Shield Priority

[jacobdm]

This is a continuation of this discussion: http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=24800 But I'll summarize for those who are lazy. ^_^

I've made a skeleton archmage w/ the intent of heavily depending on shields to keep me alive. I discovered that the current priority of shields (the order in which they absorb damage) is very different from what I would expect and desire. The way it is right now, the priority is Disruption Shield > Damage Shield > Displacement Shield (there are many others, but I don't know anything about them to give recommendations on priority). This makes it so that damage shields are the only ones that I can actually use safely, and the others are just there as a stop-gap for when I am waithing for damage shields to cooldown. If instead that priority were: Displacement > Damage > Disruption, than it would actually be strategically viable to have more than one up at once.

Note: This seems to be a pretty easy change to make in the code (in "onTakeHit" in Actor.lua), but it's simply not how it is right.

What are people's thoughts?

[tiger_eye]

The current order is:

Code: Select all

Retribution          celestial/guardian
Displace Damage      chronomancy/spacetime-folding
Disruption Shield    spells/arcane
Time Shield          spells/temporal
Damage Shield
Displacement Shield  spells/conveyance
Bone Shield
Foresight            chronomancy/chronomancy
Deflection           cursed/force-of-will

[edge2054]

The above appears to be taken from the SVN. Damage Shunt and Repulsion Shield have been replaced with other talents (for those not aware).

[jacobdm]

No one else thinks this would be a good change?

[Aquillion]

I posted my support for it in the other thread.

Though, I'll add that I don't feel it's strictly necessary anymore, after playing with them a bit -- it's true that Displacement Shield as a fallback to Damage Shield is worthwhile.

Another major consideration: Moving Disruption Shield to last makes sense from the perspective of a mage using both for defense, but would make it impossible to exploit Bone Shield or the Potion of Invulnerability (for more extreme cases) to survive a Disruption Shield explosion. This may, of course, be a desirable change, but if so, it might be worth considering Disruption Shield's purpose in general.

(Is a Disruption Shield explosion supposed to be survivable, generally? Should it be something players are encouraged to use to their advantage, especially via extra lives? Should its basic functionality be changed?)

[jacobdm]

I hadn't played around w/ disruption shield enough, I suppose. I hadn't realized that it hurts the caster. That makes it much more of a gamble to use that skill...