Fixing the Aura Stacking + Pumping Single Skill Problem

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Snorkle_uk a écrit :

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boohead a écrit :

Make clarity passive to every body, cause everyone uses that shit except for BM.

Make aura limit 3, but increased with Inner Force to 4.

Make them weaker?


Or is everyone supposed to be an auramancer like how they currently are atm?

what exactly do you have against auras? Is everyone supposed to use them? Well... is everyone supposed to use items? Is everyone supposed to use attacks? Yeah, sort of, is this really a problem? They help, a lot, armour helps a lot, ev helps, es helps, health helps, every now and then you get a build that doesnt really need to stack most of these, thats rare, rare to see a build that doesnt get help from auras, of course, if theyre of use then why wouldnt you have them? and whats really the problem with that?

If anything there just needs to be more auras to give a wider range of possibilities and choices to make when it comes to which ones you run. You have your health, you have your armour, es, ev, mana, auras, attacks, equipment, I still really struggle to see how taking the word auras out of that list makes this a better game? What am I missing here people? fill me in.

Not completely against them, mostly against mandatory(or obscenely recommended) things in general. Takes away "chioce".

But I agree, if they added a ton of more usefull auras, this would also help.

The way that auras are used currently is a bad design choice because there is no drawback to using them, people have excessive mana pools and so auras are used because people have way too much mana and don't have anything to do with it

If there was a significant drawback to auras, where people have to decide "ok maybe I can have an aura, but I really have to decide which one to use, if I want to stack them, there is going to be some significant drawback"

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boohead a écrit :

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Snorkle_uk a écrit :

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boohead a écrit :

Make clarity passive to every body, cause everyone uses that shit except for BM.

Make aura limit 3, but increased with Inner Force to 4.

Make them weaker?


Or is everyone supposed to be an auramancer like how they currently are atm?

what exactly do you have against auras? Is everyone supposed to use them? Well... is everyone supposed to use items? Is everyone supposed to use attacks? Yeah, sort of, is this really a problem? They help, a lot, armour helps a lot, ev helps, es helps, health helps, every now and then you get a build that doesnt really need to stack most of these, thats rare, rare to see a build that doesnt get help from auras, of course, if theyre of use then why wouldnt you have them? and whats really the problem with that?

If anything there just needs to be more auras to give a wider range of possibilities and choices to make when it comes to which ones you run. You have your health, you have your armour, es, ev, mana, auras, attacks, equipment, I still really struggle to see how taking the word auras out of that list makes this a better game? What am I missing here people? fill me in.

Not completely against them, mostly against mandatory(or obscenely recommended) things in general. Takes away "chioce".

But I agree, if they added a ton of more usefull auras, this would also help.

fair play I can get along with that.

I think for me part of where thats relevant is how visual they are, I would like to see them and identify them yes, but its a bit full on. I dont really have a problem with them being like a 4th defensive wall if you like along with armour, ev and es where virtually everyone has a little bit of all of them, but maybe if that is the case we shouldnt all look like neon daleks running around. I like the smaller, less intrusive charge balls we have now, I think things like determination could do with a bit of a scale down too though. I dont mind being slightly acid house lasermental, I quite like it, but it would be cool if the character wasnt virtually lost behind a shell of light. Scale it down a bit.

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deteego a écrit :

The way that auras are used currently is a bad design choice because there is no drawback to using them, people have excessive mana pools and so auras are used because people have way too much mana and don't have anything to do with it

If there was a significant drawback to auras, where people have to decide "ok maybe I can have an aura, but I really have to decide which one to use, if I want to stack them, there is going to be some significant drawback"

I get that, but does there need to be? Does it need to be a niche thing? Im not sure it does. Very little drawback to stacking armour or energy shield, or health, or mana... Im not sure it adds something to the game if they kick auras into the niche long grass and most people dont run multiples. It brings in a complexity of using sockets and hence gearing is effected, gems, it adds dimensions to the question of how you will sort out your resource sustainability, what do you need to spec in passives and what can you aura instead, if I run auras do i need futher passives... I think it just adds dimensions to the game in a lot of ways basically and I dont see that taking all that away helps the game.

I get a principal stance of compulsory skills = bad, but thats surely because its simplifying a situation that could have depth, surely the impact of the aura system adds more depth overall to the game than making the one issue of using auras or not a real choice? Personally I dont think it does, but I do respect where you guys are coming from.

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Snorkle_uk a écrit :

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deteego a écrit :

The way that auras are used currently is a bad design choice because there is no drawback to using them, people have excessive mana pools and so auras are used because people have way too much mana and don't have anything to do with it

If there was a significant drawback to auras, where people have to decide "ok maybe I can have an aura, but I really have to decide which one to use, if I want to stack them, there is going to be some significant drawback"

I get that, but does there need to be? Does it need to be a niche thing? Im not sure it does. Very little drawback to stacking armour or energy shield, or health, or mana... Im not sure it adds something to the game if they kick auras into the niche long grass and most people dont run multiples. It brings in a complexity of using sockets and hence gearing is effected, gems, it adds dimensions to the question of how you will sort out your resource sustainability, what do you need to spec in passives and what can you aura instead, if I run auras do i need futher passives... I think it just adds dimensions to the game in a lot of ways basically and I dont see that taking all that away helps the game.

Actually thats wrong regarding things like armor, because its a compromise. If you stack armor, you are not stacking ES or Life (due to how things like mods works, also some deal with the passive tree)

In stacking some passive feature, you are sacrificing not getting some other passive.

This isn't the case for auras, there is no downside to stacking auras apart from it taking up a single skill slot (since you can swap them out). The reason why there is no downside is there is no way to use that excessive mana. There is always going to be a use for things like evasion or ES or armor (which you would be giving up on if you are stacking one of those attributes).

(Note that I am aware that stacking life has no real drawbacks, but thats another balance problem)

but I dont mean stacking armour etc on the tree, I mean just getting it on gear. Theres no real downside to using armour, everyone does it, is that really a problem? I dont think it is. The only slight downside to lots of armour is small movespeed reduction, just like auras its small mana/health reduction, or even big mana reduction but little actual harm done if you like. Theres no question of 'should I allow myself to have armour, es and ev on gear?' theres no downside to having it, get as much as you can, why not. Why should auras have a downside is what Im getting at, why does it need to be something that not everyone does, beyond the principal of the matter? Would that not actually reduce the amount of factors in play when building a character and gearing up?

Surely with auras being a niche thing people are going to turn even more to the tree for the bare essentials, and then builds become even more cookie cutter because now everyone needs the resist nodes and the armour nodes etc as theyre not getting the auras to balance what they lack on the tree? I think making auras a niche thing will have a negative impact on build variety, gear variety, all sorts of things. We were playing with build, gear and auras to find a balance, now were playing with just build and gear? Doesnt that mean we now have more 'essentials' we need from those 2? Doesnt that mean theres so much less donwside to blood magic? Doesnt that almost completely wipe out the problem of mana management that causes you to go blood magic in the first place? Now we all got full tanks of blue juice, doesnt really matter so much now big a chunk we can leech or recharge because we are dealing with such a surplus rather than this tiny 15% unreserved pool? No?

Im wearing a chest on my mara right now with no resists, because I got purity and resist nodes I can do that, without purity its gonna be more like d3, chest armour, does it have str + vit + all res + armour? no? bin it, next.... I think we need as little weight as possible on gear etc no fuel diversity in general, and I think auras are a whole other dimension to consider in a build, I like that.

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Snorkle_uk a écrit :

but I dont mean stacking armour etc on the tree, I mean just getting it on gear. Theres no real downside to using armour, everyone does it, is that really a problem? I dont think it is. The only slight downside to lots of armour is small movespeed reduction, just like auras its small mana/health reduction, or even big mana reduction but little actual harm done if you like. Theres no question of 'should I allow myself to have armour, es and ev on gear?' theres no downside to having it, get as much as you can, why not. Why should auras have a downside is what Im getting at, why does it need to be something that not everyone does, beyond the principal of the matter? Would that not actually reduce the amount of factors in play when building a character and gearing up?

The downside is the limit number of prefixes. Gear only has a limited number of prefixes, so if you are looking for specifically armor (on gear) then you are reducing the pool of prefixes on that item. It means that item may not provide health, or ES, because it does have the armor prefix

The thing is though, you are confusing items with skills. There isn't anything wrong with stacking stuff on items (without consequence) in principle, because the whole point of items is to augment (i.e. improve) your current build.

The passive tree, and skills however, do heavily enforce the principle if you are getting something, you are missing out on something else (thats how unique characters are made). Thats why there are a limited number of skills you can put into the passive tree, thats why there is also limited item slots

There is no downside (or missing out on something else) with auras, which is what I am saying

yes there is, they reserve resources, thats as big a problem as finding gear with armour, resist and health, plus gear actually comes with armour, you dont need to have it as a stat to get armour. Im not confusing gear with skills, Im suggesting auras are viewed as a gear slot like any other that we have the capacity to use so we should. I dont see what you are trying to achieve by giving them more of a down side, if you use haste maybe you cant then run purity, just like getting a health node means you cant use that point on a damage node. Id love to run haste on my marauder, cant, no room in the setup, haste vs purity, thats a choice Ive got to make, both have the downside of not having the other. You could say theres no downside to getting a skill point, so we shouldnt have them? Or that getting 1 skill point means not getting another, so thats ok. Its all perspective and how you choose to view it, Im arguing theres more build variety and usable gear variety with auras not being a niche thing but being seen more like armour, you got a big slot there where you can stick it, theres very little disadvantage in putting it on so do it, why not, thats what its there for.

Now and then people dont actually equip armour to move faster, thats a niche thing, it shouldnt be engineered into a situation where its 50/50 if you even equip items for the sake of having a downside to using items, why not the same for auras?

If it was up to me to fix aura stacking this is what I would do.
1. make auras self only
2. running a aura applies a -30% damage debuff to the players skills(which means it would also be applied to minions and skills cast by totems) for each aura the player is running(the trade off here being you want to run determination to be tankier with more armor then your going to kill shit slower,you want to run purity to resist ele dmg then your going to kill shit slower. It would also reduce the scaling effectiveness of ele dmg skills)
3. add into the skill tree passives designed around the concept of the disco ball aura party support player
4. the passives choices in the skill tree would include +1 party members affected by auras(just like we have +1 zombie/skelly/specters) also -5% reduced dmg debuff applied to auras affecting party members only not on the person running the aura.
This way you still have the option of building that full aura party support player that also takes care of running whatever curses the group wants your just not going to be able to do any direct dmg yourself.

The easiest way to adress the aura aura spam is by smoothing out the mana pool and limiting auras, but making keystones to circumvent that.

Smoothing out the mana pool:

Make base mana and regeneration a bit better. Almost all chars struggle during their buildup until they either took a bunch of mana nodes or blood magic, even while running zero or at max one mana reserve skill and while still using almost no supports.
On the other hand, make more ways to actually spend mana (like the recent ice shield tries to do) in meaningful ways, so getting more than just the "required" amount of extra mana and regen can be transformed into something powerful, but not just passive.

Limiting auras:

Limit auras to 1 or 2 per player, just like totems and curses. Place +1 max aura nodes into the aura buffing clusters. Auras would no work similar to the charge mechanics - everyone can use some, but if you want to make an auramancer, you skill for it. Make auras do more interesting stuff so the auramancer actually DOES something. Perhaps buff aura strength and heighten mana reserve costs on some to compensate. Make most auras (especially those with interesting and offensive effects) use fixed mana values instead of percentages.

The end result should be that adding a passive skill or two to your build should still be typically advisable, but more noticable, while making a true auramancer its own build concept that required you to take mana enhancing and aura enhancing stuff, but enabling a buff based gameplay by that.