Life on Hit and Life Steal Guide

Life on Hit and Life Steal guide submitted by Aezoc.

While doing some testing this morning for a build I had planned, I discovered that life on hit and lifesteal both have hidden scaling that reduces (drastically in some cases) their values on certain abilities.

This makes sense from a balance perspective and may be common knowledge, but was not the case in D2 as far as I'm aware, and I hadn't seen any discussion on it.

I've only done limited testing on a monk so far, but it seems to just be tied to how big of an AoE something has; single target abilities do the full amount, small AoEs do a significant percent, and large AoEs do a negligible amount. It also depends on the rune, so runing a small AoE into a big one will reduce the life on hit/life steal per target.

To give a rough idea of the values, here is what I came up with from some very quick monk testing with life on hit. I would assume that other classes see roughly the same reductions for AoEs of corresponding sizes. As a baseline, I did confirm that a normal melee swing as well as single target abilities (I used the first hit of Fists of Thunder) both applied 100% of my life on hit value.

Way of the Hundred Fists (Windflurry rune)
Hit 1 - 74% of actual life on hit value
Hit 2 - 9.5% (per punch)
Hit 3 - 49%

Deadly Reach (no rune)
Hit 1 - 85%
Hit 2 - 85%
Hit 3 - 74%

Deadly Reach (Piercing Trident rune)
Hit 1 - 85%
Hit 2 - 75%
Hit 3 - 49%

Lifesteal actually seems worse, or has additional calculations that I don't understand. With 1.2% lifesteal, a hit for 3141 healed for 7 hp using the first hit of Deadly Reach (Piercing Trident). Assuming lifesteal is reduced in the same way as life on hit, I would have expected a heal for ~38 hp instead

If anyone has more information on exactly how this works, I'd love to hear it!


Also check out Life Steal and Life on Hit for Witch Doctors Spreadsheet and the Life Steal vs Life on Hit guide below.


Life Steal vs Life on Hit

Video submitted by Kripparrian.





Life on Hit Mechanic (scaling for monks generators).

Guide submitted by pingeee.


Life on hit is a stat that heals you for a certain amount of life every time you hit an enemy.

In case you're dual-wielding and both weapons have life on hit property, it is summed up and you are healed for that number every swing.

I.e. if you have 500 life on hit on both weapons, every swing would heal for 1k hp.

Furthermore, when you hit with certain skills (generators mostly in case you're a monk), skills have their own amount of scale from the initial life-on-hit number.

For example, if you use Deadly Reach generator with Keen Eye rune, your combo will heal for 85% –> 85% –> 75% with first and second hit of the combo healing for 85% of your life-on-hit stat (850hp heal if you've 1k LOH).

In case you're using Fists of Thunder with Thunderclap rune, your combo will heal you for 75+75% –> 75+75% –> 75% of LOH. First two hits heal for 75% for both the hit and the AOE When you hit multiple mobs, you have more heal from AoE abilities.

For example, lets see how Fists of Thunder with Thunderclap will scale, hitting 2 mobs with 1000 Life On Hit, only AoE part will heal for 2x amount:

2250 + 2250 + 1500 = 6000hp, i.e. ((750+750x2) + (750+750x2) + 750x2)

And if you hit three monsters:

3000 + 3000 + 2250 = 8250hp, i.e. ((750+750x3) + (750+750x3) + 750x3)

Numbers above were collected and tested by myself. I have not tested other generators, as well as bigger packs, however, here is a useful table that shows scaling for all generators and runes:

Scaling Chart, Click to View Full Size