ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Disruption shield is currently far more hassle than it needs to be.

1) Resting to restore HP or cooldowns should not overload Disruption Shield. When Disruption Shield is active and the player has mana regen the target value should be the maximum mana value to some appropriate midpoint, possibly 50% or 25% of total or a user configured value. The player could continuously manathrust the nearest wall to keep his mana low, but that's a royal pain.

2) Resting should reduce the load on Disruption Shield. Disruption Shield can be rebooted. Because of its long cooldown and the need to manually keep mana low while rebooting it even with the above fix allowing the same benefit from resting is almost as big a quality of life improvement as making resting not overload it.

As far as I know, Disruption Shield isn't meant to be sustained indefinitely. It's supposed to be an "Oh shit" shield for Archmages low on mana, or a middle of the fight tool for Aether mages, but not a permenant shield.

I agree with Red on this. Disruption Shield is already really powerful, and the mana management mini-game is a great, fun gameplay element. I think I'd rather see the micro reduced by deactivating while not in use, but that'd be tough to do without making things more tedious. (Stand in lava, shoot yourself at intervals, etc.)

Plus I've accidentally left it on while resting to full and never seen it overload. Are you sure non-absorption-based mana regeneration can cause that?

Atarlost wrote:Disruption shield is currently far more hassle than it needs to be.

1) Resting to restore HP or cooldowns should not overload Disruption Shield. When Disruption Shield is active and the player has mana regen the target value should be the maximum mana value to some appropriate midpoint, possibly 50% or 25% of total or a user configured value. The player could continuously manathrust the nearest wall to keep his mana low, but that's a royal pain.

2) Resting should reduce the load on Disruption Shield. Disruption Shield can be rebooted. Because of its long cooldown and the need to manually keep mana low while rebooting it even with the above fix allowing the same benefit from resting is almost as big a quality of life improvement as making resting not overload it.

In 1.3 there may be the facilities to do this, since incX() functions will be split out.

I'm thinking about tying this to Pure Aether, since once you have Aether Avatar there's nothing stopping you from rest -> reboot -> manathrust-a-wall to get optimal Mana levels (other than tedium, which I feel is a thing to be avoided).

Regular mana regeneration can't overload the disruption shield as far as I've seen with tons of mages. Only damage can. However, if you recover to max mana with disruption shield still on, the next hit of even 1 point of damage will overload the shield.

And yeah, it's really not intended to be sustained indefinitely. It's basically perfect protection for Archmages, with the exception that it can be dispelled. To be able to sustain it indefinitely as well... Archmages are OP as it is. They really don't need that.

Doctornull wrote:I'm thinking about tying this to Pure Aether, since once you have Aether Avatar there's nothing stopping you from rest -> reboot -> manathrust-a-wall to get optimal Mana levels (other than tedium, which I feel is a thing to be avoided).

That's precisely why it should just be a base function of the shield. It's an absurd amount of tedium to use remotely optimally and tedium is contrary to the game's design goals.

Well if you don't use something as it is intended to be used, you can't expect it to be flawless.

It's not functional the way you claim it's "intended" to be used. By the time you use enough mana to trigger it from full you're either a corpse or you didn't need it in the first place.

Maybe you didn't need willpower then?

I've found between sustains, high-mana spells, and buying time with other defenses or tactics, Disruption Shield is perfectly usable without micromanaging in the way it's intended to be used.

I can't speak for higher difficulties, but for the really hairy ones, you're supposed to have to bend every rule and use every scum and use every last trick you can find, QoL be damned. So I think it working reasonably on reasonable difficulties is just fine.

Lyoncet wrote:I've found between sustains, high-mana spells, and buying time with other defenses or tactics, Disruption Shield is perfectly usable without micromanaging in the way it's intended to be used.

I can't speak for higher difficulties, but for the really hairy ones, you're supposed to have to bend every rule and use every scum and use every last trick you can find, QoL be damned. So I think it working reasonably on reasonable difficulties is just fine.

I may ask, what type of weapon or weapons are using on this particular game?

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automatic knife

It seems like this could be solved by having a free talent be given when you unlock Spell/Arcane that lets you set your max mana regeneration level, like you can do with paradox.

That feels like it could be a reworked Arcane Power.