Some builds on Diablo 3 RoS rely on Life on Hit or LoH. Some tanks and even DPS characters actually prefer healing as they're surrounded by enemies.
The Blizzard devs have decided to tweak the Life on Hit mechanics to what they think is a better system for characters who want to focus on this mechanic for survival. Here's what Life on Hit on the PTR looks like right now according to the Blizzard devs on the forums:
You gain your Life on Hit amount per cast, so long as you're doing damage.
The amount healed per cast does not change based on the number of targets hit.
You continuously gain a portion of your Life on Hit value while channeling.
We're increasing LoH on items by another 100%, and LoH in Paragon by 50% in an upcoming PTR build
We're aware that this needs tuning, particularly with large packs of monsters, or those with Reflect Damage.
If you didn't quite get that, here's a more thorough explanation of how LoH currently works on the PTR:
Before the tweak, Life on Hit happened when an attack or skill would do damage. This means that when you use Area of Effect skills on a single target, you get much lower healing compared to hitting a mob with an AoE.
With Greater Rifts, gear changes are impossible within the dungeon so perhaps the devs thought it might be better to fix the mechanic so there wouldn't be need to change the gear or skill set to survive for some players.
Now, in the PTR, LoH is applied when something is cast and has an animation sequence. This means that it doesn't matter how many targets are hit or whether the attack connects. Channeling also gains you LoH because that has an animation sequence.
Since casting spells triggers LoH instead of the attack connecting, LoH no longer has to pass through the proc coefficient for skills, spells and gear and therefore can heal characters much more efficiently--or at least that's what the devs hope.
This also means that it doesn't matter how many enemies were hit with the spell or skill. The same amount gets healed since the effect happens during the casting and not the attack.
Keep in mind that this is still in the PTR and is subject to a lot of changes in the next few weeks.
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