ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

As far as I can tell, +arcane damage% and arcane damage penetration affects the damage of the mana storm that's the result of disruption shield breaking, and specifically the damage it does to you. If that's true, that means that disruption shield as a defensive measure is less effective for arcane/aether archmages than any others (because they stack arcane damage bonuses) and that running with Pure Aether and Disruption Shield is basically asking for it (as the 50% penetration will affect the resistance from Disruption shield), unless you remember to turn it off.

I never realized this until today on my arcane mage run in the ID I died from my own mana storm, taking ridiculous amounts of damage (something like 120/turn), and I was careful to clear my disruption shield at least 2-3 times/level. This either needs to be clearer in the text of the ability or needs to be changed somehow. It just doesn't seem to be logical that a fire mage could get more out of disruption shield than an arcane mage...

Invest in Spellcraft maybe?

Or have some sort of defensive effect that scales with talent points in arcane/aether?

HousePet wrote:Invest in Spellcraft maybe?

Huh? Using spellcraft doesn't change anything. This is the result of disruption shield breaking, not me hitting myself with my own spells.

HousePet wrote: Or have some sort of defensive effect that scales with talent points in arcane/aether?

Disruption shield is in the arcane tree. And it gets worse as you get better, as I tried to explain.

supermini wrote:Huh? Using spellcraft doesn't change anything. This is the result of disruption shield breaking, not me hitting myself with my own spells.

But if the arcane storm gets your arcane damage% and penetration, I assume you are considered its source, so spellcraft should protect you (I haven't checked if it actually does, though).

I meant something along the lines of "talent levels in arcane and aether talents increase your arcane resistance when disruptions shield turns into a storm".

And I'm pretty sure this is a case of hitting yourself with your own spell.

5k17 wrote:

supermini wrote:Huh? Using spellcraft doesn't change anything. This is the result of disruption shield breaking, not me hitting myself with my own spells.

But if the arcane storm gets your arcane damage% and penetration, I assume you are considered its source, so spellcraft should protect you (I haven't checked if it actually does, though).

I can assure you that it doesn't. And it probably shouldn't.

It doesn't.

It makes sense both gameplaywise(the storm is a downside you're not supposed to let occur) and thematically(it's broken, uncontrolled magic and Spellcraft, thematically, is about shaping a kind of blast-safe hole in your own spells.).

Optimally the blast should probably ignore Arcane resistance penetration, but that would make it a weird exception(Since this effect is very consistent otherwise), and the skill is, with very careful use, theoretically the best barrier in the game by a lot(Replenishes a resource to block damage? Yeah, that's really good.) regardless of what you do.

A nice stopgap measure would be to make Pure Aether instant. You'd have to make the other skills(Frostdusk/Wildfire/Crystalline Focus/Uttercold/Tempest, I believe is the full set?) instant to be consistent, but the skills are turned on/off so incredibly rarely that it isn't really unbalancing in gameplay. That way, if your storm cuts on, you can just flick off the appropriate skill.

You can turn off your sustain when the shield breaks...Unless you are incapacitated.

Anyway, at least the description of the ability should mention how it interacts with disruption shield since it's kind of a special case.

It's not really a special case, in my opinion. Pure Aether pumps you full of raw arcane energies that makes all the raw arcane energies you're throwing around that much more powerful. Disruption shield explosions happen when you overload on raw arcane energies and start uncontrollably spraying raw arcane energies all over the place. Thus, if you have Pure Aether running, it's perfectly logical to assume that your disruption shield explosions will also be infused with Pure Aether.

Mewtarthio wrote:It's not really a special case, in my opinion. Pure Aether pumps you full of raw arcane energies that makes all the raw arcane energies you're throwing around that much more powerful. Disruption shield explosions happen when you overload on raw arcane energies and start uncontrollably spraying raw arcane energies all over the place. Thus, if you have Pure Aether running, it's perfectly logical to assume that your disruption shield explosions will also be infused with Pure Aether.

It is perfectly logical to you. It wasn't logical at all to me that disruption shield would get worse as you get better. Lets just leave personal logic out of this.

I find the fact that you can store up an unlimited amount of damage in a disruption shield to be a bit odd and exploitable, even since it was nerfed to be 1/10 of an unlimited amount per turn. IMO the damage should be capped, maybe at your max mana.

Mewtarthio wrote:It's not really a special case, in my opinion. Pure Aether pumps you full of raw arcane energies that makes all the raw arcane energies you're throwing around that much more powerful. Disruption shield explosions happen when you overload on raw arcane energies and start uncontrollably spraying raw arcane energies all over the place. Thus, if you have Pure Aether running, it's perfectly logical to assume that your disruption shield explosions will also be infused with Pure Aether.

In terms of game mechanisms, it is highly unintuitive that spellcraft is supposed to protect you from AOE spells you cast, and the arcane storm, despite being AOE and apparently treated as cast by you, is unaffected by it.

5k17 wrote:In terms of game mechanisms, it is highly unintuitive that spellcraft is supposed to protect you from AOE spells you cast, and the arcane storm, despite being AOE and apparently treated as cast by you, is unaffected by it.

Agreed.

I think the best solution would be that the storm would not be affected by spellcraft, and also would not inherit player's modifiers to aether damage and resists.