The upcoming patch notes mention a change to the phylactery, but I'm not sure what that means. Presently, it's a heal, mana restore, and de-curse. Does anyone know whats going to change with the patch? Will the debuff not be a regular curse, capable of being cured by something like The Cure? Will the debuff only decrease by 1 stack for each phylactery consumed?
In 1.0.09, you can use the blood mage phylactery spell multiple times to stash multiple phylacteries. Then, eating just one will remove ALL of the stacked debuffs (leaving you with full stats and plenty of insta-heal items to use at no penalty). It's changed so that is no longer possible. You could also do a similar thing with items that dispelled debuffs. Any such item now only removes 1 layer of the debuff.
It's also no longer a decurse. The effect of the heal removes one instance of the Phylactery debuff. You can still make as many as you'd like, incurring multiple debuffs, but eating each one only removes one debuff.
No, they will not work. The debuff from Phylactery is no longer marked "bad", so an uncurse will not remove it. The only thing that removes it is eating a Phylactery.
Just checked very quickly and you are right. However, I do remember stepping on one of those blue healing squares and having it dispel one level of the debuff. Maybe that was only in an earlier RC of 1.0.10 though.
It might apply to the debuff under all circumstances. What makes uncursing yourself problematic is storing tons of phylacteries (I stopped bothering making new ones once I got around 20 on my current mage), so it would be a nice little surprise to allow rare instances of abilities to remove a curse. Ah well, I thought that the ability was rather broken as it exists. Still, even when all is finished, it's still what amounts to a full heal + mana for two turns actions. I actually kind of wonder how often I'd use it as a 'storage' mechanism, rather than a 2-Action heal. Incidently, are Necronomeconomics going to get the same treatment? Or can I trade out all those downsides for the relatively safer Cure debuffs?
No, Necronomiconomics remains the same. All curses are meant to be removed. It's just that Phylactery didn't play well as one. It's meant to be a deliberate tradeoff, choosing to accept the debuff in exchange for access to a powerful healing item.
That, and there simply was no way to make said debuff dispelable before aside from marking it a bad. Which has changed when the 1.0.10 RCs gave us the "removebuffbyname" (or whatever) effect, meaning we can now have buffs that can't be dispelled other than with some specific abilities.
This seems to be nerfed to the point of near uselessness: has anyone played with it yet? Though the blood mage tree is so powerful, perhaps that's fine.
It is useful, if you don't use it with a melee build (I'm not sure if it is then, but I don't discount that possibility) - for a ranged character, having just one or two phylacteries is good enough in case of emergency. It will become less useful if any instant-healing items more potent than the normal healing potion are introduced, though.
