Revision 6

Plague Echoes is a stacking self-buff applied to the wielder (not to the enemy) by the plague weapon family. It is the sustain engine for every Plague archetype build: stack Echoes during a fight, spend them for a large heal when HP runs low.

How it Works

The stack is self-applied (to the wielder), not applied to the target. Because it is a self-buff, the enemy being struck does not resist or cleanse Plague Echoes the way they might resist debuffs.

Source Weapons

• Arboris Saber - Strength-scaling saber dealing Crude damage

• Plague Halberd - Strength-scaling halberd; also runs the Plague Marks system on the target in parallel

• Plague Pistol - Precision-scaling pistol

These three weapons share the Plague Echoes mechanic. The Plague Halberd is notable because it also applies Plague Marks to the enemy, giving it two distinct plague mechanics running simultaneously (self-buff and enemy debuff).

Talent Interactions

The Plague Echoes loop is the centerpiece of the canonical Plague sustain build, paired with:

• Retribution - converts Temporal Health to permanent HP more effectively (up to 100% more at rank 3).

• You Will Answer for This - increases Temporal Health gained on damage taken by up to 75% at rank 3.

The Retribution plus You Will Answer for This plus plague weapon triangle is the canonical self-sustain Plague loop. Without that combination, Plague Echoes is still useful as a clutch 35% heal on a long cooldown, but the build does not reach its full sustain ceiling.

Plague Marks vs Plague Echoes

Plague Echoes and Plague Marks are distinct mechanics that run in parallel on some plague weapons. Plague Echoes is a wielder-side 5-stack buff with a 35% heal threshold at 5 stacks. Plague Marks is an enemy-side 8-stack debuff consumed by Heavy Attacks for bonus damage (and a 35-40% heal if more than 5 marks are consumed at once).

The Plague Halberd runs both systems simultaneously. The Plague Pistol and Arboris Saber run Plague Echoes only. The Rapier of Devastation runs Plague Marks only.

See Also

• Plague Marks - the parallel enemy debuff

• Retribution - talent for the sustain loop

• You Will Answer for This - talent for Temporal Health

• Status Effects - full effect roster

• Plague Halberd

• Arboris Saber

• Plague Pistol

Stack Building Rules

Plague Echoes stacks build on the wielder one at a time. Each landed swing of an equipped plague weapon grants exactly one stack, regardless of how many enemies the swing connects with. A wide cleave that strikes three enemies in a single arc still produces a single stack, not three. This makes the buff feel slower in mob fights than a per-hit counter would, but it also makes the curve predictable: five committed swings is always five stacks, no matter the target count.

Whiffed attacks do not contribute. The swing must connect for the wielder to gain the stack. Parried, blocked, or fully evaded attacks count as missed strikes and grant nothing. Animation cancels that interrupt the swing before the hit frame land also count as misses, so committing to the full attack animation is part of the stack discipline.

At five stacks, the next special attack consumes them all and triggers the weapon's unique threshold effect. The five stacks are spent together as a single charge; there is no partial consumption or rollover. Once the special goes off, the counter resets to zero and the wielder must rebuild from scratch.

Crucially, the special attack itself cannot critically strike. Both the Plague Halberd boom and the Arboris Saber round-house slam ignore critical hit chance entirely, so stacking crit chance or crit damage on a Plague Echoes weapon is wasted budget for the threshold ability itself. Crit only matters for the basic swings that build the stacks, not the payoff.

Stack Persistence by Weapon

Stack persistence behaves differently between the two melee plague weapons, and this difference is the single biggest quality-of-life factor when picking between them. Swapping to a secondary weapon mid-combat is common in Windrose, especially when pulling out a pistol to apply a vulnerability debuff before a finishing blow.

The persistence difference shapes which support pieces fit each weapon. The halberd wants a full-commit playstyle that ignores ranged tools until the boom resolves; the saber happily slots into a pistol-and-saber rotation where the gun fires off a +15% damage taken debuff before the threshold slam connects. This is also why the saber is the more forgiving Plague Echoes weapon for new players: a panicked swap to a healing tonic or off-hand does not reset the meter.

Scaling Modifiers

The threshold special inherits modifiers from a specific subset of stat sources. The matrix below summarizes which damage and utility modifiers actually feed into the Plague Echoes payoff, and which do not. The basic light swings that build stacks scale separately and follow standard weapon damage rules.

The takeaway: build the threshold ability around Strength, melee damage, and the matching weight-class set bonus. Skip every crit source, skip crude-damage rings, and watch the patch notes for the warrior ring fix before slotting it.