Random idea for draining

[pratamawirya]

Max HP percentage damage doesn't sound bad. But this means draining will not kill the target. It might be nice, though....

rN+ then should only reduce the damage by 5%, just like what it does to Torment damage. Because... hey, it doesn't reduce your XP anymore. Imagine how crappy draining will be, if it:
1. won't kill you
2. don't reduce your XP
3. deals no damage at rN+++
(Of course this only applies to living beings; undeads still get 100% immunity.)

EDIT: THIS IS NOT WHAT MINMAY MEANT

[jejorda2]

Max HP percentage damage doesn't sound bad. But this means draining will not kill the target. It might be nice, though....

rN+ then should only reduce the damage by 5%, just like what it does to Torment damage. Because... hey, it doesn't reduce your XP anymore. Imagine how crappy draining will be, if it:
1. won't kill you
2. don't reduce your XP
3. deals no damage at rN+++
(Of course this only applies to living beings; undeads still get 100% immunity.)

What a perfect way to train shield skills!

[XuaXua]

Topic: Draining Ego vs. Pain Ego.

[pratamawirya]

My bad, massive misunderstanding

This could be too strong. Imagine killing The Royal Jelly with four shots.

Although, the monsters could be given rN+.

[Galefury]

There already is pain brand for super duper damage against everything that does not have rN. Pain takes necro skill to use, while draining would take, what, nothing? And 28 average damage against TRJ is not comparable with bolt spells. A quickblade of draining goes down to delay 3, faster with Haste. Spells have delay 10. Also I don't really see the point of introducing something so torment-like into the early game. It's hard enough, don't you think?

I'm not saying it's a bad idea in general, but 0-25% max hp damage without any drawbacks is way too much IMO. Even at 0-10% it would be decent. Using 0-25% of current HP instead would be more interesting IMO, but would promote lots of annoying weapon switching, which is not great. Then again, people would need a backup weapon for undead and demons anyway. And since even the max HP based version is useless against low HP monsters there would be lots of switching either way.

Against the player: I'm not sure I like it, but it's probably more interesting than the current draining brand. The large variance and large max damage would lead to lots of surprise deaths, if based on max HP I think it should not be 0-x%, but a more narrow distribution. Possibly even make it a fixed percentage on every hit.

Differences to pain brand: does not depend on necro skill, not fully resisted by one level of rN (angels for example), only good against high HP monsters (giants and uniques are a prime targets for this brand).
Additional differences to other brands: mostly binary resistance (few enemies have one or two levels of rN), nearly useless in extended endgame
Problems: extremely powerful against some enemies, mostly useless against fodder, which leads to carrying a draining weapon with you to use against those strong enemies and lots of switching. Also it's very similar to pain brand (this is also a problem of the current draining brand).

In my opinion the problem of the brand being super powerful against only a few enemies while not being very useful against most is not worth the benefit of making draining brand not suck. This problem can also be seen as an interesting new mechanic, but I don't believe it would play well.

Edit: it just occurred to me that it would be quite similar to holy wrath in that regard. But holy wrath serves as a common (and strong) weakness for two groups of monsters that universally resist many of the regular attacks and usually have some additional resists on top of that. Draining is just another way to hurt the living (some very specific living, namely high HP ones).

[XuaXua]

Base the ego power of a brand on the total + of the branded weapon.