word of death

[YuriGaDaisukiDa]

how does this spell work?

Some people were saying they can do 600 damage with it

Is that normal damage, or is that when the creature is almost dead?

Is there a damage cap so people dont kill champions that still have 100+ hp left?

 

[Kellgory]

When you can cast WOD for the big numbers is based on the level of focus. With no focus, you have to wait until the monster is redlined. With a level 6, you can start casting at around 40% of life left (I've seen some websites that say it is at 30%). The amount of damage is also effected by the level of focus, SDI, and other enhancements (arcane empowerment, grapes of wrath, reaper form). What doesn't effect the amount of damage is your spellweaving level. A GM spellweaver can hit for the same amount of damage as a legendary spellweaver. The only difference is that the legendary will not fizzle. It's been a while since I've used my plain mage/spellweaver with 97 SDI to do a peerless, but if I remember correctly, with a level 6 focus in reaper form and arcane empowerment cast, I was hitting around 695. It might have been higher or lower since its been about a year since I last used it. Been mainly using tamer/weaver with almost no SDI and it hits for 300-420 points.

 

[Hildebrand]

The higher the focus gem the more damage you do (that's what I've observed). Spell Damage Increase (SDI) helps and Inscription skill helps too (inscription adds 10% SDI). At low focus gem, WoD kicks in when monster is almost dead. As the focus gem is higer, WoD works at higher hit points (up to around 25% of it's health?).
You have to time it, otherwise you see the usual 15-25ish damage.
That's the quick story.

 

[Farsight]

The bad thing about spellweaving is that most of the infomation, even the official uo.com information, is just flat out wrong. That means that our observations are approximately how things work.

And this is how I observe.
With no focus, the monster needs to be completely flat-lined in order to actually cast word of death. I still get a few off in that case.
With a level 5 focus, the blue part of the monster's health bar needs to be pretty low, but nowhere near zero. I won't give percentages, since they're not that important unless you know how many hit points your oppenent has.

No matter what focus I have, my tamer with no SDI does 300 points of damage against any opponent and my mage with 50% SDI does 450 damage. The difference is only in how many I can cast before my opponent is dead. 30% life (level 5 focus) gives time for a lot of WoD's.