Bone Armor

Creates an orbiting shield of bone that absorbs melee damage.

Bone Armor is a level 1 Necromancer buff (Poison and Bone tree, no prerequisite; it unlocks Bone Wall). It is a pool of physical damage absorbed: 20 points at level 1, +15 a level, 305 at level 20, and every hard point in Bone Wall or Bone Prison adds 15 more. Physical hits drain the pool before they touch your life; when the pool is empty the armor is gone. It can be cast in town (InTown in skills.txt), and the mana is 11 at level 1 rising one a level.

The numbers

• Damage absorbed is the aura stat bonearmor (and its bonearmormax) set to ln12 plus the synergy: Param1 20 at level 1 plus Param2 15 a level ("Damage absorbed baseline" and "per level"), plus Param8 15 for each hard point in Bone Wall and Bone Prison. 305 at level 20, 455 at level 30, before synergies. The Basin's page records the older Lord of Destruction value as 10 + 10 × level; the current table is 5 + 15 × level.
• Mana is 11 at level 1 and +1 a level (mana 11, lvlmana 1 at manashift 8): 30 at level 20.

The base pool (ln12) reads the full skill level, so +skills count; the synergy reads blvl, hard points only.

How it works

Bone Armor is a self-buff with no duration: it lasts until its pool is spent. Its aura event is absorbdamage, and the Basin's rules for it:

• It absorbs physical damage only, and it is applied before anything else in the defender's order described at Taking Damage, ahead of Energy Shield, Damage Reduced and resistance. The game text's "melee damage" means physical damage; physical missiles drain it too.
• It expires once it has absorbed the stated amount. The physical damage left over from the hit that empties it is applied to you, and can still be reduced by the rest of the chain (Physical Damage Reduction, Damage Reduced).
• Recasting it before it expires resets the pool to its maximum.
• It can be active together with Cyclone Armor and Blade Shield, but not with Frozen Armor, Shiver Armor or Chilling Armor: the last one cast is the one that stays.

Elemental, magic and poison damage pass straight through it. The armor is a physical sponge, nothing more; against a fire-breathing pack it is 30 mana spent for nothing.

The Basin notes that Abyss Knights and Oblivion Knights cast a monster version, MonBoneArmor, not this skill.

Synergies and +skills

Two skills feed Bone Armor, each at +15 damage absorbed per hard point (Param8 15, "Damage Absorbed synergy"): Bone Wall and Bone Prison. Both read blvl, so +skills from items do not raise the synergy. Bone Armor gives a synergy in return to both of them (+10% life per hard point to each). A hard point in Bone Armor itself is worth 15 absorbed; a +1 from items is worth the same 15 on the base and nothing on the synergy, so an item level and a hard point are equal here, and a hard point in Bone Wall or Bone Prison is equal to either.

Against players

A player's hit on another player is cut to 17% of its value (difficultylevels.txt PlayerDamagePercentVSPlayer) before anything else, and the armor absorbs the physical part of what is left. The Basin's page records no other player-versus-player rule for this skill. See Player versus Player.

Build notes

• One point and +skills: a level 1 armor with +10 skills is level 11, 170 absorbed, the same 15 a level as hard points. The pool grows at the same rate whichever way the level comes.
• Points in Bone Wall and Bone Prison are the better buy for a bone caster: each one adds 15 to the armor and 15% magic damage to Teeth, Bone Spear and Bone Spirit at the same time.
• At level 20 the recast costs 30 mana; the pool is 305 plus 15 per synergy point. Recast whenever it is low, since a cast resets it to full rather than adding to it.