Health Degeneration?

I'm having a little trouble understanding health degeneration. Say I use Illusionary Phantasm and my target suffers a health degeneration of 5 for 10 seconds. Does that mean that my target only loses 50 health total? And if so, why is that spell so popular?

Nope doesn't mean that. A couple of necro blood skills give you health degen as well. Mine has been a 2 for like 20 seconds a while, and at upper levels is still causing them to loose like half their health.

Not sure how the formula works, but it seems based on the health of the creature you're targetting, and not 2 health points.

yes it means 50 HP total. a degen of 5 a second for 10 seconds = 50 total.

and they are a debuffer spell not meant to kill only weaken so they are killed more easitly by your teammates.

No it doesn't mean that. A degen of 5 means 5 arrows to the left on the health bar. 1 arrow of health degen/regen is 2 health per second, so a degen of 5 for 10 seconds means a total of 100 health lost.

This is correct. 100 health. Even better. Life stealing and life degen skills stack.
I'm a Ele/nec and I can have upto 20 arrows of degen on my target by setting them on fire, life transfer (e) and life siphon. Thats 40 health a second. mwahaha

Oh. And it ignores armour.

I thought it only stack up to 10 arrows for degen/regen.

Hmm. Not too sure about that. You could be right. I've just added up the totall number of arrows my skills say.

Either way, even if it is 10 maximum that causes a scary amount of degeneratin if not caught fast. :-o

As I found out the other day, the cap for degen/regen is worked out after all the effects the target has on it.

So, for example, in your case, with the 20 arrows of degen on the target, then it would actually be 10.

However, if they had healing breeze cast on them, (9 regen) it would still be 10 degen, because -20+9 is -11 capped to -10.

It's why my Mending using wa/mo suffered so horribly at the hands of the *cough*

Hm I thought it was 5 x 10 = 50!

Maybe I should redistribute my e/me to air/illusion and use that Conjure Phantasm heh...

I'll give a try later, by now I have few illusion skills that are worthy to equip apart from Conjure Phantasm and Arcane Echo

BTW, I'm sure it has been answered before, but since I am spanish can't figure what terms to search for...

The range in the skills, for example

Imagined Burden - Hex Spell
For 8-18 seconds, target foe moves 50% slower than normal.

In 8-18, is 8 for having 1 attribute level ? and the 18 works for how much ?

Sorry for my phrase constructions btw...

the ...18 is when you have level 12 of that attribute, so you can actually get much more by having higher levels.