Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Leech - Working as intended?

Did a quick search, no results, so sorry if this is a re-post (it seems like the sort of thing *someone* would've mentioned by now...).

The way Leech is worded makes it sound like it only heals you if you stand in an existing pool of blood (such as that created by a dead human/orc). However currently it seems to proc every time blood is CAUSED, for instance, it'll proc whenever you're shot or stabbed or have a Bleed spell cast on you. Any time you're hit by anything non-magical or elemental.

This is a little bit OTT. Feels a bit cheap. I'm currently at level 8 (mostly - Scarlett keeps dying ｬ_ｬ), and am fighting the undead in the old church (the bit that's not completely on fire), and I see the same sort of scenario in the combat log:

Skeleton Archer hits for around 35 damage.
Leech heals me for 29ish.

My main has 500 HP. It takes a while to die when you're only taking a total of 6 damage from archers!

Madora is virtually unkillable. In fact she may be literally invincible. She also has Comeback Kid, so her cycle even when she does get low on health is:

Skeleton Archer hits her for around 35 damage.
Comeback Kid means she stays on 1HP.
Leech heals her for 29. Giving her 30HP. So next time she's hit, Comeback Kid procs again because she's above 1HP and keeps her alive. Doesn't matter how many enemies have their turn before I can heal her again. She's actually unkillable. The only way she could potentially die is if she was on fire/poisoned or hit by a spell which does more than 29 damage (as then she'd be taken down to 1 by the burning/spell, NOT healed because she didn't bleed, and then killed by the next enemy to hit her). But that's a little unlikely given the number of enemies you're likely to face with a spell/elemental attack in one fight. Since that sequence has to happen one after the other - if she gets shot/hit again with physical damage in between it'll restart the circle of undeath all over again.

This can't be intended, right? I feels cheap as hell and I'm kinda regretting taking Leech on her.

Edit: Against the Cultists in the church itself she was actually outhealing them. They did 24 damage and she was healing 28 each time, so finished the fight on full health...

I have heard Leech is OP, but am just now trying it out on my new campaign. My expectations going in was that it would proc when standing on blood or when hit by a bleed ability. Having it proc off of a normal physical hit was not expected. So, I think that's a good question: is it working as intended (and is the description just terribly wrong)?

Cast Bloodletting on Madora and if she fails the saving throw against Bleed, it will do a significant amount of healing. I think that, at least, is not working as intended.

Since the healing amount is independent of the volume of blood, if a leech runs after a moving character that is bleeding, they will heal much more than letting the character bleed and then run over the blood surface.

Leech is ridiculously OP. Not just that, but the fact that, without much planning, you can end up stacking resistances and stat effect immunities to the point where everything heals you instead of damaging you is pretty crazy.

By the end of the game my pyromancy battlemage with leech, lone wolf, stand your ground, full trait immunities and 100+ in all resistances was completely invulnerable. I would wildfire him, then battering ram solo into fights against a dozen enemies, cast explode/fireball/meteor strike and he would just stand there smashing people in the face with flurry and auto attacks as the world burned around him. Same with the final bossfight.

It is working as intended. Leech basically uses any blood source to heal you. The only thing may/may not be intended is the way bleed works.
When your toon bleeds, she is soaked in blood. Bleed only procs one per turn AND if your toon is soaked in blood. Leech removes the blood and as a result, bleed keeps proc'ing until she is healed to full and is soaked in blood again.

And this is exactly how poison and burning work. The damage is incurred in all three cases when your toon's body is soaked with blood, poison or doused in flame. That is why when you set a poisoned npc/pc on fire, the poison is consumed to make explosion and poison damage keeps proc'ing.

Unintended consequences maybe but the mechanics is exactly how it should be.

@rtkfner: try ww. If you invest in your 2hander, 1 ww = game over. Your mage can just stand there and watch.

Unfortunately, this doesn't really answer the question. I think the question is, should regular physical attacks cause Leech to proc?


Hold on now...

First, the semantical argument here (that I won't dive too far into) is that standing in blood in D:OS does not necessarily mean soaked in blood, since in D:OS standing in environmental effects is a big deal and an important mechanic. There is room for ambiguity, and based on the description of the Talent, one could argue that if you're not actually standing in visible blood on the ground, then Leech shouldn't proc.

Basic physical attacks (melee and ranged) proc Leech without any environmental effects (ie pools of blood) being produced, and that seems weird (even if, in real life, when you get hit by a sword you're probably going to bleed; real life is mostly irrelevant here).

Second, in the latter part of your post you seem to be defending the mechanic according to the status effects Bleeding, Poisoned, and Burning. But this just further illustrates the question/problem at hand: regular, non-skill physical attacks do not apply the Bleeding status (otherwise there would be very little point to Bloodletting and Draw Blood inflicting that status themselves), and yet basic physical attacks are proc'ing Leech. And they're proc'ing it with each and every attack, not just once per turn as it would be with Bleeding.

Also, Poisoned and Burning work very differently than Bleeding. You can walk in poison and fire and pick up their respective status effects. When you walk in blood, you don't pick up the status effect Bleeding... so they're really not the best defense of Bleeding/Leech.

What are the ways in which Leech >could< proc?
1. Walking through an environmental puddle of blood. This basically makes since with the mechanics of environmental effects and the talent description.
2. While under the effect of Bleeding. This makes sense because if you have this status effect you are probably soaked in blood (and it would work like you described, haxing).
3. After being hit by a regular physical attack that generates a blood pool underneath you. This makes sense according to #1. (Granted, I think that such pools of blood should be limited to critical hits)
4. After being hit by a regular physical attack that DOES NOT generate a blood pool.

#4 is what the OP is questioning (I think, and if he isn't, then I am): is this intended?


It seems to me Bleeding is a status effect that operates in different and confusing ways in comparison to the others. So why not bring it in line with the others? Like you would with the other status effects, when you walk through a puddle of blood you potentially pick up the "Blooded" status effect (ie, being covered in blood). Bleeding inflicting skills, instead of causing Bleeding (which, let's be honest, doesn't really seem to have a tactical use and is rather weak) causes a target to be Blooded... which could then lead to detrimental effects from other spells or the environment. I don't know, maybe being Diseased becomes easier or something.

Leach heals a ton of life, is very easy to trigger and basically makes you immune vs physical damage in combination with Comeback Kid. Using it can reduce the difficulty of the game to a point where the fights are no longer interesting. Imo it needs to be rebalanced (heals only at the start/end of your turn) or replaced.

I can tell you with 100% certain that bleed doesn't care about the puddle of blood beneath you, but the blood on your toon. And if that blood is gone, bleed will proc.

Leech absorbs all blood source within your grid, and that include the blood on your toon and if that blood is gone, bleed procs. Leech will not proc if you are full hp (obviously). Physical attacks make your toon spill blood, which will be absorbed by leech. Leech doesn't care about bleed, it cares about blood. And the blood generated may or may not make a puddle of blood. The talent is working as intended.

I know this because I was planning to abuse bleeding to 1 shot pretty much everything in the game. With the said mechanics, it cannot be done (poor me). Change how bleed works and I'll show you how I will abuse it haha.

And who the heck use come back kid lol? Useless and overrated talent like WtS, alone or in combination with anything.

Where can I find the skillbook for it? I've been searching the whole game but haven't found it available other than by character creation.

This is not a statement that you, as someone who didn't develop the game, can make.

Whirlwind not dust devil. And you can find it in a cellar of an abandoned house west Cyseal.


And all I was saying is that the mechanics of leech and bleed is logical and consistent with the rest of the game. There is no bug so to say. Whether it is OP or not is another matter. Had the old description of WtS read "50% resistance to all type of damage per MaA point," it would have given 250% resistance to all elemental, physical, poison AND tenebrium. Sure, people could argue that it would OP as heck but they couldn't say that it was not intended because it worked as described.

Madora starts with it... and as this thread attests, it's far from useless. It's downright broken in combination with Leech. Hence the thread.

My main point wasn't that Leech procs with physical damage, that's logical even if it's not quite what the description implies. The main problem is that the amount of damage it heals is ridiculous - sometimes MORE than the attack dealt in the first place.