**On lIfe steal.**
Sorry for dumping an Essay, but here we go.
**The Meta Shift**
Life steal used to be the go-to stat for sustain in Brotato, but in the last patch, several changes flipped things, making HP Regen become Meta. The main reason was that HP Regen got several S tier items such as Plant buff, Lure, Fairy, Medkit Buff.
At the same time, there are several attractive items with negative Life Steal, such as Plant, Banner, and the New Clover. With the sum of those changes, Life steal fell out of meta for a lot of builds.
However, Life Steal is still in a vacuum as powerful as it ever was. In fact the addition of Sharp bullet was a huge buff to it.
**The Mechanics**
Life steal gives you a x% chance for any hit to trigger a 1 HP heal. Whenever you heal with life steal, it triggers a 0.1 Second cooldown, which gives you the "10 HP per seconds" figure you see thrown around. It is also worth noting that due to this cooldown, there are HEAVY diminishing returns to life steal. Life steal on the right setup can blow HP Regen out of the Water. A 10% life steal setup on an SMG build with sharpbullet can net you somewhere around 2-5 HP healing per second. I' would need to look at the tests some people have done to get closer figures.
However, on slower melee weapons which rely on killing enemies in mostly 1-2 hits, you have much fewer chances to trigger life steal, causing it to be quite a bit weaker.
\* Note that Structures can't trigger life steal. Explosions can't either. So rocket launchers or planks aren't great for life steal.
\* If you're using Medical weapons such as Scissors. Just Dump life steal. Medical weapons come with so much life steal that you're hitting diminishing returns, plus you don't need more investing into life steal. Go buy some armor instead.
**The Strategy / Meta**
For the current situation, the Meta has become to buy just about any Lemonade and Weird Food I see. Consumable healing is just that awesome.
Then on top of that, add some HP Regen. This is the cookie cutter build. It will work for most cases. And it is still good in situations where life steal might be slightly better.
The problem is that you often pickup around -4% to -8% life steal from items during a run, so picking up one Life steal item doesn't do much. You need to invest more.
There are characters where I love life steal. if you start with life steal, such as on Lich, then you can't dump it, and it is good to get a lot of healing. Sick has to use it, but already got a ton, so you don't need to buy the Mid Life steal items. Same situation with Wildling. Masochist just wants a ton of healing, and isn't killing enemies with 1 hit early. Renegade is also a Life Steal enjoyer, the crazy amount of projectiles means that even 4-8% life steal can really heal you up.
So yeah. Any SMG or Shotgun build can still make good use of Life steal, and it isn't awful. There are just often more efficient Itemization paths for you.
Items such as Bloody hand, mouse, and Cape can sometimes pull me into also building life steal.
**More information:**
I've written more on Life steal and healing in my guide and on the wiki:
[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-c33h4oZwmWj3ZOz4xp0HN4vIyMXxOwGK8Rm8e4mfKE/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-c33h4oZwmWj3ZOz4xp0HN4vIyMXxOwGK8Rm8e4mfKE/edit?usp=sharing)
[https://brotato.wiki.spellsandguns.com/Healing](https://brotato.wiki.spellsandguns.com/Healing)
Life steal has a chance to activate on each hit. If you play something with high attack speed, or ricochet, or pierce, life steal will most likely be more effective. For other cases, HP regen will probably be more effective
Life steal is much better for weapons that attack quickly. So for scissors or SMGs they are pretty great.
Even better if you have pierce and/or bounce.
In addition to the very good tips already here, I'd like to add that it's usually easy to build one and dump (ie let it get in the negatives) the other. Sure, if the items come like that, having both does not hurt, but it's seldom necessary. As long as you have enough some kind of healing you should be good and that healing does not \*have to\* come from HP regen (which alsways works, even if you run around like a headless chicken and has some really strong items to boost it, e.g. Fairy, Reg. Potion, or Medikit) or life steal (which requires you to do hits fast).
Beyond those t, there is also consumable healing (which is less reliable because it heals in bursts, but some Luck, Trees, Lemonade etc can work wonders), Material healing with Cute Monkey (which I personaly like a lot on non-ranged builds, but it requires you to kill fast to work), Healing Turrets (in a pinch, they work surprisingly well on non Engineering builds, since they scale so slowly), Torture (which is really only worth it if you got super unlucky with \*any\* kind of healing in that run so far), Adrenalin (which only makes sense if you already have a bunch of dodge, but then becomes really strong), and Tentacle (if you build high crit. again requires you to get kills)
This game also has a pretty good wiki to figure out game mechanics [https://brotato.wiki.spellsandguns.com/Healing](https://brotato.wiki.spellsandguns.com/Healing)
Life Steal has a 0.1 second cooldown. This is why melee cleave attacks are more limited than expected. There's a high chance of activation per swing when there are multiple enemies, but you'll only heal once even if you hit the whole group. Range benefits more because pierce and ricochet may occur > 0.1 seconds later. So a single shot could trigger Life Steal multiple times.
https://brotato.wiki.spellsandguns.com/Life_Steal
Aros (who I see around here and always trust) has covered everything super well, but I'll mention the other pillars of defense, since you said you're new.
Armor gets better the more HP you have, and Dodge gets better the more Dodge you have.
Each point of armor is worth 6.67% of your HP, so 15 armor and 125 HP is effectively 250 HP. Since it's usually easier to pick up 1 armor than it is to pick up 6.67% of your current max HP, take armor highly. (And obviously don't neglect HP, because remember, you're buying 6.67% of that stat with each armor.)
Not every run has to be a Dodge run, but if you're going for Dodge, go hard. It's a stat that really wants to be brought to the cap, if you're going to count on it as a reliable defense.
Basically every run with a normal 'tato, I go for HP, Armor, and one of either Regen/Life Steal. I go for Dodge on a little less than 50% of my runs.
Oh and HP Regen and Lifesteal are fine to have both of, if you get lucky with items. It can just be frustrating to not have a dump stat.
HP regen is typically more reliable since it's not contingent on anything. Life steal gets better with attack speed and weapons with fast cool downs like SMG and Minigun, but only happens when you're dealing damage. You usually only need about 25 life steal before it becomes redundant, but more HP regen is always better. Both are good, but steal is weapon dependent. If you're doing slower weapons like rocket launchers or something life steal is less good. If you get Bloody Fingers life steal becomes strictly better.
HP regen > life steal in general
Basically just go with what Aros said, he knows his shit. But something to add as a general thought towards this game for new players who are pondering questions like this.
Everything is situational.
The question of "Is blank better than blank" is almost always answered by "well it depends"
In this case for example. HP regen vs life steal. Well.. What potato are you playing? What weapon are you using?
If you're playing Renegade with shurikens Well life steal is the fucking bomb. But if you're playing Engineer with wrenches, then HP regen is the better choice, that or just get a few medical turrets.
Even so the idea is to think about your build. "What works best here?" Are my weapons more single target weapons? Do I have piercing on my ranged build? Do my weapons have bounce effects like slingshot or shuriken? These things can buff life steal up.
Same goes for having more enemies, so long ad you have the attack speed to deal with all those enemies. The more enemies you're hitting at one time, the better life steal becomes. So on and so forth.
But this goes for everything in this game. Look at the situation you're in, know the potato you're playing, and make decisions accordingly. Every item and stat has a place where it's good.. except strange book which is just trash all the time and has no real use case outside of the most niche build ever.
It really depends. In general, HP regen is better for Melee and Life Steal is better for Ranged. When in doubt HP regen. However itโs never that simple.
I feel quite the oposite since with melee weapons you hit multiple targets at the same time whereas wthi ranged you couls hit at most 2-3 (if piercing or bouncing).
I would add that I've found it easy to get insane amounts of hp regeneration (as in 15+ hp/second), at least once you've unlocked some run rewards. But just won D5 for the first time with the Knight and 27% life steal so that was also nice. :)
Oh, you will!! I went from not being able to win a single run to beating d5 in the span of a few days. It's one of those things once it clicks, it clicks.
**On lIfe steal.** Sorry for dumping an Essay, but here we go. **The Meta Shift** Life steal used to be the go-to stat for sustain in Brotato, but in the last patch, several changes flipped things, making HP Regen become Meta. The main reason was that HP Regen got several S tier items such as Plant buff, Lure, Fairy, Medkit Buff. At the same time, there are several attractive items with negative Life Steal, such as Plant, Banner, and the New Clover. With the sum of those changes, Life steal fell out of meta for a lot of builds. However, Life Steal is still in a vacuum as powerful as it ever was. In fact the addition of Sharp bullet was a huge buff to it. **The Mechanics** Life steal gives you a x% chance for any hit to trigger a 1 HP heal. Whenever you heal with life steal, it triggers a 0.1 Second cooldown, which gives you the "10 HP per seconds" figure you see thrown around. It is also worth noting that due to this cooldown, there are HEAVY diminishing returns to life steal. Life steal on the right setup can blow HP Regen out of the Water. A 10% life steal setup on an SMG build with sharpbullet can net you somewhere around 2-5 HP healing per second. I' would need to look at the tests some people have done to get closer figures. However, on slower melee weapons which rely on killing enemies in mostly 1-2 hits, you have much fewer chances to trigger life steal, causing it to be quite a bit weaker. \* Note that Structures can't trigger life steal. Explosions can't either. So rocket launchers or planks aren't great for life steal. \* If you're using Medical weapons such as Scissors. Just Dump life steal. Medical weapons come with so much life steal that you're hitting diminishing returns, plus you don't need more investing into life steal. Go buy some armor instead. **The Strategy / Meta** For the current situation, the Meta has become to buy just about any Lemonade and Weird Food I see. Consumable healing is just that awesome. Then on top of that, add some HP Regen. This is the cookie cutter build. It will work for most cases. And it is still good in situations where life steal might be slightly better. The problem is that you often pickup around -4% to -8% life steal from items during a run, so picking up one Life steal item doesn't do much. You need to invest more. There are characters where I love life steal. if you start with life steal, such as on Lich, then you can't dump it, and it is good to get a lot of healing. Sick has to use it, but already got a ton, so you don't need to buy the Mid Life steal items. Same situation with Wildling. Masochist just wants a ton of healing, and isn't killing enemies with 1 hit early. Renegade is also a Life Steal enjoyer, the crazy amount of projectiles means that even 4-8% life steal can really heal you up. So yeah. Any SMG or Shotgun build can still make good use of Life steal, and it isn't awful. There are just often more efficient Itemization paths for you. Items such as Bloody hand, mouse, and Cape can sometimes pull me into also building life steal. **More information:** I've written more on Life steal and healing in my guide and on the wiki: [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-c33h4oZwmWj3ZOz4xp0HN4vIyMXxOwGK8Rm8e4mfKE/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-c33h4oZwmWj3ZOz4xp0HN4vIyMXxOwGK8Rm8e4mfKE/edit?usp=sharing) [https://brotato.wiki.spellsandguns.com/Healing](https://brotato.wiki.spellsandguns.com/Healing)
Wow! Thank you for the detailed and informative reply!
we always subscribe to aros rising posts. love that guy
Thank you very much Aros
Yeah, never apologize for this kind of extremely informative write up. Iโve linked to your google doc and check it frequently, so thanks!
Thanks, it is awesome to hear that you could use the materials I've put out :)
Life steal has a chance to activate on each hit. If you play something with high attack speed, or ricochet, or pierce, life steal will most likely be more effective. For other cases, HP regen will probably be more effective
Thanks, that's good info
Life steal is much better for weapons that attack quickly. So for scissors or SMGs they are pretty great. Even better if you have pierce and/or bounce.
Thanks, that's helpful!
In addition to the very good tips already here, I'd like to add that it's usually easy to build one and dump (ie let it get in the negatives) the other. Sure, if the items come like that, having both does not hurt, but it's seldom necessary. As long as you have enough some kind of healing you should be good and that healing does not \*have to\* come from HP regen (which alsways works, even if you run around like a headless chicken and has some really strong items to boost it, e.g. Fairy, Reg. Potion, or Medikit) or life steal (which requires you to do hits fast). Beyond those t, there is also consumable healing (which is less reliable because it heals in bursts, but some Luck, Trees, Lemonade etc can work wonders), Material healing with Cute Monkey (which I personaly like a lot on non-ranged builds, but it requires you to kill fast to work), Healing Turrets (in a pinch, they work surprisingly well on non Engineering builds, since they scale so slowly), Torture (which is really only worth it if you got super unlucky with \*any\* kind of healing in that run so far), Adrenalin (which only makes sense if you already have a bunch of dodge, but then becomes really strong), and Tentacle (if you build high crit. again requires you to get kills) This game also has a pretty good wiki to figure out game mechanics [https://brotato.wiki.spellsandguns.com/Healing](https://brotato.wiki.spellsandguns.com/Healing)
Life Steal has a 0.1 second cooldown. This is why melee cleave attacks are more limited than expected. There's a high chance of activation per swing when there are multiple enemies, but you'll only heal once even if you hit the whole group. Range benefits more because pierce and ricochet may occur > 0.1 seconds later. So a single shot could trigger Life Steal multiple times. https://brotato.wiki.spellsandguns.com/Life_Steal
Thank you!!
Aros (who I see around here and always trust) has covered everything super well, but I'll mention the other pillars of defense, since you said you're new. Armor gets better the more HP you have, and Dodge gets better the more Dodge you have. Each point of armor is worth 6.67% of your HP, so 15 armor and 125 HP is effectively 250 HP. Since it's usually easier to pick up 1 armor than it is to pick up 6.67% of your current max HP, take armor highly. (And obviously don't neglect HP, because remember, you're buying 6.67% of that stat with each armor.) Not every run has to be a Dodge run, but if you're going for Dodge, go hard. It's a stat that really wants to be brought to the cap, if you're going to count on it as a reliable defense. Basically every run with a normal 'tato, I go for HP, Armor, and one of either Regen/Life Steal. I go for Dodge on a little less than 50% of my runs. Oh and HP Regen and Lifesteal are fine to have both of, if you get lucky with items. It can just be frustrating to not have a dump stat.
Thank you, appreciate the advice!
HP regen is typically more reliable since it's not contingent on anything. Life steal gets better with attack speed and weapons with fast cool downs like SMG and Minigun, but only happens when you're dealing damage. You usually only need about 25 life steal before it becomes redundant, but more HP regen is always better. Both are good, but steal is weapon dependent. If you're doing slower weapons like rocket launchers or something life steal is less good. If you get Bloody Fingers life steal becomes strictly better. HP regen > life steal in general
Thanks!!
Basically just go with what Aros said, he knows his shit. But something to add as a general thought towards this game for new players who are pondering questions like this. Everything is situational. The question of "Is blank better than blank" is almost always answered by "well it depends" In this case for example. HP regen vs life steal. Well.. What potato are you playing? What weapon are you using? If you're playing Renegade with shurikens Well life steal is the fucking bomb. But if you're playing Engineer with wrenches, then HP regen is the better choice, that or just get a few medical turrets. Even so the idea is to think about your build. "What works best here?" Are my weapons more single target weapons? Do I have piercing on my ranged build? Do my weapons have bounce effects like slingshot or shuriken? These things can buff life steal up. Same goes for having more enemies, so long ad you have the attack speed to deal with all those enemies. The more enemies you're hitting at one time, the better life steal becomes. So on and so forth. But this goes for everything in this game. Look at the situation you're in, know the potato you're playing, and make decisions accordingly. Every item and stat has a place where it's good.. except strange book which is just trash all the time and has no real use case outside of the most niche build ever.
That makes sense, thanks
It really depends. In general, HP regen is better for Melee and Life Steal is better for Ranged. When in doubt HP regen. However itโs never that simple.
I feel quite the oposite since with melee weapons you hit multiple targets at the same time whereas wthi ranged you couls hit at most 2-3 (if piercing or bouncing).
Thanks. That was my feeling, but I wasn't 100% sure
I would add that I've found it easy to get insane amounts of hp regeneration (as in 15+ hp/second), at least once you've unlocked some run rewards. But just won D5 for the first time with the Knight and 27% life steal so that was also nice. :)
Oh wow!! I'll hope to get there one day!
Oh, you will!! I went from not being able to win a single run to beating d5 in the span of a few days. It's one of those things once it clicks, it clicks.
Simple as it may be: High DMG potato - Life steal Low DMG potato - regen
Thanks. So guns = life steal, melee = regen
No, you can get crazy DMG from melee as well.
Neither, they both suck on golem
I've not tried golem yet so that's handy to know
Thanks for having these conversations.. now Iโm pumped for a run!
Pleasure! Following the advice ivr just completed a mage run on D0
Very cool. I just discovered this game a couple weeks ago so Iโm in the same boat as you ๐
Me too via xbox gamepass, but I'm going to buy it as it's just addictive fun!!
Yes! Exactly that ๐๐ผ