Shadow Armor/Bowman Issues

[Voj]

I don't know if this occurred before the patch, but there seems to be a bug with these 2 skills if both are stacked:

Cast shadow armor, then shadow bowman, and you'll receive shadow armor's block permanently.
To remove this bonus block, wait for shadow bowman to expire and cast shadow armor. Once shadow armor expires, so does the bonus block.

Another issue is reapplying shadow armor. If you cast it, then recast it before it expires, the block bonus timer will NOT reset, but the floating model timer above your character WILL. In other words you have no idea when your block rate will diminish, which is almost suicide in HC. An immediate "half-fix" for this is maxing the passive block skill then putting enough points into shadow armor to hit 50% block. An easy way to fix this would be to simply add a visible timer to shadow armor to prevent recasts until that timer expires, just like haste.

And finally a request,

When playing HC, I buff myself with the following: spectral echo, haste, frost shield, shadow armor, elemental protection, entropic aura. I've learned to live with spamming buffs every 20-30 seconds, but I play a destroyer, not a... badass bard.

[Lokarin]

It'd be nice if some skills could be toggled instead of cast... Especially since many skills are mandatory and have a pittance for a mana cost. Extraspecially that it's the few frames you spend recasting that you are most likely to accidentally die.

[Voj]

Trying to keep frost shield up by pressing one button every 20 seconds for 58 hours of gameplay is beyond cruel (maybe less than 58 hours, since some time is spent in town).

[MindlessTorch]

Yes every aura type spell should be able to recast it restarting the time limit. THIS kills game play because you know you only have 5 seconds left on an arua so you have to back out of battle wait for it to dissapear then cast and go into battle again... Its sad you can not recast a spell to restart the time and it is also sad something like frost armor does not increase its seconds when lvling it up.

[changeling]

I don't know if this occurred before the patch, but there seems to be a bug with these 2 skills if both are stacked:

Cast shadow armor, then shadow bowman, and you'll receive shadow armor's block permanently.
To remove this bonus block, wait for shadow bowman to expire and cast shadow armor. Once shadow armor expires, so does the bonus block.

Another issue is reapplying shadow armor. If you cast it, then recast it before it expires, the block bonus timer will NOT reset, but the floating model timer above your character WILL. In other words you have no idea when your block rate will diminish, which is almost suicide in HC. An immediate "half-fix" for this is maxing the passive block skill then putting enough points into shadow armor to hit 50% block. An easy way to fix this would be to simply add a visible timer to shadow armor to prevent recasts until that timer expires, just like haste.

And finally a request,

When playing HC, I buff myself with the following: spectral echo, haste, frost shield, shadow armor, elemental protection, entropic aura. I've learned to live with spamming buffs every 20-30 seconds, but I play a destroyer, not a... badass bard.

I've been experimenting with shadow armor some today, and I haven't seen that behavior. I'm running a version that I downloaded from the torchlight site just a few days ago. I think it had the number 12 in the executable name. What I've seen is the block % goes away about 1 or 2 seconds before the spectre disappears, so that if I keep refreshing it never goes away.

Edit: I have noticed the bug where if I apply shadow armor then archer the buff never goes away even after I have no spectre floating above my head anymore.

[Voj]

I tested it again and confirm what I said earlier (I'm playing 1.12 with the enchant hotfix);

Cast shadow armor (mine lasts 33 seconds)
wait for 15 seconds, then recast it
wait for 18 seconds (totaling 33 seconds now) and watch your block diminish even though you rebuffed yourself
the spectre disappears after 48 seconds (15+33) while block diminishes after 33

This only affects your block - the spectre timer will be reset.

But thanks for confirming the other bug.

[changeling]

That makes me wonder if it's the hotfix or maybe a certain rank of shadow armor that makes it only last that long. I'm going to test it some more when I get home today just to make sure.

[changeling]

I tested this some more today, and I did reproduce some more of your issues. I have rank 1 shadow armor which lasts for 29 seconds. Every time I cast the buff while I don't already have it up my block goes away at right about 26 seconds, 3 seconds earlier than the graphic. I noticed that even if I refreshed the buff at 10, 15, or even 20 seconds the block buff still went away at 26.

I also found that if I kept refreshing my shadow armor without ever letting the graphic expire, I would see the block buff apply for about 1 or 2 seconds and then promptly go away again. So, after the 26 seconds had passed, I could not refresh the actual block percentage buff unless I let the graphic disappear and then recast the skill.

I used the Torchlight12b.exe file to install. I'm going to go ahead and post this up on the bug reports or at least add this info to a post if it already exists.

[TheDeadDude]

I like the idea of making the aura's / buffs count as a toggle spell where as it remains cast until you toggle it off.

For toggle spell balance you could have the toggle spells "bank"mana while its on. For an expample lets say a toggle spell costs 20 mana to use it, then you permanently lose 20 mana until you turn the spell off.

You could decide to have it degenerate mana but that would be unfair for warrior classes since they don't have good mana regen unless you have advance spell mastery. which i personally find a stupid investment on a warrior class character.

[Voj]

For toggle spell balance you could have the toggle spells "bank"mana while its on. For an expample lets say a toggle spell costs 20 mana to use it, then you permanently lose 20 mana until you turn the spell off.

It worked just like that in Titan Quest, with success.

[TheDeadDude]

Yeah, i've played titan quest 1 and a bit of city of heroes. They did sowell with toggle spells that balancing wasn't much a problem because the more toggles you have on the less you can spend on attack spells. But there is always items to improve mana so it really is a convenient and interesting way to use skill buffs.

[Marc999]

It would be really handy dandy to have 1 button that allows you to link multiple skills: frost armor/shad.armor/shad.bowman/aura of choice etc. Durations would have to be the same. Nice idea, perhaps a coding/mod nightmare though.