ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

So I really like the arcane blade class and I was happy when the change was made to give them the aegis tree... However, once I unlocked the tree and put half a dozen points into it I was no longer happy. I thought the heal would be really nice and could replace the need for a healing infusion. But in practice it really doesn't heal for much. I had 30 magic and the talent at 2 and I was getting 118 in healing. I suppose that would be okay, but putting more than one point in doesn't change much. I get maybe another 10 points of healing for each point invested.

But I could live with that. Its the next three skills that are the most frustrating. The middle two are both sustains and on paper sound great. A buff to any shields and any direct healing creates a damage shield. Well I'm assuming the last part was meant to be used with the aegis healing talent. But since the heals are for so little and the talent only creates a shield for 26% of the heal I get damage shields of 46... lovely... On top of that, each point invested in the skills only provides a 1-2% increase for shields. So more than one or two points are really wasted. Add onto the fact that the heal skills has a long 15(16?) countdown and that the two shielding skills are sustains and the whole tree isn't worth the points.

Anyway I just think that the tree should be looked at. Maybe it should have a actual shielding skill (Arcane shield sounds like it should be a shield but as far as the description text and my testing shows it is just a shield buff), or at the very least increase the healing amount or shield amount for direct heals.

Just my two cents... My next arcane blade (I just lost mine to a nasty level 25 boss on the last level of the maze, whats with that?) will not be using the aegis tree despite having poor defense...

The tree scales a lot with Magic/spellpower, at 30 magic you have really low spellpower.

Interesting.. Still, the difference between talent level 1 and 5 is going from 105 healing to 180. That's a lot of skill points for not much gain. Same with the two sustain skills. In any case, it just doesn't feel like a useful tree. Not enough positives to offset the points required and the high mana cost of the sustains (arcane blades usually already have several sustains so this is just two more to add).

What is the actual formula for the healing skill? Just curious what it would be healing me for at my theoretical build...

40 + self:combatTalentSpellDamage(t, 10, 520)

combatTalentSpellDamage however is a complex formula with non linear benefits.

I made a test arcane blade with 100 spellpower and 5/5 in the whole tree.
Heal: 350 heal
Shielding: +44% power +5 turns
Arcane Shield: 49% of heal value
Aegis: supercharge of 69%

Yes the heal is not uber powerful, but it is useful, and dont forget the 3 other talents combine with any healing runes you use too.

Imagine your char has a 200% healing modifier, when using heal you get:
350*2 = 700 heal
Thus it also adds a 700*.49*1.44 = 493 shield
If you supercharge it with aegis the 493 shield become a 493*1.69 = 834 shield

So your "crappy" 350 heal just turned into 834+700 = 1534 damage buffer.
Now imagine it with some more healing or shielding runes.

If anything the aegis tree is a bit *too* powerful.

Hmm, okay. Thanks for the response. I guess I'll have to play around with it some more. I forgot about the fact that I could get healing bonuses. I guess I was looking at it the wrong way. I was thinking that by spending a category point on it I could forgo using one of my rune/infusion slots for a shield or heal one and instead use something else. But I suppose this tree makes more sense with those runes. That makes it tough since you only get 3-5 category points.

Anywho, sorry for the uninformed post. It just didn't seem very useful at a low level. But thanks to your explanation I can see how it can be a very useful tree.

I'm not sure how the formulas work exactly, but from what I can gather from the code Aegis should heal for around 560 when maxed at high spellpower. Shielding should go up to +60% power, +5 duration. Arcane Shield goes up to around 70% of heal amount, and Aegis should give up to 90% of the power back to up to 5 shields. Particularly high spellpower and increased mastery may break these even higher (arcane blades can easily break 200 spellpower).

They might seem like they don't give much increase with talent levels, but a lot of spells suffer from this when your spellpower is low since they have high bases. As you increase in spellpower you'll find the talent level differences to be far more marked.

Overall I think it's a great tree for Arcane Blades, especially undead ones... Aegis is perhaps the least useful spell, since the giant shields one can build up with Shielding aren't going to need a lot of refilling before they run out, and Aegis doesn't stretch their duration any.

Most talents that scale with stats are meant to scale WELL with stats, and moderately with talent points; but additional talent points, when you have high stats, will increase the soft 'cap' that the talent can achieve with ease. So, in this case, [having not looked at the code yet], I would suggest focusing on the scaling stat before investing more points into the talent[s], then see how well the talent[s] scale with points invested. :)

Also, synergistic abilties likes these, tend to rely on things outside of their tree as well, to really shine. Think using a shield or healing rune in conjunction with this tree, and you can start to see more practical applications.

Wait, so is Aegis a supercharge skill or does it just refill up to the maximum amount of the shield? I thought it just "fixed" the shield from the description. Does actually strengthen the shield?

Hmm, can the Aegis spell push a shield beyond its maximum? If so... wow, I could make some amazing shields :D

Aegis doesnt stretch the duration but it not only for refilling, it does overcharge a shield.
So you can have a 700/400 shield. (or a 2000 more likely)
This can be a life saver when you know you're going to take a beating (aegis doesnt cost a turn to use), like opening the room of death

People I dont understand, you all know archmages are my pet class, how could I make them sucky skills ?

darkgod wrote:People I dont understand, you all know archmages are my pet class, how could I make them sucky skills ?

I didn't know...

Well I guess I like the tree better now

I think the Aegis spell description should be changed to:

Release arcane energies into any magical shield currently protecting you, further charging it by %d%% of its max absorb value.

Currently it says "replenish", which makes it sound like it sticks under the max.

Yup thanks

Just played an archmage, died a lot (debug mode kept me alive). Tried out a few options, but in the low-mid game it seems like there are to many sustains for any to be useful.

My mage at lvl 15 or so had ~230 mana.

Mana cost for each sustained skill:
200 probability travel
150 disruption shield
120 premonition
50 arcane power
50 shielding
50 arcane shield

In addition, a lot of skills cost a lot of mana
Aegis is 50 mana
Inferno 100 mana

I was running out of mana the whole time, and I only used shielding as a sustain. I should probably not have used aegis, and used arcane power instead.
Manathrust and lightning gets boring after a while, so I wanted to lay down some infernos.

While the aegis tree seems very powerful in the end-game, the 100 mana sustain and low spell-power in the early game make it useless in the early to mid game.