[Kameron8]

This has been brought up in several threads before, but the raw efficiency and generally polarizing nature of the Magic Mirror enchant warrants some form of changes.  Here are the current effects of the enchant:



Due to the nature of shields, the overwhelming majority of individuals using a shield with the Magic Mirror enchant are built with high defenses and resistances.  As a result, there are very few occasions where a single instance of damage will greatly exceed 100 -- which is the upper bound for the retaliation effect.  Practically speaking, this means that unless the foe you face happens to be a tome-using spellcaster, wield guns/bows, or has an efficient, spammable Guard Break ability, you are automatically permitted to deal (roughly) half of your maximum health to your opponent by spending as little as one momentum per turn.  You can deal more than half of your maximum health in damage with this item if healing is brought into the equation.  In the event you actually are fighting someone who can outright ignore this effect, you are relatively unimpacted as the investment for achieving it was only an enchantment that was slapped onto a shield.

From a strictly numerical standpoint, this is an extremely polarizing factor in PvP combat.  There are very few instances where someone who didn't happen to have a bow, tome, guard break, or spammable knockdown can defeat an opponent with 1,000 HP, if they themselves have 1,000 HP and have to take 500 unprotectable retaliation damage first to defeat their foe.

To make matters more polarizing, nearly all of the potential item counters to this single enchantment have been eliminated.  Ghosthands very pointedly does not work against the damage because it is 'Retaliation versus damage types' and not 'on attack', and even shoving the enchantment onto your gloves for the 75% reflection reduction does not reduce the amount of incoming retaliation damage. In fact, the description has been updated from a previous iteration to very specifically point out that this is the case; the previous description of the enchantment is shown below:



The current updated description, as mentioned at the top of the thread, is now as follows:



Because of these factors, I believe some changes need to be made to this enchant.  The general power level of its effects are egregiously higher than all other shield enchants, and the option to take items or the enchant yourself specifically to dampen the effects is not available.  I will not suggest specific numerical changes to make, since Dev very often does not need or want that kind of input, but I will suggest that something be done to reduce the overall damage, and/or allow for items to counter its effects.  I do not believe a single enchantment should be capable of swaying the outcome of a combat so immeasurably.

Previous Threads:

[Mirrored Enchantment] Mirror Mirror on the Shield, who is the King of the Battlefield?

Magic Mirror : Mega thread pt1

[Fern]

Fighting Mirrored can be pretty awful. I don't think there's much to add that hasn't already been said in the OP (or the other threads), it's the standard go-to for meta tanks with shields since they want to start guarding with about 1M most of the time. Guard Break is a status that only barely exists and lasts for a very short time that doesn't compensate for the drawbacks from the skills you'd normally see it happen with (Lance de Lion, Reaper Scythe, Light Tomahawk.)

If number changes are hypothetically not an option then there's the idea of making it so you need to have Guard LV30 or higher for Mirrored to do the retaliation damage, but I'm honestly not entirely sure if that's slapping it too hard.

[Senna]

The points above were already on the money. Guard is very spammable and more than 80% of the weapons type in the game are melee base so they're always suffering from it. We have guardbreakers but it's not something you can always use or prepared to use every chance you have, especially since you'll be wasting 3 momentum, 6 if you have to move while they could do whatever they need to and guard with 1 momentum.

Drifting aside, Increasing it to Guard LV30 seems nice or let it work like the mirror knight whereas taking physical (Or magic) damage breaks the mirror until they guard again.

[InsainArcaneBirdbrain]

If number changes are hypothetically not an option then there's the idea of making it so you need to have Guard LV30 or higher for Mirrored to do the retaliation damage, but I'm honestly not entirely sure if that's slapping it too hard.

Requiring a minimum level for mirror to work is a good idea in my eyes, because it forces a commitment into that guard. Mirror enchant does so much as it currently stands as it can basically throw half of a melee attacker's damage back in their face for 1-2m, while still having enough momentum for the user to get 2 actions of their own. The lv30 guard means at least 3m has to be spent, which heavily restricts skill usage on turns you want mirror to work. As it currently stands, the effect is waaaaay too efficient for a potentially 1m action that punishes basic attacks (especially those which have on-hit damage effects) unfairly.

[Snake]

I beg to differ.

The real problem with Mirrored is that it's at its most effective on 1M (or LV10 Guarding), where you "take the most damage, but also retaliate the most damage since your guard is lowered, and even have a higher chance at evading attacks, since it's just -10% Evade".

The minimum Guarding LV should be 20 for this effect to activate, not 30 (which essentially is 2M, when compared to the proposed 3M), because at least it rewards some basic hitting tanks for scoring a critical hit and having 2M left over.

Which yes, mind you, don't exist because why bother when you can cast two spells for 6M then guard for 1M? This is nasty and yes, I believe this should go, but I don't believe it should affect more risky playstyles such as basic hitting tanks.

At the very least, with critical hits you're making a bet there, on hitting your opponent and scoring a critical as a DEF-oriented char, if you all can even see my point here.

[Autumn]

I don't want to explicitly offer solutions to issue, and the in-depth explanation as to why the enchantment is strictly unfair is already explained in the OP, I do want to express that I support that enchantment should be touched upon in some way. Thus far my favorite solution was to have the damage reflect be related to guard LV (Damage cap = guard LV) so it stays useful in the right scenarios.

However it may go down I am fine with the outcome, it makes me disappointed that a shield specific enchantment has garnered this reputation, I do wish that it helped tanks prevent damage to their team like through reflecting projectiles or how not, allowing them to serve as a wall.

[Snake]

[...] favorite solution was to have the damage reflect be related to guard LV (Damage cap = guard LV) so it stays useful in the right scenarios. [...]

This is also nice.

[sadbot]

I’m with snake on this one, I’ve been saying for some time that the easy fix here would be to make the damage reflection percentage scale with guard level. I think it would be fine like this even at 1m and 7m, turning it into something that you really just get out of it what you put in. All the way down at 1-2m it makes for a minimal but essentially free guard and reflect, while the high 6-7m end can be used to call out the hyper aggressive types with nothing better to do than attack you even when you’ve now turned yourself into a retaliating death trap that likely leaves them taking more damage than you.

Right now it’s just an abusable in between where the usual case is that it gets used for 1m every turn, essentially for free on tank builds that don’t care about crits and almost always do 2 3m actions followed by a 1m guard, to retaliate 50% damage for basically nothing. The action of actually guarding to reduce damage taken is secondary to just proccing the free 50% retaliation.

[Kameron8]

The action of actually guarding to reduce damage taken is secondary to just proccing the free 50% retaliation.

I agree wholeheartedly with this, the benefit of triggering the enchant is generally superior to the benefit of guarding in the first place.

[Snake]

Damage cap = Guard LV when.