ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Or just remove the DoT trail and make it deal a normal timed effect.

I just lost a pretty good character(...On Nightmare/Roguelike, which makes this even worse) due to not realizing the DoTs would stack on the same square, and ate a few shots of 150 stacked before I realized it was myself doing it and not Weirdling Beast.

If you're in an immobile situation for whatever reason, Time Shield will actually return three times as much damage as it absorbed, which is amazingly bad, due to each fractional DoT hitting you three times. And the DoTs are rarely constructive for the person using the shield. This never even occured to me when using the spell, though I suppose it should have due to how many other DoTs allow for stacking, but it really make a spell that already basically is temporary damage shunting go from iffy to abysmal.

And it triples the damage that is delayed.
Time Shield is crap.

Time shield is good but it should be the last shield you get. Once the damage starts coming back to haunt you that means its time to retreat. But the shield lasts a really long time, there are few fights in the game an arcmage can't win in time. And don't overlook the effect duration reduction.

One problem I have with it is that it seems like your supposed to get a chance to move before you take the damage from each wake. It works that way when you have exactly normal 100% speed but haste screws up the timing which sucks.

Another issue I'm noticing on close examination; Time Shield seems to be checked before normal damage shields.

So that means stacking it for defensive purposes, before a normal Damage Shield, is actually worse than just using the damage shield in most circumstances; The Time Shield will break and the DoT will degenerate your normal shield.

This really is not a good shield.

One problem I have with it is that it seems like your supposed to get a chance to move before you take the damage from each wake. It works that way when you have exactly normal 100% speed but haste screws up the timing which sucks.

I'm actually kinda surprised you noticed that.

I didn't think people bought the category for anything but Essence of Speed.

I hadn't managed to notice that you could skip out on the DoTs at normal speed because I happen to be doing this with a Ghoul; That never occured to me, that it would null out on 100% speed(And, of course, a Ghoul is never 100% speed.). Regardless, considering that Essence of Speed is likely to be the main draw of the category, that's pretty rough.

Yeah, I had a shalore archmage so grabbed every shield I could ASAP. I believe the wake is only supposed to force you to move. When you have essence of speed and some movement speed boosts it's very worthwhile to move during combat anyway. If the wake was fixed to always spawn on the players turn and give you a chance to move than it would become a good talent.

...Except for the fact where it's rigged up to be the last shield you're likely to use due to the order of shield operations.

This means that your enemy is quite strong and has blown through any other shields you have first-as there's not really a good reason to use Time Shield first. As such, any skills that make movement unreliable-Stun, which halves your movement speed, or Pinning which prevents movement-are something they're more likely to have, as generally ToME enemies that are competent in one way are competent in others.

Your last ditch defense having multiple vulnerabilities to status that make said status far more debilitating is a little questionable. Especially when, in theory, status mitigation is part of the point of Time Shield...

Edit: Thinking on it, I've complained on this as being essentially fundamentally flawed, without giving any ideas for how to fix it. Lemme see here..

A: Turn the DoTs into a blast effect, that releases the damage a DoT would have done in a single turn as a (1+TL) radius single blast radius hit, every turn. So basically you wander around temporally exploding for a while, rather than trailing little DoTs.

Plusses: Can only return the amount of damage it has absorbed instead of triple, has all the other upsides Time Shield has now, and functions as a marginal kind of area control when it decides to go bad, which gives it more use against weaker enemies-which helps the fact that it's early in the barrier order.

Minuses: Well, you can't avoid damage at 100% speed anymore.

B: Give the DoTs a one turn delay before they form on the square. Kinda like how Explosion Traps do it.

Plusses: Makes the 100% effect work for everyone.

Minuses: Still a pretty bad shield if you're stationary. Probably would function best with a boost to the timed effect delay, or with a TL based boost to the delay. Kinda boringly good if you can stay moving.

C: Make it just a standard damaging timed effect/make the shield take hits after Damage Shield and not before.

Plusses: Fixes the issues I've mentioned.

Minuses: Kinda dull, too much like Damage Smearing as mentioned.

D: Raise the status duration lowering enough so that you can semi-reliably get out of the DoT. A fixed, rather high, baseline would be needed for this(30+(TL*5)%), in my opinion.

Plusses: Fixes the status issue without changing the behavior, probably the easiest fix.

Minuses: Doesn't actually help if you get hit with the status after the shield goes down, so it doesn't entirely fix the problem.

E: Have the skill grant Temporal resistance the same way Disruption Shield grants Arcane resistance, when it explodes, scaling upwards with leveling/spellpower.

Plusses: ...Fixes basically everything described here.

Minuses: I can't really see any? It makes it a better spell I guess.

I'm most fond of A and E. E is by far the easiest answer, and given the Disruption Shield comparison is unbelievably painfully bad for Time Shield in every imaginable way, I don't think Time Shield would be particularly hurt by getting some amount of Temporal resistance.

Often the Temporal conversion is worse than just returning the damage as normal elements, and unlike a Chronomancer, stacking Temporal-related equipment is usually not beneficial for an Archmage. A's neat too, though, and obviously these aren't necessarily exclusive.

E's really easy, though. Rather than usually returning 100% to 300% of the damage taken(barring weirdness with global speed), it would return a reduced amount of that, which makes a lot more sense.

BoomFrog wrote:If the wake was fixed to always spawn on the players turn and give you a chance to move than it would become a good talent.

This and maybe start forming wakes before duration expires, giving status effect with number of wakes under your feet everyone, staying on wake.

I like A and E too.

Also, I've been wondering, do we really need it as a damage shield?
I'm not saying it shouldn't be a damage mitigation talent, I'm just wondering if an alternative effect might be more interesting.

A is too similar to disruption shield's failure result. I like disruption shield and time shield because they feel like I am messing with uncontrollable forces which is how magic should feel.

Gives me ideas for a wild magic tree.

The problem with Time Shield is that it already is conceptually really similar to Disruption Shield(and Damage Smearing) anyways.

However, a way to make it more different would be to add a delay before the blasts start going off. It could even scale with talent level. Say, 1+TL turns after the shield goes down, but before you start actually exploding.

It makes the shield weirder, and I'm not entirely sure if that improves it actually, but it does make it more distinctive and fits the idea.

Also, I've been wondering, do we really need it as a damage shield?

Not really, no. If Archmages needed Time Shield, they'd be going Temporal more.

So maybe it could be one of those projectile-slowing talents instead. Say, with projectiles that miss and hit adjacent squares feeding the shield with their energy for more duration and higher slowdown rate?

Seems pretty hard to code that way, for questionable gain.

My best thought for a total redesign is to rebrand it as Stasis Field.

Rather than being a shield at all, it would be a temporary buff(with a similar duration to the current Time Shield), which:

A: Functions as a small amount of armor against all(all non-temporal?) elements(A relatively low reduction value, (10, 20 Spellpower) perhaps) by sapping the force from all attacks on you.
B: Constantly tries to slow all enemies within X radius(3+(TL/2)?) a small amount(3% per TL?, 20% cap?) for two turns. Largely only useful while they're in it, and not terribly reliably.
C: Slows all projectiles targetting you a large amount(Twice what B does, or so?).

Instead of a weaker Damage Smearing, sort of a strange, temporary version of Entropic Field/Energy Decomposition without really playing like either. Rather than just another shield, it's a tool that helps maintain shields. Shielding/Aegis impacting it would be optional and probably only for A, but not a bad idea. (Naming it something like Stasis Wall would fit better if it was able to use Shielding.)

No effect duration reduction?

It could have that still, probably.

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