Question about Starkonja's

Hi, got question about one low life mechanic in this helemt https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Starkonja%27s_Head

50% reduced Damage when on Low Life.
This means that I give (when I attack) reduced damage to enemies or I take reduced damge form enemies?

it means you deal less damage when on lowlife

if you were to *take* less damage, it would be worded

'50% less damage taken while on lowlife'



also, that would be insanely strong.

Thanks answer :)

11 years later and people are still asking that question and Mark, Chris, and Erik are still unwilling to admit they were wrong about not adding the word "dealt" to it.

50% reduced damage is not as much as it sounds, because it's additive.
If you have for example 400% increased damage from tree/other items, then you remain with 350% increased damage (eg. you'd lose ~10% dmg, not 50%).

So I've got about 820 hours of play time spread over several years so I guess that makes me a casual player? and when I had this helmet drop for me yesterday I had just assumed it meant you had 50% less incoming damage during low life. I did think that sounded pretty powerful but then again my level 83 can barely run level 73 content without getting 1 shot at times so it did seem pretty balanced since it would have required being on low life. The only reason I now know better is because the flavor text was interesting to read and I was curious who Starkonja was and if there was any lore about her and multiple of the top results is others asking about this very subject all the way from 11 years ago even. I will admit if I had read it on a weapon I probably would have assumed it meant you deal less damage but that's the crux of ambiguous text like this, it's not always clear and the points brought up in those 4 other conversations I read about how there really are a lot of modifiers that aren't very clear are still just as valid today. It would be nice if there was more thought put into making all the modifiers completely clear but I feel like that will likely never happen since this very thing has been an issue for so long and not gotten any fix plus the rather obnoxious barter system we have to deal with since there is no real currency in this game to facilitate trade between players. This game really is a lot of fun (even if I grow weary of my terrible skills at not dying lol) but there are certain things about it that are needlessly aggravating and ignoring now 11 years worth of questions/complaints about this item is certainly one of those things.

What I've always found a little confusing is that "added damage" type modifiers only apply to "attack" damage, while spells are, err, spelled out. Might be useful to specify that so that it looks similar. Easy to think that what looks like a general flat damage applies to all damage, including spells -- but they don't.

As for Starkonja, keep in mind that although it looks pretty rough, it is "reduced" damage and not "less". If you happen to have a bunch of "increases" to damage, the actual end result isn't all that bad. "50% less" would be catastrophic.