Beta Poll Nov 26 (0.9.3h) - Monster Auras

Monster auras were one of the major new additions in 0.9.3 to make higher level combat more interesting and challenging. Some have proven controversial while others have barely even been mentioned in feedback. Now that you've had some time with them, which aura do you find the most fun to play against? Which is the most interesting or challenging? Are there any auras that simply don't really impact gameplay? Many more auras are planned to be added in the coming months, are there any that you would like to see?

You can check out the Monster Auras page for more information about each aura.

When the +speed aura hits a normally slow mob.. like a bear, it gets interesting.

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Wittgenstein wrote:

When the +speed aura hits a normally slow mob.. like a bear, it gets interesting.

Hehe. No doubt. The first time I went up against this aura I happened along some magic zombies with increased move speed. No big deal. Then a rare monster came along and gave them all even more increased speed with its aura. Shit was crazy.

For me, speed auras are really the only fun ones.

Reflect auras are challenging, I have to time my attacks with my flask usage and remove all attack buffs so I dont kill myself.

Damage and crit auras provide a slight challenge because if you're not smart you can easily get overwhelmed with large mobs, but generally as long as you kill the rare as quick as possible it poses little threat.

Life regen, resistance and energy shield auras are just plain boring and not fun. The only thing they do is increase the amount of time it takes to kill the stupid thing. When these stack with other auras in some cases it can make for an interesting challenge, in other cases it just makes me want to reset the instance because its not worth my time.

From perspective of Witching.

Speed by far. It actually changes the gameplay and bumbs difficulty without making it tedious, like most other auras here do.

I daresay Energy Shield would also be up there *IF* it was something like "replace 75% of the target's HP with shields." Basically would do what regeneration should be doing, make it highly important to finish off damaged mobs while being less tedious than current shield aura implementation and less of a DPS check than the current regeneration aura.


Damage auras are O.K., I imagine melee finds them annoying, no opinion.

Resistances/Regeneration/LifeLeach don't so much make the mob harder as make it more tedious to kill. They are just boring.

Reflects, well, enough has been said on the subject.

Overall I like the addition of the auras... but none really stand out as the most exciting/interesting. The increased speed one is definitely the most challenging.

This happened:



My Ranger Cried, this thing was so fast it hit me 5 times after it caught up to me on screen as I was running away from it. It is in a lvl 18 area. It could drop 80% of my hp in those five hits. The only reason I survived was the imbued life flasks I had obtained from playing another character.

This wasn't greifing cause I killed myself, This wasn't a monster that I couldn't kill cause of some obtusely large amount of hp and regen, this was something that just did everything it already did better.

I killed it, after I used Detonate Dead on the pack of monsters with it, took about 20 corpses cause most of them were the small monkeys, and a few arrows to the face, but he went down. This was surprisingly fun as well, although at higher difficulties I think this could have been an encounter more difficult than any of the unique bosses in the game.

Yup. Reflects are boring and skippable. A speeding truck flying at you is scary (especially at early levels).

I really like the heavy damage aura mobs when playing a melee class, taking them over with Dominating blow puts your DPS through the roof.

As for the most fun or interesting though, I would have to say the speed aura since they can swarm you in a hurry and they're tough to run away from.

Monster "accuracy and crit". Hardly feels its there. Monsters with this aura are easy. I get the fulfilment of their kill and I feel overpowered.