Mana before Life

Mana before Life is a defensive technique that utilizes the The Agnostic and Mind Over Matter keystone passive skills. By using both keystone passives, a character's mana pool acts as both a source of effective hit points and a source of life recovery. The technique's effectiveness can be improved by additional sources of Damage is taken from Mana before Life and other modifiers related to increasing maximum mana or mana recovery. The strategy also synergizes well with builds that cast spells like Arc or Ball Lightning, especially those linked with Archmage Support.

Builds with large mana pools using The Agnostic can easily mitigate damage over time. For example, the resulting life recovery can completely counteract the damage from traps in the Labyrinth. Such builds will also strive for high mana regeneration and mana recovery, and may use Eternal Mana Flasks, even forgoing Eternal Life Flasks entirely.

Mechanics

Incoming damage that would be inflicted on the character's life is deducted from mana instead. If the character has insufficient mana, then the remainder of the damage will be taken from life.

Damage is applied to energy shield before life, and as a result there is no opportunity for any damage to be absorbed by mana.

Suppose you have 50% damage taken from Mana before Life, and you have 5000 life. If you have 5000 mana or higher, then a 10000 damage hit will deal you 5000 life damage and 5000 mana damage, hence your Effective hit points is 10000. However, if you have only 3000 mana, then an 8000 damage hit will deal you 5000 life damage and 3000 mana damage, hence your EHP is 8000.

When the passive skill Eldritch Battery is allocated energy shield protects mana instead of life. This energy shield will absorb the converted non-chaos damage before it is applied on mana. Since chaos damage bypasses energy shield the chaos damage will then be applied directly on mana.

It does not reduce total incoming damage or increase a player's actual life total, and so does not affect the threshold or effectiveness of stun and ailments applied to players.

Skill tree

Players can obtain 40-50% mana before life from skill tree passive nodes:

• Mind Over Matter - provides 30% of Damage is taken from Mana before Life
• The Agnostic - Allows rapid regeneration of life by draining a percentage of your unreserved mana
• Hierophant - Ascendancy Notable that grants an additional 8% of Damage is taken from Mana before Life
• Divine Guidance - Ascendancy Notable that grants an additional 10% of Damage is taken from Mana before Life

Useful items

Items

• Atziri's Foible - Provides both significant maximum mana and extremely high mana Regeneration

• The Aylardex - Grants 1% of Damage is taken from Mana before Life per Power Charge

• Mind of the Council - Grants 30% of Lightning Damage is taken from Mana before Life

Jewels

• Watcher's Eye with the mod (6-10)% of Damage taken from Mana before Life while affected by Clarity

Body armour

• Cloak of Defiance provides 10% of Damage is taken from Mana before Life
• Any Shaper body armour with (5-10)% of Damage is taken from Mana before Life, or its Elevated counterpart, (11-15)% of Damage is taken from Mana before Life

Related Mods

Damage taken Gained as Mana when Hit

If the character has equipped items with the x% of Damage taken Recouped as Mana modifier, this can help with maintaining mana. This mana gain is spread over 4 seconds following the hit. This modifier can be found on certain items and passive skills:

• Mindspiral
• Praxis
• Victario's Flight
• Any Warcry with Spirited Response
• Battle Rouse