Ring of Death was a flat death cost (roughly 1/3 of the cost of an onyx, which is also easily obtainable for irons from kiln runs) irrespective of gear and inventory, and unlike dying without the ring of death, would keep the familiar alive. Also the adrenaline buff of rod always was great to have. Together with wearing the defence cape which has the built-in sign of life, rod was an extra layer of safety (just in case) to mitigate death cost and safeguard hard-to-make familiars (making ancient contract pouches with hellfire metal and blood of orcus is a pain, especially for irons and iron light accounts).
Yesterday happened to be at Black Stone Dragon, wearing defence cape and ring of death as I usually do there. And usually, when I don't pay enough attention, the small hands might get me and trigger my def cape sign of life perk, then I would pay more attention and finish the fight, no problem.
But yesterday it was different. The hands got me but instead of my sign of life saving me, the new ring of death effect triggered - I was revived at full hp in place, but still had many minutes of fight ahead of me, and the tick damage plus my team mate's shadow discharge killed me and only then my def cape triggered (which did not remove the tick damage debuff by the way).
Sign of life (with or without def cape) is totally worthless when it's not the first thing that triggers upon death. So please: turn the order of activation back to how it was, always sign first, and then ring effect or whatever.
I understand the idea underlying the ring of death change, like when the boss is almost dead and you die, you can finish the kill within the next 30s - but when the boss isn't almost dead yet, like when it still has high hp left, ring of death is now unusable because the tick damage will kill you faster than the boss's hits would, so all you can do is teleport out to safety (unless the encounter is teleblocked like hard mode arch-glacor...)
10-Jan-2023 06:41:41
