Flameglow

Flameglow is a mage talent available at level 30. Flameglow is a passive ability, providing a permanent damage reduction on all incoming attacks based on the mage's spell power. It will passively absorb the lesser of or damage.

Suppose a mage has 3,000 spell power. This translates to a maximum of 900 damage absorbed from each attack. If an attack would have done 4,500 or more damage originally, Flameglow will absorb all 900 damage. If the attack would have done less than 4,500 damage, Flameglow will only absorb 20% of the attack's incoming damage. So, Flameglow will absorb 20 damage from a 100 damage attack, 200 damage from a 1,000 damage attack, and 899.8 damage from a 4,499 damage attack.

It is important to note that Flameglow takes effect before any absorption effect like Power Word: Shield. This increases the shield's power by 25% in a best-case scenario. Continuing the example from above, let a mage have a shield which absorbs 10,000 damage and let this mage furthermore suffer 10,000 damage in one of two ways: either as 10 ticks for 1,000 damage or as one big hit. Clearly, without Flameglow the shield would fail after either of these two scenarios. With Flameglow however, the picture is very different:

• 1,000 damage per tick: Every tick would be reduced by 200 damage before being absorbed by the shield. After 10 ticks, Flameglow would have eaten 2,000 of the 10,000 damage dealt and the shield would still have 2,000 points left to absorb. After 12 ticks, the shield is almost gone and the 13th tick would exhaust the shield and cause 400 damage (200 was eaten by Flameglow, 400 went into the shield). From the vantage point of the attacker, it took 13,000 damage to exhaust the mage's shield and deal 400 damage even though the shield should have only absorbed 10,000 damage.
• 10,000 damage at once: In this case, Flameglow is maxed out and only absorbs 900 damage, the shield would eat the remaining 9,100 damage and be left with 900 points.