Ok. I didn’t know, that touching zero Mana or even coming close to it would be such a danger. Sorry.
I still see it as a counter for the mana loss itself, but I can see how that’s not nearly enough for people that are THAT dependant on mana. And indeed, it’s not literally a bug-fixer and I didn’t claim it was. And again, it’s a bug because it doesn’t work as intended and I agreed to that.
Me, I just recover the mana from Mana Burn almost as fast as it’s being burned. But I do go really low, or even touch zero for an instant. It just doesn’t make that big a difference for me, but I get that it does for you.
I honestly thought you’d have way better ways to compensate for mana drain of all sorts, as part of caster builds. Just for the sheer need the builds have, even before factoring Mana Burn in.
I still don’t think a new mod would be good, unless it’s common enough that it doesn’t force everyone and their dog to chase after 2-3 items.
I’m frankly tired of how so many builds and strategies act like they’re awesome, then rely on very very very specific uniques and runewords. Like, only 3-4 items in the ENTIRE GAME, and spectacularly uncommon ones at that, will do the trick.
Also, totally bypassing the Mana Burn sounds cheap. The game should always have at least one or two kinds of enemies that make it a lot tougher for you all of a sudden (without it being an actual bug). It makes sense, that turning your hero into a “super effective or downright PERFECT against ALL POSSIBLE THREATS” should be impossible, or nearly so. Perfection is BORING, and unchallenging. Unless reaching it is incredibly difficult.
BUT there’s a massive difference between “difficult” and “unlikely.” If you NEED to rely on super-uncommon drops, it’s not challenging so much as just improbable. Chance-driven, thus hardly related to your effort. By sheer mathematical probability, your hunt for that coveted item will most likely be either too easy or too hard.
I DO understand and agree, with the fact that just adding a mod that denies mana burn entirely would be the simplest and easiest solution coding-wise. The least likely to break anything, and so.
How about this? Just put a simple, hard cap on how low Mana Burn can take you. Like, no lower than 50%. Sure, it cripples you but in a “I’m being challenged” way. Not in a “I’ll be dead before I can do anything about it.” I often try to see what abilities a unique brings, but the heat of the battle may not let me. And of course, maybe the minion does it to you and you haven’t even had a mathematical chance to check on the unique to find out. And you probably don’t wanna rush ahead to learn, because you’ll draw a lot of attention fast.
Maybe that Mana Burn cap can be based on character level, or Energy score. So it still relies on how strong you’ve made your character, but not in a way that has to bring a lot of new considerations or extra mechanics.
I’ve often said, Attributes should play a bigger role. Str and Dex are quite useless beyond equipping gear, even for physical melee builds. That is, considering how difficult it is to increase those scores substantially and permanently.
For one thing, Str doesn’t affect actual damage nearly enough. I’ve had massive (25%+) boosts to it from items all of a sudden, to find out the dam increased only ike 3%. And that the +% to damage wouldn’t even work on that small base increase…
