So this is a weird one. Been having some random deaths on my Witch Doctor where I was pretty sure Spirit Vessel didn’t proc.
I know, I know, the first thing you’re going to say is that “Tinne, you must be mistaken, you probably missed it. No one has ever provided video proof of a cheat death passive failing to trigger when it couldn’t be explained by other methods like big damage blowing through the shield from Unstable Anomaly.”
Well, it seems I’ve found a fringe case where Spirit Vessel will fail to trigger.
After some testing, it looks like a pretty specific interaction between Blood Ritual and Spirit Vessel in combination with the cheat deaths from the Scoundrel or Enchantress, but not the Templar. Importantly, the cheat death from the Templar restores HP, but the cheat deaths from the Scoundrel and Enchantress do not.
If the cheat death from the Scoundrel or Enchantress triggers and leaves you at very low HP while you are casting a skill that costs mana with the Blood Ritual passive enabled (which causes 20% of the mana cost to be paid with health), then it’s possible for the Blood Ritual passive to bring you to zero HP. If this happens, it seems that Spirit Vessel is bypassed and you die instantly.
You can see I don’t get it to happen every time, but I can make it happen pretty reliably by spamming a skill that costs mana with the Blood Ritual passive equipped while taking a lot of damage. I believe that the HP loss from Blood Ritual is bypassing Spirit Vessel and can kill you without triggering Spirit Vessel.
Testing video part 1: checking with Enchantress with and without the Blood Ritual Passive
Testing video part 2: checking with Templar and Scoundrel as well
I did some frame by frame playback of many of the deaths, and Spirit Vessel definitely does not seem to be triggering in some of them.
Here’s one example. I have full health on frame 918, get hit and am reduced to very low health and trigger the Enchantress cheat death on frame 919, and am dead without Spirit Vessel triggering on frame 920.
And you might say well yeah, but that’s a pretty manufactured scenario. Probably won’t happen in real gameplay, right? Well, it’s been happening to me once or twice an hour while farming GR90s on my Witch Doctor. Guess as a workaround I’ll be switching Blood Ritual for a different passive!