Aether/Arcane thoughts and ideas...

[Delmuir]

Since the change to Disruption Shield, the arcane/aether Archmage build finds itself a little lost... I'll explain or you can just skip to the first bold line...

Arcane/aether as low variance damage and powerful spells (Arcane Vortex and Aether Beam are two of my favorite skills in the game) but they're tricky to use and generally a little pricey. Aether Avatar let you cast them quickly such that you could layer them over and over while using Disruption Shield to replenish your mana.

This build no longer works now that Disruption Shield both doesn't provide mana directly but also shuts down when dropping below 50% mana, something that effectively cuts your mana pool in half. This is especially punitive for this particular build.

Additionally, each element has a skill that increases damage and resistance penetration along with a thematically appropriate tertiary function. Wildfire mitigates self-inflicted damage. Lightning adds daze to more skills. Cold allows for ice block penetration. Earth does something or the other but honestly I don't care about earth at all... but what does Pure Aether do? Gets rid of some status effects when using Aether Avatar? That's a really weak effect.

So, I'd like to return arcane/aether to glory and give it a proper theme.

1. Fire is reliable damage over time and cleansing.

2. Lightning is daze and hurricane with high variance damage.

3. Cold is freeze and speed (cheap, low cool down spells) with moderate damage.

4. Earth... still don't care about it but it has something to do with defense and maybe stuns.

5. Arcane/aether... has mid-range skills that are almost as likely to kill you as the enemy and one of them has a small chance to silence. Then it has disruption shield, which is good but no longer especially thematic.

What should arcane/aether be?

I think it should be the purest magical category. No status effects and no tricks, just unbridled magical fury. I think it should continue as the most dangerous to use of all of the magical categories. In order to achieve this, I propose these changes:

Arcane:

1. Mana thrust... basically the same except that every enemy it hits it unleashes a radius one burst of damage that can hit you or your party. Increase mana cost a bit.

2. Arcane Power... trade places with Aether Permeation

Aether Permeation... sustain. Check arcane resistance at 2/3 for all damage types (starts here at level and stays there). Increase arcane resistance cap 3% per active talent level.

3. Arcane Vortex... Whenever an enemy with an arcane vortex on it is hit by another aether spell, the damage increases 20%. Stacks multiplicatively. Increase mana cost.

4. Disruption Shield... shuts down at 25% and not 50% mana.

Aether:

1. Aether Beam... eliminate the cap on hits per turn. Eliminate chance to cause silence.

2. Aether Breach... no change.

3. Aether Avatar... get rid of access to temporal category. Add +20% damage shield penetration.

4. Pure Aether... eliminate the tertiary effect that eliminates a status effect when using Aether Avatar and replace with: Disintegration.

Every time an aether or arcane spell hits someone, including you, it reduces arcane resistance by 5% for 5 turns. Stacks.

Replaced prodigy: Arcane Power:

Spellpower on crit +10 for 5 turns. Stacks.
Gains passive mana regen equal to spellpower/10
+25% max mana
+25% silence resistance
Reduce resource drain effects by 33%.

That's my idea. Pure, brutal damage. Thoughts?

[HousePet]

Run another pass over that. It isn't very self consistent.

"No status effects, no tricks" but then you added a trick to Arcane Vortex and a status effect to Pure Aether.

You can't put Aether Permeation there. Nobody has Arcane resistance at that level. It will be useless for half the time you have access to the talent. Its also something that you have to build around to use. Therefore point tax talent.

I would like to keep the difficult and dangerous theme, but you can't go with a no tricks/status design. That leaves the only possible options for keeping the danger as "Your spells hurt you when used. Unavoidable damage." and "You have no defence because you used this." So either boring or unviable.

[Delmuir]

Fair points but as always, I put the idea out there for input, not so much as a perfect plan. It's a starting point. Is my initial premise regarding the mana issue incorrect? I don't think so. As such, what's to be done about at least that point?

I don't think silence is a particularly thematic effect on arcane/aether and that's really my big point. What would make sense would be damage shield penetration or a multiplying effect (because other wild and volatile nature of the skills, this makes thematic sense to me). So, remove the "disintegration" mechanic and the multiplying effect on Arcane Vortex.

How about adding one of these instead:

1. Aether Permeation - add this to the given effect. Converts between 1/3 and 2/3 (with talent level) of all outgoing damage to arcane/aether. This would solve the early troubles of single-element builds.

or

2. For arcane/aether spells, it would add a damage bonus (with talent level and spell power) whenever arcane/aether spells are layered on top of one another, i.e., whenever two arcane/aether spells affect the same enemy at the same time, they gain a damage bonus.

To return to my first issue... Arcane/aether only has four attack spells (4.5 if count the disruption shield going down), which is the fewest of any element save Earth/stone which also has 4 (or 4.5). Earth stone uses cooldown reductions to make that easier to deal with but Arcane/Aether uses Aether Avatar for a similar effect. The problem is still the mana cost... you can cast a lot of spells but doing so will break your primary shield. It's a tricky situation, especially because the offensive utility of a broken Disruption Shield has not manifest as such.

My point is, Arcane/Aether either needs more mana to start or incoming (which is what it was designed around) or it needs to increase the damage to mana ratio in some way. So that brings me to another, somewhat similar idea:

3. Whenever Disruption Shield is down and the Aether Storm is raging, that's when you add the multiplying effect. In other words, while the storm is raging, every arcane/aether spell that you cast within its radius gains a damage bonus. This would actually make useful the Aegis effect that increases its radius.

[Delmuir]

Another idea! Again, this is to deal with the mechanics of that shield...

Disruption Shield: works as it currently does EXCEPT it has this added effect:

1. Percentage of damage reduced by arcane/aether resistance is restored as mana.

So, if you received 100 arcane damage and have 35% resistance then you'd suffer 65 damage. Okay but then, let's say you recover 1/3 of the reduced as mana. If your mana pool is full or is filled up by this effect then your shield suffers the excess as damage...

Again, you restore 1/3 as mana so that's 11 but you're only down 10 mana so you restore 10 mana and suffer 1 damage on top of the original 65. If you had 65% resistance then you'd suffer 35 damage BUT now the 65 reduced restores 22 but you're only down and so you suffer the 35 + 12.

You will note that this means that you could could suffer more damage than your resistances would suggest BUT only against the shield which is really handy because once the shield is depleted then it drains mana which this would also restore.

This wouldn't be that big a deal as it'd only be arcane/aether damage but you can self-inflict said damage. More so, if you took the aether permeation prodigy then all damage would act like arcane/aether. As such, when at max mana, your shield would drain faster BUT once it starts depleting your mana then it would be much more resilient. This would make your shield a bit more dynamic or volatile but it would make the Aegis effect WAY more useful as you'd actually be able to use the energy to restore the shield itself.

[cowking]

5. Arcane/aether... has mid-range skills that are almost as likely to kill you as the enemy and one of them has a small chance to silence.

It's fairly self-obvious you're supposed to be running spellcraft with aether mage if you intend to use aether beam/breach on any kind of regular basis. Then again you're not forced to use either.

1. Mana thrust... basically the same except that every enemy it hits it unleashes a radius one burst of damage that can hit you or your party. Increase mana cost a bit.
...
That's my idea. Pure, brutal damage. Thoughts?

Aether mage I already consider borderline OP. Granted I'm only L30 on nightmare roguelike but it feels like playing a shadowblade that can fire a shadowstep every turn as a beam out to range 10. What you're suggesting is adding AoE to it. Everything already dies in 1-3 shots with Mana Thrust alone, even dark crypt felt easy.

This build no longer works now that Disruption Shield both doesn't provide mana directly but also shuts down when dropping below 50% mana, something that effectively cuts your mana pool in half. This is especially punitive for this particular build.

It sounds like you're not using a manasurge rune, have problems in your itemization, are using expensive sustains you don't need (essence of speed) or not realizing that activating a non-listed spell in aether avatar will cause you to lose 50 mana (including runes).

The build definitely works. I don't know if you're talking about insane difficulty or?

[Delmuir]

Cowking,

I'm actually quite experienced (having won on Insane with every element save Earth because I find it dull) with mages and the Arcane/aether is my favorite. I'm not struggling with it or making the elementary mistakes that you describe.

First off, on normal, almost any build is viable so you should no problem.

However, the way it was designed, the expensive spells (such as metaflow) worked in harmony with Disruption Shield by draining mana. Now, that doesn't work. It shouldn't be an issue on normal but on the higher difficulties, it becomes a serious issue. Using large amounts of mana will cause your shield to shut down... which, again, isn't a problem much on normal as a few castings will kill most anything but in a long fight on Nightmare or Insane, you have to layer spells significantly more and so mana becomes a problem and you no longer have the old mechanic of constant mana inflow.

I would encourage you to take a look at the original poster's history or time on this forum before launching into such a comically condescending response.

[cowking]

However, the way it was designed, the expensive spells (such as metaflow) worked in harmony with Disruption Shield by draining mana. Now, that doesn't work.

How it used to work has no relevance on how a redesigned skill/tree now works. You adapt to the changes, the changes don't adapt to you.

It shouldn't be an issue on normal but on the higher difficulties, it becomes a serious issue.

Using large amounts of mana will cause your shield to shut down... which, again, isn't a problem much on normal as a few castings will kill most anything but in a long fight on Nightmare or Insane, you have to layer spells significantly more and so mana becomes a problem and you no longer have the old mechanic of constant mana inflow.

No, it really doesn't unless you're doing something wrong. I can perma-fight in sludgenest to the point I had to exit the zone out of fearing some kind of item rollover bug and my build is nowhere near focused around mana recovery. Some basic math.

manasurge = 0.5 mana regen
items = 0.5 mana regen
2000% manasurge rune
= 21 mana per turn which lets you permacast your entire offensive arsenal short of aether breach and still regain mana

with 5/5 chant illuminate = ~+2 mana per turn
= 63 mana per turn which you'll be unable to dip unless you're a sped up shalore with essence of speed or something crazy like that

You can use Manaflow item power (flat mana regen) after using Manasurge to add like 15 mana per turn on top of that, which you can near perma-chain with device mastery. Flat mana + one round regen (casting time) from manasurge is enough to immediately cover your opening salvo (aether avatar + time shield + aegis etc).

On my mage I regen 43 mana per turn with manasurge without any talent or item focus on mana recovery (could get it over 80 if I wanted to). The main offensive spell of aether mage is manathrust with a whopping mana cost of 10 mana. 70 mana regen would mean about 210 life per turn if the damage ever dips into my mana (which it never does because I have like 10k shield power at level 45 and that's actually more than the incoming dps I received while facetanking Massok in clothing with hardening charm iirc).

If anything these mana "problems" are the most interesting part of the build since it's something you actually have to solve as the build itself is too strong for nightmare. At level 50 you can easily reach perma 4k dps with disruption shield + arcane reconstruction + aegis shooting you over 10k hp and that's without displacement or time shield.

I would encourage you to take a look at the original poster's history or time on this forum before launching into such a comically condescending response.

Your register date or post count don't really matter when what you write is in gross contradiction to reality.