When does life steal outperform LoH?

[Walo]

well, in theory, lets take cleave with broad sweep rune for example, which hits 3 target in one swing... assume u are dps barb with 40k dps... assuming we can get 2,5 LS on weap, 2,5 LS on barb belt and 3LS from passive, which should be easily obtain without much money spend:

- so we get total 8 LS total - in inferno 1,6 (you can get total of 2,4 by dual wield)
- lets take 1000 LoH total which is not so hard to get (but I think this is more expensive in general)

so with cleave we can heal with 1000 LoH total 1500 Life with 50% proc coef.

with 40k damage we do in total 187,2k in damage to 3 targets - which is around 3000 heal so twice as much

this is just what I made off my mind right now, if I´m correct LS is not that bad and in certain situations it can outperform LoH, usually when you have decent damage output and hit more targets at the same time...

for comparison, with one target only it´s - 500 life with LoH and aprox. 1000 life with LS

would be intersting if someone is putting this in some table where are the values of damage output, LoH, LS and average number od targets to find that line, where LoH is even with LS...

and to that wicked gear....decent LoH weap cost you tens of millions, with LS by far not that much, so you can spend the money on better gear which you need to have decent damage (2H?) and not die instantly ...

[Dethklok]

Life gained from lifesteal, per second per target = LS*dps*sdm/5
sdm=skill damage% modifier
Life gained from life on hit, per second per target = LOH*aps*procrate
LS*dps*sdm/5 >= LOH*aps*procrate
dps/aps >= 5*LOH*procrate/(LS*sdm)
Let LOH=930 (near perf) and LS=0.03 (perf)
dps/aps >= 155000*procrate/sdm

So the four ways to get the most out of LS are:
1) pick a skill that does lots of damage to many targets very rapidly. Good examples are Multishot, Arcane Orb, and Acid Rain. These skills normally have only one downside: low procrates. Not a problem.
2) maximize damage per attack, not necessarily raw dps. LOH is strongest on fast weapons and weakest on slow ones, LS is the opposite. Demon Hunters are currently the premier life leechers because they use slow two-handers best; unfortunately, they have access to Gloom and therefore will almost never pay for the mod on a weapon. Its probably best on a one-handed mace or spear that is otherwise attractive to a witch doctor.
3) increase your passive resource regeneration (per sec, not on crit). Since you already have low aps, it will give you more resource between attacks, letting you spam your nuke more.
4) avoid increasing attack speed too much; if its free that's cool, but you don't want to pay for the mod. Focus more heavily on crit damage instead. This won't directly effect lifesteal but will help with resource management so you can spam your nuke better.

[ancalagon]

My barb had 35k dps with 1700loh and I switched it to 45k dps with 8.5ll (bloodthirst and 2 x ll weapons, no loh this time around) just to test both. WW / nado build so tons of hits per second to proc loh or ls. I was dying to white mobs in seconds while ww / nadoing, and it was literally filling up my bulb at a turtle's pace. I just couldnt believe because after all calculations it was meant to heal muuuuuuch more than 1700 loh, 45k dps at 8.5ll being approx. 765 loh, however life leech is not supposed to have the coefficients that ww and nado have for loh, every hit returns the full amount, so while ww and nado have 13% and 20% proc, life steal is healing between 5-6x as much, so essentially my 8.5ll shouldve been 765 x 5.5 = 4207 loh, and since it scales with damage and nado hits for minimum of 60% wpn dmg, worst case scenario ignoring ww it would be equivalent to 4207 x 0.6 loh = 2524 loh! Then I switched to wotb with slaughter using this same 8.50 ll build and was healing faster than when I had 1700 loh and less dps! It was literally a complete transformation, its as if I didnt have life steal before lol! So bottom line, I would say minimum 80k dps on screen, ideally 100k+ dps is where life leech shines...

[Dethklok]

My barb had 35k dps with 1700loh and I switched it to 45k dps with 8.5ll (bloodthirst and 2 x ll weapons, no loh this time around) just to test both.

Your numbers suck. (That's what you get for actually believing the tooltip.)

Whirlwind = 13% procrate per tick, 44% skill damage per tick = 45795 damage per attack to outperform LOH. That's damage per attack, not per second; for example, with 2.0 aps, you'd need 91k+ dps before you break even, much less benefit significantly, from lifesteal.

Run Like the Wind = 20% procrate per tick, 20% weapon damage per tick = 155k damage. Per attack. Good luck reaching that one.

For some contrast, Demon Hunter's Multishot - Fire at Will = 17% proc rate, 165% skill damage = 15656 damage per attack. Assuming 1.27 attacks per second (2h crossbow + 15% quiver), a Demon Hunter with 40k dps gets twice as much benefit from 3% lifesteal as he would from 900ish life on hit. Mostly that's only because they pre-nerfed Multishot's proc rate to hell (it still doesn't gain enough life to tank), but still, lifesteal does win sometimes. (Specifically, when it's irrelevant.)

[lanceuppercut]

let's hope LL gets some sort of buff if as the math going around seems to suggest, it appears to have no merit save for the select few with insane dps..

[ancalagon]

Your numbers suck. (That's what you get for actually believing the tooltip.)

Whirlwind = 13% procrate per tick, 44% skill damage per tick = 45795 damage per attack to outperform LOH. That's damage per attack, not per second; for example, with 2.0 aps, you'd need 91k+ dps before you break even, much less benefit significantly, from lifesteal.

Run Like the Wind = 20% procrate per tick, 20% weapon damage per tick = 155k damage. Per attack. Good luck reaching that one.

For some contrast, Demon Hunter's Multishot - Fire at Will = 17% proc rate, 165% skill damage = 15656 damage per attack. Assuming 1.27 attacks per second (2h crossbow + 15% quiver), a Demon Hunter with 40k dps gets twice as much benefit from 3% lifesteal as he would from 900ish life on hit. Mostly that's only because they pre-nerfed Multishot's proc rate to hell (it still doesn't gain enough life to tank), but still, lifesteal does win sometimes. (Specifically, when it's irrelevant.)

I dont believe I've ever said anything to the contrary. Mad at something still are you?

Life steal and loh in terms of ww and nado should be compared by ignoring the 20% penalty in inferno, since the average loh coefficient for such skills and life steal penalty are identical , practically 1/5. When I compare mathematically, I just compare loh to the life steal % of the damage output without penalty. So for the equivalent of 1700 loh, which really is give or take 350 loh after coefficients *in the case of ww/nado*, I would need 1700 x 12.5 = 21250 damage * per hit * with 8% life leech. If I add the inferno penalty, it becomes more or less 350 loh, hence the same effect with 8ll as 1700 loh if each hit of mine were 21k+. The only problem is 1700 loh ignores your damage, whilst with ll you need to hit each nado or ww for a minimum of 21k+, essentially where the problem lies. Now with my 51% 35k dps crit build I hit for 8-12k crits easily, so just like I originally said for lifesteal to start outperforming loh you need a minimum of 70k dps. Ideally, 100k dps+ to make sure each hit is 20k+. And thats with investing lots of life leech in your build, I had 2 weapons with life steal and bloodthirst, eventually went with a belt and back to NOS for passive, but LOH was far outperforming lifesteal in every possible way.

[Spankalot]

At the moment sprint gives me on average ~100 less HP back per second with 7.8% LL compared to 1000LoH. However, whirlwind healing is over triple that of LoH. This is with buffed stats of ~115k damage and a mainhand swing of 56k and attspeed of 1.82.

[ancalagon]

At the moment sprint gives me on average ~100 less HP back per second with 7.8% LL compared to 1000LoH. However, whirlwind healing is over triple that of LoH. This is with buffed stats of ~115k damage and a mainhand swing of 56k and attspeed of 1.82.

sprint is doing 60% weapon damage and whirlwind is doing 110% weapon damage, also whirlwind seemed to heal me much more with ll than nados did. When I had 4xk dps and I was on WOTB for about 65k dps, WW alone was healing faster than any loh i ever had. And its strange seeing as WW was tested to account for only a minimum of the overall damage contributed by a ww nado build. I wonder if ll also has some sort of proc coefficient with different skills as loh does.

[Spankalot]

sprint is doing 60% weapon damage and whirlwind is doing 110% weapon damage, also whirlwind seemed to heal me much more with ll than nados did. When I had 4xk dps and I was on WOTB for about 65k dps, WW alone was healing faster than any loh i ever had. And its strange seeing as WW was tested to account for only a minimum of the overall damage contributed by a ww nado build. I wonder if ll also has some sort of proc coefficient with different skills as loh does.

The thing is those weapon damage figures in the tooltips are wrong, they generally do more than that. For example with my stats (1.82 IAS, 56k MH damage, 115k buffed), nados from RLTW are ticking for ~11k damage (20% wepdam) 6 times a second and whirlwind is ticking for, as far as I know, ~25k damage (44%) 6 times a second as well, so lifeleech is magnified beyond simple tooltip calculations, as is LoH because of the multiple ticks mechanic.

[ancalagon]

The thing is those weapon damage figures in the tooltips are wrong, they generally do more than that. For example with my stats (1.82 IAS, 56k MH damage, 115k buffed), nados from RLTW are ticking for ~11k damage (20% wepdam) 6 times a second and whirlwind is ticking for, as far as I know, ~25k damage (44%) 6 times a second as well, so lifeleech is magnified beyond simple tooltip calculations, as is LoH because of the multiple ticks mechanic.

Yeah forget onscreen dps, its more of an indicator of how overly powerful your character is. But if you take your highest weapon damage number and multiply it by your crit damage, str bonus and battle rage / insanity / brawler whatever and record the highest crits for bash / ww / nado, it actually works out as it says on the tooltip however. I have worked it out myself for nado and bash, ww is a bit harder to do. The numbers vary a lot with ww and nado because of their ticking nature, some numbers are not displayed at all, especially if you are attacking real fast etc. Same with archon disintegrate for example.