After getting the game at the 1.0 launch and putting in ~75 hours tinkering with lich ive finally refined my build to a custom low life chaos bolt build. Im pushing 500 corruption smoothly and after getting the last few upgrades i have planned should be able to hit 700+ no problem.
Thats where my fun ends. There seems to be no source of scalable damage increases on lich. Compared to the runemaster who gets armor that lets you scale a MORE damage multiplier by stacking stats or access to TWO unique relics that let you scale damage as well. I can see the warlock can scale some MORE Dot damage a couple ways, but thats it. Ive seen videos of runemasters doing 100000+ crits rapidly but there is no way to achieve anything close to that on lich.
Not to mention poor âadded damage effectivenessâ on all acolyte skills. Transplant for example on a 5 second cooldown receives 250% added damage effectiveness. Using the more multipliers against bleeding and cursed can produce some nice numbers. But this doesnt compare to divebomb on a 5 second cooldown which gets a 750% effectiveness multiplier or meteor at 900%
As i said i have a few more upgrades to go, such as 1 more LP on this item, or properly slamming other items but after that theres nothing i can scale which is disappointing and i feel im probably going to get bored when i have no more progress to make because there is no options.
Lastly lich is obviously designed around low life builds, from the mastery buff to 120% increased damage on low life passive to the life drain passives and idol stats such as âincreased x at low healthâ. Yet the class super ability ends when you run out of health. Making the only way to use the unique ability of the class with low life to run death seal, which has to be specifically built around and then which seriously bricks using ward as defence, which the lich has a huge amount of access to. Frankly i dont see how you can use death seal above ~3-400 corruption, even maxing armor and endurance when ive been hit for over 8000 damage by things. Yes, you can dodge a lot of heavy hitting things but why would i want to use this playstyle when i can use ward, and not brick my dungeon or echo or gaze stacks from 1 single mistake. Im about to hit 500 corruption smoothly, and i dont use a single lich specific ability. Aura of decay synergises with a lot of acolyte abilities, but seems plopped onto lich for no reason and belongs more on warlock. The whole âreaperâ aesthetic you would think lich would get at least 1 melee ability besides reap when transformed, but it doesnt. I feel like the class could synergize better.
Transplant is primarily a movement skill with some damage tacked on as against Divebomb & Meteor which are both DPS skills. You should be comparing it to Shift (3.5s CD, 100% added damage effectiveness), Lunge (4s CD, 100%), Teleport (5s, 100%) or Fury Leap (6s, 250%). Compared to those, Transplant is quite goodâŚ
Lich gets a phenomenal amount of leech, 1% base line, 4% from Survival of the Cruel, 5% (on hit) from Ageless Ascetic & Soul Maw plus 25% increased leech (for a total effective leech of 18.75% if you take everything. Plus Aura of Decayâs healing nodes if you donât want to go leech.
Apart from Harvest?
@Heavyâs your man for Lich, especially melee LichâŚ
The Lich is quite a lot older than the Runemaster, it doesnât have any threshold nodes & quite a few skills (& most of the passives) could do with a good hard rework IMO.
I said the issue with the super ending when running out of HP is the fact the mastery is designed around low life.
Transplant is a skill like any other. Being a traversal skill doesnt mean its not meant to deal damage, and most of its skill nodes are centered around damaging effects. Even so, comparing it to divebomb and meteor is still fair, because no lich skill gets anything above 250% damage effectiveness except i believe some of the DOT scalings on warlock skills when other classes like rogue have 700+ scalings and are deleting bosses in 2 seconds.
And lastly yes, you would think that a mastery about being a grim reaper dual wielding scythes would have access to a new melee ability besides the default class melee ability of harvest. Yes i know âreapâ is a melee ability but is not really a skill, just a cheap dash attack. Youre a grim reaper dual wielding scythes and you get a poison aura and a channeled spell. Those abilities dont match the theme.
It does though, it means that the main purpose of the skill is movement not damage & the skill & skill tree is built around that. If it were intended as a primarily dps skill then it would have a higher added damage effectiveness stat & more % more damage nodes. But it doesnât because it isnât. What damage it does do is merely a side effect.
1 of the Rogue skills has an added damage effectiveness that high, almost all of them are in the 100-200% range & several are less than 100%. The majority of Acolyteâs spells have a much higher base damage, plus Ghostflame has 700%, just like Divebomb.
Iâm not saying that the non-Warlock skills couldnât do with a rework, most of them are quite old.
It is a bit odd that one of the Acolyteâs masteries looks like it should be melee but itâs really not.
Ghostflame is not a hit, and is considered a channeled damage over time effect and does not scale like a normal spell would. Its essentially channeled bleed damage and has 700% added damage effectiveness because things like flat spell damage or crit have no effect.
Ghostflame is a damaging spell with the dot tag. This means that it scales with flat and % spell damage modifiers but does not hit so canât apply the usual ailments that require hits (bleed, chill, slow, damned, etc) nor can it crit. However, there are some upsides to a skill not hitting, it isnât affected by enemy crit avoidance, blocking or dodge modifiers!
No, bleed is a specific physical ailment in LE. Ghostflame doesnât have the physical tag by default.
Yes and no. Crit chance has no effect & the only benefit that cast speed has is the wind up time for the skill to start damaging, sadly it does not affect the interval between damage instances. But it is affected by flat spell damage and % increased damage. This is easy to test for yourself.
I guess that depends on your definition of what a âreasonableâ added damage effectiveness is. The devs tweak that stat based on the cost & cooldown of the skill, so more expensive, higher cooldown & less aoe damage skills have higher added damage effectiveness. Rip Blood is a free/cheap spammable spell so it has 100%, Wandering Spirits has 180% per second because it has a cooldown but it also covers an area, Ghostflame has 700% likely because itâs channelled & you canât regen mana while channelling.
Not that it should be the ultimate measure of anything, but Lich dominated the normal solo ladder in 0.9.2 before bugged warlocks and falconers came along, and itâs not as a melee mastery, but rather as VZombie/Sacrifice/AoD. It does suggest that the mastery has potential.
You are the one who seems to be confused how the skill works.
I know it doesnt do bleed damage. I used bleed damage as an example.
When you attack using ghsotflame you âdealâ damage over time damage without applying a dot. You dont deal hits. Which means base damage for wands or gear does not apply which is why it has such a huge added damage modifier, because scaling base DOT damage is horrible in this game. You cant crit. And you cant apply on hit effects except those listed by the skill tree.
No, scaling ailment damage is difficult in LE since the likes of bleed, poison, etc have their own base damage that doesnât get flat damage added to it. Skills with the DoT tag absolutely do get the relevant flat damage added.
These are correct, the other statement is incorrect. It is easily testable in-game. Get one of the DoT skills (Spirit Plague, Ghostflame, etc) & see how much damage you do with them unspecialised with out a caster weapon compared to with a caster weapon (ideally a high level base).
Additionally, skills with the DoT tag donât suffer from the % damage variability that hit skills get.
If Ghostflame isnât scaling with flat spell damage from gear then thatâs a bug because it is supposed to.
You sure about that? Check Tunkâs site. If a skill is a hit (like Rip Blood, for example), it says âIs a hit: Yesâ. Even Hungering Souls which is an odd combination of a skill that hits but has the DoT tag has âIs a hit: Yesâ.
This is the difference between skills with the DoT tag and ailments (like bleed). Then, to further muddy the waters, you have ailments with the spell tag (Torment, as an example), those should gain flat spell damage from gear.
I would check Ghostflame scaling with flat spell damage but Iâm at work at the moment.
Mate, you hit the jackpot and one of the most knowledgable OG players is explaining you how the mechanics work. Stop being a dick and listen to everything he tells you.
