ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Just had a shield dropped called "Summertide." At first glance it gives bonus fire and light damage, which would be good for a sun paladin, but then it also boosts mind damage, gives bonus mindpower and max psi, and an active ability that scales with mindpower. Just what class is there that uses psi and mindpower, but also uses a shield and cares about fire and light damage?

Adventurer.

fun fact summertide's proc scales off will too

it's bizarre, it's meant to be SP themed (summertide phial used to boost pos regen) but it's nature infused instead of arcane so it gets mindpower stuff for flavor?

Either way it's better than the other bad t5 shield standarts just for having 325 block (so demonologists like it since temporal rift is the only better standart in that department) and light damage (so bulwark wants it if you're still using shield wall for some godawful reason, and SP wants it since you do light damage)

Compare shieldsmaiden and black wall which i could never see anyone using


e: also stone warden uses the proc very well

On the subject of artifacts no one will ever use, most exotics and light armors lol.

Especially the whip that knocks things back on hit seriously why would any melee class want to use it?

Shield sun paladin deals mainly light damage and a little fire damage, so sun paladin benefits from +%light and +%fire which makes sense since its a sun paladin shield. Mindpower and mind damage is pretty weird though, I will give you that. Also that shield is the best shield in the game for every class but I wont go much into that since its kinda irrelevant to the original post.

Eh... I guess there's some fit with it with some items? Randart/rare tools can pick up a psi-based silence and be a mind hit regardless, and there's always loremaster. Also projection weapons, for what that's worth. Probably stuff I'm forgetting.

Mindslayers can ping off the fire and mind as well, and the shield itself makes some use of its light boost. Active would slot in with them even better than sunpas, too, since its tooltip is very much accurate and the thing doesn't scale with mindpower, but rather directly off of willpower and cunning. On-hit special scales off will, too, now that I look at it.

... what I'm saying is that now that I check the code it kinda' looks like the thing's intended more for slayers than sunpas, especially considering most of it scales off willpower and willpower does pretty much exactly nothing (specifically) for a celestial class. Throw in a chant escort unlock and another bump of light (to boost the shield) and fire (everything thermal) and you'd be in decent-ish shape, if for whatever reason you were trying to roll with a thermal focused slayer.

All that said, it's perfectly okay for an artifact to fit kinda' awkwardly at best with any class, or half fit one and half fit another or somethin'. They're there as much for interesting/unusual mechanics and lore as anything, or guaranteeing a certain level of kit quality for certain parts of the game. Don't really have to be a best-in-slot deal or whatever for someone to be worth having around in the game.

Frumple wrote:
... what I'm saying is that now that I check the code it kinda' looks like the thing's intended more for slayers than sunpas

Mindslayers don't really want to use shields, especially given how few sources of fire/light/mind damage they actually have (none of the thermal talents do good dmg compared to 3 weapon melee, and your only mind damage is from mindstars and loremaster escort mind sear). Neither do sun paladins but that's another topic entirely.

There's that Cloud Caller hat that boosts lightning and light damage and is mind based. Well the light part is worthless for any mindpower based class and the benefits for a spellpower one aren't worth much.

At least the item is still good just by it's active.

The alternative is to have artifacts that are only useful for a single class, which is less desirable.

Most artifacts have some niche where they shine. For instance, Storm Fury appears to not fit on any class but it makes an excellent Cursed Sentry. Cloud Caller and Flamewrought are early range options for melee classes. Summertide works for Sun Paladins or for Bulwarks that go Antimagic (which might actually be decent in 1.5). Not every stat on an item has to be useful at the same time, but giving something a variety of stats means more classes can use them.

What about the bow that boosts lightning damage and the archmage lightning categories? Anyone ever tried having an archmage use it (though people always say the other elements are much inferior to fire and arcane for them).

That T5 lightning bow is amazing for Temporal Warden or Archer. Yeah you technically could use it with an Archmage, but it would be pretty sub-optimal, especially considering the investment in dex you'd need to make (unless you find or vault a bunch of stat boosting items)

It's pretty fun building adventurers around the more awkward items. I made a lightning archmage adventurer once wielding and TK-wielding two Storm Furies. Ran around in stealth while auto-lightning killed everything.