Antimagic - Aura of Silence - Make it a sustain?

[Laerte]

It would be interesting if the "Aura of Silence" talent became a real aura, a sustained talent like the cursed gloom - zero equilibrium cost would be nice too - IIRC this was the original idea.

[edge2054]

It would need a serious nerf if it was made a sustain (and probably some rethinking of how it should trigger). Imagine running into an NPC with this on as a mage and getting caught in it's radius 10 aura of silence (the player can hit 9 on this easily, I'm sure an npc would have no problem shutting down a player from outside of line of sight).

[Laerte]

So nerf it a bit, would be better than the current one were the player must spend a turn to activate (losing 20 equilibrium in the process). Silence can be resisted anyway.

And mages deserve a nerf too.

I still dream of antimagic archers in T4...

[Aquillion]

And mages deserve a nerf too.

Not that they're not ridiculously overpowered, but remember that ToME classes are not meant to be balanced against each other -- what's important is that each one offers a unique and fun gameplay experience, not that they all be equally hard (since, after all, this isn't a MMORPG and you're not competing with the other classes.) Clearly Doomed are harder to play than Archmages, and clearly this is intentional (the name of the class rather gives it away!)

Archmages could probably use more challenge, but it should be a "fun" sort of challenge -- getting all your powers unexpectedly shut down from outside of your LoS so you can't do anything and without much of a chance to react isn't fun. At all.

[Laerte]

Well, right now, except for the theme, antimagic isn't fun. It's just a shadow of T2 antimagic.

Archmages could probably use more challenge, but it should be a "fun" sort of challenge -- getting all your powers unexpectedly shut down from outside of your LoS so you can't do anything and without much of a chance to react isn't fun. At all.

Silence can be resisted, the caster can use a wild infusion to remove the status, run, hide etc. It's not that much of a threat. It's not like going to an orc pride and getting 10 curses, diseases, spells etc. cast upon you and you cannot even leave the level anymore...

Well, I guess I have to stop bring this subject. It seems no one cares about antimagic, why not remove it at all?

[edge2054]

I love antimagic. I just found Aura of Silence to be extremely powerful as it is. At 4/5 it shuts down every caster in line of sight for 5 turns (that's 50% uptime considering the cooldown is 10).

http://te4.org/characters/81/tome/88f4b ... 1cc000edf0

The rest of the tree is extremely useful as well, especially considering it's generic (though it does come with a heavy price).

b32 added two more antimagic only artifacts (both end game power level) and a nice nature powered great maul. Fairly recently the slime tree was put back in the game, again for antimagic users. So antimagic isn't being ignored.

I'm not opposed to making it a sustained aura. It would just need to be done with great care. Something else to consider is that the tree already has one sustain and one passive. If aura of silence went to a sustain it'd leave mana clash as the only active power.

Maybe it'd be better just to rename aura of silence? Or it could be a map effect (like ice storm) that only silenced for a few turns but lasted longer (basically an active aura that would move with you while it was on but in a smaller radius then it has now).

Basically, all I'm saying is a straight conversion to an always up aura using it's current numbers would be very broken. Also, removing an effect with a wild infusion doesn't mean anything if that effect gets reapplied the next turn (because it's an aura). And again you're talking about an effect that currently can push a radius larger then line of sight (at just 5/5, imagine it on a random unique with 10 talent points and always being up, you'd be silenced from twenty tiles away).

[Aquillion]

Well, right now, except for the theme, antimagic isn't fun. It's just a shadow of T2 antimagic.

Archmages could probably use more challenge, but it should be a "fun" sort of challenge -- getting all your powers unexpectedly shut down from outside of your LoS so you can't do anything and without much of a chance to react isn't fun. At all.

Silence can be resisted, the caster can use a wild infusion to remove the status, run, hide etc. It's not that much of a threat. It's not like going to an orc pride and getting 10 curses, diseases, spells etc. cast upon you and you cannot even leave the level anymore...

Well, I guess I have to stop bring this subject. It seems no one cares about antimagic, why not remove it at all?

Well, fun is subjective.

But my understanding is that Antimagic is meant to be more of an optional challenge than an even trade-off. Most of the time, it's meant to make the game harder. The rewards you get for it are there to make it a bit more fun and interesting (since it's a challenge that might otherwise make the game less interesting by reducing your options) but are generally not intended to be balanced against what you give up for them.

[Laerte]

Or it could be a map effect (like ice storm) that only silenced for a few turns but lasted longer (basically an active aura that would move with you while it was on but in a smaller radius then it has now).

That would be great. A max radius of 5 or 6 would be enough I think.

But my understanding is that Antimagic is meant to be more of an optional challenge than an even trade-off. Most of the time, it's meant to make the game harder.

I disagree here. This is the current state, but I believe it's not set on stone the antimagic must be the weaker path. I must spent 20 generic points because it's a good and valuable tree, that would really help to fight against casters, not because I want a challenge. If I want a challenge I would play a bow wielding cursed...

[darkgod]

Yeah it's not meant to be weak.
But then I dont believe it is weak, with aura of silence alone you can render useless all casters in sight for at least 50% of any combat length. Antimagic shield & resolve do work together to make you super resistant to things that would wreck you (try it on a curse of death or an impending doom) and mana clash let you siphon your foes mana, rendering them even more useless

[Laerte]

Yeah it's not meant to be weak.
But then I dont believe it is weak, with aura of silence alone you can render useless all casters in sight for at least 50% of any combat length.

But then, high level casters only need the other half of the combat to finish me

Antimagic shield & resolve do work together to make you super resistant to things that would wreck you (try it on a curse of death or an impending doom) and mana clash let you siphon your foes mana, rendering them even more useless

The problem here, in my opinion, its the equilibrium resource. Wyrmics, that possibly are the one of main class interested in investing in AM, generally also have Ice Skin and Elemental Harmony sustained. If you put AM Shield on, its a high 80 EQ cost. If you make liberal use of Aura of Silence and breathes, the EQ goes readily over 160, 200 and the AM breaks. No middle level antimagic char have so much WIL to keep the failures low, and Swallow isn't enough to recover the equilibrium. I've never used the last harmony talent to check its equilibrium recovering, so I cannot speak favor or against it.

Another option: remove the failure checking of AM Shield and make it like Ice Skin, it would be like an armor effect versus magical / elemental damage (yeah, balance it against high talent level and high WIL)? Should I open another request the forum to discuss this?

[edge2054]

Antimagic Shield is extremely powerful and isn't meant to be 'on' all the time. If the drawbacks where removed it would need a substantial nerf. (For an idea on a balanced approach to an always on Antimagic Shield you can look at Energy Decomposition, which is basically AM Shield but with 30% 'armor hardiness'.)

Personally though I liked Antimagic shield as it is. It literally saved me from dying several times during the game. Against dots it's basically an ignore button you can pop on as you see fit, much as DG said. Get hit with curse of death, impending doom, or even a nasty disease. Just pop Antimagic Shield and ignore it.