Mortal Conviction

This has been brought up a zillion times in the past but it hasn't been dealt with and indeed actually made worse recently.

As someone who loves blood magic, the vast majority of my characters end up taking it at some point or another (usually asap). However, doing so means I effectively cannot use auras.

Right now as it stands with Mortal Conviction being 50% less mana reserved if I want to, for example, run Grace, it costs me 30% of my maximum hp. On my ex-bloodlines level 81 ranger with 3940 life that's 1182 life down the drain. With a level 20 reduced mana you can knock that down to 839.

Just so I'm not cherry picking, I'll also show the calculations for a 40% reserved aura. MC slashes it to 20% bringing it down to 788 reserved, add reduced mana and the final result is 559(.48) reserved.

Level 20 clarity with no investment reserves 520 flat mana. MC to 260, reduced mana to 184.6

This is, quite frankly, bullshit.

Why is it the only aura that would be feasible to use on a blood magic character is mana regen? Yeah sure low-life builds abuse the keystone SO TARGET THEM AND NOT US. All I would like is ONE aura on a bloodmagic character without kicking my hp down to nonviable levels. I'm pushing it with ~4K at level 81 as it is.


Now the rant's out of the way, let's talk solutions.

Right now the main reason GGG hates blood magic so much is because of low life builds. GGG had no problem restricting Acrobatics by reducing armor, energy shield and even block chance so I propose something that's been said many times before:


Mortal Conviction
75% less mana reserved
40% less energy shield

You can't balance the game around people with GG gear, but you can make it painful for them to abuse it without throwing people under the bus. Right now mortal conviction only punishes pure blood magic users while rewarding lowlife. With 75% less reserved blood magic is actually competitive again, while the 40% less ES makes it harder (but not impossible) for people to take advantage of it by stacking ES. If you want to stack four auras you can do so, but it'll kick your life down pretty significantly. You'll still get your low-lifers with six or seven auras active but there's nothing you can do short of removing lorica and shavs that would prevent that: with sufficient gear the game simply breaks down and you can't balance around that.


A second solution that was thrown around which I would accept without getting to the point of people with BM walking around with six or seven auras is to change MC to the following:


Mortal Conviction
100% less mana reserved
You may only have one active aura

The problems I'd see with this are that it ignores the drawback of going blood magic in the first place, which is that if you want auras you'll have to reserve life. I want to reserve life, what I do not want to do is reserve so much with a single aura that my life pool becomes unviable for current-level content. I've successfully ran heralds on blood magic characters in the recent past, but if I want an aura for defensive purposes (such as Grace which would make my dreams come true) then I'm in trouble.


I rambled a bit, but I hope my point is clear: this node needs a rebalance pronto.

No to only one aura.

Make it a 3 node cluster with greater effect spread across 3 points for balance, e.g - 15%, 15%, 40%.

im a low life user and if you tell me im going to get 75% less mana reserver for the cost of 40% of my es then i would say that ITS FINE.

I got enough gear to push my es to 6k even with 40% less es and 75% less mana reserver? WOW MOER AURAS TO DADDY!! MORE PEW PEW POWER C: please do this

"

BIGLITRO wrote:

im a low life user and if you tell me im going to get 75% less mana reserver for the cost of 40% of my es then i would say that ITS FINE.

I got enough gear to push my es to 6k even with 40% less es and 75% less mana reserver? WOW MOER AURAS TO DADDY!! MORE PEW PEW POWER C: please do this

With GG gear, yeah sure why not? Barely anyone's going to be able to get that much ES and it doesn't outright shut you out of it like "No ES" would.

Repost from another thread on the blood magic issue, I still feel this is the best way to approach the issue:

I post this every time, but the blood magic keystone should have a new stat appended to it. One that would allow reserving life to not be a death sentence for anyone but low-life summoners.

"Mana reservation instead lowers your life recovery rate"

Life recovery covers regeneration, flask recovery and leech. If you reserve 50% "mana" you'll receive half healing. Manage to reserve 99%, you'll pretty much never regain health other than from on-hit. The reasoning is that it's much easier to double your flask recovery, leech or regeneration than it is to double your max life if you want to reserve 50% of it.

With this, mortal conviction could then have "mana reservation applies to maximum life" added to it. This way low-life users can still make use of blood magic to reserve max life. If necessary, including a "25% less mana reserved" on the blood magic keystone then lowering the bonus on mortal conviction to 35/25% would allow for the numbers on how much reservation of life recovery to be fine-tined to be the most fair or workable.

There'd be little difference to low-lifers who would be taking mortal conviction anyway, but for builds that don't rely on ES, this form of BM would be a whole lot better to use. Would also make using the covenant or malachais simula a lot more interesting if you didn't absolutely NEED to take mortal conviction for BM to be useful.

Also, none of this would need to effect BM gems, so the classic way of reserving life would still be there for those who never go anywhere near the BM keystone and want to reserve all mana and life.

"

Hemmingfish wrote:

Mortal Conviction
100% less mana reserved
You may only have one active aura

Too good, i think.

This would be more balanced:
100% less mana reserved
Cant use auras

You still can use skills, that reserve mana, but arent auras - i.e. Heralds or Tempest Shield. And they all will be free, so you wont bother about support that skyrocket their cost - meet 6-L HoA without Reduced Mana, for example :).

Also, the part "removes all mana" should be removed from Blood Magic keystone. It isnt really needed (cause you still CANT use mana for skill usage or reservation). Also, it brings synergy with "Mind over Matter" keystone, placed nearby. When you dont use you mana for skills, you may want to use it to absorb damage partially. And you can use Clarity!

I still like my suggestion from previous threads on this topic. Change Mortal Conviction to Mana Reservation Applies to Energy Shield instead of Life. It would not penalize life based characters and also allow them to run auras at the cost of having to get ES on an item. Low Life builds would either skip the node or be hard pressed to get to low life without using aura reservations.

A simnple fix would be

Mortal Conviction
75% less Mana reserved
You cannot regenerate or leech energy shield.

Fixed.

"

SoujiroSeta wrote:

A simnple fix would be

Mortal Conviction
75% less Mana reserved
You cannot regenerate or leech energy shield.

Fixed.

Why dont just remove Energy Shield then? If you cant replenish it anyways.. Oh, wait, you can use AA for it, probably...