Mana Shied Chaos Perk reduces life by 99% but raises mana by 400% or so. In my case I have 22000 Mana and 48HP. Serpentine Aspect consumes all Mana on a single cast. Now this is a problem combo. I end up losing all 22000 Mana and naked with 48HP. If you are going to limit Serpentine Aspect to provide bonus for maximum of 500 Mana then you should cap mana consumption for each cast to be 500 as well. It is obscene that I am losing 22000 mana.
You can see this here.
youtu.be/_pf3NcvdJgo
That seems like an intended interaction to me.
The bonus you get for Serpentine Aspect at max efficiency (500) is huge. Way more than most singular aspects grant to skills. It’s also exceptionally difficult to reach without using Mana Shield.
If it capped the mana spend at 500, Mana Shield would effectively make it free to use. The entire point of the aspect is to dump your entire Mana bar for a massive boost.
You can still use the combination, you just need to find another survivability mechanism since you are opting to go maximum glass cannon in converting all your HP to Mana and then converting all that mana into a damage boost. One that comes to mind is tempering for Fire Shield duration and then stacking cooldown reduction so you can have it up almost permanently. Even if you don’t get it to permanence, you could get it good enough to pop it, burn your mana, then regenerate enough before it wears out to get your survivability back.
Actually, I don’t think it is a bug. It is a feature. A feature that requires a player to test and experiment with various gears to find out which play style suits them best. Some players just blindly equip all mystic gears and uniques without give any thoughts on how these will interact with one another. I actually quite like Mana Shield as it gave me more changes to roll (gamble) for Chaos gears by completing more quests quickly.
agreed, it should only take the 500 mana it caps the effect at.