Death link/chain explained.

WARNING: this post contains lots of letters to read b:shocked

Hey fellow assassins, since it's sunday and recent curiosity was brought to me and BloodyMorgan about the skill death link/chain, we decided to go ahead and run some tests since this skill seems to be deemed useless and not worth using / learning or whatever.

But the question is, is it really?

What we did is go outside of south archo and use the lvl 33 mob backstabbing scorpion. Why? well... why not, the results would ultimately mean the same thing if we were to target higher level mobs, the numbers would just be lower, but the increases the same, this mob would show the increases better in my opinion. Wether you agree or not is up to you, but we decided to test it there.

Now then, what did we find out:

Damage information:

Normal hit on me, crit on mob, both no emblem: 15457 average on mob

Normal hit on me, crit on mob, BloodyMorgan demon emblem, me no emblem: 15494 average on mob (no impact from BloodyMorgan using emblem)

Normal hit on me, crit on mob, BloodyMorgan no emblem, me lvl 10 emblem: 18020 average on mob (own emblem has impact)

Normal hit on me, crit on mob, both emblem (BloodyMorgan demon, me 10): 18317 average on mob

Normal hit on me, normal on mob, emblem only works with crit so pointless to mention: 7564 on mob

Miscellaneous information:

Death link/chain does reduce the damage you take yourself (it was said by Nymphali in an old thread that it doesn't).

Death link/chain can be purged.

Defensive stats (physical, magical and defense levels) have no impact on damage transferred. (using no gear actually decreased damage transferred due to soulforce)

Damage taken from DoT's does not transfer.

If linked player gets hit by a crit and mob receives crit as well, it does not increase the damage the mob takes, but it does increase damage player takes.
however, receiving a zerk hit does seem to increase the damage transferred to the mob (which is strange imo).

Genie skill tangling mire used on linked player has no use, since death link/chain does not take defense stats into consideration.
Using mire on mob doesn't increase damage mob receives either.

Genie skill EP used on linked player increases damage transferred to mob as well
Using ep on mob increases the damage as well on mob
In combination the damage would increase as well

Damage received from soulburn does not transfer damage.

Attacking an enemy that has SoV does not transfer reflected damage

Attack levels on attackers side seems to have no effect (using white voodoo -99 attack levels did the same damage as using black voodoo)

Own attack levels (aka using chill of the deep to increase) do have effect on damage transferred to the mob. (damage increased on mob while using chill of the deep)

Since there are so many possible situations to test (we didn't try venomancer's amplify damage, blademaster heaven's flame or archer's bloodvow) we decided to stop the tests at this (as it also started to get a tad boring to do it for hours)

However since the genie skill extreme poison increases damage taken (and also increases damage transferred to mob) we assume amplify damage and HF/BV will do the same as they do not mess with defensive stats, they purely increase the damage someone takes, as does EP. (This also counts for subsea strike as this is the same debuff as EP).

So lets come to a conclusion, which will probably be formed by my own opinion on the matter wether the skill is useful or not.

Conclusion:

On players, obviously, the damage transferred will be less, but it is still between 20 and 60% depending on your soulforce, so when is this skill REALLY viable? Most likely when you are an assassin with a ton of soulforce (read a sin with +10~12 gear)

However we can not ignore that this skill reduces damage taken as well, it's only 15 seconds, but it could come in handy in mass PvP (like hectic NW situations where you can get ganked, etc.) where you could link to... I don't know some high HP barb or BM or anything really.

So in the end, I do have to say that personally I think the skill is worth learning and using in particular situations:

• When you have to pull mobs, you can link to 1 mob and receive lower damage from other mobs (if you ever have to pull say... lunar or FC room or PV or anything like that)
• Mass PvP where you receive a lot of blows, pretty much for the same reason as above
• It hurts the target you're linked to while you receive lower damage yourself.

The downside of the skill would be that it costs 2 sparks... but those are, imo, easily gained back.

Note: the conclusion IS pretty much my opinion, you're free to have your own opinion about the usefulness of this skill, but it is what I conclude after testing it.

I would like to thank BloodyMorgan for testing this with me b:cute