A question about health stealing.

This thread is mostly to address monking versus health stealing; more specifically, blood magic. Why is it that there are absolutely no monk spells to counter it, or rather, why is it that health stealing completely ignores enchantments? Protective spirit, shield of absorption, and shielding hands all fail at lower the damage. To my knowledge, it is the only type of damage which evades it. What really ticks me off is that even Spirit Bond doesn't trigger upon taking damage, despite its description.

In my opinion, if nothing else, Spirit bond should trigger. It triggers for everything else that does ^ 60 damage, including skills which are neither attacks nor spells, like Shock, so why not life stealing spells and skills? Protection magic has a counter for everything except for this, except for maybe Zealous Benediction since the only possible way to counter it is to outheal it by pissing away energy. The monks that yearn for a Touch Ranger nerf should be pleased by the fact that they finally have a spell to ease the damage.

Is it rational for life stealing like blood magic to be unstoppable? Is my suggestions good or bad?

Your suggestion is bad. With the exception of Spoil Victor, life-stealing and life-loss is not very powerful, and Warrior/Elementalist damage can top it.

This post reeks of 55 monking as a long term goal.

But valid points as far as life stealing is concerned.

Scourge Sacrifice can hinder blood sacrificing but it can't stop it.

Zealous Benediction and obsoletion of boon prot made this a non-issue.

Touchers are just another build from the past, obsoleted and redundant.

Er...I don't 55 monk. I don't even farm anymore. I had pvp in mind with the suggestion.Just to make sure. Do you mean that the only way to balance the relatively low damage is to make it ignore every sort of protection, or just that my particular suggestion for spirit bond to trigger on it like it does for everything else is bad?

This is about life stealing. Not life sacrificing. I don't understand your point.ZB was mentioned.
Technically boon prot too-see "pissing away energy".

Zealous benediction is a free heal. If you choose to go /E, then it even returns 20 energy in a few seconds.

Touchers are a non-issue, and by now just about everyone know to kite if they get one, and others gank them.

The one and only reason touchers did somewhat well, was because boon-prot, as the staple monk build, was unable to outheal their damage in typical random arena circumstances.

With monking builds now this is irrelevant, since even prots can easily outheal without sacrificing energy. Even if the person isn't kiting.

Even if you don't go ZB, you can always bring gift in any prot build.

'unstoppable' is debatable. After all, a Shadow Strike can be interrupted. A vampiric weapon carrier can be blinded.

Lifestealing has very specific characteristics, like you mentioned. I think it adds another level of complexity to GuildWars, and welcome it. Personally, it doesn't feel overpowered to me, I haven't noticed anything with lifestealing that made me ponder if things went bad.

As for touch ranger, there is now the paragon shout 'don't touch this', but that is of course not a very practical solution. A better solution is a very simple one: run.
Also Diversion, snares work wonders on touch rangers.

Hope this helped.

Good points. I concede, touch rangers aren't too much of an issue with this.
However, I still think spirit bond should obey its description and activate

Spirit Bond obeys its description to the letter. It specifically says "damage", and neither life-steal or life loss are damage.

I meant that the damage couldn't be stopped. Not the skills that do it. Pointed noted, though.The damage doesn't feel overpowered to me either. It just urks me that there is no...thorough? protective counter for it except straight healing.

Yep, it's helped.

Oh. I never thought about it that way. That sucks xD
Everything makes sense now, thank you

life stealing = get X health from a target and put that X health to your health bar.

damage = remove X health from your target.

isn't that hard to understand?

Your explanation is terrible next to kakumei's. Get could easily be replaced by remove too.

"get" is unidirectional (towards you). "remove" is not. (you may leave it in one area, sideways, towards you, w/e).

The direction it heads isn't important.
I understood when he mentioned life loss next to life steal. Which direction does life loss go?

Its called LIFE STEALING for a reason, it steals life.... how can you counter it?

Life stealing isn't damage. Asking why shield of absorption doesn't trigger on vamp gaze is like asking why it doesn't stop degen.

Your explanation was pretty poor TCjr, saying get and then put implies that you heal twice the stolen life.

So far I think Alleji put it best.