Tweak shield/heal/regen runes/infusions some.

[Sradac]

Do shields even take into account resistances? I honestly dont think they should, just because you are resistant to say cold because of talents, or gear protecting you from the environment, that dosent mean it should extend to a shield.

Maybe another form of shield egos could be element focused, so you could have a rune of frost shielding that does a normal shield, but also reduces all damage it takes from cold by 50%

[Mex]

The issue with having shields that focus on a single type of damage is that predicting the next type of damage you will receive is pretty much impossible. You can make general assumptions such as lightning needed for Urkis, or blight being needed for crypt, but these general guidelines fall off almost completely once you go beyond NM difficulty.

This is also probably why Mindslayers have 3 shields that each cover 4 resistances. Also torques.

Even a shield that made you immune to fire damage for example is pretty worthless compared to a shielding rune that blocks any damage for even just ~500.

Oh but wait we have something called wards which do this kind of thing, my bad. Then again only the temporal one is used in combination with damage smearing, which will soon be nerfed to the ground.

The variance on starting runes infusions etc is big... but also fairly irrelevant once you get past the early game. The shield runes for example have never really impressed me. The only really important one is the infusion that removes physical and mental debuffs. Special mention to heroism however, that infusion if found early can really boost survivability in comparison to the other things shops sell.

It's also worth noting that fungus/regen infusion is disproportionately powerful on NM-.

If you are playing on anything below Insane I don't see why this is that much of an issue... and if you're playing above then what the boss/uniques (drowning) drop in terms of HP gear is much more potent than any potential rune spawning in the shops (with the exception of the physical/mental wild, but even then just a physical can get you by). In all honesty, start scumming on NM and below is not really necessary and seems to be a generally accepted part for "difficult" roguelikes, such as ToMe on Insane+.

And to reply to the original post. The starting inscriptions are worthless and usually immediately replaced, with the exception of the physical and or mental removers, just because they don't really scale at all and remain the same throughout the entire game (with just the cd being a concern). If I remember correctly the cds on the starting infusions are all very low and they are the most important inscription you can have. I think you see enough drops to upgrade the other ones fairly rapidly as well.

[donkatsu]

I think giving the shield its own resistances would be neat, and it makes sense that its resistances would be different from your own resistances. Just because the shield focuses on cold doesn't mean that it blocks only cold. Rather, it will block 500 points of anything, but it will block 1000 points of cold, to give an example. You could give it multiple types of resistances too, really anything is possible with egos.

The early game is already the part where you're most likely to get screwed without any means of compensation, so reducing variance there is desirable. And I've seen 400 point damage shields in Last Hope, which effectively double/triple your health pool in the early game, which is just nuts.

NM- is perfectly doable regardless of inscription rolls, the issue is consistency. For a certain skill level (or class), Normal/Nightmare can be made drastically harder/easier if you have a 300 point shielding rune versus if you don't. It's important for new players to have an enjoyable experience too, and just saying "you don't need any of this stuff, just do xyz and you can win without it" misses the point.

[Doctornull]

I like the idea of shields having resistances.

Hmm, maybe that's a perk for Aether Permeation: your damage shields gain half your Aether Resistance as Res All, or something.

[HousePet]

I like the idea of shields having resistances.

Hmm, maybe that's a perk for Aether Permeation: your damage shields gain half your Aether Resistance as Res All, or something.

Hmmm
*thinks about all inscriptions having an element ego*
*thinks about Aether Permeation adding the Arcane ego effect to all inscriptions*

[Delmuir]

I think giving the shield its own resistances would be neat, and it makes sense that its resistances would be different from your own resistances. Just because the shield focuses on cold doesn't mean that it blocks only cold. Rather, it will block 500 points of anything, but it will block 1000 points of cold, to give an example. You could give it multiple types of resistances too, really anything is possible with egos.

The early game is already the part where you're most likely to get screwed without any means of compensation, so reducing variance there is desirable. And I've seen 400 point damage shields in Last Hope, which effectively double/triple your health pool in the early game, which is just nuts.

NM- is perfectly doable regardless of inscription rolls, the issue is consistency. For a certain skill level (or class), Normal/Nightmare can be made drastically harder/easier if you have a 300 point shielding rune versus if you don't. It's important for new players to have an enjoyable experience too, and just saying "you don't need any of this stuff, just do xyz and you can win without it" misses the point.

I endorse this in its entirety.

New players should be able to have fun playing the game… if you want a brutal grind (and consider that fun) then play nightmare or insane.

Realistically, every class should be viable and right now shielding runes have such high variance that getting one can make the game a breeze and not getting one can make it impossible.

[Sradac]

I agree, and I think it would REALLY up the survival of new players to get to actually enjoy the game. If someone finds a decent cold shield, it would really increase their survival. The Shade, Wrathroot, Rantha, and Weirdling would all have some of their heavy hitting abilities accounted for in terms of defense.

And even if you got unlocky and rolled alts on some of those, its still a shield rune. It just so happens that its doubly effective against cold.

I just wonder if we should be careful not to bloat with too many resistance types. Maybe going the way of torques / mindslayers? You could have a "Thermal Shield" that is extra effective against fire / cold or a "Prismatic Shield" thats extra effective against Light / Dark.

Would there be any types we DONT want to include because those types should be extra deadly and exotic like Temporal or Blight?



....hmmmm I honestly think that would make sense. If you think about it, what would a runecrafter spend their time doing. Mass producing runes to protect against something that people will almost never see, which makes their creations useless, and plummets the demand for it? Or do they mass-produce runes to protect against something the every-day adventurer would come across. Fire and Cold, Lightning and Nature, Light and Dark

[Delmuir]

I'm just not sure this isn't a bit of over thinking…

Why have a damage-shield help against different types of damage? After all, that would make resistances even more useless… that's why my suggestion (which I made a bunch of but I don't know how good those ideas really are…) was if you add a bonus to a shielding rune, why not add a bonus to resistance cap rather than to the shield itself?

That way, searching for resistance gear would still be interesting and some-what important.

[HousePet]

Damage type resistances on runes won't help new players, they won't know which ones they need.

We could go really complicated and have things like a firey shielding rune of retribution: Boosts fire resistance and does fire retaliation damage.

[donkatsu]

We could go really complicated and have things like a firey shielding rune of retribution: Boosts fire resistance and does fire retaliation damage.

Make shields that grant fire penetration reduction.

Then, attack runes that grant fire penetration reduction penetration.