Mana Surgery - two and a half tweaks to Arcane.

[0player]

http://te4.org/games/addons/tome/mana-surgery
An attempt to make Arcane Power less useless, Manathrust less boring, and Aether Permeation less awful for its cost.

Here goes:
- Arcane Power now additionally provides Spellpower increase as you run out of mana, by up to 10% increase on first talent level; and arcane resistance depending on how full your mana bar is, from 0 to 10-25 depending on talent level.
- Manathrust now additionally drains 10% of current Mana to deal arcane damage baseed on mana drained, TL, and Spellpower. The drain can critically hit.
- Aether Permeation now uses 66% of your Arcane resistance and 34% of original damage resistance for all resists; and stacks with resist_all as expected. It also increases your arcane resist by 10%, which I don't have any flavor text for, so suggestions are welcome.

Try it out, have fun with it, and provide me with feedback!

[NemesisZeru]

I was just thinking of making an Archmage earlier, and decided tribeam might be a bit boring. Perfect timing! As soon as my head feels better, I'll give this a try. C:

[Razakai]

I like this a lot, but the bonus based on points invested feels a little Wyrmic-y. I'd probably give the cap increase bonus to Arcane Power or Aether Permeation instead. Or go full on with the mechanic and give every Archmage tree a similar bonus, that'd be fun.

[0player]

I'm... not terribly sure that fire%, lightning%, cold% and light% resistance caps are of any use. Physical resist% would be, but given how rare physical resist is, you're probably not going to hit the cap anyway.
This can be done easily, though.

[0player]

Went with sticking 10%/20% resist/cap onto Aether Permeation, because I still need to be trying hard to overbuff it, and because resist cap wasn't of particular use to those not taking Aether Permeation.
I guess it was nice for not blowing yourself up with Disruption Shield?
Updating OP post to reflect.

[Delmuir]

So I was just having a back and forth about Aether Permeation and then found your Addon. I've now spent a few hours with it (and I love playing Aether mages) and here's my feedback:

1. The Manathrust +% of mana is a bit of a cheat. It takes such a big chunk out of your base mana when you're full that it's easy to keep manashield up, maybe too easy. More so, it seems a bit unnecessarily complicated.

Ultimately, I think the Arcane/Aether build is already super, super strong and this just over-powers it a little. I actually think this class does more damage per turn than any other mage build. Killing yourself is usually the problem, ha ha.

2. Arcane Power: with the changes to the Aether Permeation, the bonuses are just overkill. The talent is already appealing enough now that Aether Permeation is useful. However, I might scale it up such that the resistances are backloaded rather than front loaded, thus encouraging spending more points in the talent.

3. Love the changes to Aether Permeation. I think it's fantastic. I wasn't sure how it would work but having now played it, I think it's excellent and it'll become a regular prodigy for virtually any mage or higher character (who happens to wander into space) that I play.

The 90% resistance cap is perfect.

I should note that this gives a Necromancer-Lich who finds his/her way into space, a very powerful defensive tool.

4. There is a big problem with it though… Spellcraft. Right now, it is really only useful for classes that get the Aether tree. Cold, lightning, and earth spells don't hit you for the most part, Wildfire can actually heal you plus you get a massive fire resist anyway from self-inflicted damage.

The only build that really needs Spellcraft is Aether and with this prodigy tweak, it no longer would (having potentially 90% or better Arcane resistance). Of course, you could still silence yourself on accident with Aetherbeam… and then spellshock, etc. could lower your resistances temporarily so maybe this isn't much of a problem… something to think about though.

[0player]

1. Haven't experienced it being that easy, but maybe you are right. You think upping the cd/lowering the % to 5 would do it?
2. The bonuses, IIRC, are equal to the original on average. Do you think % spellpower increase is too strong?
3. Addressing Spellcraft, there is Pure Aether for all your blowing yourself up needs.

[Delmuir]

1. Haven't experienced it being that easy, but maybe you are right. You think upping the cd/lowering the % to 5 would do it?
2. The bonuses, IIRC, are equal to the original on average. Do you think % spellpower increase is too strong?
3. Addressing Spellcraft, there is Pure Aether for all your blowing yourself up needs.

1. I'm not sure it's that easy but I did find that at the end of the game, it made it easier when I had a lot of mana. I'm just not sure that's really a problem per se but I thought it worth noting.

That being said, CDs are already a problem with Aether in general, upping it for Manathrust would mess up a lot of things, such as the tri-beam build but for aether-specific, it'd just be annoying.

I'm not sure I really have good feedback on this as my point was minor anyway.

2. I thought it was a big higher… maybe I'm wrong. Still, if the results are the same, what's the point of a more complex mechanic? That just makes it opaque.

3. Fair enough… ha ha.

[0player]

1. I'm not sure it's that easy but I did find that at the end of the game, it made it easier when I had a lot of mana. I'm just not sure that's really a problem per se but I thought it worth noting.

That being said, CDs are already a problem with Aether in general, upping it for Manathrust would mess up a lot of things, such as the tri-beam build but for aether-specific, it'd just be annoying.

I'm not sure I really have good feedback on this as my point was minor anyway.

2. I thought it was a big higher… maybe I'm wrong. Still, if the results are the same, what's the point of a more complex mechanic? That just makes it opaque.

3. Fair enough… ha ha.

1. The high Mana drain/Disruption Shield synergy is actually totally intentional.
2. Yeah, it turns out to be a bit higher in the late game in the sense of Spellpower bonus. That was intentional as to make it feel a bit less lackluster lately.
3. Thanks for the feedback, by the way. I wanted to make it so that the effect of resistance penetration is lowered/negated by Aether Permeation, but then I considered Pure Aether (which, iirc, makes even Disruption Shield resistance pretty feeble) and decided that it'd be overpowered.

[Delmuir]

1. The high Mana drain/Disruption Shield synergy is actually totally intentional.
2. Yeah, it turns out to be a bit higher in the late game in the sense of Spellpower bonus. That was intentional as to make it feel a bit less lackluster lately.
3. Thanks for the feedback, by the way. I wanted to make it so that the effect of resistance penetration is lowered/negated by Aether Permeation, but then I considered Pure Aether (which, iirc, makes even Disruption Shield resistance pretty feeble) and decided that it'd be overpowered.

1. Ah, that makes sense. Well, having said that, I endorse it even if it might be a bit strong… honestly, it might not be because it should probably balance by being tougher early on. I'll play with it again when it's ready for 1.24.

2. Fair enough.

3. I endorse this premise whole-heartedly!

My last point is that the add-on seems a bit buggy on 1.23 as it crashed my game more than few times. I'm not really sure about the details but I figured I'd mention it.

All in all though, I really like this prodigy.

[0player]

Thanks to invaluable feedback, the addon has been adjusted!
- arcane res bonus no longer scales off Spellpower and is instead pure talent levle now. It had weird interactions with itself otherwise and generally was a bit too strong.
- Permeation no longer ups your resistance cap. It synergizes a lot better with usual all resist than I reckoned, and it was just too strong.
- Manathrust now deals the vanilla damage and then the damage scaling off 10% mana drained. Tell me if numbers are too high on that one.

Enjoy!

[0player]

Ehh, so apparently Manathrust was dealing 100x more damage than intended and no one told me. U_U
Fixed now.

[darkgod]

ahah

[0player]

You laugh, but someone apparently run an archmage to level 15, got a manathrust to 5/5 so it was doing 7k damage.
I imagine they proceeded to perish from boredom >:(

[Delmuir]

You laugh, but someone apparently run an archmage to level 15, got a manathrust to 5/5 so it was doing 7k damage.
I imagine they proceeded to perish from boredom >:(

Man, I used this briefly and did not notice that… ha ha. However, I do like this add-on.