Why am I stuck at half life? A Lich quandry

[frankleefish]

I have rolled several Liches and played them into the 70s and 80s. A couple Necromancers too.

Never encountered this issue before:

As soon as I log in, just sitting around in town, my life drains to 50%. Almost exactly: 320/642 HP. I’ve taken off all my gear. I’ve unsummoned my golem. I have looked through all my nodes. Doesn’t make sense.

My skills: Transplant, Bone Curse, Blood Rip, Bone Golem.

I’ve taken 6/8 points in the Unclosing Wounds node, so current health drained per second is 6%. But with past Liches, that didn’t kick in while I was just sitting around in town. Assuming this node is the issue, I’ve added 7/8 Bed of Souls (Vitality and Regen), and 1/10 Volatile Blood (reduce health drain). These nodes haven’t made a difference.

Am I bugged? Or what am I missing?

[frankleefish]

Okay, it was definitely Unclosing Wounds. I just removed the points and I’m back to full health. Has the way that node works changed recently?

[Llama8]

Nope, it’s always been a constant drain of your current hp. The value your hp settles down to is dependent on how much hp regen or leech you have running. If you want to get your current hp as low as possible (for Exsanguinous/Last Steps of the Living missing hp → ward) then you need to remove as much hp regen/leech as possible.

[frankleefish]

Weird! I guess I always skipped that node. Thanks

[m0r14r7y]

I have a follow up question!

I’ve taken the Unclosing Wounds; I’ve also taken some points in the node that reduces the amount of health drained by X%.

Is this intended to be a ‘percent of percent’ or just a change to the percent?

I.e. which is right: Unclosing wounds cases 10% health drain, other talent reduces drain by 10%, ergo I’m still getting ~9% health drain,

• or -
  Unclosing wounds causes 10% health drain, other talent reduces drain by 10%, ergo 0% health drain.

[Llama8]

It’s multiplicative, so it’s a 9% drain rather than 10%.

[Heavy]

There are 3 permanent an 1 conditional/temporary passive node, that will drain a % of your current health.

Namely: Blood Pact (Acolyte Passive Tree; up to 5%), Unclosing Wound (Lich Passive Tree; up to 8%), Mind Over Body (Lich Passive Tree; up to 10%) and Elixir Of Death (Lich Passive Tree; up to 10%)

There are also 2 Passive Node that will reduce the Health Drain of all the above mentioned nodes: Crimson Gluttony (Acolyte Passive; up to 25%) and Voaltile Blood (Lich Passive Tree; up to 50%)

So if you have all the permanent Health Drain Nodes maxed you would have 23% of your current health drained/sec, 33% with the conditional/temporary Elixir Of Death.

The reduced Health Drain is additive and will lead too 75% reduced Health Drain.
This will lead to 5,75% of your current health drained/sec (8,25% with Elixir Of Death)

It is very important to understand, that this is current health drained/sec.
So the threshold at which your hp regen cancels out the drain is a fixed, flat HP number.

Also while talking about this, I think it’s important to mentioned, that the Health Decay from Reaper Form and the Current Health Lost from Shroud Of Obscurity, Exsanguinous and Last Steps Of The Living are their own thing and are not considered Health Drain.
And thus are not affected by Crimson Gluttony and Volatile Blood

[Neokortex]

Interesting in this context would be a necromancer armor which only has “% of Missing Health gained as Ward per second”, but NO “% of Current Health Lost per second” built in.

[Llama8]

That’s an interesting idea. My initial thought was that it would be strictly inferior to Exsanguinous/Shroud of Obscurity but you’d be able to use the class-specific prefixes on it (as well as % health/etc).