Ternion or Lifedrain (1.20)?

[Gideon]

Is it better to max out Lifedrain/Cascade or Ternion/Lore?

Assume I have good/max% recharge, good -%vit/%life steal aura.

Positives for L/C:

200%+ dmg converted to health
High vitality damage
Hits mutiple opponents


Negatives for L/C:

Fixed amount of vitality damage (does it still do well in epic+?)
Need high recharge to spam
Long casting time (for a spell you would want to spam)


Positives for Ternion/Lore

Damaged not fixed (based on staff)
Extra elemental damage
Hits multiple targets
Can spam without recharge+increase in attack speed ihelps

Negatives for Ternion

Less vit dam then Life Drain (I've not seen a staff w/+200 vit dmg )
Far less %dmg converted to health
Aura doesn effect the elemental damage


It seems like Ternion would be better later with a killer staff, but I'm just wondering if anyone has compared the two?

[Frostbane]

Ternion for damage and life drain goes in the bin.

[Felexitus]

vitality damage is a bad thing as undead are hardly ever hurt by it and its not modified by int. doing secondary damage might sound sexy but actually opponents usually dont have worse secondary resistances

= agree with line above

[KAuss]

With 100% reduction to vitality resistance (spirit auras), you actually do see some pretty good drain #'s but it's nothing to write home about because ultimately the game's mobs just have wayyyyyy too much HP for any life leeching build to work completely without twinking...

[Dedo]

Ternion of course. It's still powerful and you can reduce the -20% elemental damage with +skill items. Regardless, when you have a right set that -20% is nothing.

:)

[Prito]

Dmg wise life drain is just a bad bad bad bad, really really bad version of Storm masterys Chain lightning. Yes it heals you but eh, not worth it.

I actually tried it with the near perfect equipment, and it worked well in all normal, late epic it starts to take really long to kill and in legendary forget it. (Tried it with -100 recharge and +%vitality gear).

[Blackbrrd]

It is worth putting 1 point each in Lifedrain/Cascade to start with, but by the time you get to the first place where you can reallocate the points the skill is worthless and you can remove the points spent on it.

I isn't as if its expensive moving points around - at least for the first few times...