Auras are WAY overpowered: Remove reservation, cap them like totems and save blood magic!

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Allnamestaken a écrit :

I wish people would stop with suggestions that will kill other people's fun. No really. Why is every single suggestion always so self pleasuring? Allthewhile dumping on other people's needs?

"Yes, make it 1 aura, I do not care that many builds don't work without at least 2 or 3. As long as I get what I want, who cares about other people?!"

People asked GGG the same, when they implemented the current auras after the off. release.
A lot of builds were ruined. No one asked players if they support the idea.

But being well known about their unavailability to balance properly, in the unique way of their own they created a monster.
I doubt it was intentional, it's just players being smart asses, loving to explore and exploit, it's so human.

Developers managed to deepen the problem, now people get used to exploits and power, and it will be very difficult the aura issue to be balanced, as most of the current top(and not so) builds completely depend on auras, as they are incredibly powerful if properly buffed and supported.

And now players come to the point, where one say "rework for balance", other replies "fuck don't touch it".

The last word will come from devs, not from you, dear players. Type on forum, suggest and all, lose you time. Shits about current auras' state are so deep, that GGG won't touch it with a ten feet pole anymore. Some plays with numbers are possible, but don't expect much.

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CanHasPants a écrit :

@Scrotie:
I wouldn't so quickly dismiss hard-caps. Hard caps and reservation costs need not be mutually exclusive.

I understand they needn't be, but I kind of agree with GGG that such a system would be rather arbitrary; thus, it would rub me the wrong way in regards to giving players freedom of choice.

Right now, auras use a softcap system which isn't really much of a softcap system at all. By using Reduced Mana support, taking reduced reservation nodes, and/or using Shavronne's/Lorica, you increase the size of your "aura resources." Thus the argument that aura resources are softcapped is very similar to the argument that Life or ES are softcapped. In some vague way, they are: you can only get so much Life (even with Kaom's), or so much ES, you can't go infinite. Auras are essentially a similar system; you build to increase your aura reservation pool as large as reasonably possible. In the same way that some builds have more Life or more Mana than other builds, some builds have more reservation pool than others. More reservation pool is always good, but sometimes other things are better.

So far, this isn't a problem.

The problem is what you then do with your reservation pool. You spend it pure on quantity of auras. After you add one aura, the only thing you can do from there is: add another aura. So everyone ends up running pretty much all of the same auras, the highest number they can squeeze in.

I'd like to see more options where you can choose to spend your reservation pool on quality of auras. You might start with Hatred as an aura, and instead of deciding to add another aura to the stack, you decide to buff your Hatred further. Because you'd be running a smaller number of auras, there would be a better chance of partying with someone who is running an aura you are not. If implemented properly, you could actually begin to see players making meaningful choices.

To be fair, OP's suggestions are well-intended, but not what we need. The issue about auras doesn't seem to be as simple as OP is making it out to be.

By no means am I attacking OP. I'm just playing the Devil's Advocate. Yes. Builds that utilize aura stacking (maybe excluding summoners) are definitely OP. However, I don't feel like builds that use 2-3 auras are, and I don't think that they should be punished along with the aura stackers.

TL; DR There are many items that involve auras, such as Alpha's Howl and Prism Guardian. Even the corruption mods involve them. If auras are changed, anything related to them would have to be as well. OP suggests removing mana reservation which would in turn remove low-life. If low-life is removed, than something would have to be done about all of the items related to that as well. Auras are a complicated, involved part of the game. I don't think removing them or capping them would benefit the game. Rebalancing the auras or changing the way mana reservation works seems to be more reasonable than changing the entire system.

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Those auras make almost every build into an aura stacker, it's really very disruptive to the creative process of building characters.

If every build is an "aura stacker," and you make a build that also "aura stacks," that's kind of the opposite of being creative, no? Gellig's Aegis Tank and RaizQT's Poison Trapper both run around 2-3 auras, and they seem to be quite creative. One's a tank, and one's a poison arrow trapper. Just because a few builds utilize aura stacking to maximize efficiency doesn't mean all of them do. On a side note, I think only elemental and summoner builds stack auras, but I may be wrong.

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Your reasoning is clouded, that's why you try to argue it's the best game where everyone has a good 3-6 auras as standard, and there is nothing special to auras.

Again, most people would have to invest quite a bit in their passives and/or gear to run more than 3 or even 2 auras. Alpha's Howl is also pretty necessary for a lot of builds that stack auras.

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You want to build a fun summoner? Think again, it's all about maxing amount of auras, leaving you with no funny gameplay skills left, unless you want to be a really bad summoner.

Summoners use minions. Auras buff minions. I'm not really sure what kind of fun gameplay skills are available to summoners by forgoing auras, but summoners aren't my area of expertise anyway. If I'm not mistaken, building a summoner that both cast spells and uses minions as damage is quite a challenge. In most cases, I think only one or the other is possible. However, if I were to choose between making myself stronger or my minions, my main source of damage, stronger, I would choose my minions. If auras were capped or removed, what should be done to minions? Auras benefit them just as much as they do us. Minions can't wear gear, save for a shield if you use Necromantic Aegis, I guess.

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It furthers the gab between lowlifeshavronnes builds and regular builds, because they in addition to insane damage boosts get also more auras which leads to massive power increases. It will also strike at shavronnes stackers, who now have to choose between all damage auras, or having a discipline. Even without discipline you can get as much ES as a life build has life anyway.

To be honest, I'm not really sure that auras really further the gap between Shavronne's builds and non-Shavronne's builds. I think the gap may or may not be that 90 or so exalts (for unlinked, non-legacy).

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Auras have no reservation costs, but you are only allowed to use 1 aura.

Someone already mentioned that:

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Don't you realize that, by removing reservation costs in the first place, low life no longer even fucking exists?

In that case, OP, what should be done about the low-life keystone? About blood rage? About Shavronne's Wrappings? About Crown of Thorns? About Solaris Lorica?

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No more wasting half your sockets on auras. 1 Item is sufficient and you will not need reduced mana for it anymore.

Right, so what would happen to reduced mana? I can't think of an instance where it would be used except for reducing mana reservations. Maybe reduced mana was designed to actually reduce mana costs, but very rarely would someone pick reduced mana over a different support gem, especially for their main damage skill.

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Do you remember where auras come from? They are supposed to be special, unique and something you contribute to a party while feeling special doing it. They are supposed to bring people together so they are stronger, benefiting from each others varied auras.

Not everyone runs in parties, so what would solo players do if they wished to get more auras? Actually, what would solo players do about auras in general? At the moment, I do understand that auras are underwhelming in parties when the same ones are being used, but there are many, many builds that benefit greatly from joining parties because they don't and can't stack auras.

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Ideally, auras will be more iconic. "Wow guys, pretty nice. There is a wrath guy in our party", "Hey, this guy has haste! I wish i could have that in my build!" Powerful auras, but the standard won't be to run all.

Right. So we go from "one person stacking auras is too OP" to "buff auras to make party play even more OP." I'm not sure I follow.

At the moment, Hatred adds 36% of your physical damage to your attacks. Anger adds 94-156 fire damage. Suppose they get buffed by 50%. Now Hatred adds 54% of your physical damage and Anger adds 141-234 fire damage. Now instead of one person running both of the auras, two people can run separate auras. Okay. Auras are now more iconic, more OP, and wait..a full party can still run 6 auras, and that's supposing that 1 person can only run 1 aura. There's only 4 offensive auras (Anger, Wrath, Hatred, Haste), leaving room for 2 more defensive auras if all 4 are run. If auras were capped, the ones that will feel it the most won't be the people playing in parties, it would be those playing solo. I don't think that it's fair to people playing solo to be at a disadvantage to those in parties. Of course, one person running the same amount of auras as a party doesn't really seem to be fair either.

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You can't change aura stacking to prevent elemental builds from having enormous amounts of damage without hurting the summoner builds.

You can't change mana reservation without impacting low-life builds.

You can't cap auras without impacting solo and party play.

In all honesty, I've no clue either. The aura support gem idea was pretty cool, as was the "increased mana reservation per aura" idea. If build diversity is really the plan, than diversity has to be allowed. 2 auras per person isn't diversity, that's equality.

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ScrotieMcB a écrit :

I kind of agree with GGG that such a system would be rather arbitrary; thus, it would rub me the wrong way in regards to giving players freedom of choice.

Funny that you mention auras and choice, because we currently aren't really required to make one. Or at least not the choice we should be making. Instead of 'which few auras are the most vital for my build' we make a choice of 'what should I sacrifice in order to run all the auras I need'?

If you look at various builds used these days I'd say they've never been more similar, you can almost read the build thread title and trace the tree without looking. So, if devs wanted to demonstrate to us how genetics work I'd say they've hit the mark, after all, 90% of mammal genetic code is almost identical, those 10% determine if we get a mouse or an elephant.

So what's the big difference then if not the genetic tree... sorry, generic tree.... ok, passive tree? Gear and absolutely freely picked skills.
Ok, now, this sounds familiar, does it maybe remind you of anything? There is a game that came out recently and took quite an amount of flak for lack of player investment, gear and freely interchangeable skills fully defining your char in order to fuel online economy, ring a bell?
Right, it's D3.

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fuzen a écrit :

OP suggests removing mana reservation which would in turn remove low-life. If low-life is removed, than something would have to be done about all of the items related to that as well. Auras are a complicated, involved part of the game.

Best point in thread, i'll return later when i have more time to write.

I'm okay with the fact that people can stack multiple auras at once, after all, that does require quite a bit of investment in the passive tree.

What's not right is the fact that auras can contribute so much to a character's offense and defense. Grace + determination contributes 87% (2.5k -> 19k) of my character's armour. Haste contributes close to (2179 -> 2696 tooltip incinerate) 20% of my character's dps and more than 33% (30% -> 46%) of her movespeed bonus.

I suspect that the reason why auras are perceived to be so powerful is that speccing into auras is often the cheapest way to build a character's offense and defense (as evidenced by the 16.5k increase to my character's armour which is far more than can be obtained through gear). In certain ways it is good. It allows people with subpar gear to build characters with sufficient offence and defence to tackle the endgame. Specifically, it allows people like me without (and won't trade for) multi-exalt gear to have > 15k armour. It allows ele wanders / buzzsaws who don't have spectacular weapons to have sufficient dps to tackle the endgame. The disadvantage of auras being powerful is that it completely alienates characters who cannot afford to run them (e.g. blood magic characters). At the same time, it trivializes the decision making process involved on whether to run an aura or to use the resources somewhere else, since most times it's more advantageous to run the aura.

What I'd like to see is a tweak of numbers to nerf auras whilst implementing a corresponding buff to other sources of the same stats (gear, tree). This makes it such that the strength of auras becomes more marginal relative to a character's stats. Existing characters don't change whilst characters who can't afford to run auras are directly buffed.

At the same time, more content should be implemented to offer powerful alternatives to running auras, I'll be honest in saying that I have no idea as to how this can be done though. This will make it such that the "should I run this aura or should I use my resources elsewhere?" decision is no longer trivial.

As for blood magic, instead of forcing it to work with auras, I'd recommend implementing other forms of perks to offer an interesting alternative. An idea I had was "Apply corrupting blood on nearby enemies upon life expenditure".

My view on balance is that whilst number tweaking is always going to be necessary, it's always better to introduce additional dimensions into the decision making process if possible.

Edit: I really like ScrotieMcB's idea of spending mana pool on quality of auras. Perhaps this can be implemented by having their percent mana reservation scale according to gem level such that players choose whether to use a high level high mana reservation gem or to use more low level low reservation gems.

While we're at it. I'd advocate changing all 60% reservations to 40%, 40% reservations to 30% (60%*0.71 = 42.6%, 40%*0.71 = 28.4%, close enough) and making auras not work with reduced mana gem since right now the decision to support auras with reduced mana is completely trivial. It won't make that much of a difference and will free up a gem slot. Hurray!

As for the remaining purpose of reduced mana, I'd say introduce powerful skills with huge mana costs (powerful being the operative word here, there are some skills out there that do have huge mana costs, but definitely not worth the mana to use). Such that they'll absolutely require reduced mana in order to be used frequently. Players can then choose to either slot in reduced mana and make it a primary skill to use, or some fancy builds may incorporate them as resource heavy nukes to be used when necessary.

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Crackmonster a écrit :

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fuzen a écrit :

OP suggests removing mana reservation which would in turn remove low-life. If low-life is removed, than something would have to be done about all of the items related to that as well. Auras are a complicated, involved part of the game.

Best point in thread, i'll return later when i have more time to write.

Don't bother, we later agreed reservation has to stay. It will be lower but you can tweak it with supports I suppose, 40% and 30% sounds about right, that way you'll still need reduced reservation nodes.

You know, there's one thing I strongly disliked about restricting auras with high reservations. It became impossible (yes, impossible) to use an aura on a totem, so we had a feature that worked before but stopped working at all. Even with all reduced cost nodes on the tree you could bring it down maybe to 70% of your mana per cast, which you most likely don't have because you also reserved it.

Or at least it was impossible until they made The Vertex, then it became 0 cost, a free extra aura, or two, or three. A prime example of bad balancing.

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raics a écrit :

You know, there's one thing I strongly disliked about restricting auras with high reservations. It became impossible (yes, impossible) to use an aura on a totem, so we had a feature that worked before but stopped working at all.

Hatred + Spell totem + CwDT / CWS

Saw someone do it once, it's quite funny :D Wanted to see if I could build around that but completely forgot about it until your post reminded me.

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Cyan_ogeN a écrit :

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raics a écrit :

You know, there's one thing I strongly disliked about restricting auras with high reservations. It became impossible (yes, impossible) to use an aura on a totem, so we had a feature that worked before but stopped working at all.

Hatred + Spell totem + CwDT / CWS

Saw someone do it once, it's quite funny :D Wanted to see if I could build around that but completely forgot about it until your post reminded me.

Ah, yes, trigger gems again. Disgusting :)

@Cyan_ogeN

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While we're at it. I'd advocate changing all 60% reservations to 40%, 40% reservations to 30% (60%*0.71 = 42.6%, 40%*0.71 = 28.4%, close enough) and making auras not work with reduced mana gem since right now the decision to support auras with reduced mana is completely trivial. It won't make that much of a difference and will free up a gem slot. Hurray!

As for the remaining purpose of reduced mana, I'd say introduce powerful skills with huge mana costs (powerful being the operative word here, there are some skills out there that do have huge mana costs, but definitely not worth the mana to use). Such that they'll absolutely require reduced mana in order to be used frequently. Players can then choose to slot in reduced mana and make it a primary skill to use, or some fancy builds may incorporate them as resource heavy nukes to be used when necessary.

i love this idea. using reduced mana with auras is just an arbitrary gem requirement. i've never used auras without it and i dont think ive ever seen a build that doesnt use it. And there really isnt a reason not to. (not including my RF guy where i just used a bm aura to proc double redbeaks). I really like the second part too. Ive always thought there should be a valid time to use reduced mana with active skills, that quality bonus has been bugging me for a while.

the only problem i can see with this so far is that then you would be able to run 3 auras in a shield/1 hander or 4 auras in a helmet/boots/gloves. ie: it would make aura stacking less slot hungry. but i really like the idea of taking reduced mana out of the equation. its so pointless