Punishment - 1.05

Actually one of the things I've always felt they need to change on it though was that it should be reflecting based on raw incoming damage before migration and possibly count even if blocked or soaked with molten shell. That way a tank with 20k armor, 40%+ block, and 5 endurance charges still takes very little damage overall but reflects 38% of the unique monster's total raw physical damage (ex: 80% damage migration but basing punishment off raw is like a 800% efficiency increase). But it is something that is again something usually very reliant on damage boosting curses and shock stacking to make it really worthwhile atm... something that will still usually work better for direct damage (like a discharger). This will likely never be a primary damage source, but rather one of opportunity.

I guess that it also can't hurt too much to extend it to more elements to be more like lightning thorns.... it will just be hard to balance when you can give a target 7+ different damage reflection, items and/or reactive style skills at once.

Tempest Shield
Lightning Thorns (from spectre)
Damage on melee hit (supreme spiked shield)
Damage on melee hit (item mods)
Punishment
Molten Shell
Bramble Jack
Cast with Damage Taken (can be taken multiple times and active multiple skills)
Cast when Stunned (same as cast with damage taken)

And with elemental equilibrium and casting a ice spell; the lightning thorns, tempest shield and molten shell can see another damage boost as well. We very well could, in theory, make a auto casting damage reflecting sponge with a focus on damage migration and survival. In other words, the typical MMORPG tank role with aggro pull (enduring cry spam), high damage migration, crowd control, high effective health pool and reactive damage sources.




edit - for another example let us assume:

10-15k armor and a granite flask
5 endurance charges (20% physical damage reduction)
Lightning Jack (40% percent physical converted to lighting)
Mind over Matter (30% damage converted to mana cost)
Dark Scorn (25% physical converted to chaos)
Molten Shell and Artic Armor
Enfeeble Curse

If we also assume 85% lightning and 75% chaos resists then they end up reducing damage taken even more. If we apply the pre-damage migration amount of the damage as the basis for punishment it gets very efficient very quickly when we can pretty much reduce most of the damage type we're reflecting down to near zero. It will never be quick but its efficiency will be skyhigh. You can even swap over to that pheonix robe and add in righteous fire (with burning miscreants and a righteous fire totem also?) to add in a lot of passive damage as well for slightly less durability.

It would greatly raise the value of heavily armored single targets and slightly raise the value of my own minions when they have my shield (necromantic aegis) + the determination aura. And since it would be based on pre-migration damage it won't be as likely to shatter the system when there can be multiple summoners in a party with massive armies of their own (since minions are already taking pretty much full damage).




Plus such a change would pack a hell of a wallop in PvP matches to the point it may actually need nerfed for them, lol




A flat damage increase (and increase in reflection types) though wouldn't just break the system, it would shatter it into tiny pieces and pretty much cement the auto casting magic find farming bots with skeleton totems as nigh invincible all (culling) killing machines that turn the game into a ultra casual self-playing farmville like game.....