Blood Mage Dominance, Ascendancy Power, and Lich

With Blood Mage's Sanguimancy ascendancy node being mandatory in recent patches, it's no wonder that it's the most played, strongest, and dominant ascendancy the game currently offers.

It provides upsides and downsides; skills gain life costs, but you get to restore that health back by actively hitting enemies and collecting life remnants, thus encouraging active, risk-and-reward gameplay.

This kind of power is thematically fitting for a Blood Mage while being transformative to how a character plays. All other ascendancies don't get such transformative skills or bonuses. Not off the bat or without significant investment, at least.

Instead of nerfing Blood Mage, I'd encourage GGG to look into giving all other ascendancies required skills or nodes (with upsides and downsides in PoE 2 balancing fashion) that are transformative and thematically fitting for that particular ascendancy.

While we're on the topic of ascendancies, I'm a huge Lich enjoyer. I think the cookie-cutter build that GGG pushes right at the very beginning of the game utilizing both Chaos spells (EDC) and minions is heavily underrated and under-played. Why that is, I couldn't say.

However, as it stands, I believe Lich is rather boring and limited. Necromantic Conduit is a great damage boost node for minions and Liches alike, but the (boring) passive 5% mana drain is too oppressive if you want to invest into MoM, Eldritch Battery, and/or mana stacking. Instead of passively draining a % of mana, how about increasing mana costs by a certain % up to a cap based on nearby allies? Thus, you aren't severely cucking MoM setups with its 50% less mana recovery rate downside.

There is nothing you can do to scale defensively while being a mana stacking Lich. (I understand that stacking hella mana regeneration is a form of defensive scaling, but this is essentially negated by Necromantic Conduit + MoM.) Which, fair enough, would be problematic given how much power Blackened Heart and Arcane Intensity would give you with this setup.

The only defensive option is Soulless Form and Eternal Life. But I'm a Lich; I don't exactly care about life. I want to care about ES and mana. I would gladly trade the power that mana stacking + Arcane Intensity + Blackened Heart gives in exchange for defensive scaling with mana besides MoM + mana regeneration.

Hope both BM and Lich sees nerfs

Blood Mage is definitely, in its current form, one of, if not the best designed ascendancy. Agreed with everything you mention. It transforms gameplay. It provides tremendous benefits. It feels fitting Blood theme. More ascendancies should be like Blood Mage.

While nerfs are certainly possible I hope GGG will instead opt to rework / buff other ascendancies, not just by the numbers, but by how they could transform gameplay and provide thematically fitting benefits.

I still remember that feeling when I rolled the improved Blood Mage for the first time, and as soon as I finished Trial of Sekhemas the entire gameplay feel totally changed. I felt much more powerful and had to immediately start playing around blood remnants as to stay alive. This feeling is missing from 90% of other Ascendancies.