Old skill idea but a goodie

"Mana Sheild" damage taken goes to manna at 40% (at low gem level) 100% (at a high gem level)and reduce stun chance 50%

To balance this skill you could make it so resists dont come into consideration so all damage taken is at a 0% resist and maybe 0 armour evasion, this way you will take more damage because I think you could get 10k manna

this skill would be fun because there is some good synergies like "eldrich battery" you could stack energy sheild then convert it to manna

what do you guys think?

CI + mana shield = the tankest wizard of all RPGs?

well you couldnt use CI because you would have 1 life maybe they could make it so manna sheild maxes out at 95% damage recieved goes to manna that way if you have 1 life its not viable

In diablo I the way the mana shield worked with def and dmg was different from normal HP. Mana shield would either not fully apply def (in poe's case armor), but a % of the the def; OR it would make a dmg increase % (I aint totally sure to be honest).

Both the solutions up here seems fine for me. Mana shield is supposed to be a shield, not a tank resource. Something in the lines of '100% of dmg is deduced from mana' is fair and would be a great extra for build variety (more people going after real mana instead of mana leech support).

Given the existence of Blood Magic (BM), I was surprised the opposite didn't exist for mana- the prime candidate being Mana Shield. In a way, Chaos Inoculation (CI) and energy shield (ES) create a similar effect by eliminating the need for life flasks. The difference however is there are no flasks to restore ES- a huge advantage to BM.

As another pointed out, the challenge is how to deal with CI + Mana Shield.

BM + CI = death

This suggests CI should not be possible with Mana Shield.

Another factor is ES. This should also be disabled with Mana Shield. There should be no 2nd life line- if you run out of mana you die.

Then there's Eldritch Battery. Not sure how this should be treated as you could potentially get insane amounts of mana this way (thousands). Doing so would mean zero physical damage mitigation which, in itself, might be enough of a trade-off.

the TL;DR:

Mana Shield
* Damaged taken from mana instead of life
* Maximum life becomes 1
* Maximum energy shield becomes zero
* Cannot gain immunity to Chaos damage

Many skills cost a mana reserve to cast.

They could just make it so that mana shield has a life reserve cost to cast.

I.E. You have to pay a cost of 500 life reserved to cast mana shield.

If your life pool is under 500 hit points you cannot cast mana shield. Thus, Chaos Innoculation witches would be precluded from casting mana shield.

I feel like this would also make sense from a flavor stand point. Giving up some life as a cost to use mana shield just "feels" right in application to me.

Mana Shield is interesting indeed. I had been thinking on it myself and had an idea. Instead of it being a passive thing, make it an active ability.

You turn it on like Molten Shell, and it goes away after a few seconds. My reasoning behind it is simple, regenerating Energy Shield. Attacks go to mana instead of Energy Shield, thus your ES can regen actively in combat at the cost of godly mana.

Would work as a "last ditch" ability for mages, even if they had tons of mana. Armor and Evasion would not factor into the Mana Shield, but the skill has default damage reduction. At level 1 it has 20% damage reduction, and an additional 1% per level. Even at max level a 40% reduction to a 700-2500 damage blow will spend lots of mana.

I think that both skillgem and passive node idea are ok. If you think about it, most of the passives got duplicated into skillgems lately.

Regarding OP witches with high ES and Mana, thats quite a mess. Long ago I saw tanker witches with 7k ES, but their mana wont go past 1k. Taking in consideration the lack of armor it's even fair if said tanker witchers can get a boost and maybe players will want to try the build again.

If we think shadow wise, well the new passive that leechs ES is a problem, but not big deal if we compare with 3~4k hp BM Granite Maras. I think that it is just a mirror build after all: what I do with my mara and Templar I should be able to make on my witch and shadow, but in their own way (intelligence stat wise~ ES/Mana).

I wish I could discuss more, but I haven't gotten any replies from staff. I guess we will stay in the dark.

Mana shield Keystone..

50% Reduced life, Reserves take effect on life.

50% More/Increased (Balancing..) Mana. Damage is deducted from mana.

Immune to Elemental Ailments. (Not damage)



Hmm.. Perhaps something else would be pretty neat

Body for Soul Keystone
Mana and Life are swapped.

Say you have 1k mana, 3k life, you now have 3k mana 1k life,
your life regen now affects mana and vice versa -

All passives counting towards life now count towards Mana, vice versa.

Spend life for skills & Reserves - Armor value 0, Evasion value 0, ES Value -50%. DR% can only be attained through Endurance Charges.

Takes 4% chaos damage on life/sec.

All Damage is deduced from mana - once mana hits 0, life begins taking damage.


TL;DR

Body for Soul

-Swaps Life and Mana
-Skills now cost life, 4% Chaos damage to life/sec
-New defensive values : 0 Armor, 0 Evasion, -50% ES
-Damage is deduced from Mana, at 0, life then takes damage

How did you come up with swapping health and mana? This is quite a misconcept of mana shield if you ask me.

Plus you are making an OP mana shield with that 1st idea: full ES gear + eldritch battery + 50% Mana from CI is my IRONMAN WITCH build, and there is no way to run out of mana. If you top an extra 50% from a mana shield keystone... absurd.

In the other hand, I like the swap idea.. but you can already do that with current gems and keystones if a simple <Mana Shiel: Damage is deducted from Mana> is implemented in the game.