ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Given the short cooldown on manaclash, it can be absolute hell on magic-only classes. Nerfing it is, in my opinion, a mistake. So what to do?

I propose killing two birds with one stone. See this thread on Aether Permeation:

http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=49497

My proposal is to tweak Aether Permeation so that it addresses this issue and is no longer terrible:

1. Keeps current function and bonuses but also check arcane affinity, cap incoming arcane resistance penetration at 30% (or whatever is balanced) and grant a 10% chance to cast "Echoes from the Void" on any outgoing damage. Echoes does resource drain on hit.

2. Make it a sustain at no cost

3. Have it store like a battery "x" magic resource (mana, postive energy, vim, and so on) per point of arcane resistance.

4. Whenever your magic resource hits 0, the sustain shuts down and instantly recovers said resource, thus PREVENTING your sustains from collapsing. Note that it doesn't totally negate the effect of manaclash as this prodigy would shut down so you'd still take a hit, just not as devastating of one. Now, if you get hit twice in a row by manaclash then you're out of luck, ha ha.

This would make the prodigy useful for more classes than just an Archmage. More so, by making it a sustain, you'd have the ability to shut it off if for some reason you wanted to specialize in another resistance for a bit.

Now I think this would be a prodigy worth taking. Thoughts?

While I certainly agree that Mana Clash needs a counter and Aether Permeation is bad I think your suggestion has too much going on.
(I personally think that Mana Clash scales too high. It scales at least 50% higher than other Mindpower based attacks, has the double effects of damage and resource reduction, and scales with either Mindpower or Physical Power.)

You've got the original effect, but enhanced with a couple of niche bonuses.
You've got it storing resources so that it can restore resources and avoid sustain disabling. (Sounds horrid to code.)
You've then added a small chance to apply a minor resource drain over time status to all your attacks.
I'll accept that these can be linked loosely via flavour, but its now doing three different things in a not very effective way.

Why is it not effective?
You've nerfed the primary function of the prodigy, and it was already not great.
How is it nerfed? Being mana clashed now disables the Prodigy. Those niche bonuses do not go anywhere near to making it worth taking if it now disables when you are mana clashed.
The Mana Clash protection? Well its stops your sustains going down once. This is sort of good but, unless you can be quite certain of destroying everything before you are hit again, your best option is still to run after being Mana Clashed to 0. (Especially since your resistances are now lower with Aether Permeation turning off.) So this doesn't really change the gameplay in any way. If you get wrecked by a Mana Clash, you still run away or die.

What would I suggest? This is still tricky, and made trickier if we want to do something about Mana Clash at the same time.
Let's start with the base Aether Permeation resistance conversion / damage redirection (The poor thing has both names in the code):
This is supposed to make it easier to manage resistance stacking and give you better damage resistance.
It doesn't because it then multiplies your resistances by 66%. That means your Arcane Resistance needs to be 50% higher than all other resistances for this to benefit you. Even with the Arcane Resist Cap bonus, your effective resistances cannot exceed 56% (Unless you find another source of increased resistance cap). (The description is not clear on this, but that 66% factor doesn't apply to incoming Arcane damage.)
Now this effect is actually used in another place in the game: Mountain Hewn makes Deeprock Form switch all damage to check your Physical resistance. Is Physical resistance significantly harder to get than Arcane resistance? Only if you aren't an Arcane focused Archmage. So this 66% factor is there to balance the Prodigy for Archmage. AKA everyone else is screwed. So your suggestion of adding in an effect that caps arcane penetration at 30% helps the one build that is messing up the balance for everyone else. Not the direction to go in.
So, what to do? That 66% factor needs to go, or at least get increased to 80%. That puts your maximum effective resistances at 68% (Unless you find another source of increased resistance cap).
This still make the Prodigy easier to use for an Arcane using Archmage, but that is likely unavoidable and not necessarily unwanted. To remove the bias, you would have to nerf Arcane Power and remove the Resistance bonus from Disruption Shield overloading. Not sure its worth it.

Now Mana Clash:
Who would have thought that something with no resistances or counters could become a wildly unbalanced mechanic? Hopefully everyone...
Radical suggestion: Make Arcane Resist reduce the power of Arcane Resource Burns. You can make the final damage have 100% resistance penetration easily enough.
Results: Everyone now has access to something that helps protect against Mana Clash. Aether Permeation now increases that protection without giving everyone a headache when they try to read what it does. (Although it should be clarified that Arcane Resistance is not penalised by the Prodigy.)

Success! My goal is always to kick around my terrible ideas and hopefully someone will respond with a better one (and I've had a little success) and I think you've done it. Nice work.

I really like your idea about dealing with Manaclash by having it reduced by arcane resistance. Why not just add that to the prodigy and call it a day (though I still think it ought to check affinity as well just because it makes thematic sense...)? From my perspective as someone who likes the mage classes, that'd be sufficient to justify taking the prodigy.

One added point... I'd add to the game more ways to increase resistance caps, particularly on shields. A +5% on some shields... a mage could still get it but at a cost of having to use a short-staff.

If the manaclash/burn reduction was 2/3 of your arcane resistance then it'd be sufficient. That'd probably make the prodigy "good enough" in my eyes. At the very least I'd consider playing it on a Lich Necromancer.

Strong disagree that mana clash is anything other then an annoyance. Mana classes have manasurge runes[Necromancer has consume soul instead], which are getting buffed in 1.6 to restore more mana. Vim classes have bloodcasting, which is also getting buffed in 1.6. Celestial classes are the least affected of all since they have many talents, generally with short cooldowns, that restore resources. Plus their sustains generally don't turn off at 0 energy anyways.

The big problem as I see it is that each class has a sufficient resource to escape but given the cost of all of your sustains failing, and the nightmare of also getting hit with a stun or similar, you have little chance of actually fighting back, though I concede that Celestial classes do better than standard mages.

I'm simply suggesting that mage classes should have some means of fighting back and if the price of that is a prodigy, it might be worthwhile.