Aura Change Feedback and Suggestion

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PHRandom wrote:

I remember that old days when you run seven auras without serious investiment, when costs for most of them were flat instead of proportional to mana/life. They were too much overused by everyone. If there is something that is still overused it is the three heralds. Their mana costs are too low in comparison to their benefits for both attack and spells. I hope GGG fix it at close beta soon.

Yeah, i agree, GGG always makes the same mistakes, letting people stack auras in some terribly imbalanced way and then the heralds. They basically have to balance auras for people who use as many as possible so people like me who really just wanna use 1 aura on mana and still cast from mana are screwed. I just want my flat auras back so i can at least use something other than a herald or something other than clarity with reduced mana. This game really is anti casual player. Balancing around top players screws lower end people. I dont even wanna start with the spell/ranged attack totems...

At least now you have to invest into running multiple auras (more then 2-3)

In regards to heralds why does it matter they affect both spells and attacks, unless someone has a hybrid build I've yet to see or hear of it doesnt matter if they affect both, as the benefits are exclusive to whoever is running them.

Flat auras were a huge mistake, especially with the old eb, its literally the worst suggestion or idea they've had in regards to auras, second being quality auras as increased aoe.

They have to balance around the top, its a sad but known truth when they didn't we saw extremely overpowered builds everyone QQ'd about, including but not limited to spectral throw, anything crit based and most recently mjolner (which is changed in beta)

Spell totems were really overpowered back in the day, can't say anything about RAT, but I know with the new jewel(s) they might see a rise in popularity.

Bump to see if I can get some more opinions on this idea.

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goetzjam wrote:

They have to balance around the top, its a sad but known truth when they didn't we saw extremely overpowered builds everyone QQ'd about, including but not limited to spectral throw, anything crit based and most recently mjolner (which is changed in beta)

It's because GGG has persistently refused to implement more realistic diminishing returns formulas in their underlying combat engine that would soft-cap overpowered combos without requiring nerfs to item stats. As a consequence, damage levels scale up in an unconstrained linear manner, and multiplicative damage modifiers combine to produce grossly inflated DPS levels that trivialize all attempts to maintain balanced gameplay. On the defensive side, linear scaling of damage reduction mechanisms produce increasing returns as each percentage increment in damage mitigation approaches 100% immunity. Hard-capping these defensive stats to arbitrary levels (such as 75%) results in balance breakpoints that are excessively sensitive to buffs that alter those hard-capped levels.

Consider the one counter-example to this syndrome, a defensive stat that has always been soft-capped by a diminishing returns formula: armour. When is the last time you heard of an exploit that produced an OP armour build? Back when a potion could briefly give you a 10K armour boost, it was pretty damn strong, but by no means was it a grant of 100% physical immunity. If all damage and defense mechanism worked similarly, GGG would have much less difficulty taming the most extreme builds without gimping non-exploitative builds or retroactively nerfing stats on even the most OP Uniques.

I think the idea makes a lot of sense.

But I also don't mind englighten having a small mana reservation deduction as long as it is small enough to not become something you should always have. A niche thing for special builds, not a new RM.

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I think there is in principle a good system for diminishing dps effectiveness. It is just that there are so many different kind of sources for damage that it does not really get to kick in. If damage sources would be turned somehow into "increased damage" modifiers instead of "more damage" then it would work a lot better. But this goes a bit off topic.

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Cipp wrote:

I think the idea makes a lot of sense.

But I also don't mind englighten having a small mana reservation deduction as long as it is small enough to not become something you should always have. A niche thing for special builds, not a new RM.

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I think there is in principle a good system for diminishing dps effectiveness. It is just that there are so many different kind of sources for damage that it does not really get to kick in. If damage sources would be turned somehow into "increased damage" modifiers instead of "more damage" then it would work a lot better. But this goes a bit off topic.

The 2 main problems with enlighten is a different color then reduced mana and the restriction of it being a high skill cap gem. My other issue is like I said quality on aura gems are completely pointless.

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goetzjam wrote:

The 2 main problems with enlighten is a different color then reduced mana and the restriction of it being a high skill cap gem. My other issue is like I said quality on aura gems are completely pointless.

To clarify: I think ideally we could have both systems.

Main source of reservation reduction: quality on auras. Secondary source: enlighten. The englighten would only allow an aura-focusing build to upgrade one herald to purity or one purity to a big aura or get an extra Herald if there is enough unreserved mana to spare. So it would not be something every build should have.

Thematically it makes sense that aura reservation deductions are intelligence-based. But on the other hand, many players have build around them being red and some even have mirrored gear based on that. Also the three special gems (enhance, empower, enlighten) do not fit neatly into the red-blue-green disctinction based on the main effects so I think they should in fact be white gems.

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Cipp wrote:

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goetzjam wrote:

The 2 main problems with enlighten is a different color then reduced mana and the restriction of it being a high skill cap gem. My other issue is like I said quality on aura gems are completely pointless.

To clarify: I think ideally we could have both systems.

Main source of reservation reduction: quality on auras. Secondary source: enlighten. The englighten would only allow an aura-focusing build to upgrade one herald to purity or one purity to a big aura or get an extra Herald if there is enough unreserved mana to spare. So it would not be something every build should have.

Thematically it makes sense that aura reservation deductions are intelligence-based. But on the other hand, many players have build around them being red and some even have mirrored gear based on that. Also the three special gems (enhance, empower, enlighten) do not fit neatly into the red-blue-green disctinction based on the main effects so I think they should in fact be white gems.

Well TBH its worth noting that quality on heralds already have decent quality bonuses so they are unaffected by my suggestion. It still might help run that extra aura, but I wanted to point that out.

I think much more people would be OK with the change if enlighten was a white gem, but I don't think that is something GGG is willing to do.

Note: I didn't read all 12 pages in this thread


I personally like the idea of getting rid of the mandatory Reduced Mana for aura's, but I do not like that they simply moved it to Enlighten. This means that getting the same amount of aura's is now simply ludicrously expensive. A mana multiplier of x92 (lvl 3) or x88 (lvl 4) seems also very big. I really like aura-based characters, so I'm pretty sad they will now become so expensive.
A lvl 3 Enlighten is in Standard worth 3ex (corrupted, non-corrupted is minimum 8ex), seeing that this gem will only receive a buff, and I play in leagues where prices are higher it will simply become unaffordable.

It's the same if you let quality on aura's give you reduced mana reservation. GCP is expensive and 20% quality gems are too.

IMO, either make reduced mana reservation cheap or easy to get (as a gem), or simply remove it from and chance the mana reservation on aura's accordingly. Removing it allows GGG to properly balance the mana reservations without having to account for people with a spare 50ex to get a lvl 4 Enlighten.
Please, don't just change the Reduced Mana gem to a ridiculously expensive Reduced Mana gem.

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In my opinion, the negative thing about the change to auras is that, instead of having reduced mana be an almost mandatory gem for auras, we'd be having enlighten as an almost mandatory gem for auras. It's the same, except not exactly the same colour.

The reserved % has dropped and since enlighten is very rare and takes a long time to level, most of the people won't have access to it in the temporary leagues - thus it is an exclusive top-end thing, rather than a mandatory one.