Cool mod, very expansive and I appreciate the work that went into it, however one of the abilities sticks out to me as odd.

Problem:
The energy shield that reduces damage at the cost of AE is very odd because it is always active, and thus if you get into a close brawl with several enemies you'll essentially never be able to use any of your other AE related skills and abilities because it'll always drain your energy, especially noticeable in the early to midgame.

Example:
In my tests on the trip to Golgotha, my character upon buying the skill went from semi regularly being able to use void bolt as asupplementary ranged option, to not being able to cast anything in the middle of combat because their AE is emptied out from any damage I would have taken. Even if the damage wouldn't be potentially fatal, it was still quite frustrating to not be able to cast any other abilities

Suggestion:
Simply make the energy shield an activated ability rather than a permanent passive so we can choose whether to go for damage reduction of focus on damage casting

Originally posted by NemoThePixelotl:

Cool mod, very expansive and I appreciate the work that went into it, however one of the abilities sticks out to me as odd.

Problem:
The energy shield that reduces damage at the cost of AE is very odd because it is always active, and thus if you get into a close brawl with several enemies you'll essentially never be able to use any of your other AE related skills and abilities because it'll always drain your energy, especially noticeable in the early to midgame.

Example:
In my tests on the trip to Golgotha, my character upon buying the skill went from semi regularly being able to use void bolt as asupplementary ranged option, to not being able to cast anything in the middle of combat because their AE is emptied out from any damage I would have taken. Even if the damage wouldn't be potentially fatal, it was still quite frustrating to not be able to cast any other abilities

Suggestion:
Simply make the energy shield an activated ability rather than a permanent passive so we can choose whether to go for damage reduction of focus on damage casting

Dear NemoThePixelotl,

Thank you very much for your feedback. The Energy Shield is indeed a bit tricky by design. My intention when implementing it was precisely to encourage strategic decision-making when choosing which abilities to acquire, rather than simply unlocking them one after another. The idea was that picking this ability would have a real impact on the effectiveness of others—Void Bolt and Energy Blades, for example.

If you genuinely believe the mod would be improved by making the shield a manually activated ability, that change wouldn’t be difficult to implement. However, it would come at the cost of its current role as an automatic defense in the event of a sudden or unexpected, stronger-than-expected attack.

I’d really appreciate your thoughts on this trade-off.
Thanks again!

Originally posted by Stratos:

Originally posted by NemoThePixelotl:

Cool mod, very expansive and I appreciate the work that went into it, however one of the abilities sticks out to me as odd.

Problem:
The energy shield that reduces damage at the cost of AE is very odd because it is always active, and thus if you get into a close brawl with several enemies you'll essentially never be able to use any of your other AE related skills and abilities because it'll always drain your energy, especially noticeable in the early to midgame.

Example:
In my tests on the trip to Golgotha, my character upon buying the skill went from semi regularly being able to use void bolt as asupplementary ranged option, to not being able to cast anything in the middle of combat because their AE is emptied out from any damage I would have taken. Even if the damage wouldn't be potentially fatal, it was still quite frustrating to not be able to cast any other abilities

Suggestion:
Simply make the energy shield an activated ability rather than a permanent passive so we can choose whether to go for damage reduction of focus on damage casting

Dear NemoThePixelotl,

Thank you very much for your feedback. The Energy Shield is indeed a bit tricky by design. My intention when implementing it was precisely to encourage strategic decision-making when choosing which abilities to acquire, rather than simply unlocking them one after another. The idea was that picking this ability would have a real impact on the effectiveness of others—Void Bolt and Energy Blades, for example.

If you genuinely believe the mod would be improved by making the shield a manually activated ability, that change wouldn’t be difficult to implement. However, it would come at the cost of its current role as an automatic defense in the event of a sudden or unexpected, stronger-than-expected attack.

I’d really appreciate your thoughts on this trade-off.
Thanks again!

In that case, choosing which abilities to pick as a strategic choice is fine, there should ideally be a more clear warning that the shield would be a permanent passive thing, as its easy to pick it early without realizing that it would be a permanent change and kneecapping your low level character's utility (especially because the game has no way to refund skills).

In the possibility that it does become an activated ability, then if you want you could have it cost a percentage of your total AE upon activation so your character would have to turn it on before going into somewhere dangerous but still not be able to freely toggle it without consequence while potentially be able to play with it inactive if they want to be able to use other abilities

Originally posted by NemoThePixelotl:

Originally posted by Stratos:

Dear NemoThePixelotl,

Thank you very much for your feedback. The Energy Shield is indeed a bit tricky by design. My intention when implementing it was precisely to encourage strategic decision-making when choosing which abilities to acquire, rather than simply unlocking them one after another. The idea was that picking this ability would have a real impact on the effectiveness of others—Void Bolt and Energy Blades, for example.

If you genuinely believe the mod would be improved by making the shield a manually activated ability, that change wouldn’t be difficult to implement. However, it would come at the cost of its current role as an automatic defense in the event of a sudden or unexpected, stronger-than-expected attack.

I’d really appreciate your thoughts on this trade-off.
Thanks again!

In that case, choosing which abilities to pick as a strategic choice is fine, there should ideally be a more clear warning that the shield would be a permanent passive thing, as its easy to pick it early without realizing that it would be a permanent change and kneecapping your low level character's utility (especially because the game has no way to refund skills).

In the possibility that it does become an activated ability, then if you want you could have it cost a percentage of your total AE upon activation so your character would have to turn it on before going into somewhere dangerous but still not be able to freely toggle it without consequence while potentially be able to play with it inactive if they want to be able to use other abilities

Thanks a lot. I will change the skill info in order to introduce a warning.