Mana shield/TK

[Vash]

Can someone with more experience in the matter advise me on how much to have in mana shield and telekenesis? I plan on making a teh ubo FO sorc.

[Thlayli]

There apparently is a bug in v1.10 Energy Shield which causes all elemental damage taken from the mana pool BEFORE resistances are are counted in for, which makes you reach 0 mana really fast regardless of base TK level and even faster when with higher levels of ES, so it's HIGHLY recommended you will not invest points into TK or ES until this is fixed <_<

[Nightwind]

There apparently is a bug in v1.10 Energy Shield

I am under the impression that this is eather operating as intended, or that the behavior with vulpine equipment would also need t be changed/caped.
If this where not true, then there is the ability to set it up to be nearly invunrable, and that has to be concidered as a bug.

I would say, it's operating as expected, in the way things often are in D.. ie, not as a player would want it.

[Nadreck]

Vulpine is irrelevant. It only works on physical damage and it only applies on the damage actually done (ie, after energy shield reduction).

[Caaroid]

Vulpine is NOT irrelevant. Without physical resistances, you can sustain the mana loss of a 60% ES with about 100% Vulpine if you maxed TK. If ES came after resistances, the Storm/Shako sorc would be very hard to kill with melee attacks.

ES was powerful the way it was before. I believe that if they moved the mana damage after resistances it would be too powerful - alas, at the moment it is truly nearly worthless.

[Nadreck]

(Approximately) true, but if you get a really high energy shield % it becomes impossible to negate the mana damage with acheivable damage to mana values. I do see your point about the shako/storm sorc though.

[Caaroid]

(Approximately) true, but if you get a really high energy shield % it becomes impossible to negate the mana damage with acheivable damage to mana values. I do see your point about the shako/storm sorc though.

Absolutelly true. That's why I stated 60% ES. The nice trick would be to pull off a, say 75% ES and negate all the mana drain... but as you're rather limited in the Vulpine attributes, it is not possible. (A friend had a sorc with near 200% vulpine and still had some trouble when he had higher level ES active).

An interesting thing, however, is that Vulpine "FEELS" to act AFTER the mana damage to ES. It would be lovely if someone could confirm this to be true, but I experienced that

• my ES stays up even when I seem to have no mana at all
  <>
  
• I can teleport even when my mana ball seems empty<>
  [st]I explain this with the Vulpine effect refilling some of my mana orb, but then again it could be desync, my improper observations or Sweet Fanny Adams.
  
  Ah, and Vulpine works with Gloam's attacks (what should not be such a wonder considering that they do physical damage as well; but IS still curious since with 90% lightning resist and lightning absorb one actually HEALS from them, what would indicate that no physical damage is delivered).
  
  Mysteries, mysteries...

[Caaroid]

OK, so assuming lev 20 TK, the amount of Vulpine needed to negate the mana drain from ES:

lev5 (40%): 50%
lev6 (45%): 62%
lev7 (50%): 75%
lev8 (55%): 92%
lev9 (57%): 100%
lev10 (59%): 108%
lev11 (61%): 117%
lev12 (63%): 128%
lev13 (65%): 140%
lev14 (67%): 153%
lev15 (69%): 167%
lev16 (71%): 184%
lev17 (72%): 193%
lev18 (73%): 203%
lev19 (74%): 214%
lev20 (75%): 225%

(I wish HTML code went through somehow...)

And some items the the Vulpine attribute (collection by agyi):

angelic amu (20%)
cresent moon amu (10%)

carrion wind ring (10%)

infernal cap (20%)
cow king hat (35%)
Howltusk helm (35%)

NAJ armor (45%)
enigma armor (15%)
gloom armor (5%)

aldurs boots (10%)

hwains belt (12%)
tal's belt (37%)
nightsm belt (50%)

lanceg. shield (15%)
ancient's pledge (10%)

swordguard. 2hsw (30%)
blackhand wand (20%)

ith runa armor/sh/helm (15%)

So the attainable maximum seems to be ~ 260%. Not that you could do ANYTHING then :)

[Nadreck]

It's not surprising that the energy shield stays up, since in 1.10 energy shield stays up when you run out of mana. If you have fast mana regeneration, that could explain the teleporting. Your report of vulpine working with gloams is a surprise though, since in fact they don't do any physical damage.

Edit: I've just checked this on realms and confirmed that gloam's lightning attack does cause an increase in mana with vulpine.

[Caaroid]

As I understand they are deadly because their lightning attack also delivers their physical damage (a bug).
That explains the vulpine, but does not explain the no-damage-taken-if-lightning-is-absorbed phenomenon.

[Nadreck]

But the thing is, the lightning attack adds their mana drain damage to its regular damage, but converts it to lightning damage. No physical damage is in fact dealt.

[Crystalion]

Your report of vulpine working with gloams is a surprise though, since in fact they don't do any physical damage.

Edit: I've just checked this on realms and confirmed that gloam's lightning attack does cause an increase in mana with vulpine.

Well, if two people report it, I'll assume the effect exists. So here's a thought for you...

Vulpine probably doesn't react to "damage dealt" at all.

More likely it "peeks" at the final "subtotal of physical damage"?

Damage dealt ultimately has no type. It is a total (from a calculation).

There isn't anything preventing the code from doing weird "accounting" in moving the numbers around (in fact there are many documented cases of bookkeeping in D2 that would earn anything from a slap on the wrist to a prison sentence if done in the corporate world).

What I'd suspect here, then, is that any effects that "convert" damage types have to be checked vis a vis the Vulpine after effect.

I don't think Jarulf's damage thread details are quite up to answering such nit-picky questions (for example, my current observations suggest +/- non% element absorb no longer occurs as a plus to life before the damage is dealt, which used to result in perpetual "below top" HP globes when under elemental attack, but this detail is beyond the scope of that thread, atm).

Off of the top of my head, player skills that might do some sort of conversion:

barb berserk
concentrate?
zon lightning bolt
fire arrow
cold arrow
magic arrow
? other arrows (immo/explo?)
assassin fire claw charge-up