Mark of Pain

Usage Notes

 * This curse can potentially deal a great deal of damage to a clustered group of enemies.


 * This skill works well with henchmen because they will focus fire if you call a target. For best effect, choose henchmen that do physical damage, such as Little Thom, Stefan or Devona.


 * Minions, fiends, and horrors do physical damage and trigger Mark of Pain.


 * The longer the target lives, the more damage Mark of Pain does. Cast Mark of Pain on the strongest foe and allow the AoE to kill everything around it.  Alternately, if you are playing with just henchmen, switch to the lowest damage weapon possible, so that the "mark" can live as long as possible and hurt his friends as much as possible before dying.


 * Wands and staffs (or staves) don't trigger Mark of Pain. To trigger Mark of Pain, use a bow or melee weapon.  Necromancers with ranger or warrior sub-classes may find this curse particularly useful.


 * Using Mark of Pain with other players instead of henchmen can be a little more challenging. Warriors and rangers must know to focus on your target.  Players doing damage that is not physical may wish to choose a different target in order to spread their damage around and allow the curse to do it's full job.  Be aware of nature rituals and other ranger skills that change physical damage into elemental damage.  Make sure that rangers and warriors are not using weapon upgrades that change their damage into elemental damage.


 * Mark of Pain triggers only if someone deals physical damage, so, most of the AoE spells (such as Fire Storm, Inferno, Searing Heat, Chaos Storm) won't trigger this curse since these spells deal elemental damage.


 * Monsters sometimes flee from Mark of Pain, as if it were Area of Effect spell if you attack in succession. Since the curse is located on a target foe and not a location you can follow the target and still do damage.


 * Mark of Pain is very effective against so called Healing Balls in PvP. Using it in a Ranger spike build makes opponents go down with ease.


 * The ranger skill Whirling Defense will trigger Mark of Pain, making it a very dangerous spell to have if player is getting overwhelmed with melee enemies.

Acquisition
Skill Quests: Skill Trainers:
 * Death in the Ruins (Sardelac Sanitarium)
 * Captain Osric (Yak's Bend)
 * Dakk (Ember Light Camp)