With VP being nerfed, I was wondering how spells like DP or BV are going to be used. Since the only combo for them to be viable was VP+Warlord/Zerker leech It's pretty sad that most of the leech on the tree is only for attacks and not spells.
At the same time in most RPGs, Mages have superior dps to melee/bows at the cost of not being able to leech. As per usual stereotype, Mage - high dps/CC/AoE, Warrior - tank with leech, Rogue - high single target dps but squishy.
In PoE, I can buy a unique weapon like Wasp Nest or Dyadus and easily reach 1 million Shaper dps with something like a Blade Flurry or Molten Strike on a 10ex budget, along with great sustain and survivability. You also have wanders obliterating entire screens in mili-seconds with just Piscator's, or totem builds for great clear and safe bossing at the same time.
Majority of self cast spells cannot achieve those feats, some are safer but actual dps is low (ED), a lot of them have long casting times or are channeled, reducing your survivability by a lot, or lack area/range/coverage to obliterate screens at the same speed as attack builds, who also have easy access to leech.
I personally didn't use spell echo linked to my DP char this league, but that would mean I could cast it "once" in two seconds, which is far too slow to be any sort of enjoyable. Glacial Hammer is faster at that point, especially against bosses, which seems to be an ignored point here.
Add in some life leech, maybe some flasking, maybe some more regen nodes, and more than one self-cast a second is still viable.
So if we say that you can get 1.5 casts in a second, now we're getting past the point of what the build feels like when you're chilled + temp chains and now we're only chilled. Feels better, but anything feels better at this point.
And if we're looking at the amount of investment that you didn't have before, you're now taking regen nodes and devoting more to defenses than you did in the past. The most you can get on the tree is something like 12.1% or so? That is in 14 nodes, as well. And that's not including the nodes that you travel to pick up said life regen, which takes away from the damage nodes that you pick up. (Though DP could scale damage by scaling health, which was a very nice plus).
The more you devote to defenses to get the build running, the less you can devote to damage, which slows the build down, and pushes down the viability. So now you have a build that moves slower, does less damage, and feels worse than before, and your other option is to slow it down further by throwing another spell (cast skellies) into the mix. It just seems like you're ignoring what's happening to the skills and arguing that everything will go back to the way it was; we already know that's not going to happen.
For me, the changes don't bother me, because I'll just do a wander or a bow build if I wanna keep that speed up without sacrificing damage, and now VP is basically on the way for me, which is dope. But I'm not gonna pretend like DP is suddenly still as viable as it was before.