Mana Shield

Mana shield is one those skills that no matter who is playing it will be considered a noob. It's not so much because mana shield sucks it is because it fits with the nooby way of thinking. Noobs in general love to build their damage up and often forget about things such as damage reduction, spell reduction, and sometimes even hit points. With mana shield they can pile on the damage by simply rushing shell of the mana goddess and omega staff. It is because of this glass cannon mentality that many noobs believe mana shield to be imbalanced or unbeatable.


Mana shield creates a shield using your mana points.
Level 1 it absorbs 1.25 damage per point of mana at the cost of 50 mana to activate.
Level 2 it absorbs 2.5 damage per point of mana at the cost of 100 mana to activate.
Level 3 it absorbs 3.75 damage per point of mana at the cost of 200 mana to activate.
Level 4 it absorbs 5 damage per point of mana at the cost of 400 mana to activate.
Level 5 it absorbs 6.25 damage per point of mana at the cost of 800 mana to activate.

For a good mana shield build you would want at least one area of effect kind of nuke or summons so you can farm and any of the skills listed below. Some of them are situational and if you have any question of my judgement I can show you where they could be used in what situation.

Skills that compliment mana shield in no particular order
Offensives
Death Strike
Soul Burn
Clap
Corrupt Flesh
Storm Bolt/Dragon Punch
Vampiric Soul
Mark of the Warrior
Frenzy

Defensives
Combat Mastery
Evasion
Static Shock
Spirit Link/Watery Defenders
Hex/Stun Field
Divine
Rally Cry
Cripple/Terrify
Spike Armor/ Devotion Aura

Miscellaneous
Darkness
Endurance Aura/Guardian Ward
Poison Sting
Consume
Mana Restore
Sleep/Banish/Impale
Bonus Attribute Points
Mana Regeneration Aura
Bash
Blood Bath

Now for those of you who have read through all this I grant you the reward of the mana regeneration equation. You can determine how much mana regeneration a second you have with the following formula.

Base Mana Regeneration (Lowest it can be set to is .01)
+
(Intelligence * The regeneration given per point of Intelligence) Lowest it can be set to is .01
*
(1 + The Total Percentage Increase)
+
Brilliance Aura + Mana Regeneration Aura (If you selected it)

pretty good post. I will just like to add in about mana regeneration: It can be set to 0; but yeah, it is .01. On the heroes with "increased mana regeneration" it is a base of .02. Also, just so people know; it isnt percent based on your int; it is a set value increase; I believe. so, 100 int is 1 mana per second. Doesnt seem like much; does it? Early game, mana regen from int us really bad. But; on any MS build; 1300 int shouldnt be hard to get by later game. Get shoulders, scepter of mana goddess, shell of mana, and maybe even an eternal set of mana. The shoulders and shell give what, combined 900% increased mana regen? this has nothing to do with the auras, keep in mind. with 1300 int; that is 13 mana regeneration. Still; poor. Increased 900% though? 13*9=117? 117 mana regen. Add in the... 60? from shoulders; 40 from shell. 217 mana regen a second.


Armor information:
Unlike armor, where every point gives you... idk, 3% more life (in theory), mana shield does not offer that. A max level mana shield is ~90% damage reduction. Going against someone with 250 armor; who also has 90% damage reduction; you will die much faster than them. Comparing all that regen to 250 armor with mask aura; assuming damage is about the same, and no one is using abilities; you will drop faster than the other person; or at best, at the same rate. Even the same rate is bad, when you compare 217 mana regeneration to 60? 70?

The thing I don't like about Manashield is that as it levels it scales worse against mana burn.

Say at max level, 6.25 damage per mana.

A lightning weapon (not sure of the actual numbers) lets say 100 mana per hit. That 100 mana per hit actually increases their attack damage by Manaburnt * 6.25. That is, 100 mana burnt actually equals 625 auto attack damage. Same with stone staff, if it burns 1000 mana every 10 seconds, thats 6250 bonus auto attack damage every 10 seconds. Mana shield is not to bad early - mid game, but if they have a chance of getting maxed out weapons and can armour up, your usually toast.

very true epic, very true. <3 mana shield. But this is why mana regen gets up to ~3X stronger than life regen. (item based) A good mana shield build only uses mana shield as a buffer though. very late game, MS always loses to armor.

I don't know purge is kind of an overrated counter. I'm not going to go into much argument, except to say over half the heroes in the game are ranged, and anytime their attack is enhanced by a buff placer (bash, crit,) it will prevent purge from ever happening. Not to mention just about every mana shield build will have some kind of evasion. However all is not lost I've always found frequent crits generally cut through mana shield pretty well. Generally what it comes down to is how much damage they're able to deal to you before you break their shield. If they can deal enough damage they can squeak by until they build their own armor and hit point type items.

Quote :

I don't know purge is kind of an overrated counter. I'm not going to go into much argument, except to say over half the heroes in the game are ranged, and anytime their attack is enhanced by a buff placer (bash, crit,) it will prevent purge from ever happening.

Fair enough, if I know you are using rejuve why would I cancel out my purge with crits and bashes though? And as far as I know, crits and bashes don't completely cancel a purge, they merely can not purge AND crit/bash at the same time. Thus, your 20% chance to crit doesn't block out your purge the other 80% of the time. Sure, if you stack 3-4 crits and try and purge it's not going to work, but if your that silly you probably wouldn't be trying to purge in the first place.

Quote :

If they can deal enough damage they can squeak by until they build their own armor and hit point type items.

Play against Undead with a manashield build. He's one of the few people that I've ever seen to actually pull it off. Why? Because he does it in complete opposite order that everyone else does. He realizes that mass mana and regen doesn't come till late game, and that armour/damage/health all come to intel in mid game. He makes a strong ass intel hero just like any other good intel build AND THEN he begins his mana shield work. So by half way to late game he already has 60 ish armour, 6k+ hp and awesome damage, all he has to do is grab a shell and another item or two, and he doubles - triples his strength. If you do manage to break his shield, you still need to deal with a hero equally as strong as you.

With exception to the fact that there are more melee heroes than ranged heroes; I will also argue that if you are hitting a crit, who cares about purge? By the time you have a top rank purge weapon, what kinda crit are you dealing? 2.5X? 3X? Dealing 3X damage is generally better than that purge would have been. I think max level purge is something like 60% for 90 burned? Assuming you have a 20% crit chance going on; that is still roughly 50% for 90; AKA 90 mana burned per second. (plus damage) 90 X6.25= lets call it an even 600. Worse than a crit; but when you proc it every other hit; is more DPS than a crit.

As an aside to what epic said about my MS strat, it was alot easier to balance armor hp mana and regen and shit back when the immortal's shield was easy as shit to get. You could finish shell and sheild at the same time. NOwadays i look to hardened skin to grant the dmg reduction and try to find another source of evasion... IMO the changes to immortal's shield nerffed the MS build harder then changing the coefficient. if i could still easily get the 200 dmg reduction and use evasion to get the 52% dodge then the build would still be OP

commenting on what glorn said... if you really better of critting hard and getting a corruption sword or somthing. Against any mana shield build worth killing you are going to have to fight through a fuck ton of armor once you break the shield down... really i treat the build like any Non-MS build untill getting hte shell seems intelligent you can just farm faster with restore mana.

the build i use currently is...
Flame strike
hardened skin
restore mana
Hp regen / Health innate
mana shield

Level FLame strike till you hit level 13. keep restore mana at rank 2 untill you max hardened skin. after those 2 things then max restore mana.

Items.
Basic mistics cloak
magic shield / boots
totemic set
use the magic shield to make set armor
divining rod
cloak of the hidden
theif's mask
make the shell of the mana goddess
make the shroud of hte theif god.
make 2 warrior sets.
make an auraic set
make a lvl 2 corruption sword
normally from here if the end of the game is not near i work for an immortal's mask. The regen on that thing is very good for a mana shield build

Just a comment on your build, I stopped using mana restore on MS builds. IT makes your opponent get a light weapon. If that light weapon is blocking you from getting another 3000 mana every 22 seconds, it is really worth having. Then they will also be burning your mana from purge.

Purge deals damage also; based on mana burned... so, 90 purged mana deals an additional 90 damage to the person being hit. Nothing amazing, but again, with a 60% proc rate, it adds up. with 1000 damage, that is .2 BAT worth of DPS. (Which everyone overrated)

Generally with a MS build; I just run a normal int build and throw MS on it to fuck with people. Restore does help creep though; but I would rather put a few points into divine and main level my other two skills. my goal is that I should be able to easily beat any vortex build with a MS build.

THe gae for me ussually ends b4 i can get mana restore past lvl 4-5. normally im out with a frost orb ganking long b4 that

Not a bad build item build bane. It is pretty close to a terraptus item build I used to use a long time ago. With terraptus and those items you could use your hp to supplement any mana missing so you could continue to farm. You know now that I read my previous post and some of yours I don't know what I was thinking. Must of been drinking and typing or something. Items vary from game to game if your being conservative then your building more like a terraptus kind of build. However if your dominating you can take advantage of the shield and be a glass cannon with no armor. I will give one advice to you mana shield users and that is to quit with the crown of the ages rush. Your not that hard up on mana. It generally gives you the worse damage to gold spent and doesn't even benefit you that much. Try this starting item order glittering tiara, mystics cloak, and magic shield. Why do I think that item order is better? It gives slightly more raw mana, +36 damage, 11 armor, and 4 more strength and agility. Now with the crown rush your looking at +16 damage going into a duel, that your likely are not going to even have mana shield for. Here is the clincher why my build order is better, when the duel is over I will nearly always have enough cash to make the same crown you rushed.

try getting consume instead of restore mana... its actually pretty painful coupled with flamestrike, but you will have to mainlvl it after you hit 11 or so