Lifesteal: for or against?

Just opening a little debate to hear your thoughts on lifesteal.

I won’t lie I’ve never really liked this mechanic that tends to favor whoever can drain the most health from their opponent.
Situationally, on certain abilities, I guess it’s fine... but between the PTR feedback and what I’ve been seeing in-game, lifesteal seems overwhelmingly strong right now.

The main issue is that every class can benefit from it thanks to the auto-attack system, which makes balancing really difficult.
You can farm almost all mobs with ease, and PvP often boils down to who can regenerate the fastest.

Honestly, I’ve never liked this system because it creates super meta-driven situations.
And I can’t help but wonder wouldn’t the best solution be to just remove the stat entirely?

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Comments

Arya_Yeshe

Don't like lifesteal in anygame, it's attack and heal altogether, it is ok if it is very weak then it's ok and the cooldown should be rather long enough

Azherae

I love it in games that have actual group play and party dynamics and generally don't like it as much in games where everyone's really just soloing while happening to be in a group (if even that).

It's one of my favorite mechanics and the Throne and Liberty implementation of it (where it is available basically to only one specific 'Archetype' and has some 'weird' implementations) is perfect to me.

I think this depends on the game's design more than lifesteal itself. Bad games with bad balance usually have bad lifesteal mechanics. No surprise there.

Ludullu

I prefer it as a party buff, rather than a gear-based thing.

ShaggyRyn

It’s good as a skill/ buff but can get out of hand when on gear. If you go for the stat just like anything else “all in” on one thing should make you lack elsewhere. I like the idea of a high damage character with a lot of lifesteal to be tanky vs mitigation stats though.

Birqa

i like lifesteal.

i dont like the 25% chance to proc it. rng healing is not skillbased.
with the recent update the numbers u can get on lifesteal are just way too big. getting to alomst 100% is not good balance wise.
imo lifesteal should be coming as a tradeoff and only be useful enough for dps build characters.
so the suggestion wold be to make it 100% proc chance while keeping the value in check and give those items no other dmg benefits. that way you either do substantially more dmg or you get idk 5% lifesteal on one item. balance need to be watched carefully and some diminishing returns are advised.

thats my 2 cent on that topic

Apok

I like having options for character builds, before the update I used it with my tank cause it complimented mitigation builds when dealing with aoe farming in groups and smaller things like lv 16-22ish named mobs.

I feel like damage was nerfed and other stats like crit, leech, etc. were buffed so people will actually play with these builds and get some numbers to the dev team.

My only gripe with it is the 25% proc chance I don't see why something you would build around would be restricted like this. It's just too much RNG.

for Example as a tank I could make a life leech build, this would help with things like soloing and grinding gear/xp but wouldn't work in an actual raid scenario because you're not hitting multiple weaker targets instead there's one target hitting you like a truck making it better for that tank to optimize HP/Mitigation. but this all goes down the drain cause why build around a 25% proc chance you have no control over. at least with crit builds you work your crit damage and crit rate.

willsummon

Lifetaps and manataps are nice. It is just that such skills need be assigned to those classes where the motif fits, such as Blood/Death Knights, Necromancers, Dark Priests, Warlocks, Berserkers, Dark Rogues, etc...

SmileGurney

I like it, it should be an optional playstyle. Whatever it should be chance based with high lifesteal values, or 100% chance with low lifesteal values is debatable.

What should happen next is other options should be made good enough to compete and be talked about. Invest into armour, HP, evasion, block/parry to adopt a new playstyle on the top of your class abilities. Some of those could be more active playstyles. For example to reap all benefits of higher evasion / parry etc, you should be expected to actively dodge / parry an attack every 10 seconds or so etc.

Raptin

In a game balanced around group play with defined roles for healing and buffing, I don't think Lifesteal fits in at all. Healing won't be special, or even needed, if everyone can heal themselfs.

I think Lifesteal frm gear should e removed completely. If it's still araound on some occasional ability on one or two classes where it fits and has a proper cooldown, I'm fine with that. But Lifesteal for all is not a good path for a game like AoC.

Vyllz

Imanek wrote: »

Just opening a little debate to hear your thoughts on lifesteal.

I won’t lie I’ve never really liked this mechanic that tends to favor whoever can drain the most health from their opponent.
Situationally, on certain abilities, I guess it’s fine... but between the PTR feedback and what I’ve been seeing in-game, lifesteal seems overwhelmingly strong right now.

The main issue is that every class can benefit from it thanks to the auto-attack system, which makes balancing really difficult.
You can farm almost all mobs with ease, and PvP often boils down to who can regenerate the fastest.

Honestly, I’ve never liked this system because it creates super meta-driven situations.
And I can’t help but wonder wouldn’t the best solution be to just remove the stat entirely?

I support lifesteal!

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