Problem with leechcurse is that it shared a timer with unholy aura for a long time. I knew they made a few adjustments to HT over time regarding how much dmg you could do to a PC. I think I remember trying to whack people down to around 40% and that would pretty much be an insta kill.

I was on a blue server and people always cried when you used HT. Oddly enough a pally could blow LoH and that pre epic part with charges of CH and no one would blink.

i vaguely remember them being on the same timer, I think I opted for the leechcurse, man what a fun disc!

Ya but then you run into the aforementioned balance issues, where lots of SKs together can insta-kill stuff they shouldn't be able to. That's why I agreed that making it a lifetap would be so perfect - the damage could be kept at classic levels, but it would still heal the SK up a good bit. It still wouldn't heal as much as LoH and it could only ever heal the SK himself, so pallys wouldn't have any room to be angry about it. Everyone always knew that LoH was waaaay better than HT, and SKs weren't significantly superior to Pallys in any other way (although I guess trying to compare them is kind of apples to oranges).

There wasn't anything even at HT's max power in PoP that SKs could kill this way that was current. Only Velious and older era mobs that people still farmed for epic 1.0s, for example. So this really isn't a factor. And oh by the way, as I recall Wizards and Necros were teaming up to mana/life burn mobs like this during the Luclin era, one expansion sooner.



But otherwise I think you're right on the money

Its funny, looking back its clear that a lot of what the EQ devs did was "amateur hour", as far as balancing and itemization goes. Nevertheless, we're all here hoping to do it again one day.