You have eight or so posts on this subforum alone that refer to WAR's abilities as 'life steal'. I'm really not sure where you'd want to start, and anyone can see this with a simple search. I don't mind that you're playing the devil's advocate here as usual, but it seems truly bizarre to suggest that this isn't a vampiric effect without even an attempt at offering an alternative explanation on how said healing-on-hit works that's substantiated by lore or gameplay.

What you're describing with temporary HP is just an eHP problem. If I'm at 1 HP going into a tankbuster, TBN isn't going to save me any more than a 125% max HP boost will. If TBN was a Thrill of Battle effect and not a barrier, it would be broken.

Manipulating aether is another term for 'magic'. You're going to end up going into an aether vs. dynamis discussion with this next, I can sense it.

Either way, you can have your magical vampiric barbarians if you want, but I just want to see some consistency in how it's executed.