooldown)”)
Yes, all of those conditional stuff, does proc if it comes off cooldown while you are already below that threshold.
So if you’re permanently low life due to Exsanguinous/etc, the node will continuously proc every 12s, despite that not being what the wording says?
If your health takes damage yes it does.
So, the logic is like this:
- Did you just take damage? (Yes)
- Is your current life “below half”? (Yes)
- Then, Proc.
Just out of curiosity, can some of y’all take a look at this build to see if I designed it right based on your answers?
Low Life Lich - Soul Feast: Lich, Level 100 (LE Beta 0.8.1e) - Last Epoch Build Planner
(note: I left off resists, just want to get basics before I do that)
Thanks!
In a nut shell, any build that takes advantage of intelligence and ward retention. Acolyte and Mage maximize the benefit of ward generation. At end game you can have 5-7k ward pretty easily with those two items.
You did not select the “Dance with Death” Lich passive. Not interesting for your build?
And how do you plan to sustain the health drain?
Added Dance With Death.
Not sure about health drain. I just thought, mathematically, it would get to a certain point where a % of my health would be 1 or less and it would just stop?
Some tips about ward builds as well:
- Max the amount of int you can have picking passives that give it to you. Int scales damage with your int skills and provides ward generation.
- Vitality/health scale really nicely with these two uniques. A simple 10 HP can convert to something like 35 ward, meaning you should pick up vitality/HP on items where it makes sense and wherever passives have it.
- Ward regeneration scales with your ward pool size. The larger the ward pool the faster it regenerates as you take damage. For example, if you have 6k ward and you get hit for 5k damage to 1k ward, your ward regeneration for the first few seconds will be much higher compared to if you had a 3k max pool, get hit for 2k down to 1k.
Overall, ward builds enable great survivability.
Soul Barrier only triggers, when your Health is taking damage, for a pure Ward Build it’s probably no necessary to take, since it would only be a fery minor last resort proc.
All of the drain is current health per second, so you never die
I know, I was testing/trolling 
So, the “drain” on my health doesn’t proc Soul Barrier?
Correct.
I’ve updated the build accordingly. If anyone has more feedback, much appreciated! 
Lich Low Life Soul Feast: Lich, Level 100 (LE Beta 0.8.1e) - Last Epoch Build Planner
ethereal revenant (acolyte tree) is 2 passive points for a minion, with your build the condition proc’s all the time at low life.
I’m trying to avoid Minions, solely because I have other minion builds, but also because minions tend to agro stuff I don’t want to agro.
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