I'm about to fall asleep, so bear with me...but the idea popped into my head and I wanted to get it down before I forgot it...

I know you get all kinds of complaints about the randomness of shields...so why not take the randomness away??? That's right, I said it.

One example of my idea, it should explain the idea without me having to...or so it should:

Spell Shield at 50%
Realm receives 10 Meteor Storms, 10 Death Strikes...5 MSs, 5 DSs successful, 5 MSs, 5 DSs failures...how?

XX:XX x.x The Meteor Storm spell from X hit our realm and was successful.
XX:XX x.x The Meteor Storm spell from X hit our realm and was blocked by our shields.
XX:XX x.x The Meteor Storm spell from X hit our realm and was successful.
XX:XX x.x The Meteor Storm spell from X hit our realm and was blocked by our shields.
XX:XX x.x The Meteor Storm spell from X hit our realm and was successful.
XX:XX x.x The Meteor Storm spell from X hit our realm and was blocked by our shields.
XX:XX x.x The Meteor Storm spell from X hit our realm and was successful.
XX:XX x.x The Meteor Storm spell from X hit our realm and was blocked by our shields.
XX:XX x.x The Meteor Storm spell from X hit our realm and was successful.
XX:XX x.x The Meteor Storm spell from X hit our realm and was blocked by our shields.
XX:XX x.x The Death Strike spell from X hit our realm and was blocked by our shields.
XX:XX x.x The Death Strike spell from X hit our realm and was successful.
XX:XX x.x The Death Strike spell from X hit our realm and was blocked by our shields.
XX:XX x.x The Death Strike spell from X hit our realm and was successful.
XX:XX x.x The Death Strike spell from X hit our realm and was blocked by our shields.
XX:XX x.x The Death Strike spell from X hit our realm and was successful.
XX:XX x.x The Death Strike spell from X hit our realm and was blocked by our shields.
XX:XX x.x The Death Strike spell from X hit our realm and was successful.
XX:XX x.x The Death Strike spell from X hit our realm and was blocked by our shields.
XX:XX x.x The Death Strike spell from X hit our realm and was successful.

Bleh, that didn't explain it at all...

Basically, you pay for your shields with mana (maybe taken in hourly increments) for the day. Then however much % block you paid for for the next 24 hours, is how many out of 10 spells you will block. This is per spell type so that people can't just cast a slow pop and it gets blocked, then cast MS and it's successful, then cast ASE on a realm and it gets blocked then DS and it's successful and so on. It would block 5 out of 10 MSs cast at a realm for that 24 hours, 1 by 1. Umm...you can only buy %ages in tens so that you block 0/10, 1/10, 2/10, etc.

And I had something in mind for how this would all be beneficial and work out balanced and all, but I have forgotten it due to my tiredness...maybe I'll remember it sometime...but for now, I'm going to go get my deserved sleep...

ummm...why we dont remove shields and we can train a new kind of troop...the Exotic Kamikazes. We save them and when they see a spell coming on us, they throw their body on the spell and dont let the spell hit us...

we would have a max number of Exotic Kamikazes (like 10, I dont know)...then we would just get hit if we dont have anymore kamikazes...we wouldnt have this random bs and many players wouldnt complain about it...maybe...because few players can cast only low spells and save all the strong spells to cast when the other realm dont have anymore Exotic Kamikazes...but this would be the same for shields...we could save the strong spells untill he get shields down :-D