A while back in a previous post I made, I argued that one of the particular runes for the Familiar spell was largely useless. This rune was Vigoron, which at level 60 gives you 310 Life Per Second. Now, 310 LPS is pretty good as regen goes - the maximum LPS on any non legendary slot is 340 (according to D3MaxStats), which means Vigoron comes close to providing a max roll for this particular stat. And yet, Vigoron is still as useless as a one legged man in an ass kicking contest, by virtue of LPS being said man's missing leg.
In an early blue post for Diablo 3 (I can't find the exact thread, but I'd be grateful to whoever can supply the link), the devs touted LPS as one of the four major sustain options (the others being life steal, life on hit, and health globes; before the advent of Archon builds, life after kill was seen more as a minor leveling/farming quality-of-life advantage). It was supposedly a major cornerstone of Monk gameplay, as well as Witch Doctors to a lesser degree, and was advertised as being useful for all classes. Nearly eight patches later, we now all know better.
Missing The Goal: Life per second started out as a humble, yet useful affix called Replenish Life in Diablo 2. Oddly enough, in those days when everyone and their follower had life steal, Replenish Life still had its place. The average run through Harrogath could see you chugging down entire stacks worth of potions, and buying those pots was a significant gold sink. Replenish Life allowed you to ease the fiscal damage of profligate potion use and ensured you started each fight relatively close to a full hp orb. Nobody really stacked it, but it was a good stat to have, and you didn't lose anything by having it on you.
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| CHUG THAT HEALING POTION, FRANK! |
Now, fast forward over 10 years later. Potions now have a 30 second cooldown, and you'll find more of then in the course of a run than you can ever consume. Monster density and run efficiency means that LPS is significantly devalued as a between-fight heal; you simply don't want to spend any time not killing anything. LPS also takes up an affix slot that could easily be something more worthwhile - even in a shoulder slot, with no direct dps stats, the 'perfect roll' of mainstat, mainstat + vit, all res, +armor means that 4 out of 6 mods have already been consumed. For the last two, pickup radius, +life%, and bonus to health globes are all much better choices, and even mfind/gfind sounds pretty good if you're below Paragon 100. And this is on the most versatile armor slot - can you seriously imagine giving up LoH on jewelry or +crit chance on gloves for LPS? Didn't think so.
A World With More Options: Okay, so the whole healing-between-fights thing has gone the way of the dinosaurs. Well, what about LPS in combat? Why use the other options when LPS can roll on every item slot except weapons? Well, why eat chopped liver when you can have Kobe beef?
Referring again to D3MaxStats, the absolute maximum LPS you can ever have with the current patch is 5217. This assumes max rolls on every slot and a max roll on a Sky Splitter (don't get me wrong, it's a great weapon, but not everyone will want or be able to use it). This also means that you gave up potential stats on the other slots - for example, an optimal rare (non class-specific) helm will have mainstat, vit, crit, armor, all res, and a socket. And we haven't even started talking about the Helm of Command, Storm Crow, or god forbid, a Mempo. In other words, you gave up either DPS or EHP for that couple hundred hp worth of regen. If you could argue that it was worth it, I wouldn't be here telling you how bad it is. Let's see how the other life sustain sources stack up against it.
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| Clearly regrets stacking LPS against Fire chained/Molten packs |
Life Steal - The sustain of choice for two-hander barbs, bell monks, non-CMWW wizards, and a lot of heavy, slow hitting builds. Devalued by difficulty level, it nevertheless scales directly with your damage output, meaning the better your gear is, the better it gets. At 100k DPS (which is entry level into the big leagues) and with good crit damage modifiers, this adds up to significant life recovery. 1.5% life steal, which is the average for a 1-handed weapon, will still heal for 1,500 in Inferno if you get a 500k crit. And you can still multiply that for area targets. Life Steal tends to jack up a weapon's price by a lot - since it can only roll on weapons unless you're a barb - but by the same token, once you get a good weapon with life steal, that purchase will last you a long time.
Life On Hit - A popular option, this has been a staple of the most popular builds in D3; WW barbs, CMWW wizards, witch doctors with Rain of Toads, and two-weapon monks of all stripes. Another expensive stat, this rolls only on jewelry (and legendary pieces like the Storm Crow and Jousting Mail). This skill is limited by the proc coefficient of the spells you're using - with the wrong skills, it's dead weight. With the right skills, it renders you nearly immortal. It maxes out at over 4100 LoH with legendaries, realistically capping at 2876 with rares. While on paper, this number is greatly lower than the maximum possible LPS, in practice this easily overtakes it depending on the number of targets, cooldown/attack speed, and the skill's proc coefficient. In fact, a popular guide for wizard gearing indicates that 500 LoH should be enough for endgame needs, depending on the rest of the gear. Since LoH caps out at nearly 500 on rings (and nearly 1000 on amulets), this is easy to get provided you're willing to spend a good deal on a single jewelry piece.
Health Globes - While rarely geared for specifically (Gruesome Feast witch doctors and Pound of Flesh barbs come to mind), this mechanic particular to Diablo 3 is one of the most reliable options for healing between fights, and sometimes in mid fight too. Globes heal a percentage of your max health, meaning that it scales with your health pool. All monsters have a chance to drop it, and elite packs can drop it multiple times. While not as strong in terms of pure sustain as the previous options, it's easy to use provided you can survive between health globe drops, and it's dead easy to gear for. A single bonus affix caps out at almost 13000(!) extra life, and this applies to potions as well, which is just GREAT. It doesn't significantly increase the price of gear, and one affix somewhere on your set is good enough to be noticeable without negatively impacting your DPS or EHP.
Life After Kill - One of the least used recovery options, this affix is nevertheless useful to note in high speed farming runs at low MP. Archon wizards benefit greatly by it, as their main mechanic involves fast killing, and Rend Barbarians can also make use of this. Like Bonus Health To Globes, this affix doesn't usually increase a piece's cost, and one should be enough somewhere on your set. It caps out at 2878 life per piece, which is pretty good by itself. While killing large amounts of white trash (or Illusionist packs), this pretty much negates the need for any other kind of healing on lower difficulties.
(Note that there are other niche options for recovery not mentioned here. For example, monks have Life Per Spirit Spent and some barbarian pieces have Life Per Fury spent. These are too class specific to be included in this discussion.)
The first two options completely outclass LPS for combat life recovery, while Life After Kill is clearly superior for post-fight recovery. Health globes are somewhere in the middle, healing for a static amount relative to life pool that can be used both in combat and out of it. All of them reward aggressive gameplay and high DPS. Compare that to LPS, which is a completely static amount regardless of the player's actions, and which heals for an insignificant amount in comparison, and you'll understand why it's not a very impressive stat.
The 411: As it is, LPS is currently a very underwhelming affix that could use some improvement to be a competitive recovery option. Even in combination with certain skills (Mantra of Healing or the aforementioned Vigoron rune), it's still not very good. Worst of all, those skills are subpar options that have much better analogues; Mantra of Conviction and the Sparkflint rune come to mind.
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| Another little known disadvantage of life regen is that it ruins the upholstery |
It's true that LPS is still an important factor in a tiny number of builds. The biggest one that comes to mind are glass wizards specs, which rely on the Force Armor rune, small life pools and large EHP values. To a lesser extent, witch doctors with Blood Ritual and/or Fierce Loyalty benefit from stacking LPS. Still, this is far too small a sample size to justify the existent of LPS in the current state of D3.
In my opinion, LPS needs to be buffed, and bad. I'll go out on a limb and say that LPS on gear should be DOUBLED. By doing so, a player needs less pieces of gear with smaller rolls, making it easier and more practical to stack LPS to a useful amount. I would argue that there's no real harm if said player chooses to go ahead and stack it on all his gear pieces; as I've already pointed out, all this does is negatively impact his overall DPS and EHP.
Skills that affect LPS should be tweaked on a case by case basis - Galvanizing Ward and Vigoron could be doubled with little harm, I would think. However, skills like Blood Ritual or Mantra of Healing (which is percentage based or affects the whole party) could be kept as is. Or maybe the opposite could be applied - keep LPS on gear the same while greatly increasing the amount skills recover. This in turn could promote build diversity, effectively transferring the burden of EHP to the skills, allowing the player to gear more offensively instead. In any case, Life Per Second is a stat that needs watching and improving, and hopefully we can make this case to the devs in an upcoming patch.
