ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

This is a continuation of this discussion: http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=24800 But I'll summarize for those who are lazy. ^_^

I've made a skeleton archmage w/ the intent of heavily depending on shields to keep me alive. I discovered that the current priority of shields (the order in which they absorb damage) is very different from what I would expect and desire. The way it is right now, the priority is Disruption Shield > Damage Shield > Displacement Shield (there are many others, but I don't know anything about them to give recommendations on priority). This makes it so that damage shields are the only ones that I can actually use safely, and the others are just there as a stop-gap for when I am waithing for damage shields to cooldown. If instead that priority were: Displacement > Damage > Disruption, than it would actually be strategically viable to have more than one up at once.

Note: This seems to be a pretty easy change to make in the code (in "onTakeHit" in Actor.lua), but it's simply not how it is right.

What are people's thoughts?

The current order is:

The above appears to be taken from the SVN. Damage Shunt and Repulsion Shield have been replaced with other talents (for those not aware).

No one else thinks this would be a good change?

I posted my support for it in the other thread.

Though, I'll add that I don't feel it's strictly necessary anymore, after playing with them a bit -- it's true that Displacement Shield as a fallback to Damage Shield is worthwhile.

Another major consideration: Moving Disruption Shield to last makes sense from the perspective of a mage using both for defense, but would make it impossible to exploit Bone Shield or the Potion of Invulnerability (for more extreme cases) to survive a Disruption Shield explosion. This may, of course, be a desirable change, but if so, it might be worth considering Disruption Shield's purpose in general.

(Is a Disruption Shield explosion supposed to be survivable, generally? Should it be something players are encouraged to use to their advantage, especially via extra lives? Should its basic functionality be changed?)

I hadn't played around w/ disruption shield enough, I suppose. I hadn't realized that it hurts the caster. That makes it much more of a gamble to use that skill...