UI/Interface : Damage Shields

[Elkan]

I've noticed that some damage shields give a nice HP bar, But others do not. it would be nice if the following changes could be implemented.

* All damage shields with a fixed HP value get their own bar

* Shields are ordered top - Bottom in the order they absorb/break (not expire)

* The turns remaining on the shield is shown in the bar in the same spot the regen figure is displayed for resources

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Shield [257/342    (3)]  

* When shields are mutually exclusive and you try to activate one it normally fails. Instead of it failing, you could get a prompt

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 "Barrier cannot be cast whilst Rune of shielding is active, do you wish to replace this shield with barrier?"

* The ability to turn off non-sustained damage shields at will, perhaps by right-clicking the shield in question.

* Damage shield bars colored by their element - grey for physical/generic, Blue for ice etc.

Thoughts?

[Nagyhal]

I was about to post my own thread and then I ran a quick cautionary search and found this one. I'm glad I did as I do prefer many of your ideas. Here's what I was going to post:

Show different shields with different colours in shield bar

Straightforward, this one.

When every fight consists of me casting several different simultaneous shields with drastically differing effects, such as my Shadowblade that uses a common Shielding Rune together with Displacement Shield, I tend to lose a grip of what is going on in the battle. Adding a bit of visual shorthand to distinguish the two -- if the bar was split into sections of differing colour -- would go a long way toward making these fights so much more comprehensible.

I like the shield bar's dark colour very much, and it's distinct from all other resources, so I'd recommend sorcerous indigos and penumbral purples to match with the impervious stralite colour of the current bar. Hues, first of all, could be based on the talent metacategory and the colour of its associated resource, so blue would go to mana effects, purple to Psi, a nice rich gold for Positive Energy's Barrier, and so on. Boldly constrasting dividing lines would help the colour-vision-compromised as well as going on to differentiate different shields of the same type. Perhaps the various shields would be placed in a sort of queue on the bar, so that shields cast first are displayed first, going from left to right.