As someone who has been trying to make Soul Feast work, with and without the curse requirement, it’s painful how little damage it does. I was super-excited to see a big fat DPS number on the screen, but then I tried it on the dummy and empowered echoes and I was dumbfounded on how mediocre it was in practice. Even with it costing 90 Mana, I wasn’t getting nearly the utility as something like Rip Blood - which costs 0 Mana.
It’s a shame, because I really like the build, but it’s too weak to handle Empowered bosses right now, even with only 100 Corruption. Worst part of it is: I have not the slightest idea what to remake it to. Out of the combination of Hungering Souls, Drain Life, Soul Feast, Wandering Spirits, I have no clue which skill is actually worth trying to DPS with, and which is just not worth bothering.
I have tried on/off to get a Lich caster to work where i am happy with it for over 2 years and never got there, Lich also has mana issues you cant really solve without minions and awful mechanics. Closest was Lowlife Marrow Shards which ignored mana cost
There also Marrow Shards which isnt weak its just mechanically a bit shit, but you have infinite casts due to paying life costs, it still needs a rework though I would love to see a Marrow shard addition to like Maelstrom where you can gain stacks
Soul Feast needs a massive rework, no ideas without stealing D3 Witch Doctor who consumed spirits on also another skill like Soul Feast, it did insane damage but was clunky as to setup
Hungering Souls just needs a big damage buff for self casting it, the problem is the triggered cast from Death Seal is just better which limits the design space, ive never ever been able to deal respectable damage with this skill
Drain life is too weak on its own, the shackles mod that allows ground placement destroys your mana and just feels bad to play because then in the downtime you are doing nothing which means you need to cast more Dots frantically
I havent touched Wandering since way prior to the nerf and even then it was only good as a Poison vehicle with projectiles. Now that you can channel it what would be good if while channeling the spirits all auto focused into mobs charging into them doing constant contact damage
Rip Blood is mechanically decent but again far too weak as its trying to do 60% utility in its tree
Infernal Shade needs a rework as currently its more (only?) used as a utility for Abomination, because theres an attach to minion node plus also an infinite duration/scaling damage node also if EHG buffs the base damage too high you wont be able to attach it to other minions due to killing them too fast
Transplant is actually really good, does good damage and stacks bleed, gives defence. if only you could get the cooldown to .5 or less would be insane
The main issue with the Lich as well as all these skills can only be done at once, she has very little autocasts/procs except for minions and very low burst capability apart from Death Seal/Transplant, but other than that off the top of my head has no real ‘nuke’ skills on a high cooldown, the other cooldowns are all DoT based
Some of the skills above ive tried on a character with 600-800% increased damage, a relatively optimised skill tree/specialise tree and can barely kill mobs at 100 corruption
