Tainted Flesh

Tainted Flesh

Description: For 20-39 seconds, target ally is immune to Disease and anyone striking that ally in melee becomes Diseased for 3-13 seconds.

Energy Cost: 5

Casting Time: 1 seconds

Recharge Time:5 seconds

Skill Type: Enchantment Spell




This looks like a really powerful skill, and I was wondering if anyone has tried it out? How well does it work?

Thanks for any info.

Tainted Flesh is a Death Magic elite. As I tend to avoid Death Magic as a rule, and Death Magic elites as a specific rule, I can't recall having used it. However, it doesn't seem all that good to me. While it might work well, defending a target against Disease as well as harming anyone who might dare to attack them in melee for a long time for a low energy cost and a quick enough recharge that you can swiftly enchant your entire team. But you'll need to because Disease can infect both enemy and allied targets. If you're not careful inflicting Disease in the middle of a scrum will give some of your teammates that 4 pips of degen (that's 8DPS, by the way, for, at Death 12 at most 101 damage over 13 seconds.) and that's not a good thing. But that 4 pips of degen isn't really going to deter anyone from smacking a character around because it's not very threatening and can be removed via a number of anti-condition techniques. Disease is also a condition that's not spread around all that much. It's worse than Poison but it's not done by all that many skills and not many of those skls are really top notch in the first place.

It's an alright enough skill, I suppose, were it not elite. There are better elites out there to use instead. Granted, not in Death, but somewhere in your two professions there's got to be something else you can use more in that slot. Just another halfway decent skill made unplayable because of its elite status, really.

Disease spreads, which makes this a pretty unwieldly skill to use, plus it's elite which means it takes a backseat to something actually abusive.

If it wasn't elite it probably wouldn't be worth the effort. As Saus said, it's a somewhat interesting skill rendered useless by the elite mechanic.

Peace,
-CxE

I suppose the point of Tainted Flesh would be to buff up everyone in your party with it, which shouldn't be too hard given the 5 second recharge time, then to get in a big melee scrum and hope the other team can't snuff it out. Disease will spread, but not to you when you're protected from it.

Just how quickly does disease spread anyway?

Still, it's potentially giving anyone in melee 4 pips of degen as long as one of them keeps attacking you and a little bit beyond. Or, it's protection against the other team Diseasing. Neither option really thrills me, even if it weren't elite. Take some condition removal if you're worried about Disease. Or take a much more effective defensive buff if you're worried about the other team. And take Apply Poison and Epidemic if you really want to spread 4 pips of degen around...

Thanks for your opinions; I guess I'll find a different skill. Do you know of any "good" elite skills that cause negative pips?

Actually, if it matters, I was going to cast it on everyone except our warriors.


Also, though I'm not going to use Tainted Flesh now after your glowing review of it, I would still like some general information:

Do poison and disease now have the same number of degeneration arrows; I could have sworn poison was one less?

Disease can be spread just by the diseased person being right next to a "healthy" person, right? The diseased person doesn't have to melee the other person or anything?

Wither? Life Transfer, maybe?

I don't know. I'm not a big fan of of causing health degeneration as the endpoint of a strategy. Health degeneration maxes out at 20DPS so it's not so much getting there as it is getting there and then doing something *more* with direct damage. If you're really looking ot cause degeneration problems look at Malaise because denying energy is a lot better than denying health, in most caess.

That's probably what you *dont'* want to do. Your Warriors are going to be the ones who need to get closest to the enmey making them much moe likely to get Diseased than anyone else.

Nope, Disease is Poison everyone nearby can catch. They're both 4 pips. Bleeding's 3. Burning's 7.

Yep, that's about it. I'm unsure just how far "nearby" is but just standing near someone who's Diseased is going to get you Diseased yourself.

Well, I was trying to find one that could put negative arrows on more than one person at a time. I like your earlier idea of just using epidemic now though. Thanks for all of this info; you have been very helpful.


They are also the most likely to spread disease to a lot of the members of the other team as well when they do catch it.



I guess I'm off to make an epidemic build now...