Introduction:


While I always loved the concept of wards they always seemed to be double nerfed making them extremely situational, as opposed to merely situational.  They already cost mana to maintain and don't provide any bonuses just for equipping as a shield would but, for some reason, they added a charge up delay to wards as well.  With the charge delay, the ward starts at zero efficacy and takes time to reach full power.  This is fine when defending against ranged attacks, but terrible for defending against melee attacks.  With mods like Deadly Combat that allow blocking physical attacks, DC gives a half-second window for a timed block, I felt like a little update was in order.

What this does is removes the charge-up time for wards so they should be instantly at full strength.  That's the theory anyway.  I tested it and the wards aren't broken but it is difficult to tell if it is working as intended without an accurate means to test it.

What I did was simply change the spell archetype from "Accumulate Magnitude" to "Value Modifier."  Let me know what you think.

Compatibility:

This should be easy to make a compatibility patch.  Just copy your favorite ward mod, then carry forward the single value that is changed into your compatibility patch.