[b30] Deactivating sustains on spell cast.

[lukep]

All of your sustained spells deactivate if you cast a spell while you have barely enough mana to cast it.

[Hedrachi]

This isn't new to b30, more like b15... thought it was intended, and it's true for stamina talents as well as mana. Dunno what else deactivates when you run out of its resource, aside from mindslayer auras (which as far as I remember, say they'll deactivate when you run out of energy).

Edit: Perhaps for resources which have powers that act like this, a "bloodied" effect can be applied to the screen, similar to the low hp warning, but coloured to match the resource being depleted?

[tiger_eye]

yeah, sustains are deactivated if you have less than 1 of the given resource. Hence, if you have 10.5 stamina and use a talent that requires 10 stamina, then all your stamina sustains will be deactivated.

[Final Master]

This has been present for at least as long as I've been playing [that is, beta 3]. As far as intended, as it hasn't been changed or mentioned really at all for over a year, I believe it is meant to be that way, and I like it that way. I makes you really consider waiting a few turns to use a resource once you start to get rather low.

I would definitively not file this under bug, but as working as intended. :D

[lukep]

I am strongly opposed to making the player manually check talent costs in order to avoid losing all of their sustains, especially since there is already a UI element that checks the talent's cost against the resource needed (greyed out/green skills).

Currently, to use a talent with no risk of losing sustains, you:

1. Choose talent appropriate to the situation
2. check if it is green (not cooling down or too little resources)
3. mouse over it
4. check its cost
5. check the amount of the resource you have remaining
6. compare (5) and (4)
7. cast it

Where I think it should be:
1. Choose talent appropriate to the situation
2. check if it is green (not cooling down or too little resources)
3. cast it

Why not just set sustains to deactivate at 0, or give a warning, or not allow casting spells that would deactivate all of your sustains? It would remove the tradeoff between playing extremely slowly and risking losing sustains, as well as making the talent colours actually do what I use them for.

[Final Master]

That list of seven things that you put up are easily done without active thought, I really don't see why it's an issue.

[Hedrachi]

Titan Quest doesn't have "deactivate sustains on loss of last free resource point"... but this isn't TQ. I really don't have too much of a problem here, because the problem only occurs when you're right on the resource level which leaves you with less than 1 but more than 0 of that resource. Your resource bars are easily visible on the left-hand side of the screen, and while you're typically focusing on the main game area, you can always look over and see what you're at. You should always have a rough idea of what your manasurge/manaflow/second wind/whatever does to the resource bar that replenishes it, and use the replenishing ability when you need it. If you're still running low, get another one. I only suggested the "color the screen" bit as a way to get the game to yell at you to pop a resource replenisher, not because this situation happens regularly.

[lukep]

That list of seven things that you put up are easily done without active thought, I really don't see why it's an issue.

It is an issue to me because it takes time (especially if you play using the keyboard, like I do), not because it takes mental effort. As it currently is, checking if a talent is green is almost useful, instead of working as I would have intended it.

[marvalis]

have noticed this a few times too. When it happens, it is usually undesirable to me. I would not mind this feature to be removed.
Ideally, there would be an option somewhere to choose between deactivate or not.

[Frumple]

What might be neat, is if instead of all of the sustains collapsing, they started dropping one by one as you hit zero, freeing up some resources as they go -- probably something like 1/4 to 1/2 the cost of the sustain. Even better would be if there was a chance, perhaps based on the sustain's cost, to hit you with some sort of debuff every time it happened.

For most of the sustains that drop when resource hits zero, it sorta' makes sense. Hard to keep stuff going when you're completely out of gas, yeah.

[lukep]

What might be neat, is if instead of all of the sustains collapsing, they started dropping one by one as you hit zero, freeing up some resources as they go -- probably something like 1/4 to 1/2 the cost of the sustain.

I would be very careful about this, as it would lead to new ways of regaining mana, for example, casting Invisibility at 1 mana, then recovering 100 when it deactivates one turn later.

Even better would be if there was a chance, perhaps based on the sustain's cost, to hit you with some sort of debuff every time it happened.

Please no. Losing a sustain is already detrimental, I wouldn't want to see a debuff added to it as well.

For most of the sustains that drop when resource hits zero, it sorta' makes sense. Hard to keep stuff going when you're completely out of gas, yeah.

Agreed, but I think that the UI should prevent you from doing it to yourself. Being hit by manaworms or stamina drain should not be changed.

[Frumple]

What might be neat, is if instead of all of the sustains collapsing, they started dropping one by one as you hit zero, freeing up some resources as they go -- probably something like 1/4 to 1/2 the cost of the sustain.

I would be very careful about this, as it would lead to new ways of regaining mana, for example, casting Invisibility at 1 mana, then recovering 100 when it deactivates one turn later.

Yeah... easy enough to fix that -- if you don't have the resource open to pay for the sustain in full, make it blow up or something. Simple enough. Or could just have it not work, I guess, if one was feeling pansy about it

Please no. Losing a sustain is already detrimental, I wouldn't want to see a debuff added to it as well.

Specifically causing a debuff when you overcast, so to speak, not when it's induced. A price to the free resource, basically. Not sure what would be thematic, though. Either a damage nerf of some degree or something along the lines of a few turns of burning hex equivalent, stuff like that. Maybe a temporary mastery reduction to resource using talents, if that was possible.

I could see this becoming a more robust mechanic, actually. You could 'spend' sustains as a sort of desperation move. Use a talent that costs more than what you'd get back and there's particularly nasty side effects. It would be fair to have a warning before going through with it, though, in such a case.

Agreed, but I think that the UI should prevent you from doing it to yourself. Being hit by manaworms or stamina drain should not be changed.

Ambivalent, here. I occasionally find it pleasant to be kicked in the genital area for not paying attention, and not paying attention is the basic cause for self-induced sustain loss, here.

[lukep]

Yeah... easy enough to fix that -- if you don't have the resource open to pay for the sustain in full, make it blow up or something. Simple enough. Or could just have it not work, I guess, if one was feeling pansy about it

Wow, that's a pretty significant change, activating sustains at low resources would become very costly/impossible.

Ambivalent, here. I occasionally find it pleasant to be kicked in the genital area for not paying attention, and not paying attention is the basic cause for self-induced sustain loss, here.

The problem I have with this is that it forces you to pay attention to the wrong thing, making you check resource cost, (precise to one point), instead of what the UI is telling directly you, which is the entire reason for colour coding the talents.

If you were allowed to cast one spell that brought you to negative mana (eg. casting Inferno at 5 mana, and losing all of your sustains, and possibly other debuffs) this wouldn't be an issue to me, as that would clearly be deliberate design. As it currently is, difficulty is added through UI design, not through game mechanics.

[bricks]

If I'm understanding this properly (using an ability that takes you down to 0 < X < 1 resources disables sustains?), I can't understand how that is intended behavior. For most resources that requires an unbelievable amount of attention to one extremely small detail when compared to the whole pool in a very specific circumstance. It does sound like this is a consequence of making mana/stamina drain abilities deactivate sustains, which I suppose they should*, but spellcasting should not. Losing one's sustains is already unnecessarily devastating for certain builds/classes (my temporal warden loathes dreadmasters...).

*Thought about this a little more... why does this happen? Sustains tie up part of the resource's max, not the resource itself (ignoring equilibrium/paradox here). This seems counter-intuitive. If this is the intended behavior, it should probably part of the skill itself, and not the default behavior for meters.

Easiest fix I can think of, don't allow spellcasting for spells that would bring the resource down to <1 (instead of the current check for <0).