Improved Heal Focus and the Lifetap line

A couple days ago, the guild I'm in on the Combine server did the
Furious Jailer event a number of times, I was lucky enough (yeah, luck,
as in we rolled to see which ten people we'd do it for that day) to get
the Blessed Seeker Pendant, which has a focus that adds 25% to all magic
based damage.

During the FJ event, an earring drops that has a focus that works like
improved healing, only better, reportedly a 25% increase in heal size.
Its a good earring for us otherwise, but the heal increase would be
icing on the cake I thought. Well, I was outbid for it the times it
dropped, but afterwards, I went and did some testing.

I got a low level Improved Heal item (mask of the Fall, IH III) and went
to POI where there are some mobs who can hit me enough to let me see
heal sizes, but not enough to be scary while I'm trying to experiment.

I also got the "bigger nukes" item, the necklace, reward from the FJ kill.

With neither item on, my level 60 lifetap did consistent damage and
matching heal. With the necklace on, it did randomly bigger damage, a
nice improvement, and again the heal size matched precisely, as you'd
expect. I also got a "blessed seeker pendant glows" message with each cast.

With just the mask, though, the heals still matched the damage, instead
of being randomly higher. No focus message for the mask, either.

With mask plus pendant, just the pendant activated, the heal still
matched perfectly whatever random size the tap was for.

Then, thinking that perhaps the mask just doesn't give a message and
somehow the heal is larger than its reported as, I memmed Dark Empathy,
that old thing that hits us for 30 damage and heals our target for the
same. Someone else was working the zone in area, I healed them with DE:
30 points damage to me, 30 heal to them with nothing on. With the Mask,
30 points damage to me, 31 heal to them and the mask gives a focus message.

SO, its my conclusion that healing focus items don't count for lifetaps,
which is sad.

And its not consistent, because I can assure you that AA for heals do
work; I get crit heals as well as crit nukes on lifetaps, and sometimes
both, getting over 2K hp back on a nominally 500ish damage tap.

Of course today's patch may alter all that, who knows.


Oh, as a side note, I was doing some fighting later, and noticed the
Blessed Seeker focus effect works on DOTs as well as on Nukes; Festering
Darkness, Blood of Discord, any magic based damage you do will be
enhanced by this effect, not just DD ones. I'm thinking (but haven't
tried) this includes the anti undead nukes as well.

Berg, 68 SK, Combine

In article <VJ6dnT9g37vfqhDbnZ2dnUVZ_oOknZ2d RemoveThis @dejazzd.com>,
Lance Berg <emporer RemoveThis @NOSPAM.dejazzd.com> wrote:
>
>Oh, as a side note, I was doing some fighting later, and noticed the
>Blessed Seeker focus effect works on DOTs as well as on Nukes; Festering

Yup, the +magic damage focii work on dots including druid dots
and cleric undead dots. Also lifetaps and the damage from root spells
with damage. And the cleric damage shield type spells, ward of whatever.

I haven't tried one with the shaman dd proc spells, but should work
there too.