What does Death Link do?

Saska - Lost City

Cuz i still havent noticed what is this for?

Lywllian - Sanctuary

It transfers a portion of the damage you take to the targeted person/mob. It will not transfer and damage from the person/mob you targeted, so no luck on having our own psuedo-bramble. One thing i did notice is that if you're in a squad, you can cast it on a squad member, even if you and they are blue-named. Thus I imagine it could be used to spread out damage a bit more, if you have agro and can't tank a boss effectively, but that's kinda pointless imo, because of the short duration. I'm not sure exactly how they thought it could be used, but it seems roughly useless to me.

_Perses_ - Lost City

Lywllian - Sanctuary wrote: »

It transfers a portion of the damage you take to the targeted person/mob. It will not transfer and damage from the person/mob you targeted, so no luck on having our own psuedo-bramble. One thing i did notice is that if you're in a squad, you can cast it on a squad member, even if you and they are blue-named. Thus I imagine it could be used to spread out damage a bit more, if you have agro and can't tank a boss effectively, but that's kinda pointless imo, because of the short duration. I'm not sure exactly how they thought it could be used, but it seems roughly useless to me.

I could imagine it be used when some bosses do a single target "one-shot" type skill they have, and say you have a decently geared barb with hp to pack...just death link to him and share some of the damage to avoid yourself getting 1-shot.

Cut_Bait - Heavens Tear

Lywllian - Sanctuary wrote: »

It transfers a portion of the damage you take to the targeted person/mob. It will not transfer and damage from the person/mob you targeted, so no luck on having our own psuedo-bramble. One thing i did notice is that if you're in a squad, you can cast it on a squad member, even if you and they are blue-named. Thus I imagine it could be used to spread out damage a bit more, if you have agro and can't tank a boss effectively, but that's kinda pointless imo, because of the short duration. I'm not sure exactly how they thought it could be used, but it seems roughly useless to me.

The way I interpreted this skill it applies more to AOE-type situations like in FF and fighting groups of mobs the damage taken from the "other" mobs will transfer to the targeted mob. I don't know this for a fact, but that is how it appears to me.

Has anyone tried this that can comment?

_Skai_ - Raging Tide

What I'm slightly confused on is this:

Does the skill transfer damage you take to the target, or does it just reflect it, sort of like a directed bramble.

For example: I normally take 1000 damage from a mob after damage/stat reductions. I cast this skill on my barb squadmate, and since I have 38k soulforce, let's assume 35% of the damage is sent to target.

Does that mean (theoretically) I take 650 damage while the barb takes 350, or I take the full 1000 damage, while he takes 350?

I am at work, so I cannot test this at the moment.

Lywllian - Sanctuary

Alrighty folks, here's some more data for y'all.
With 22932 soulforce, it looks like I reflect somewhere around 25% of the damage.
Dueling a 65 sword bm, he hit the following numbers on me:
121
138
159
124
164
118
121
154
158
125
Averaging to a damage of 138.2 per hit.

Using death link:
147
110
123
136
108
138
116
138
134
105
Averaging to a damage of 125.5 per hit

Thus the I took roughly 9% less damage while using death link; however this was only a quick test, and given that the damage reflected onto the mob was almost exactly 25% and that Death link reflects 15% at minimum, we come to the disappointing conclusion that no, Death Link does not reduce the damage that you take.

However, Death Link does seem to work in much the same way that bramble guard/soul of vengeance does: the reflected damage that counts as coming from you (generates agro).
Also it appears to use your crit rate, and the damage it 'reflects' can crit (which makes sense).
In addition (unlike bramble, but like soul of vengeance) it will reflect ranged damage.

tl;dr
Death Link shoots people when you get hit, works exactly like a directed bramble. It has no damage reduction effect attached to it.

Cinderball - Raging Tide

My test ended up showing the contrary. I equipped my cleric with a G3 npc wand using an IH + plume shot macro and dueled my sin and the results are as follows:
192
193
193
164
164
193

The two in red are hits done with death link being used on an NPC. My soul force is only 16,063 and the difference between 164 and 193 is a 15% reduction in the damage I took. Even with such a small data size, I'm confident that it transfers damage instead of simply reflecting it.

Here is a screenie if you prefer:
http://i41.tinypic.com/2j0bm1g.jpg

Lywllian - Sanctuary

Interesting....

I will admit that i really had been hoping that it would reduce damage. I will also admit that i didn't have access to any character who was within even 30 levels of me, so there's also the damage reduction from level difference worked into mine. How curious.

Another source of difference could be what you cast Death Link on. You said that you tested while casting it on an NPC? I was testing using the Ancient Sea Dragon down by City of Raging Tides.

Anyone else have data?

Deadalus - Harshlands

Just a wild thought i had reading the skill...

What happens, when:

You have a Friend and you two duell. Both of you are somewhat 80+ and hit decent.
Now you go to.. the Mines outside arch and duel there. you use Death Link on a Blue name and your Friend starts attacking the sin who just used the skill on a blue name.

CAN you KILL the Blue name with that?!?
I mean its just 20%~ damage you transfer but for a bluename its enough to kill it b:shutup

Cinderball - Raging Tide

The source of the damage wouldn't make any difference for testing the reduction in damage of the skill since that only relies on your own soulforce. What you use death link on also shouldn't matter for testing the reduction as long as the player/mob damage to you is constant or you have a large pool of data. I went with a low level wand on my cleric for constant damage to test with but in hindsight barehanded would work even better. I figured an npc would be best for testing since it wouldn't clog my damage log.

Its interesting that it crits though. I wonder how the reduction varies with increasing soulforce? My assumption so far is that it has similar properties to bramble. We will need multiple sets of damage data against a target to see how defenses modify the damage.

Edit, I've ironed out most of the details so far for the skill's reflect involving magical damage from the TT hands. They do the same damage every time unless magic defense changes so tests can done with only one sample for each.

1. The amount of attack/hunting levels modify the amount of damage reflected.

2. It appears that the skill transfers not only the damage but also the type of damage. (physical damage taken transfers as physical and magical damage transfers as magical) Have yet to test physical damage but from tests so far it seems very likely to be true for it as well.

3. The damage transferred does not rely on your own defenses but rather on the raw damage received before defenses kick in and is reduced by the enemy's defenses/level.

4. The reduction still works if used on a squad-mate but it did not harm my blue-named cleric at all.

5. Using it on an enemy while in stealth mode will not kick you out of stealth.


Red = actual damage Yellow = damage without crits + attack levels

Normal +65 attack levels 321330 /1.65 = 194745
http://i39.tinypic.com/1zp7j8h.jpg

Crit +30 attack levels and sage wolf emblem 556972 /1.3*2.2 = 194745
http://i44.tinypic.com/akwthl.jpg

lvl 10 tangling mire +65 attack levels (CotD applied after the fact) 321,330 /1.65 = 194,745
http://i39.tinypic.com/34xmdrb.jpg

Lvl 8 elemental seal +65 attack levels
http://i41.tinypic.com/165538.jpg 352,256 /1.65 = 213,489

lvl 10 vanguard +30 attack levels(CotD applied after the fact) 253,169 /1.3 = 194,745
http://i43.tinypic.com/3160y9l.jpg

level 10 magic shell +30 attack levels 253,169 /1.3 = 194,745
http://i43.tinypic.com/2gseuy8.jpg

buffed against blue-named cleric +65 attack levels... 0 = 0
http://i39.tinypic.com/m80dnt.jpg

Damage done to me with only 1 mdef 1,999,665
http://i39.tinypic.com/1i0jet.jpg

Damage done to me without Death Link activated 1,263,748
http://i39.tinypic.com/zlu5py.jpg

I ended up with a 15% raw reflect and a 15% reduction using these numbers and the formulas on pw wiki:
My Magic Defense = 3,481
My level = 101
TT hands level = 150
Raw dmg from hands(see pic above) = 2,000,000
Actual dmg from hands(see pics above) = 1,074,186
Ancient Runewolf Guard's Mdef = 2,170
Transferred dmg without attack levels = 194,745

My damage reduction against hands is 3,481/((40*150)+3,481-25) = 0.368126

Total damage taken before transfer was (picture above matches exactly) 2,000,000*(1-0.368126) = 1,263,748

Reduction from the transfer is 100*[1-(1,074,186/1,263,748)] = 15%

Runewolf's damage reduction is 2,170/((40*101)+2,170-25) = 0.350849

Raw damage to Runewolf is 194,765/(1-0.350849) = 300,000

Total transferred from the raw damage is 100*(300,000/2,000,000) = 15%


I honestly expected a higher transfer amount than the minimum even with my low 16,063 soul force.We need someone with 30k+ soul force to try something similar to get an idea of how the reduction/reflect scales.