The strangeness of Absorb Soul

The level 19 Mystic skill, Absorb Soul:
Deals Physical Damage equal to 125% of your Magic
Damage plus xxxx to players. Deals Physical Damage
equal to 200% of your Magic Damage plus xxxx to monsters.
Absorb Soul cannot cause a critical strike.

This skill behaves rather strangely. Several people (me included) have decided that it is most likely a wood attack with 0 initial damage, followed immediately by a single tick of physical "damage over time" damage. This helps to make sense of several oddities about the skill, as you will read below.


Some strange things about the skill include


- Deals no damage to element-immune mobs (such as KunKun) even though it is specified as physical damage

- It has been tested and confirmed that wood immune bosses resist the spell as well. Whether or not the skill counts as specifically wood element when determining immunities has yet to be seen.

- Deals full damage through damage absorb skills (such as Aegis Sphere, Winged Shell, Wings of Protection, etc)

- Deals damage against Psychic Will (again, even though it's specified as physical damage)

- Deals full damage through damage-reduction skills (such as Invoke, Bramble Hood, Wings of Grace, etc)

- Does not show up in the damage log

- Deals full damage through a Cleric's Plume Shell (again, physical damage) and takes no MP from the cleric

- When used on mobs, sometimes the mob will simply fade away (like when a veno tames them) instead of going through their usual death animation

- Damage is unaffected by the Mystic's attack levels

- Deals damage through the Invincible buff (Spark, Feral Concentration, Absolute Domain, etc) in duels, works normally in open-PK

- Suffers no damage reduction when attacking from Air -> Ground

- Does not activate a Psychic's Soul of Retaliation, Soul of Stunning, or Soul of Vengeance

- Ignores opponent's defense levels

- Has almost 0 aggro-pulling capability (Probably the only time you'll aggro a mob with Absorb Soul is if it hasn't been hit yet)

- Results in no lost durability on weapon

- Consumes no magic attack utility charms

- Certain mobs/bosses will resist the skill entirely (even if they have no element immunity)

- Many bosses, and certain elite mobs, will resist the Nature's Vengeance amp (not necessarily something strange about AS, but still nerfs the damage of the skill). I'm going to go ahead and assume, since the amp also has a slow effect, that any enemy that can't be slowed, can't be amped.

- Does not break sleep

These are just the oddities that I have personally tested. If anyone else knows of any other interesting things that occur with this skill, please post them and I will add them to the list. Thank you.

PS: These PvP-related "glitches" were discovered while dueling. And it has been brought to my attention that some of these skills/items may work differently under open-world PK. If anyone reading this thread has a Mystic in PK mode and could test some of these to confirm/deny that they work in dueling and PK, that would be great, thank you.


Stolen from: http://pwi-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1018921

Farng is one of the bosses that immune to absorb soul eventhough when I cast Nature Vengeance, Farng has the icon of nature vengeance status + 2x damage from absorb soul..

Absorb soul that is casted on a target with nature vengeance status deals about 3x damage of nature vengeance.. With level 1 rapid growth, absorb soul has 4 secs channeling compared to the usual 5 secs..

Yes, absorb soul does less damage on wood mobs compared to non-wood.. Still need more testing on this however.. Need to compare wood mobs (not effective), normal/fire/water/metal (normal damage), earth (super effective).. See if there is any difference in damage..

I'm gonna update this since some of these aren't true anymore. PWI is known to make undocumented changes and let the players figure out for themselves.

- Deals no damage to element-immune mobs (such as KunKun) even though it is specified as physical damage
Sage Absorb Soul does damage to elemental immunes. I've tested this on elemental immune axe at toad boss FS, elemental immune king in FS, and elemental immune mobs in Zeta EU. Likewise, Sage Absorb Soul also does damage to both wood and physical immune, such as the west tower in Nightmare Gate SoT.

- It has been tested and confirmed that wood immune bosses resist the spell as well. Whether or not the skill counts as specifically wood element when determining immunities has yet to be seen.
Sage Absorb Soul does damage to wood immunes. A good example is the wood immune mobs in Nightmare Gate SoT.

- Damage is unaffected by the Mystic's attack levels
Sage Absorb Soul takes into account attack level of the mystic and defense level of the opponent, while level 1-10 Absorb Soul does not.

- Ignores opponent's defense levels
Sage Absorb Soul takes into account attack level of the mystic and defense level of the opponent, while level 1-10 Absorb Soul does not.

- Has almost 0 aggro-pulling capability (Probably the only time you'll aggro a mob with Absorb Soul is if it hasn't been hit yet)
This is arguable as I haven't tested it recently. Last time I checked this, which is over a year ago, I pulled aggro when spamming Sage Absorb Soul on Lord of Captivation SoT. As far as I'm concern, Lord of Captivation DOES NOT have random aggro.