Fixing the Aura Stacking + Pumping Single Skill Problem

Lets not beat around the bush here, PoE does have some very fundamental flaws, especially late game.

One of these flaws is the basic mandatory stacking of auars (if you are a non BM user) combined with just souping a single ability (often FP/EK/LA/PS) when you hit late game. Even though auras and related abilities/support gems have gotten nerfed, its still happening, and its a problem, lets have a look at why

Although people can argue that having cooldowns on skills can break pacing, with PoE its basically taken to the other extreme, having skills with no cooldown means you just soup a single skill thats broken and continuously spam it. Also games like D3 have shown that putting moderate/sane cooldowns on skills actually improves gameplay combat, not make it worse (we don't want the situation that we have on TQ though where abilities have cooldowns of greater than 8 seconds, because that really does break gameplay pacing)

1. Auras are being treated as passives, not auras. Typically in these RPG style of games, Auras imply some supportive ability that you give to yourself as well as allies. They usually also imply that the aura version of a passive is weaker than the passive itself, mainly because you are spreading it in an AoE. The problem in PoE? Auras are stronger than passives (either through the passive tree or item mods) and they are being used as passives, instead of auras.

2. Mana regen is still based off max mana, not the usable mana you have. The biggest limiting factor, in terms of resource managed for skill usage in PoE, is regeneration, not mana pool. Its generally considered quite difficult to get a skill using 250+ mana (and when it gets to that stage, most people use a reduced mana/mana leech/health leech for BM gem). The thing is, its not uncommon at all to have 1k+ mana, and because skills have no cooldown (and hence one PoE encourages spamming a single skill), whats more important than anything else is regeneration of mana, not how big your pool. Aura stacking is attractive because when you are sitting at 1k+ mana, you literally have a massive section of mana that would never get used, and so its always filled with auras, and doing so doesn't effect mana regeneration

3. A lot of the broken abilities are broken because they have no CD. One of the biggest issues in game design (in general) is not putting restrictions on things that should have restrictions. If a skill is generally very good and reliable (i.e. applicable in all situations), which is what FP/LA/EK/PS are, than such skills should either have a cooldown or have very low damage. Thats not the case with PoE (and PoE is breaking the formula in this regard). I mean its really gotten so bad that watching a stream of something like Kripp playing is painful. Its literally him, just perma casting FP (inbetween moving) for a period of 12 hours, its just sad

Possible solutions

1. It would actually be better off, in terms of gameplay, if such abilities had a smallish cooldown (lets say ~3 seconds). The abilities can get a slight buff to compensate for cooldown, but what it would mean is it would encourage using a group of skills, instead of just pooling everything into a single offensive skill. Its in PoE's interest to make sure that one dimensional charcters are not the most effective ones, they in fact should be the least effective ones

2. Mana regeneration is based off not your max mana (which includes max mana), but the mana that is available to use. To offset this, base mana regeneration can be buffed

3. Abilities like EK/FP/LA would get a buff in raw numbers, but they would also get a cooldown (of something like ~2 seconds would be good). Generally speaking, if you can constantly spam an ability, it should either be weak (in terms of what it does) or be plain utility. Thats not the case for these spells. GGG can also introduce a reduced CD support gem which would allow people to decrease the CD of the abilities if they want a similar playstyle to what is currently available

4. Auras give less stats to the user compared to allies. To prevent aura stacking, one method is to make sure auras are auras in the general definition of what they are RPG type games, that is, an AoE ability that benefits your allies. There is nothing wrong with a summoner/totem stacking auras, in fact they really should be the only class that should be stacking auras. One way to encourage this is to make it, simply put, that auras do not give full benefits for you. So if you want to be selfish, and you are getting purity because you need MR (and not because you are a summoner whos minions need MR), then you would get a passive which grants you MR instead of the aura

General consensus is though, you aren't going to fix this problem with just number tweaking, thats already been done and it hasn't solved anything

What are your guys thoughts?

My thoughts on this are very simple:

First: You can only use an aura visible in the skillbar. So going with 6 auras will leave you with almost no room for you skills.

Another (better) option could be a max of 3 dedicated skillslots for auras. this way we have to think and choose which one we use. The dedicated slots are extra to what we have now. (now we have 8?, then we have 5 for flasks, and then we have 3 for auras).

Also take the traps: they have a cooldown. So what ever they say, the cooldown mechanic is used in game. So if i was GGG i should use what ever is best for the skill. I never had a problem with cooldowns in any game, as long it was balanced.

The thing is: why are Auras part of our skills/skillbar? I think the flasks are more part of it and they have there own seperate bar.
Give auras there own section to and dont let them be part of our skillbar couse they are of a different order. This way you can design and control the Aura use way better: GGG should give us a max number, like 3. Maybe a passive in the skilltree that will open an xtra Aura slot (witch area).

Cooldowns aren't really a good thing for ARPGs. People want to spam a skill over and over again, and only in rare instances should a built-in cooldown be implemented.

Here's a counterproposal:

• I'm not sure if the skills you list are actually so powerful they need nerfing, but if so do it the old-fashioned way, not by adding a cooldown to them.
• Introduce one or two support gems that add a lot more damage (and a lot more mana cost multiplier) to a spell, at the cost of giving it a cooldown. Two would probably best, giving it the LMP/GMP treatment; one kind of short cooldown that adds a nice extra punch, and one long cooldown for truly spectacular burst damage. In a way, it would be implementing your suggestion, but making it optional.

Your idea on mana regeneration reminds me of the way sustained abilities worked in Dragon Age: Origins. That game also had a mana reservation system, except almost all sustained abilities were personal, and each also had a fatigue cost, which made your active abilities cost more to use (essentially a mana cost multiplier). The result was horrible; the only sustained abilities worth using were the ones with near-broken effects, like the one that made you immune to knock-down -- think of stun in this game, except you literally had to watch your character get off their back.

Here's a counterproposal:

• Double base mana regeneration rate to 210% per minute, or 3.5% per second.
• Mana flasks use half the charges (conveniently, "charges consumed" is always divisible by 2 currently) and do their thing in half the time. Same amount recovered.
• All mana costs doubled, including flat auras. But not percentage reservations.
• Blood Magic support gem goes from 125% at level 1 to 106% at level 20.
• Clarity might be exempt from the cost doubling, but if so is also exempt from getting its regeneration rate doubled.

These changes would have the following effects:

• Relative cost to stack flat auras is doubled; percent auras would remain unchanged.
• Skills that aren't reserved would take the same amount of time to regenerate their mana, even though their costs were doubled.
• Players would have much more control with mana flasks, able to use them twice as often for effectively half the benefit.
• Because mana costs doubled without any change in life regeneration, Blood Magic keystone becomes significantly less effective; Blood Magic support gem ends up being about the same for active skills, and actually usable for % auras reserved on life.

In terms of having auras provide less benefit, I think the way to do it is the other way around. Have auras provide a full benefit to you, but less benefit to allies. This might be too hard to code, but I think the coolest possible application would be to have the aura slowly lose strength the further a party member gets from the source, similar to how Point Blank calculates damage... if you're with 10 units (roughly melee range) of the aura's source, you get the full bonus, but as you move away it decreases linearly, hitting zero precisely at the edge of the aura's effect. Among other things, this would encourage people to actually get quality on their auras, because it would extend the "50% benefit" range to a usable distance for group play.

"

ScrotieMcB a écrit :

Cooldowns aren't really a good thing for ARPGs. People want to spam a skill over and over again, and only in rare instances should a built-in cooldown be implemented.

The thing is, it degenerates into incredibly boring and repititive combat. I dont have an issue with people playing like that (if they want to), but the bigger problem is its also by far the effective way to beat endgame content.

Also I am in now way suggesting putting cooldowns on everything, just that, as a game design perspective, some skills need a cooldown, and some skills are fine without a cooldown. The skills that I mentioned currently are not fine without a cooldown, and GGG has already implemented the CD mechanic in skills like Cold Snap and traps

"

ScrotieMcB a écrit :

Here's a counterproposal:

• I'm not sure if the skills you list are actually so powerful they need nerfing, but if so do it the old-fashioned way, not by adding a cooldown to them.

Its moreso the gameplay they are promoting rather than it being a balance issue. Personally I think these skills are broken, and that the reason they seem less broken is because there are other skills in this broken category Basically FP/EK/LA are skills that fall into this "broken" bracket for the reasons I stated earlier [quote="ScrotieMcB"]
• Introduce one or two support gems that add a lot more damage (and a lot more mana cost multiplier) to a spell, at the cost of giving it a cooldown. Two would probably best, giving it the LMP/GMP treatment; one kind of short cooldown that adds a nice extra punch, and one long cooldown for truly spectacular burst damage. In a way, it would be implementing your suggestion, but making it optional.

[/quote]

I can see that working theoretically however people would just use things like GMP/LMP over those skills as they do now, there wouldn't be a reason to use an increased damage gem if it increases cooldown, as it stands, normal mobs already fall ridiculously fast with LA/FP/EK when those skills are pumped

"

ScrotieMcB a écrit :

Your idea on mana regeneration reminds me of the way sustained abilities worked in Dragon Age: Origins. That game also had a mana reservation system, except almost all sustained abilities were personal, and each also had a fatigue cost, which made your active abilities cost more to use (essentially a mana cost multiplier). The result was horrible; the only sustained abilities worth using were the ones with near-broken effects, like the one that made you immune to knock-down -- think of stun in this game, except you literally had to watch your character get off their back.

I general I would be wary to jumping so quickly to such a conclusion when comparing games that are fundamentally different. Not saying my idea is perfect, just that PoE has so many different mechanics to DA:O that such a conclusion isn't evidenced

"

ScrotieMcB a écrit :

Here's a counterproposal:

• Double base mana regeneration rate to 210% per minute, or 3.5% per second.
• Mana flasks use half the charges (conveniently, "charges consumed" is always divisible by 2 currently) and do their thing in half the time. Same amount recovered.
• All mana costs doubled, including flat auras. But not percentage reservations.
• Blood Magic support gem goes from 125% at level 1 to 106% at level 20.
• Clarity might be exempt from the cost doubling, but if so is also exempt from getting its regeneration rate doubled.

These changes would have the following effects:

• Relative cost to stack flat auras is doubled; percent auras would remain unchanged.
• Skills that aren't reserved would take the same amount of time to regenerate their mana, even though their costs were doubled.
• Players would have much more control with mana flasks, able to use them twice as often for effectively half the benefit.
• Because mana costs doubled without any change in life regeneration, Blood Magic keystone becomes significantly less effective; Blood Magic support gem ends up being about the same for active skills, and actually usable for % auras reserved on life.

I can see some of those properls working

"

ScrotieMcB a écrit :

In terms of having auras provide less benefit, I think the way to do it is the other way around. Have auras provide a full benefit to you, but less benefit to allies. This might be too hard to code, but I think the coolest possible application would be to have the aura slowly lose strength the further a party member gets from the source, similar to how Point Blank calculates damage... if you're with 10 units (roughly melee range) of the aura's source, you get the full bonus, but as you move away it decreases linearly, hitting zero precisely at the edge of the aura's effect. Among other things, this would encourage people to actually get quality on their auras, because it would extend the "50% benefit" range to a usable distance for group play.

This alone wont fix the problem of every non BM character basically stacking auras

"

deteego a écrit :

I can see that working theoretically however people would just use things like GMP/LMP over those skills as they do now, there wouldn't be a reason to use an increased damage gem if it increases cooldown, as it stands, normal mobs already fall ridiculously fast with LA/FP/EK when those skills are pumped

That's why I said you could nerf them the old fashioned way. For example, what if FP was nerfed by giving it 70% damage effectiveness (hypothetical, not actually suggesting this)? It wouldn't be so great at clearing monsters anymore, unless you used the new 100% more damage, 200% mana cost multiplier, 2 second cooldown gem. If you did, it would essentially do 40% more damage than currently, but you've also used up a support gem slot, and you need to work around the cooldown. Some people would use the cooldown support, others would keep spamming it at the reduced efficiency.

That's kind of an extreme and unrealistic example, but it demonstrates the concept.

"

deteego a écrit :

I general I would be wary to jumping so quickly to such a conclusion when comparing games that are fundamentally different. Not saying my idea is perfect, just that PoE has so many different mechanics to DA:O that such a conclusion isn't evidenced

My conclusion was the fatigue penalties were an unfun mechanic, almost by their very nature. I'd rather not see them here.

"

deteego a écrit :

This alone wont fix the problem of every non BM character basically stacking auras

No, that's why I suggested the cost increase too. I think that auras should primarily benefit the user, who allocated a gem socket for them and nurtured it as it gained all those gem levels; I have trouble imagining someone being intense enough about group play to go to those lengths for a benefit he barely receives. Instead you reduce the effectiveness in group play while giving groups something they can do to mitigate the nerf (sticking very close together).

"

ScrotieMcB a écrit :

"

deteego a écrit :

I can see that working theoretically however people would just use things like GMP/LMP over those skills as they do now, there wouldn't be a reason to use an increased damage gem if it increases cooldown, as it stands, normal mobs already fall ridiculously fast with LA/FP/EK when those skills are pumped

That's why I said you could nerf them the old fashioned way. For example, what if FP was nerfed by giving it 70% damage effectiveness (hypothetical, not actually suggesting this)? It wouldn't be so great at clearing monsters anymore, unless you used the new 100% more damage, 200% mana cost multiplier, 2 second cooldown gem. If you did, it would essentially do 40% more damage than currently, but you've also used up a support gem slot, and you need to work around the cooldown. Some people would use the cooldown support, others would keep spamming it at the reduced efficiency.

That's kind of an extreme and unrealistic example, but it demonstrates the concept.

I just think from a game design point of view, it should be implied that such skills start with a cooldown, mainly from the perspective that skills like LA and FP are broken on early levels (in regarding how easily they clear mobs) just as they are in later levels

Again the whole point of this thread is to enforce fun, varied and tactical gameplay and hence it should be done asap, which is when you get the gem at level 1.

I am more in favor with doing something like this (plus implementing a cooldown reduction support gem) rather than making a rare support gem that increases damage but adds cooldown. Remember the whole point is to heavily discourage stagnant gameplay, and that is done by putting that "discouragement" in the actual basis and design of the skill

"

ScrotieMcB a écrit :

"

deteego a écrit :

I general I would be wary to jumping so quickly to such a conclusion when comparing games that are fundamentally different. Not saying my idea is perfect, just that PoE has so many different mechanics to DA:O that such a conclusion isn't evidenced

My conclusion was the fatigue penalties were an unfun mechanic, almost by their very nature. I'd rather not see them here.

"

deteego a écrit :

This alone wont fix the problem of every non BM character basically stacking auras

No, that's why I suggested the cost increase too. I think that auras should primarily benefit the user, who allocated a gem socket for them and nurtured it as it gained all those gem levels; I have trouble imagining someone being intense enough about group play to go to those lengths for a benefit he barely receives. Instead you reduce the effectiveness in group play while giving groups something they can do to mitigate the nerf (sticking very close together).

But thats the jobs of passives. The whole thing in RPG's in general is

- Passives are selfish bonuses designed to boost you greatly
- Auras are weaker versions of passives that apply to people all around them

The whole issue in the first place is PoE mixing them up. There needs to be a clear distinction between auras and passives in regards to strength in terms of balance, there currently isn't one. Auras are both stronger than passives and apply to all units around them.

In all honestly, the only exiles that should be stacking auras should be summoners/totem users. None of your suggestions actually fix that core issue

On second thought, the cooldown support gem is dumb. The result would be that players have one skill they spam continuously, and another skill they spam whenever the cooldown refreshes. Probably the same skill, but socketed in different 6Ls. It wouldn't actually add any tactical or unique gameplay.

The same concept applies to your idea to add cooldowns to the skills that people currently consider imba. Anything that got hit with the cooldown nerf bat would be propelled into underpowered nigh-unplayable status, and the next best tier of skills would become the new imba crowd. Like replacing one dictatorship with another.

The only way I could see cooldowns working is if there was an option to bypass the cooldown through clever build design. Flicker Strike is the prime example. Give people a hurdle to overcome, and they'll try to overcome it with their builds; give people a hard cooldown, and they'll just spam something else instead.

In terms of auras, I'm not saying that isn't the tradition. I am saying it won't work in PoE at all because of how important skill gem sockets are. People won't risk selfless developing a skill gem for other people's benefit when they could run something that has a more guaranteed return on investment.

"

ScrotieMcB a écrit :

On second thought, the cooldown support gem is dumb. The result would be that players have one skill they spam continuously, and another skill they spam whenever the cooldown refreshes. Probably the same skill, but socketed in different 6Ls. It wouldn't actually add any tactical or unique gameplay.

The same concept applies to your idea to add cooldowns to the skills that people currently consider imba. Anything that got hit with the cooldown nerf bat would be propelled into underpowered nigh-unplayable status, and the next best tier of skills would become the new imba crowd. Like replacing one dictatorship with another.

Look, the way I am thinking about it, the reason why FP/EK/LA are so strong is they have ridiculous scaling with support gems due to unique mechanics the skills have. In fact this is a problem that sheds light on other areas. For example, with chain getting the nerf that it did, chain is now basically unusable on anything that isn't LA, and chain is still being used on LA in general (the massive price drop for the trade price on chain is reflective on this). The issue wasn't chain, it was the skills that are using chain, in this case LA

What I am getting here, that in my opinion its a far more balanced approach to go "hey, we accept that some skills, due to design, have ridiculous scaling because they have some unique mechanics. These are the skills which should have some sought of base cooldown to compensate for that". In fact almost every other aRPG has that, these skills are often "ultimate" skills. I am not saying that we should implement ridiculous cooldowns on the skills, but the skills do need a cooldown that doesn't effect pacing. You would also realize that all of these skills do have "broken" mechanics with them, whether its FP's piercing/multiple projectile properties, or LA's cascading AoE feature. There is nothing wrong with this, its what makes the skills unique. Its we have to add another mechanic to balance this out, cooldown is the most obvious choice

I think that is an entirely appropriate attitude to fix this problem. If you just adjust the numbers of skills like FP, than its either going to make the skill useless or the skill is going to remain in its broken state. And whenever you have skills that are "broken" like this, its a sign that the skill either needs to be remade, or another mechanic added to that skill so you have another variable to balance it (in this case its cooldown). Things like traps, although ridiculously strong, are balanced fine due to cooldown. Its the same thing with molten shell

"

ScrotieMcB a écrit :

The only way I could see cooldowns working is if there was an option to bypass the cooldown through clever build design. Flicker Strike is the prime example. Give people a hurdle to overcome, and they'll try to overcome it with their builds; give people a hard cooldown, and they'll just spam something else instead.

Why would you want to bypass the CD of the skill, the whole point of this is that not all skills should have zero cooldown. If you make a stupid lower denominator (in this case 0 zero cooldown), then you are always going to have a far superior skill/s (in this case FP/EK/LA) that will just trump anything else. And if one of those skils get nerfed, than another one takes its place.

The whole point of good game design is that you have a multiple layers of mechanics, which you can tweak individually, to balance the skill. Adding cooldown to certain skills would mean that we can balance (and even leave) the fact that the skill is so strong, we can just tweak the CD instead of other parts of the skill. It also fixes some of the gameplay issues with skills like FP (mainly being able to perma CC mobs so easily with it when combined with LMP/GMP)

"

ScrotieMcB a écrit :

In terms of auras, I'm not saying that isn't the tradition. I am saying it won't work in PoE at all because of how important skill gem sockets are. People won't risk selfless developing a skill gem for other people's benefit when they could run something that has a more guaranteed return on investment.

In regards to auras, I think that GGG need to rethink in general what auras need to be and how they work, because their current design is something thats broken. As I said earlier, number tweaking is not going to fix the aure problem, GGG tried that, it failed

"

A lot of the broken abilities are broken because they have no CD.

This really doesn't need much more explaining. Spam-spam-spam-->BORING.

Cooldowns-->rotations-->paying attention at the game-->fun-fun-fun, no more "flixflax I am so powerful keeping my finger on the right mouse button".

Also ScrotieMcB, there isn't any evidence, whatsoever, that applying sane cooldowns on skills will effect pacing in aRPG (since it hasn't done that to any aRPG to date apart from TQ, which is a simple case of them putting the cooldowns way too high)

I mean you can just look at D2/D3 as obvious examples