Blackened Plate Armor & its Cycle of Decay - good or bad?

[cfleeton]

So, I cleared a certain island full of fampyrs and came away with a suit of Blackened Plate Armor.

 

It looks nice, but I can't make sense of its "Cycle of Decay" property ("all Damage heals for 25% instead of dealing damage with Decay / Poison / Disease attacks").

 

Does that mean it has no effect if the wearer isn't dealing decay/poison/disease attacks?

 

If I am using powers that deal those damage types, does it reduce my damage output?

[Boeroer]

I guess it heals you when you get hit by poison/decay/disease?

[HiddenWings]

Could be really great for a non-shifter druid who wants to be in melee for some reason. Keep in mind that if you use spiritshift you'll lose the armor's bonus.

[dunehunter]

Any classes has poison and disease attacks? Need sometime in keyword system I assume?

[Braven]

Any classes has poison and disease attacks? Need sometime in keyword system I assume?

 

Druid and wizard have at least a couple poison spells each.  Druid has a bunch of decay ones.  Not all poison attacks have the poison keyword, but they usually have the countered by antidote text.

 

I imagine this armor would combo well with Alchemy since that skill increases Poison Power Level by one for each point... you could have around 25 poison PL for both massive healing and damage using poison AOE spells.  I think friendly fire is possible with Druid's VenomBloom and both of the Wizard's poison cloud type spells.

Edited May 30, 2018 by Braven

[omgFIREBALLS]

Does that mean it has no effect if the wearer isn't dealing decay/poison/disease attacks?

 

If I am using powers that deal those damage types, does it reduce my damage output?

As far as I understand it, it effectively means you take half damage from those attacks, unless you're subject to increased/reduced healing.

 

You get nuked for 100 damage. 25% of it heals you, so it's 75 damage and 25 healing. Let 25 healing negate 25 damage and you have 50 damage.

[Phyriel]

Erm isn't it trading your damage from spells/attacks with those keyword by turning it into self healing? I thought that this is how it works. 

[omgFIREBALLS]

Hmm, yeah, that actually sounds slightly more likely. Could be both too.

 

Thing is that would mean you deal reduced damage when wearing this, in exchange for healing you might not want...

 

I don't suppose we could just test this instead of guessing? :D

Edited June 1, 2018 by omgFIREBALLS

[Siegdarth]

Ignore the decay thing, the upgrades of this armor are great.

You can deal aoe dmg, heal allies or engage more enemies. For a pure tank build I would still use the Platinated armor since the 20% - 40% chance of stun at melee is hard to surpass.