Aura of the Lich details examined

Quote: Aura of the Lich (Enchantment Spell) For 24..53 seconds, your maximum Health is halved, but you take half damage and half healing from all sources. When Aura of the Lich ends, you're healed for 50..202 Health. Death magic ELITE. When AotL says it causes half healing, it is wrong since all healing works fine. What IS cut in half are skills that give you extra max health, like Demon Flesh and Fertile Seasons. So if you have 500 health and cast AotL, you are down to 250. With a Demon Flesh cast that gives +200 health (cast before or after AotL, it doesn't matter), you end up not with 450 health but with 350. Health stealing, casting or regen gives you the exact amount expected.

With this in mind, here is a summary of the effects under AotL:

- Healing, whether regen or insta-casts, are always applied for 100% of the values indicated
- Sacrifice percentages are always 1/4th damage to you of the value indicated
- Instant damage inflicted (whether by your sacrifice or incoming attacks) is always 1/2 of the value indicated
- Degen hexes and conditions are always applied for 100% of the values indicated

So, let's say you begin your build with Aura of the Lich. At 500 health, you now have 250 health to work with. The biggest benefit is when using a sacrifice build by FAR, or you likely do not want this elite. Yes normal damage is cut in half, but you are running around with half health! No net benefit comes as a result besides the +200 health bonus after 60 seconds when AotL ends. Since degen is not affected, being at 250 health means that you begin closer to death where degens are the most harmful to you.

So what about percentage sacrificing? Spending only 25% of the sacrifice damage listed is awesome, but don't do it without being able to counter the effects of degen with other skills. Life Transfer would be perfect if not for the fact it's also an elite. You must get it from other sources, starting with Blood Renewal and Life Siphon as top candidates.

BR costs you only 8% of your current health under AotL (20 from a 500 point build reduced to AotL 250). For that 20 health donation, you get +3 regen and 160-200 health after 10 seconds (L12-L16 Blood). Combined with Life Siphon's constant, long lasting -3, you get that 20 health back in two seconds and are protected against up to -6E of degen. Add Life Siphon to another foe (recharges in two seconds) and you can be at +9 regen (with 200 point health bonus every 10 seconds) for up to 25 seconds at a time when you keep recasting BR.

Another angle for minimizing sacrifice damage is to concentrate on stealing what you need. Vampiric Gaze and Vampiric Touch give you 60/72 respectively at L12 stats - more with enhancements. The recharge is decent, so you can use them as alternates or even additional health stabilizers in your battles. So what about inflicting serious damage to the enemy? The most consistently solid damage you can inflict with sacrifices use Dark Aura with Dark Pact. Everything else is just bonus to speed up the pain.

Quote: Dark Aura (Enchantment Spell) For 30 seconds, whenever target ally sacrifices Health, Dark Aura deals 5..41 shadow damage to adjacent enemies, and you lose 5..17 Health. 10E/1C/10R - Death Magic

just one thing in the begining... how did you get that 450 right on the begining of the post?

also... I suggest people consider this skill to in solo PvE.

Let's say you are a 500/500 player and you use Blood L15 Demon Flesh with Aura of the Lich. That skill gives you an extra +200 max health with L15 stats. So Aura of the Lich takes you to 250/250 health. You cast Demon Flesh (before or after doesn't matter) and instead of giving you the +200, it only gives you +100 under AotL. You are now at 350/350. Actually you would be at 300/350 because it will need to take 20% sacrifice first.

After you regen that 20%, your max health will be 350/350 for 60 seconds. When Aura of the Lich ends after a minute, you get around 202 bonus health at L12 Death Magic. Demon Flesh also gives you 200 after a minute. During that minute, you are supposed to attack with your sacrifices to take advantage of the reduction in cost. Just watch out for degens and run if you are double teamed. You can easily recast later if you need to.

Why not use Demon Flesh and sacrifice with 700 health? Because every sacrifice will be 100% of the cost. Touch of Agony at L15 Blood Magic will do 58 damage, and L12 Dark Aura adds 41 damage for a nice total of 99 damage each cast. But the DA damage to YOU is a full 17 (not 8), and the 10% cost of ToA will be 70 (not 17). It costs 87 a cast without AotL (about 7 uses) instead of 25 a cast with it on you (about 14 uses). Your health is cut in half under AotL, but sacrifice skills are not nearly as harmful.
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EDIT:
Wow, I have to say that Blood Renewal in a Dark Aura/Aura of the Lich build is absolutely fantastic. Yes it costs 33% to cast, but while on a 500/500 player it's 165 point sacrifice (or .33*500), under AotL, that comes to only (.33*250)/2= 41 points.

If you do this near an enemy while under Dark Aura, it damages them as a DA trigger. You now have +3 regen, but after 10 seconds of DP and ToA spamming, all that damage to yourself (and from others) will heal for 200+ as I said above. In an actual battle, this is a GREAT thing because it instantly takes you to "full" health (250/250)!

In other words, you never have to worry about sacrificing too much with the attack skills without enough heals because Blood Renewal will always keep you VERY healthy. It's a fast cast and only 5E. Use it ONLY under AotL, but once you have it on, BR works so well it should be essential to any AotL build.

You want to kill with a Necro like all those other power builds? Run this:


Blood Magic - 16
Death Magic - 12
(the rest on whatever)

Aura of the Lich
Dark Aura
Blood Renewal
Touch of Agony
Dark Pact
Rez
(any two defensive skills)

Here you are doing like 102 or 92 damage each ToA and DP cast. That's about a cast a every other second by the way, and you are constantly being repaired as you attack. The kills are great, but I'm amazed at how much health it supports you with. Make sure to use Blood Renewal with AotL.

The only problem with this is that aotl is an enchantment with 3secs casting time. Which is ok, cause you cast it like a couple secs before the battle starts, but then someone will always drop NR and the enchantment will be removed so the whole build will become useless.

Aotl is a very useful skill when combined with sacrificial skills. But till we see less NR casted, it is useless for gvg/tombs.

I've only spoke of this skill as it relates to my experiences in Arenas and said so from the beginning. Whenever Tombs are in play, it's a whole different discussion for nearly any skill. In the times where NR has been on the field... yes the fact that it disables AotL immediately is a concern since it takes a long while to recharge.

With that in mind, I don't usually cast it early anyway, to maximize its benefits when I'm ready to attack. 6 seconds to put it on under NR can seem problematic, but it's only a second longer than the Ranger out there spamming spirits. Once you get it up, the other enchants are quick to put on, and you are ready to go to work.

I won't try to pretend that this is an answer to solve any Spirit build problems, but obviously that strategy screws up lots of builds. Similarly, I find that Spirit builds go down quick in random Arenas, since the team isn't built around it. But all of this is another topic altogether in figuring out how to get around the restrictions that NR brings to the fight. This is just a lot of fact finding here about how this skill actually works.

Here's a big question on this skill: AotL reduces damage you recieve by half. Does that reduction come before or after armor and absorption runes take effect?

Example:

I have a Warrior/Necro with Knight's armor on and a major absorption rune.

Let's say my W/N takes a hit from a Bladed Aatxe in UW for 100 damage.

Armor and absorption reduction without AotL
100 x 2^(( 60 - (80 + 10 vs. physical) ) / 40) = 59.46 damage -2(knights) -2(absorption) = 55 damage to my W/N

Now, which of the following equations is correct for AotL?

AotL applied first
(100/2 for AotL) x 2^(( 60 - (80 + 10 vs. physical) ) / 40) = 29.73 damage -2(knights) -2(absorption) = 26 damage to my W/N

AotL applied after
100 x 2^(( 60 - (80 + 10 vs. physical) ) / 40) = 59.46 damage -2(knights) -2(absorption) = 55.46 damage / 2 for AotL = 28 damage to my W/N

The difference of 2 damage isn't that big a deal when an Aatxe only does a 100 damage hit, but I've seen them do upwards of 250 damage after armor when they score criticals and that could mean a much larger difference here. Especially if a it's not a warrior being hit.

Does anyone know when AotL reduction is applied?

Bump. I still need an answer to the question I posed in my last post. ^

Sorry amigo, I don't have Warrior gear to test it for you. I'll try and save up for it and test it when I can.

Blood Renewal's new +6 max regen since the patch, along with the NR nerf, makes AotL a very potent elite to build around. Here is some info on how strong it makes you on defense....

Under AotL you are always under BR if you wish. Slap a +20% enechant mod on your gear to make BR last 12 seconds. You still recharge in 10 so when you re-cast it, the game "remembers" your old BR and still gives you the 200 point bonus in a few seconds while you are under +6 regen. Even without the enchant extender, it is nothing to re-cast BR since it is 5E, takes 1 second to come out, and only takes 8.3% of a sacrifice. (33%/4)

Blood Renewal at max on you now is like having an effective +12 regen. ou are at 50% max health inder AotL, but regen and degen are not affected by AotL. That means regen is double in worth (an effective max +20 regen) and degen is double in penalty (an effective max -20 degen)... you will die twice as fast with degen on your AotL build than you would at 100% max health because you start halfway closer to death. Look at the speed of life lost on the two builds to see -10 degen moves twice as fast towards your death than on a non-AotL build for proof. On a normal build, degen can only move that fast if you could get a -20 degen on you (which is impossible).

So regen from BR gets you back up towards your AotL-lowered max health twice as fast than without AotL, or an effective +12 regen if you didn't have this elite. It's impossible to get +12 regen in a normal build, but you get that effective speed on your health bar in regen under AotL. Conjure Phantom is -5 degen in a normal build, but on an AotL build it acts as if you were at -10 degen... that's why you die quicker only by degen since all other damage is in half to your reduced max health.

So if they put CP (-5 degen), Phantom Pain (-3 degen) and Suffering on you (-2 degen) then on a normal build you are losing health at -10 speed, but under AotL, the health bar will degen at a simulated -20 degen.... VERY fast. You counter it with Blood Renewal (which acts like +12 regen) until 10 seconds are up and you get a health bonus of +200, which is an effictive +400 health under AotL.

Why do I say an effictive 400 HP bonus? The 200 point bonus that Blood Renewal and AotL give is like 400 points health without AotL. If you are at 10% health left on a normal 500 point build, you are at 50/500. If you are at 10% health left under AotL, you are at 25/250. Now, when you get a 200 health bonus from one of those skills mentioned, the normal build jumps up to 250/500. But when you get that 200 bonus for the AotL build, you jump to 225/250 (actually 200/200). With one build you are left with 50% current health, the other you are at 100% health.

To get up to full health on the normal build, you actually have to recive a 400+ HP bonus since 200 is not enough. That's why I say you're getting an effective 400 HP in AotL because you jump up to max health so easily. "But your max health is only 250!" some would say. That is NOT an issue to have half max health because you only receive half-damage from all sources! That means if a Warrior combo takes ten hits to kill you in a 500 point build, the half damage rule makes him take the exact same ten hits to kill you in a 250 point AotL build.

You aren't dying faster by anything under AotL except degen because it moves at double the degen speed (effective -20 max degen) on your health bar than if you were in a normal build as described above, which is easily countered with the effective +12 regen of BR plus the effective +400 extra health at the end. If your team has the rezzes covered, take Life Siphon and say hello to an effective +18 regen when also using BR under AotL for more invulnerability to degen.

Another penalty to keep in mind is that sacrifices do an effective half damage to you under AotL than without it. Imagine a 500 health bar.... you take 316 damage from a Air Ele combo before he dies and are at 184 life left. That's about a 37% length of the health bar remaining (184/500), right? Under AotL, you will only take half of that damage... 158. But since you are at half max life to begin with (250 max health to start), your life bar will still be 37% long and be at 92 health remaining. That's the exact same ratio, right? The AotL version is literally closer to 0 health, but he won't die faster from normal attack damage because that always hits him half as hard.

You turn on Blood Renewal in both examples. Normal build A takes a 33% damage of max health (165 is 33% of 500). He goes from 184 to 19 health immediately. That's only 4% of life left! He is regening at +6, which is 12 health a second. That's 120 health in regen he'll get for 139 total (he's at 28% max life), and then a bonus 200 as BR ends. In this example he starts at 184 life after the damage, he loses 165, then he regains 320 to be at 329/500 health after 10 seconds of casting BR. Risky, but he is in better shape. He was at 37% of max health after the damage, now he is at 68% max health.

Now let's look at AotL Build B. He also is at 37% health left after the Air Ele combo... 92/250 are the current/max health values. But AotL grants a 50% reduction in sacrifices, making the -33% Blood Renewal cast hurt half as hard than the normal build. Instead of losing 33% of 250 (or 82 hitpoints) taking you to 4% health at 10 HP, you lose only half that which is 41. You now have 51 health left, which is 8% life.

You are regening life at a +6 rate. That again comes to +12 every second, or +120 health after ten seconds. But the difference is that this healing isn't reduced, so you go from 51 health to 171/250 health (67%!) where above you went from 19 health to 139/500 health (or 28% health left). Again that's why the regen acts like +12 because in a normal build, only a +12 regen would leave you well over half of your life this way.

Of course you still have the 200 point bonus coming, and under AotL it is not reduced. So in Build A, the normal one, you go from 139 health after the regen to 339/500 (68% of max health). In AotL Build B, you go from 171/250 health (67%) up to an impossible 371/250 that drops to 250/250. You are at full AotL health with ease. And that ele has to start all over to hurt you. 339/500 normal build vs. 250/250 AotL recieving half damage from all sources... can you see how awesome this is without a Monk needing to help?

If the Air Ele rezzes and attacks both builds again, the first normal build goes to 20/500 HP! A Blood Renewal cast will take him to 1 HP because sacrifices don't kill you unless you have Awaken the Blood on. He's an easy kill unless he can survive for 10 seconds where he'll be at 321/500 health. The AotL build however is again at 92/250 after a BR cast and will zip right back to 250/250 in no time.

Hopefully the details and "effective" numbers talk don't confuse you. Just check it out yourself and you'll be impressed. This is the version I run now in Arenas, with defense that help protect me vs. Rangers, Warriors, Necros, and Mesmers:

=================
Blood Magic - 16
Death Magic - 12
Illusion - 4
Soul Reaping - 3
Domination - 5

Aura of the Lich
Dark Aura
Blood Renewal
Touch of Agony
Dark Pact
Rez
Distortion
Hex Breaker
=================

EDIT: Don't mind me... I replied to someone who's post is now gone... d'oh...

actually that you only sacrify 1/4 is wrong, it has always been right, there was never a bugg. The Values showed that you sacrifice stand for you full health, without AoTL, but as you have AoTL on, they have to divide it for sure, so you only take 1/2 of it, which is correct to your current health.
So there is no realy advantage using AoTL, except from the fact that your gettin healed at the end, and to be honest, you must be very lucky that AoTL ends when you need the healing, because normally it ends when you dont need it.

one thing most people are forgeting is sac life is dmg delt to you. so you have your max life cut in half. then the sac life dmg is cut in half when you use the skill.

AoTL does alot more than most people think. n/mo with blood renewal, breeze and sac life skills really benifit from AoTL.

PSST! dont tell!
actually you even can get way more out of AoTL, its all about Percentages and Damage Numbers cut in half taken to the squad and divided by 3, but dont tell anybody, it has to stay a secret, if anyone would bring that equation to the public it could lead to a mass spamming of nuclear weapons and destroy the western civilisation.

So lets stop talking in this thread, and active our Nano-Communication-System. If you give me your frequency, I'll ring you.

AoTL is, as people said, very good/bad to pips of regen/degen, but things like shielding hands is actually twice more effective. its an interesting spell, but im not sure its all that usefull in tombs. if it werent elite i would give it alot more thought, but as it stands i see many more usefull elites for necros >.<

Quote: Originally Posted by Dont Look At My

My Necro tanks with 190 health!

I've been working on an AWESOME AotL build for the last week. This build is really a lot of fun to play as it combines two of the Necros many talents. You take one splash of the AotL sacrifice attack spamming I've been praising here, and then mix it with a Minion Animate skill. Tadaaa! You have a playmate (or two) that is available to you as you fight. But the absolute beauty of this ability is when you add an overlooked skill in the Blood line called Dark Bond:

Quote: Dark Bond - For the next 30..54 [62] seconds, whenever you receive damage, your closest minion suffers 75% of that damage for you. Now, this skill used to be "eh" because before the update it only reduced physical damage. Now that it reduces all damage (instead of degen), this skill is absolutely INSANE with AotL! Here's my build that I've been using:

==========================
Necro/?

Blood: 15
Death: 14
Soul Reaping: 11

(Dual Superior runes)

Aura of the Lich: 58 secs and 227 bonus at the end
Blood Renewal: +6 regen, 190 bonus at the end, 33% sacrifice (half under AotL)
Dark Aura: -19 health for an extra 47 sacrifice damage in-close
Dark Bond: 60 sec. of pain diverting
Dark Pact: 48 damage, 10% sacrifice (half under AotL)
Touch of Agony: 58 damage, 10% sacrifice (half under AotL)
Animate Bone Minions: twice the fun!
Rez (or Death Nova if your team has rezzes covered)
============================

I was using double Superior runes here because I wanted maximum carnage as I attacked my prey (works fine with normal runes though). This gives you awesome damage from the sacrifice attacks AND Dark Aura's bonus. What about the low max health? Well it's really not that hard on you with AotL because the health bonuses have a stronger effect on your total health while sacrifices do less damage. And when you get a minion up, then you really forget about that low max health. I am able to tank with 190 health!

- Cast AotL... the 380 health goes to 190.
- Cast Blood Renewal
- Cast Dark Aura
- Attack with DP and ToA, using BR everytime it recharges
- Cast Animate BM when someone dies
- Immediately cast Dark Bond

Everytime you are hit, 75% of the damage goes to the minion closest to you. The reason why I say this build is so awesome is because you already take only HALF damage under AotL! So instead of a minion getting 75% damage and dying fast, they take half of that amount and live. I use Bone Minions because you get two of them, and when I tanked with this build I tanked. As long as I had Dark Bond and Blood Renewal going I was near unstoppable.

In one match I was the last player left against three hammer/axe Warriors and it took them MUCH longer than normal for them to kill me. A few were even cursing saying I was cheating (I had no Monk secondary that he could see he said ).

You aren't invincible, but sometimes you feel like you are. And the more you tank, the more you kill. The more you kill, the more damage absorbers you can animate. With high Soul Reaping, I was fine for energy most times. Sure, enchants can run out/be stripped, but you recover and clear the area to "recharge" when you can, then back to the action! Most enchant strips so far only take away my Blood Renewal, which comes back up in no time. Not many enemies waste Rend or Lingering on an innocent Nec it seems. Try it for yourself and it'll remind you why you love being a Necro!

damn it ... I knew it would come out some time.
In fact your build is cool arredondo, but what do you do, if theres noone of the ennemies who will die. So lets just get it, that the ennemi team focusses on you. You have no 75% removed and you will die really quickly.
And if they are a bit intelligent, they go on your minions, if you have like 5 of them left.

So nothing against your build, its good, but try to swap that skills for a few monkie ones, it makes a big difference.
Just as example with healing: 8
Mending + Watchful spirit = +5life regen
+blood renewal = +10 life regen

thats quite funny ^^

I don't die. I have Blood renewal at +6 regen with 190 bonus health (acts like +12 regen and a 380 point bonus when under AotL). Believe me when I say I can play fine in between enchants.

hey they changed it on you; new update.

Less filling but still tastes great.

Quote: Aura of the Lich – Decreased Energy to 10; decreased casting time to 2 seconds; decreased recharge to 20; decreased duration to 15..45; removed “half healing” from description. The biggest loss is about 15 seconds less of AotL goodness. Other than that, it's better. The decrease in cast time is worth the nerf alone. It's always nice to get cheaper casts, but the recharge issue only makes it better vs. the new Rend Enchants since AotL was always buried too far to be removed by single enchant strips. The elite still ownz.

Hey fellow AotL Minion Dark Bonders! I want to try out my newest AotL build idea above in Tombs this weekend (maybe Sunday, 6:00 PM PST). I'll need at least six others with the same build to go in too (you can use normal runes)... who's with me? Send me a PM or leave your IGN here and I'll contact you. Win or lose it should be a lot of fun!

Please only reply if you have good experience with AotL in general. It's not something that can work well if you've just picked it up.