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.

Life Stealing ignoring Prot is the only reason it's of any real value in the first place.

Peace,
-CxE

The big red numbers above my head when I get hit with a weapon indicate damage, correct? Degen is a slow loss of life, while lifestealing is, surprise, a big red number floating above my head that indicates that i've been hit with somethign that has decreased my life in a single chunk.

Saying that lifestealing isn't damage is a cheap way of making it special. it ignores armor like some damage does, but how is losing x amount of health from lifesteal any different from losing that same amount of health from energy surge or any other armor-ignoring spell? The end result is thesame: we lose x health, so why does protective spirit lessen one, and not the other?

My main problem is that lifestealing is one of the very few things that the protection prayers line cannot actively protect against. Healing prayers can outheal most forms of lifestealing, but protection prayers has no effective way of dealing with it.

Since it's not "damage," is it safe to assume that bosses in Cantha and Elona do NOT do double lifesteal numbers? Is anyone willing to bet that they don', and that a vampiric gaze from a boss hurts twice as much as from any other source?