Life needs a new utility "defensive" spell in it's spell book.
Life healing is currently all about reaction, not team protection. An ounce of prevention (weakness), is worth a pound of cure (healing). Note: Weakness unlike shields are not effected by pierce, shadow shrike ... When we face an enemy team with high critical and pierce boss and mob henchmen (who can all critical simultaneously hit), the team health is decimated, and the healer can not heal fast or hard enough, without a critical and high outgoing health (almost mutually exclusive traits). Some may say use tc virulent plague, (which I use), but that also requires death mastery amulet to be pip efficient and can be removed by bosses. Proposal: Life mass enfeeble, 3 pip, -40% weakness spell (that can be enchanted).
Re: Life needs a new utility "defensive" spell in it's spell book.
This sounds like you are trying to undercut what life is as a school. Life is all about healing, and if you want to prevent damage, I recommend using the absorbs build into the school.
This gets to a core issue which they have been trying to fix since the game came out: school identity and how well it's understood.
Lots of people miss the point of a school. Ice gets LOTS shields because they are supposed to be tanky. Storm gets high damage because it is supposed to be a glass cannon. Balance has been the one to restrain other schools with weakness effects because that fits into their school identity and the flavor of what it means to keep balance: being able to help some or restrain others. Life's flavor is all about growth and improvement. Life is supposed to take a hit and heal it off, using absorbs to create health buffers while supporting other heavier hitters. Sure, life CAN hit things and do damage, but they are much slower at doing that, much like how fast they get damaging spells. They are intentionally not designed to prevent damage.
The other thing I want to point out is that Enfeeble is already a storm spell which removes all positive charms from the opponent, and a name like "Mass Life Enfeeble" is very misleading.
Re: Life needs a new utility "defensive" spell in it's spell book.
Respectfully: Absorbs is irrelevant against an 5000+ damage critical hit from a boss, and a 1500 critical hit from a minion, but a 40% mass weakness is. Absorb only offsets the damage by 400, good for a level 50 life, but were level 130 life facing 130 level bosses and 3 -100 level minions. Life is a school of healing and support, but..., All i am saying we should have "one" mass weakness spell to offset possible "major" incoming damage. Yes I use tc virulent plague(if and when needed), so I can simply pigsie heal the team and occasionally blade, cleanse, what ever to help the rest of the team kill the boss ASAP.
The game is ten years old, we have graduated wizard school. We now facing cabal with multi school abilities(so KI has opened the door). Cabal have their natural schools abilities and "one" other schools spell abilities.
Today is about school player "diversity", because we are a diverse people that play.
if we want to be a (any school) glass cannon then fine, you take the risks. calculates probabilities, yes and he can always fall back to our roots if needed, are we the best hitter maybe not Its a game, we try to have fun, challenge ourselves, maybe stretch and little outside the norms.