ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Mana clash is a brutal, brutal skill against mages. Saps you of all (often at least) mana, likely shuts down sustains, does damage, and has a really short cool-down.

I propose that it checks mind power against spell power and if one's spell power is higher, it cuts down some mana drained.

That's it... a small window that might leave your sustains active or leave you with enough mana to escape.

An alternative idea might simple be just to cap the amount of resources it can destroy to a percentage of the targets resources instead of a flat amount. Maybe have it so that damage is scaled by a percentage of the targets resources instead of scaled by a number that can go up and beyond 100% of the targets resources?

To keep some of its current brutality though it could also attempt to inflict Silence or do a sort of 'Magic Talent' Stun that puts several of your magical abilities on cooldown.

or antimagic just needs a complete rework so that it isnt completely broken on NPCs who have infinite resources (or at least the important ones do) and always completely shafts players, more specifically, vim users.

I agree that anti-magic is currently too powerful on AI units compared to the player. After all, when does a player have infinite resources?

I have made this argument about manaburn (not just Mana Clash) before: Resource drain is a tough one to balance due to its "all or nothing" nature, it is only effective when it could remove a large chunk of mana in a few turns so as to shut down your target reliably, if it takes 3-4 casts to completely drain your target's resource you would be better off using routine offense talents.

Any attempts at balancing Mana Clash should be made on the basis of linearizing it's payoff. Something like spell power reduction would work, it is not too brutal to players/enemies as it still leaves sustain and escape options open, but it would still be a very powerful talent to make your target less of a threat without shutting them down altogether