Life Leech effort vs reward

Old topic but posting it again since nothing ever changed - the reward for the effort for this spell is out of line.

Life Leech - quested
level 47 (really 50 because can't get quest until 50)
228 pt lifetap
181 mana
3 sec cast time
10 sec recast time
5 sec spell bar lockout

The quest requires:
1. a white gold necklace from a froglok noble in lower guk
2. a crystaline orb from a stone spider in solb
3. a prickly pear from a terror tentacle near Vox in permafrost
4. 3,000 plat

Compare that to:

Lifedraw - vendor bought
level 29 (level 12 for necros)
105 pt lifetap
86 mana
2 sec cast time
1.5 sec recast time
1.5 sec spell bar lockout

Siphon Life - vendor bought
level 51 (level 29 for necros)
150 pt lifetap
115 mana
2.75 sec cast time
1.5 sec recast time
1.5 sec spell bar lockout

Or another way of looking at them:
Life Leech: 22.8 chain cast dps, 1.26 dd/mana ratio
Lifedraw: 30 chain cast dps, 1.22 dd/mana ratio
Siphon Life: 35.3 chain cast dps, 1.30 dd/mana ratio


As is, there really isn't a reason to ever use Life Leech over the other two lifetaps outside of a situation where you just need as much healing in one shot as possible (ie. patch healing on a late incoming heal) and the cast time isn't aligned with that. Add on the cost to get this spell and it explains why so many SKs avoid it.

Suggestions for improvement would be:
1. lower spell bar lock out to typical 1.5 seconds
2. lower mana consumption significantly (ex. to 100 mana)

The first is a simple usability change so that other spells can be cast during the 10 second recast delay. The second means making the spell a mana efficent one, meaning there is now a reason for the investment needed to get this spell.

Those are just ideas. Even if the spell was changed from a quest to vendor bought (which it is in PoP, though still costly), it still needs some kind of tuning to be usable.

Sorry forgot cast time - Life Leech is 17.53 dps chain cast.

Keep in mind this quest was done on Live when XP was VERY slow. So it remained useful for a while. Nowadays it's more of a checkbox thing for questors.

IIRC from my time on Agnarr, it makes a big difference in Classic. The cost is high, and you can do without it. But if you want to be the most powerful SK in Classic, you'll need this spell.

IIRC