ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

There are clearly some prodigies that are so universally good as to render others pointless: Draconic Will for one.

Now, this leads me to Aether Permeation. If you max Arcane resistance and have this prodigy, you have 46% resist all, essentially. This is kind of a problem. One, it renders the Thick Skin skill obsolete… unless I'm mistaken on what checks first, etc. Two, it can actually make you situationally worse… especially against Atamathon or in a handful of other places where you really want a higher resist than that.

To that end, I want to suggest that the prodigy itself give you a 5% increase in your aether resistance cap, bring it up to 75%. That would bring your effective resist all to 49%… not bad.

Now, I'd like to suggest that Aether Avatar get a 5% increase, per level, to your arcane resistance cap. Thus, while you were using the skill, you could have a theoretical arcane resistance of 100% and an effective resist-all of 66%.

One of the things this would do is make Aether Avatar critically important but also, it would make Arcane Power useful as that extra arcane resistance would actually mean something and maybe people would use the skill.

That is my suggestion, unless of course someone wants to defend Aether Permeation as a useful prodigy over any of the other ones like Cauterize and Temporal Form, etc. Maybe I'm underestimating it...

Nope, it's pretty awful. Part of the problem, though, is that people tend to overrate resistances in general.

I'd like to see resistance penetration capped alongside any buff AP gets.

This idea, or a similar one, came up about a year ago and no one acted on it… not really sure why.

They've been busy adding new effects (like wet… seriously, it's useful but how like an engineer to produce a ridiculously complicated feature for a simple problem…) and graphics but I never heard anything about this… I can't even recall if people thought it was a stupid idea or something.

It's just a bit frustrating because there are tons of prodigies but realistically, only a very small number are useful at all. More so, based on the nature of the game, you're not likely to have that many options…

I'd really like to see this one be useful.

I think there was a proposition to make it 66% arcane resist 33% usual resist all?
Also, thumbs up for raising resistance cap. Kinda sad that obvious synergy between Disruption Shield (which gives you, like, 90% arcane res or so?) and Aether Permeation is wasted due to resistance cap.

Hmm. Some ideas:

1/ Grant 90% (or more) immunity to your own Arcane damage. This would make the prodigy a workable replacement for the Spell/Meta category, which could contribute to more different viable Arcane/Aether builds.

2/ Grant some "flat" damage reduction to the more esoteric and magical damage types: Arcane, Blight, Temporal, Darkness.

3/ I like the idea of granting a more limited +% resist all rather than replacing +% resistances for other stuff. I also like the idea of increasing the resistance cap.

does the resistance cap include resist all? or is it added on top?
if it is added on top, then it would make it possible, to have a 100 or over resistance for arcane.

all other resistances also, would be really high because of it, and I believe some people would think it is op.

as for increasing the resistance cap, well, the above would be even more op.
you have 30 to 40 on all the resistances that matter, then add resist all from the prodigy and BOOM effective 90% on all resistances.
or if it doe not stack it will still be 70% on all.

Radon26 wrote:does the resistance cap include resist all? or is it added on top?
if it is added on top, then it would make it possible, to have a 100 or over resistance for arcane.

all other resistances also, would be really high because of it, and I believe some people would think it is op.

as for increasing the resistance cap, well, the above would be even more op.
you have 30 to 40 on all the resistances that matter, then add resist all from the prodigy and BOOM effective 90% on all resistances.
or if it doe not stack it will still be 70% on all.

Resistances are not like Diablo… they're highly overrated (to such a degree that I don't even pay attention to them at all).

Even if you could have 70 resistances to all, there is resistance penetration, ignore resistances, etc. Really, you can't do much better than a 50% effective rate and that's only on a mage with that prodigy who sacrifices other benefits for defense (things like health mod, crit rate that are so critical for wildfire build). Allowing the resistance cap on Aether to reach 100% (or maybe a little higher with gear) would actually make a resistance-based mage build viable and interesting. In fact, you could put the cap increase not on Aether Avater but on the Arcane Power sustain… that would make it more useful and it would introduce a whole new line of mages.

It's not OP. It's a viable option… which it isn't currently. Right now, anyone who takes that option is a fool… improving the resistance cap wouldn't make it OP, it would just make it useful.

I think people are underestimating the value of being able to get 50% resist all from just focussing on arcane resistance.
Using the Aether Permeation method means you don't have to spend points in Thick Skin, or get loads of different resistance equipment.
Spare generic points and less fiddly equipment slot filling is worth something.

That said, I'd be happy with a small extra bonus on this prodigy and maybe an extra source of arcane resistance cap.

Five generic points are not worth a prodigy. Also, resistances aren't that great.

As Parcae has noted, resistances in general are overrated. They also suffer from the fact that you don't really want to focus on a specific one due to the variance in damage types that you will receive.

It seems to be a general trend that very few prodigies are worth taking, simply because they are grossly overpowered by several orders of magnitude compared to similar prodigies that are somewhat comparable.

For example Draconic Body and Cauterize, the fact that the first deals with HP in the first place makes it very meh.

Another is Spine of the World and Unbreakable Will which are just a lot worse than Draconic Will, which also covers magical.

Windtouched Speed is arguably strictly worse than Swift Hands.

Crafty hands allows you to gain 10 more stats!!!! Wow so amazing!

So how would Aether Permeation be good? If it converted all damage to Arcane so you could abuse wands, then yeah sure...

Mex wrote:As Parcae has noted, resistances in general are overrated. They also suffer from the fact that you don't really want to focus on a specific one due to the variance in damage types that you will receive.

It seems to be a general trend that very few prodigies are worth taking, simply because they are grossly overpowered by several orders of magnitude compared to similar prodigies that are somewhat comparable.

Yeah it would be nice if the overpowered ones were scaled down a bit, or the others were scaled up a bit.

I really don't want to see Prodigy power inflation, though.

Mex wrote:Crafty hands allows you to gain 10 more stats!!!! Wow so amazing!

I thought people abused the +% damage rather than the +stats.

HousePet wrote:I think people are underestimating the value of being able to get 50% resist all from just focussing on arcane resistance.
Using the Aether Permeation method means you don't have to spend points in Thick Skin, or get loads of different resistance equipment.
Spare generic points and less fiddly equipment slot filling is worth something.

That said, I'd be happy with a small extra bonus on this prodigy and maybe an extra source of arcane resistance cap.

This is my line of reasoning (you know, with a better tone… Housepet never sounds like an asshole, something I regularly do... sorry) as well.

There are builds that are short on generics and could actually really make use of this prodigy. I used the example of an archmage and giving a boost to it only because that's the class that could abuse it the most… which is fine, by me.

Right now there are too many absolutes in the game. The drop off between prodigies, builds, and skills is simply too great… the best are amazing and the second best are rough and the third best are crap.

So, how about this as a solution: Make two Aether-oriented prodigies… keep aether permeation the same but add a second one that adds 25% resistance cap to all resistances, bringing your max to 95%… in addition, there are a few wands and whatnot that further raise the cap so in theory, you could have 100% aether or maybe even slightly higher than that.

Realistically, very few people are going to max their resistances anyway… it would work really nice in combination with Aether permeation and it would cost BOTH prodigies to get.

Now, maybe that's over-powered so why not make it come at some small penalty… I'm not sure what would work but maybe it could be a sustain that costs life (like 100 hp) which would force a mage to commit a little more to constitution than they might over wise, potentially at the expense of cunning and crit rate… that would make the aether-based mages slightly less of a buzz-saw.

I have better idea. "Convert 30% or 50% damage you receive to arcane(May be manaburn). You gain x% arcane affinity."
Would work fairly well. You gain a bit of protection if you are not using metamagic from your own arcane or just spells, gain decent protection from arcane and other damage. Most enemies that have fire, cold pen, unlikely would have arcane pen. And arcane damage is rare enough already so there is little chance someone would have arcane pen.

(Also capping penetration is maybe right thing to do for sake keeping some stats at list marginally useful(or not cap, but reduce your total resistance(including one that is over cap)).

Bormoth wrote:I have better idea. "Convert 30% or 50% damage you receive to arcane(May be manaburn). You gain x% arcane affinity."

Interesting idea. Would this mitigate damage penetration? In other words, if an enemy has fire penetration and the damage is converted to arcane, would the penetration still apply? If not, then I rather like this idea.

This idea really brings this point home: the proposed value of Aether Permeation is that it would let you deal with one damage type. That's a pretty big deal if it worked, but it doesn't. Because of spellshock, resistance penetration, etc., you still have to cover numerous damage types, especially given that the prodigy can actually reduce your major resistances.

To that end, I propose one of three solutions:

1. Convert "x%" of damage to arcane and add some % affinity.

2. Simply convert 100% of all damage to arcane but reducing the resistance cap by 15% or so "due to the strain"… thus eliminating resistance penetration (unless they have arcane penetration) entirely if using this prodigy.

3. Some combination of raising the resistance cap, adding arcane resist, or converting damage to arcane.

For the sake of elegance and simplicity of gameplay, I suggest option #2. It doesn't raise the cap nor offer additional resistances but it does offer solid protection and more importantly, has a huge impact on dealing with resistance penetration.

More so, this solution would make said prodigy viable for any build that uses a Higher, archmage or not.

Delmuir wrote:

Bormoth wrote:I have better idea. "Convert 30% or 50% damage you receive to arcane(May be manaburn). You gain x% arcane affinity."

Interesting idea. Would this mitigate damage penetration? In other words, if an enemy has fire penetration and the damage is converted to arcane, would the penetration still apply? If not, then I rather like this idea.

This idea really brings this point home: the proposed value of Aether Permeation is that it would let you deal with one damage type. That's a pretty big deal if it worked, but it doesn't. Because of spellshock, resistance penetration, etc., you still have to cover numerous damage types, especially given that the prodigy can actually reduce your major resistances.

To that end, I propose one of three solutions:

1. Convert "x%" of damage to arcane and add some % affinity.

2. Simply convert 100% of all damage to arcane but reducing the resistance cap by 15% or so "due to the strain"… thus eliminating resistance penetration (unless they have arcane penetration) entirely if using this prodigy.

3. Some combination of raising the resistance cap, adding arcane resist, or converting damage to arcane.

For the sake of elegance and simplicity of gameplay, I suggest option #2. It doesn't raise the cap nor offer additional resistances but it does offer solid protection and more importantly, has a huge impact on dealing with resistance penetration.

More so, this solution would make said prodigy viable for any build that uses a Higher, archmage or not.

Dunno I like first more you may actually heal off your mana vortex(though you can take) and using arcane and aether school feels less suicidal with second idea though it is not so bad either.
1st idea Having 10% arcane affinity from preminition and 70% arcane resistance -20% of your pen and 50% convert
And primal infusion(10% more all affinity)
Arcane damage: received damage without pen(0.3x-0.2x) only 10%(it is 90% resist) of damage(get 10% more max resists and you are immune not so good, maybe with other ways reduce damage(are all resists multiplicative or additive?)
Self damage: (0.5x-0.2x) 30% of damage received( would get worse with more resistance penetration) or (70%)
Damage from other sources including physical(physical is most cool imo(0.5x-0.1x+0.15x-0.2x)=0.35x damage (without any other resisastances it is 0.35x or (65% equivalent)(physical may go quite lower due to armor)
If affinity is higher then god mode in some cases may come( with few types of shields most likely(though till primal ends))

Idea N2 100% convert 55% max resist(but can't be lowered) and +10% arcane max resist from cloth) With primal infusion
"All cases the same", yay. and 0.45x-0.1x=0.35x well pretty much weaker on average. Though there is still spellshock, feed, penetration, lower resistances negated(may be add can't get highier then 70% or 80% max resistances.)
Or instead -15% arcane resistance cap just make increased resistance cap has no effect on you.
So it is pretty much question of weather you want floating efficiency or solid.
And in the end resistance pen may have some soft cap of 50% so (if you have 70% you still received 70% of damage instead of 100%) it would help with sad situation with resistances at higher difficulty.