Hey, Doing Tomb of Tvericus, my Priest had three Lifesaving Blocks in-hand. Zombie mob from the front attacked with three other Zombies nearby, my Priest was at 9 health or so. None of the three Lifesaving Blocks triggered. Working as Intended?
There's some dev talk about this here, damage boosts are supposed to be calculated when triggering the card. In many other threads the problem has been character facing, the attack has come from an unblockable direction. You say it came from the front so something else then?
Yeah, I had just re-positioned my Priest so that he'd block at least three of the attacks, and all four zombies were in front at the time of attack. Still won the battle anyway thanks to my wizard, but I wanted to double-check this one. Wish I had battle logs from this, those might be helpful in determining what's up.
Maybe the Zombie Mob ally boost is erroneously not factored into the Lifesaving Block triggering? This should be easy enough to test if so.
The problem is the phrase When this card does damage. It means that the bonus damage from the card itself only apply only when damage was already done, so if the initial damage can't kill you, Lifesaving Block won't trigger. For example: Zombie Mob have base damage of 1. When it hits you, all blocks trigger first, so the damage is registered as 1, therefore Livesaving Block won't trigger. Then all armors trigger, if the damage is reduced to 0 by armors, the bonus from the text won't trigger and you still take 0 damage. But if the damage can go through all your block and armor, it deals 1 damage to you, only by then the bonus from the text takes effect and adds 9 more damage to the attack. At that moment, the damage had already gone through your block, therefore you can't block it anymore. The same thing applies to Devastating Blow and Touch Of Death.
Interesting. The question, then, is "What was the intention from the devs?" 'Cause I could probably make a case either way that it's either working as intended, or that Lifesaving Block was meant more to, y'know, save your life.
Thanks for the clear explanation, VNSAramaki! I can see that now looking back at Jon's post I linked. Here's the complete list of attacks from the wiki Lifesaving Block will not work against if the base damage is not enough to kill you: Anvil Strike Backbiting Strike Cowardly Attack Devastating Blow Mob Attack Swarming Attack Touch Of Death Tree Limb Smash Zombie Mob There are quite many of them! I expect this will continue to catch people unawares. These are all the attack cards that have the phrase When this card does damage on them. I wonder whether there are any other kinds of attacks where this phenomenon occurs. EDIT: Yes there are. From the wiki: "Expecting Lifesaving Block to trigger while holding Raging Strike won't work. Ditto for Unholy Curse, Vulnerable etc as well. As a general rule, blocks do not trigger upon allied damage. Lifesaving Block doesn't trigger if the fatal damage comes from an ally. So firestorming with your ally holding Lifesaving Block won't trigger it. This card was initially named as Guardian Angel. Try searching the forums to browse the multiple cases of it not triggering." So, let's add these to the list: Raging Strike Unholy Curse Vulnerable The three cards mentioned above all have the phrase "take damage" on them. I couldn't find any more damage boost cards with "take damage" or "takes damage" on them. I wonder whether there are yet more different damage boost cards where Lifesaving Block doesn't trigger and which cards those are. EDIT 2: Yes there are. Terrain effects: Acid Blast Acid Jet Acid Pool Acid Spray Hot Spot Stone Spikes Volcano Wall Of Fire The above cards all have the word "occupant" on them, I found them with that. These three groups of cards are all the ones I can find also after checking the Guardian Angel mentions on this forum. If there are any more cards which bypass Lifesaving Block, please post them so we can have them all in one place for later reference. EDIT 3: I noticed one more: Combustible Keyphrase: "take Fire damage"