Identity
Blood Mage is Witch's Life-as-a-resource Ascendancy: skills that would normally only cost Mana also cost Life, in exchange for strong spell leech, on-kill Life recovery, and a keystone that turns your Energy Shield into an offensive tool rather than a pure damage buffer. It's the most aggressively self-damaging of Witch's three Ascendancies, betting that your own Life pool is more useful spent than hoarded.
Notables
- Sanguimancy — Skills gain a base Life cost equal to their base Mana cost. Grants the skill Life Remnants — killing enemies or landing Critical Hits spawns Life orbs that restore Life, with overflow potential beyond your normal maximum.
- Vitality Siphon — 20% of Spell Damage is Leeched as Life. (Buffed from 10% in patch 0.5.0 — this is a live guide-site error worth knowing about: most public guides, including some patch-history-tracking wikis, are still showing the old 10% figure months after the buff.)
- Whispers of the Flesh — Targets Cursed by you have 100% reduced Life Regeneration Rate, and have at least 15% of their Life Reserved. (This node used to be named "Open Sores" with a completely different effect before patch 0.3.0 — if you see that name elsewhere, it's describing an old version.)
- Blood Barbs — Elemental Damage also contributes to Bleeding Magnitude; Bleeding you inflict on Cursed targets is Aggravated. (An earlier version of this node also granted 10% of Damage as Extra Physical Damage — that clause was removed in patch 0.2.0 and the node no longer has it.)
- Gore Spike — 1% increased Critical Damage Bonus per 50 Life. (Changed from per-40 Life in patch 0.3.0, which also swapped this node's position on the Ascendancy layout with Sunder the Flesh.)
- Sunder the Flesh — Base Critical Hit Chance for Spells is 15%.
- Grasping Wounds — 25% of Life Loss from Hits is prevented, then dealt to you over 4 seconds instead of all at once.
- Crimson Power — Gain additional maximum Life equal to 100% of the item Energy Shield on your equipped Body Armour.
- Sanguine Tides — Flasks do not recover Life at all. Gain 1 Life Flask Charge per 2% of Life spent. On Hitting an enemy while a Life Flask is at full charges, 40% of its charges are consumed; gain 1% of damage as Physical damage for 5 seconds per charge consumed this way. (Reworked in patch 0.5.0 — the pre-0.5.0 version was milder: 50% less Life recovery from Flasks rather than none at all, 1 charge per 4% Life spent rather than per 2%, and a 3-second buff instead of 5.)
Keystone
Blood Mage has no separate keystone-tier node — Sanguimancy functions as the Ascendancy's defining mechanic but is categorized as a notable, same as everywhere else on this tree.
Practical notes
- Sanguimancy plus Sanguine Tides is the core loop of this Ascendancy: spending Life on skills builds Flask charges, and cashing those charges in on a full-charge Hit gives a temporary damage buff — the Ascendancy wants you actively spending Life, not just tanking the cost passively.
- Vitality Siphon at its current (verified) 20% figure is meaningfully stronger sustain than the 10% you'll see quoted on most other sites right now — worth double-checking your source if you're comparing this Ascendancy's leech against another build's sustain numbers from an outside guide.
- Crimson Power rewards stacking item Energy Shield on your Body Armour specifically, even in an otherwise Life-focused build — it's one of the few places in this Ascendancy where ES investment pays off directly as more Life.
