With the arrival of Path of Exile 3.21, it introduced major changes to the passive skill tree’s mastery system. While many of the new abilities may seem useless, these new abilities may open up interesting new build options.
There are two specific Mastery options that I want to emphasize. The first is Leech Mastery, and the second is Claw Mastery. Today, we need to review the basics a little together to make sure we’re clear on what we’ve learned. After that, I will interact with various keystones and build archetypes.
How The New Mastery Work
The default behavior of Life Leech is that when you deal with hit damage, you create a Leech instance and buy POE Currency a lot before do it. The instance heals for a percentage of damage dealt or 10% of its maximum health, whichever is lower.
Regenerates at 2% of maximum health per second, resulting in a maximum duration of 5 seconds per Leech instance. Total health recovered from Leech per second is capped at 20% of max life per second. This means you need 10 concurrent Leech instances to hit the cap.
Mana and energy shield Leech function the same. We should note that mana and energy shield it capped Leech at 10% per second, or 5 concurrent instances. If you set Mastery that causes 10% Leech to instant, instances of Leech that normally regenerate 10% of their max health in 5 seconds will instead regenerate 1% instantly and 9% in 4.5 seconds.
Since it still applied recovery at 2% per second, you still need 10 concurrent instances to hit the 20% cap. And the instant part of Leech is not “recovery per second”, so it does not count towards the upper limit of the total recovery per second.
Interaction With Leech Modifiers
So how does this instant Leech interact with different modifiers to Leech? The most important thing to understand is that “recovery per second” modifiers will not affect the immediate part of Leech, but will continue to affect the non-instant part.
If you then get “100% increased total recovery per second from life Leech”, you will still recover 2% life instantly, but non-instant Leech will recover 36% over the next 4.5 seconds.
So how do you scale instant Leech? The most notable stat is “Leech health regen”, which refers to the 10% of maximum health that a single Leech instance can restore. Unfortunately, there are very few places in the game to find modifiers for this stat, the most obvious of which is Brutal Fervour notable passive in Slayer Ascendancy tree. With this notable, you can now recover up to 20% of your maximum health from a single Leech instance.
Additionally, Divergent Energy Leech Support Gem provides 40% of maximum regeneration per Energy Shield drain, allowing you to restore 14% of Energy Shield with one instance of Energy Shield Leech. This means that these auxiliary gems have an impressive effect on your damage recovery, and you can get them with enough POE Currency to ensure you have a better gaming experience.
Strength Of Blood
Now that we understand how instant Leech Mastery work. So let’s talk about how it interacts with certain build-defined Leech mechanisms. Starting with Strength of Blood, it is the most notable beneficiary of the new Leech Mastery. Strength of Blood “reduces damage taken” based on the total health you regenerate from Leeches per second, but in exchange, it prevents non-instant Leech from regenerating health.
Now we can instantly apply up to 30% more Leeches without using DPS’ unique weapons. As a result, we have more viable ways to play Strength of Blood and farm POE Orbs.
In fact, I think Slayers in particular should seriously consider using Strength of Blood, which grants sustained damage reduction by forgoing their continuous regeneration. While Dual-Claw Slayer seems like an interesting route right now, you can easily get over 30% damage reduction from Strength of Blood while instantly restoring 6% of your max health when you hit an enemy.
Immortal Ambition
Another focus is the keystone of Life Leech – Immortal Ambition. When you are at full health, Life Leech instance directly restores energy shield.
The major hurdle with the nerfed Immortal Ambition is that the energy shield recovery from Leeches is by default capped at 10% of the max energy shield per second. Immortal Ambition also drains 5% of Energy Shield per second and disables Energy Shield regeneration and recharging.
Also, Immortal Ambition does not create energy shield Leech instances. Energy Shield restoration is still from Life Leech instances, up to 10% of maximum health per instance. So if you have 4000 health and 1500 energy shield, one instance of Life Leech can restore 400 energy shield, even if that’s more than 10% of your max energy shield.
Faster regeneration means your energy shield can actually be a meaningful damage buffer. Hybrid dual – Claw Shadow builds seem more viable now, with a combination of instant Leech Mastery and Immortal Ambition. If we’re going to talk about Immortal Ambition, then Mahuxotl’s Machination definitely deserves a mention.
l Also Read: 3.21 POE Currency Farming Guides
Mahuxotl’s Machination
The shield’s modifiers are just keystone salad, but include Corrupted Soul, Divine Flesh, Everlasting Sacrifice, and Immortal Ambition. The combination of these four keystones essentially gives you a massive amount of energy shield.
But when converting the energy shield from an HP pool to a battery, it fully discharges and increases all max resistances by 5% for 4 seconds. Because Immortal Ambition blocks too much energy shield recovery, there aren’t many ways to actually fill the energy shield bar. And Bloodseeker is a great booster for Everlasting Sacriment due to its ability to quickly refill the energy shield.
It’s now possible to do so on almost any build, thanks to instant Leech from the new Mastery and POE Currency buy. Essentially, it’s a replacement for the existing mix of max-rolled Dawnbreaker, Tempered by War, Purity of Fire, and Sublime Vision.
Outro
There are other interactions involving instant Leech that I didn’t consider. But these are the main interactions that I think will be built in Path of Exile 3.21. Don’t forget that new Mastery can not only instant Leech Life but also mana and an energy shield.
If you are interested, you can also discuss it in the community. The above is all the information about the new instant Leech Mastery mechanics and interactions, hope these can help you understand this mechanism better. Come and try it out.