Change rank 3 of demonspawn mana shield facet

[tasonir]

Currently rank 3 converts some/all hp regen into mana regen when your mana is critically low. This sounds to me like it was designed back when spirit shield took 100% damage to mana before it damaged hp. Now that it shares damage (I think it's proportionally?), you probably want to keep regenerating both pools. Rank 2 also already increases mana regeneration, so rank 3 is somewhat redundant with it, even if it does have the difference of taking it from your hp regen.

Suggestion: Make rank 3 grant +10% mana instead. This is generally useful and has synergies with the facet as a whole, obviously. I don't believe there's any demonspawn mutation which gives +mana, so it doesn't overlap with an existing facet. It is the same as High MP rank 1; I'm not sure if you want to make it conflict with (ie, prevent) Low MP mutations.

[CanOfWorms]

if your HP is significantly lower than your MP then spirit shield effectively diverts all damage to MP, that's what proportional sharing means

[tasonir]

Right - but I'd think that if some player has 20 hp and 30 mana, they would value regenerating +1 hp to be the same as +1 mana. In other words, rank 3 isn't really helping them - they probably are just trying to stay alive by running away, and aren't about to cast a 6 mana attack spell which would be equal to giving up just more than 10% of their health while critically wounded. It will keep your mana somewhat higher as you're dying, but dying players need to be running away, and generally aren't going to be casting spells, unless they're fortunate enough to have some good translocations.

In other words, rank 1 and 2 make this facet very, very strong, but rank 3 doesn't really help at all. If that's needed to balance out the overall facet I could understand, but I thought giving something more helpful would be nice.

[Hellmonk]

I'd guess that the intent of rank 3 is less to keep you alive when you are low on mp and hp and more to let you keep blasting shit when you are low on mp and almost full on hp. No comment wrt power level, though I think that +10% mp is very boring and I'd prefer to see something else if it's going to get changed, not sure what though.

[tasonir]

That's a valid point, I wasn't really thinking about that. I'd still argue that you already have a rank of fast mana regen and if that isn't enough to keep you blasting things you're probably playing horribly wrong, but converting hp regen to mana in that case is certainly useful.

[duvessa]

I'd think that if some player has 20 hp and 30 mana, they would value regenerating +1 hp to be the same as +1 mana.

The idea is that if MP was actually in short supply, the increase in MP regeneration would be significant as long as you are using MP for something else, since it would allow you to cast more spells/abilities/etc. However, currently you get a surplus of MP before you even get rank 2 of the mutation, let alone rank 3, so increased MP regeneration doesn't matter for that. So you're effectively just getting a small boost to HP regeneration, specifically one that is too small to matter, and rank 2 and 3 of the facet do basically nothing.

In spite of that this still manages to be the second strongest tier 2 facet after nightstalker, so you probably don't want to buff levels 2 and 3 without commensurately nerfing the effect of level 1. I would hate to see partial guardian spirit, so I'm not sure how to approach that issue...
I suppose you could globally nerf max MP to make MP regeneration in general meaningful after the first few dungeon levels, which would both fix levels 2 and 3 of the mutation, and nerf level 1 into something more reasonable. I think that idea would be hard to sell though; to make MP regeneration meaningful I think you'd have to reduce max MP pools by at least 50% by the time people are in Lair (MP pool size on D:1 is fine), and even more than that later. Not many people would go for that.

[huiren]

I'd think that if some player has 20 hp and 30 mana, they would value regenerating +1 hp to be the same as +1 mana.

The idea is that if MP was actually in short supply, the increase in MP regeneration would be significant as long as you are using MP for something else, since it would allow you to cast more spells/abilities/etc. However, currently you get a surplus of MP before you even get rank 2 of the mutation, let alone rank 3, so increased MP regeneration doesn't matter for that. So you're effectively just getting a small boost to HP regeneration, specifically one that is too small to matter, and rank 2 and 3 of the facet do basically nothing.

That's batshit. I'm not sure what you're saying, to be honest, but I think it's that it's hard to run out of MP as a caster. I suppose that might be true in some abstract sense assuming a string of optimal choices, but it has nothing to do with what everyone experiences when they play the game.

Tier 3 magic shield is amazingly fun for blasters if you stack up enough regen. Have you ever tried it with something like powered by death or the robe of vines? You can cast glaciate every single turn and not run out of MP.

[PowerOfKaishin]

if your HP is significantly lower than your MP then spirit shield effectively diverts all damage to MP, that's what proportional sharing means

I'm confused. I thought spirit shield always used maximum MP for percentage calculations, not current MP, and if you ran out of MP to lose from taking too much damage then 100% of the rest of the damage would come straight from HP.

[CanOfWorms]

yes, the amount of HP+MP you lose will always be equal to the damage you take. if you don't have enough MP the game will be forced to remove HP, although that only happens at very low values of MP because spirit shield balances the damage so that your HP% loss and MP% loss are as equal as possible.

i'm describing the extreme situation where you have 1 HP and say 50 MP remaining. as long as you don't take over 50 damage you can't die, the game will only drain your MP

[duvessa]

I'm not sure what you're saying, to be honest, but I think it's that it's hard to run out of MP as a caster.

yes, I'm saying that pretty much every character, by the time they reach Lair, has far more max MP than they could ever need. MP is a meaningful restriction on the first few dungeon levels though.

i'm describing the extreme situation where you have 1 HP and say 50 MP remaining. as long as you don't take over 50 damage you can't die, the game will only drain your MP

unless the damage is from the Pois status in which case it bypasses spirit and you die

[Siegurt]

How about if the level 3 facet redirected regeneration in the proportionally towards the lower of the two.

So take your total mp+hp regen and split it by the percentage missing.

When you have full hps, itd be the same as it is now, when you have full mp, you regen hp much more quickly, when both are at half you regen them both equally....

[PowerOfKaishin]

yes, the amount of HP+MP you lose will always be equal to the damage you take. if you don't have enough MP the game will be forced to remove HP, although that only happens at very low values of MP because spirit shield balances the damage so that your HP% loss and MP% loss are as equal as possible.

i'm describing the extreme situation where you have 1 HP and say 50 MP remaining. as long as you don't take over 50 damage you can't die, the game will only drain your MP

That clears things up with spirit shield. I didn't realize it always took from MP before reducing HP to 0. That means Sif's regeneration is effectively bonus hit points if you have Spirit Shield, making it an even stronger ability than it already was (albeit with a very high opportunity cost).

The second thing was what confused me. I was under the impression that if you had 10 HP out of 100 HP and 50 MP (max) and took 6 damage, 4 of it would come out of HP and 2 out of MP, because max HP is twice max MP in this situation.

[tasonir]

I'm not sure I agree that in general, caster mana pools are too large. You could certainly get by with less mana, but having 40-50 mana pools by end game is a good end point for conjurers. It's more than hybrids or melee characters need, certainly, but feels about right for casters. You could maybe lower base mana and increase mana from spellcasting if you wanted people to be forced to "build" for mana supply, but I don't think that's too big of a deal.

And while I do agree that spirit shield is one of the strongest facets, I don't think it's so far off the charts that it needs to be nerfed. Rank 1 is the strongest rank, but rank 2 is also a significant boost. Rank 3 is less impactful most of the time, but after discussing it here, that's probably fine. Adding 3-5 mana for rank 3 would just be increasing the power level further