Something seriously wrong with Mana Shield

[Taem]

I'd venture to say the synergy doesn’t work, the Damage Goes to Mana% does not work, both don't work, or they're not activating at the right time.

Currently, my sorceress has (actual points, not +skills)

11 Mana Shield (19 with + skills giving me 74% absorb)
12 Telekinesis

I have 135% Damage Goest to Mana% from Naj' Armor (45%), Nightsmoke (50%), and 3 x ITH (15% each).

According to the Arreat Summit:

By default, for each point of damage absorbed by Energy Shield, 2 mana points are deducted - a 200% ratio.

and;

Each hard skill point in Telekinesis makes Energy Shield 6.25% more effective. For example, with 8 points in Telekinesis, 1.5 mana points are deducted for each point of damage absorbed - a 150% ratio. With 16 points in Telekinesis, one point of damage absorbed equals one point of mana loss - a 100% ratio.

http://www.battle.net/diablo2exp/skills/so...ml#energyshield

With 12 points into Telekinesis, I have a 75% effectiveness in my damage to mana ratio, making ES only shave off 1.25 mana per point of damage absorbed. To put it into context, I have a 1 : 1.25 Ratio of damage absorbed going to mana.

With 135% damage goes to mana, this would effectively make the ratio 1 : -0.10. To put that into context, I should be gaining 0.1% of the damage I take into mana.

Here is my problem: I'm loosing mana at a rate consistent with not having either Telekinesis or Damage Goes to Mana. I haven't done extensive testing to figure out which is the culprit, but I have tested this phenomenon in normal cows by putting up Energy Shield then letting the cows hit me. I saw my mana go down! Hell Bovines in normal do 27-43 damage, or 35 average damage. I lost approximately 21.75 average mana per hit from a cow over 20 consecutive hits (the least was 14, the most was 42). If the most was 42, that means I’m getting almost 100% damage goes to mana, or 1:1. This doesn’t make any sense! See below:

According to Tommi’s site made for 1.1:

4. Application Order

4.1 Damage Modification Effects

There is a well-defined order in which the damage modification effects are applied to the damage:

1. XvX
2. Energy Shield
3. Bone Armor and Cyclone Armor
4. DR and MDR
5. Resistances
6. % Absorb
7. Direct Absorb

In each of these phases, damage cannot be reduced below zero. The result is what I call Damage Taken.

4.2 Special effects

There are some special effects that take place before damage resolution: Thorns, Iron Maiden, Spirit of the Barbs, and Vulpine items (X% Damage Goes To Mana). They all use the physical damage after all damage modification effects, i.e. Physical Damage Taken, as their source damage. For example, Vulpine items add X / 100 x Physical Damage Taken mana to the defender's mana pool in the damage resolution.

4.3 Damage Resolution

Damage and Life Gain
Life gain and damage taken get applied to the target's current life amount in the following order:

1. Add the life gained from absorb effects
2. Reduce life equal to Damage Taken

Mana Damage and Mana Gain
Some effects, such as energy shield and attacks of mana burn bosses, cause you to lose mana instead of life. This is called Mana Damage. Other effects, such as X% Damage Goes To Mana (Vulpine items), cause you to gain mana. These function similarly as life gain and life damage, i.e. the are applied to the target's current mana amount in the following order:

1. Add the mana gained from Vulpine items (and other possible sources)
2. Reduce mana equal to Mana Damage Taken

There are no effects that modify mana damage, and therefore Mana Damage Taken is always equal to Mana Damage dealt by the attacker plus mana damage caused by Energy Shield. Energy Shield causes mana damage equal to (32 - unmodified Telekinesis skill level) / 16 x Damage Absorbed by Energy Shield.

http://www.hut.fi/~tgustafs/damagereduction.html

What does it all mean? It means something is broken with Mana Shield! It would seem the mana received *might*, be applied before the damage is absorbed from Energy Shield thus the mana loss, however I highly doubt it as when I let myself get mobbed by the cows, I didn’t gain ANY mana from my attackers, but lost mana.

Any ideas?

[adeyke]

With 12 points into Telekinesis, I have a 75% effectiveness in my damage to mana ratio, making ES only shave off 1.25 mana per point of damage absorbed. To put it into context, I have a 1 : 1.25 Ratio of damage absorbed going to mana.

With 135% damage goes to mana, this would effectively make the ratio 1 : -0.10. To put that into context, I should be gaining 0.1% of the damage I take into mana.

Here is my problem: I'm loosing mana at a rate consistent with not having either Telekinesis or Damage Goes to Mana. I haven't done extensive testing to figure out which is the culprit, but I have tested this phenomenon in normal cows by putting up Energy Shield then letting the cows hit me. I saw my mana go down! Hell Bovines in normal do 27-43 damage, or 35 average damage. I lost approximately 21.75 average mana per hit from a cow over 20 consecutive hits (the least was 14, the most was 42). If the most was 42, that means I’m getting almost 100% damage goes to mana, or 1:1. This doesn’t make any sense!

No. The % damage taken goes to mana works on the amount of damage you take, while the mana loss is based on the amount of damage absorbed.

If a monster deals 27-43 damage (is this actually right?), a 74% ES will absorb 19.98-31.82 damage, leaving 7.02-11.18 damage. With 12 points in TK, you're losing 1.25 mana per point of damage absorbed. So you're losing 24.975-39.775 mana per hit. However, you're also gaining 1.35 life per point of damage taken. So you're gaining 9.477-15.093 mana per hit.

That means that, for very 27-43 damage hit, you're losing 7.02-11.118 life and 15.498-24.682 mana (average: 20.09). This seems to match your data rather closely. Inaccuracies may be attributed to rounding issues, mana regeneration and/or critical strike (in the case of the the 42 mana loss hit).

(There's also the matter of % damage taken goes to mana only working with physical attacks and ES coming before resistances, but these don't matter here, since you were hit by a physical attack and presumably had no physical resists).

If you do have 12 points in TK and a 74% ES, you'll actually need 214% damage taken goes to mana to break even and lose no mana.

[Taem]

No. The % damage taken goes to mana works on the amount of damage you take, while the mana loss is based on the amount of damage absorbed.

Okay, I think I understand. So the more damage I take, the more damage is turned into mana, correct? I'll get test in Hell Cows right now to verify and then modify this post. The information I got on the damage of hell bovines was NOT from the .mpq for 1.1 listed in the Phrozen Keep, but from the diabloii.net Darkness site:

http://darkness.diabloii.net/beastiary/nor...mal/hellbovine/

I tested in nightmare. So NM hell bovine does 59-95 damage. Over the extent of my testing of 20 attacks, I took an average of 42.2 mana damage with 32 being the lowest and 52 the highest.

According to Tommi's site, damage goes to mana happens before energy shield absorb, so if I took 77 average damage with 135% damage goes to mana, I would of gotten back 103.95 mana per attack. However, mana cost for mana shield would of been (200% - 75% from telekinesis = 125%) 77 x 1.25 = 96.25. That means I should of been gaining an average of 7.7 mana per hit.

Am I doing the math incorrectly or am I not understanding something?

Okay, according to your post, damage goes to mana happens on the damage recieved AFTER mana shield absorb. This means on 77 damage, I absorb 74% of this and am delt 20.02 average health damage. 135% of 20.02 health damage = 27.027. Thus if I lost 96.25 mana per attack, and gained 27.027 per attack also, I would effectivly loose 69.223 on average, comming fairly close to my numbers (assuming 1.1 is different than what is listed on the Darkness site). That sucks :P . I thought damage goes to mana happened before mana shield aborb (total damage delt as it states on Tommi's site). He needs to update his site then.

[Taem]

So with 20 telekinesis, how much damage goes to mana would you need to equal zero mana burn? My brain is hurting right now from frustration at mis-information listed on various sites.

[Thrugg]

Meat, I can't see anything in that quote from Tommi's page that suggests DtM works on the raw damage. It says in 4.2 "Special Effects" that DtM is calculated on the total Physical Damage Taken, which is the modified amount, which is after all effects including Energy Shield (and PDR, etc).

It does say that you get the mana back from DtM before you get mana removed to pay for Energy Shield. But the amount that was to be removed was worked out way back at the start of the process, on the raw damage.

Anyway, with 20 points in TK, each point of absorbed damage costs 0.75 mana. With your 74% absorb, you are taking 0.74 * 0.75 = 0.555 mana drain per raw damage point.
Assuming no PDR, with 74% absorb each point of raw damage does 0.26 damage points. So you would need 0.555/0.26 = 214% DtM to see no mana drain at all.

ES + DtM is not exactly designed to be a complete lock. The better your absorb from ES gets, the harder it is for DtM to keep up with it.

[edit] When doing maths in public, you shouldn't try to do it too fast :doh:

[Obi2Kenobi]

What Tommi's site is saying is that the mana you gain back comes before the mana you lose, not that the vulpine works before energy shield.

/edit: Um... really messed up my math... I was in a hurry. :)

[Taem]

:blink: Oh. Okay, looks like I misunderstood what was written and his site is 100% correct. Still a little confusing if you ask me.

There seems to be one more thing I may be confused on that maybe you guys can help me with. The way I see it now with the +1 light charms I managed to cube re-roll, I'll have 95% absorb from Mana Shield. Seems that I'll need an insane amount of damage goes to mana to regain that lost mana now. Example assuming I have maxed telekinesis (4:3 ratio) and 95% absorb:

Physical Damage Dealt: Say I take 100 damage
Absorbed: 95 points of physical damage is absorbed
Life Lost: I will loose 5 points of life
Mana Lost: I will loose 75 mana

Everything correct so far? If so, then to regain my lost mana, I'll need approximatly 1,500% damage goes to mana just to break even. Boy that elemental damage is going to hurt!

REPLY to Thrugg:

It says in 4.2 "Special Effects" that DtM is calculated on the total Physical Damage Taken, which is the modified amount, which is after all effects including Energy Shield (and PDR, etc).

:lol: I thought when it said the total damage taken it was reffering to the total unmodified damage before anything (since XvX is #1 on the list). My bad.

[adeyke]

Mana Lost: I will loose 75 mana

.75 * 95, not .75 * 100. So really "just" 71.25 mana.