They should overhaul some of the Auras (Grace, determination, ect.)

As the topic says, A lot of aura's should be looked at.

For example, lets start with grace: Strange to start talking about armor with an evasion aura, but here we go: armor's in a bad place, everyone knows this, there's a thread on it everyday. A big issue is that armor is balanced around the assumption not that you get your armor from gear as "average" armor levels for hits, but that you're getting Armor + iron reflexes grace +jade flasks, meaning absurdly high armor. Grace should be redesigned to help evasion users primarily without fuxoring with how GGG looks at armor balance.

They should change grace from being "provides 2575 evasion" as a static number to instead:
Level 1: Increases evasion by 33% and increases your dodge chance by 1%
Level 20: Increases evasion by 51% and increases your dodge chance by 6%

Alter it to be a simple % increase (Like determination) and give it a Dodge kicker so its not Garbage like Determination. The skill is still aimed at benefitting evasion characters, but no longer is used primarily as a way for Armor characters to get absurd armor.
The dodge bit is a bit similar to vaal grace, yes, but a straight +evasion aura would run into the same issues as determination does for armor builds (I.E., not enough bang for your buck)
At the same time, they should then go and Buff either Armor nodes (12% ones become 15% for example) or base armor from gear (preferred option) now that this crutch has been removed for armor values.



Determination: Pretty damned weak aura. IMO, it should come with a added on kicker of reducing physical damage, much like soul of steel's talent.
Level 1: Increases armor by 33% and reduces physical damage by 1%
Level 20: Increases armor by 51% and reduces physical damage by 4%

Gives it more umph, gives it a benefit to non-armor users as well, while still synergizing best with armor builds.



Vitality: Hoo boo, where to begin? one of the WEAKEST auras in the game. Give it a small tacked on bonus to life as well, make it feel a little better GGG.
Level 1: regenerates .75% life per second, increases base life by 12
level 20: regenerates 1.65% life per second, increases base life by 63
Lower its reserve mana to 25%

Not a big buff, and its honestly still pretty piss weak, but at least gives a small buffer bonus to characters in addition to its regeneration benefit, while also making it more cost effective.

I think you're right with most points, but lets not forget that auras ... well, they're auras. They have to be balanced around them buffing a whole party.

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Scherge wrote:

I think you're right with most points, but lets not forget that auras ... well, they're auras. They have to be balanced around them buffing a whole party.

True that. but I don't think the Grace change truly increases its party benefit that much, as its 51% evasion increase is DRASTICALLY worse than the +base evasion benefit, and its +dodge benefit is only truly powerful for those stacking dodge already (such as evasion characters). And the vitality aura is still pretty weak even with this buff, the main thing is that it provides a decrease in opportunity cost to the caster of costing less mana.


Determination I will admit is pretty strong if it provides a static -4% Phys DR, so I do think that one would need to be looked at closely, and it could be lowered from 4% to 3 or 2% if it was too strong.

I'm not sure about Grace. I still sometimes use grace in some of my builds. I don't think I have ever used Determination outside of the first few leagues when people went Determination/Grace Iron Reflexes.

Determination is dead. Maybe you could throw in a Damage Reduced by a Percent. Going from 1-5. So it reduces all damage as well as provide a ton of armour for physical hits.

Vitality definetly needs something. A flat life roll would be very solid and put this aura on radar for all life builds. I think you would have to do more then 63 though. Around 100-150 might be a better spot for flat life.

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e1337donkey wrote:

Determination is dead. Maybe you could throw in a Damage Reduced by a Percent. Going from 1-5. So it reduces all damage as well as provide a ton of armour for physical hits.

well that's what I was going for with the determination change where it reduces physical damage by 4% as well :)
I'd love it for it to reduce all damage by 1-5%, I just would worry that reducing elemental and chaos damage as well as physical damage would make it feel mandatory for even non-armor builds.

I agree with the OP's points.

Auras should have already been made to have double effect - one for solo & one for party.

You go Solo? You get Solo-balanced bonuses based on Aura type and something useful from Quality (who needs AoE from Aura when playing Solo currently?)

You go in Party? The game automatically detects that & Auras now give other kind of bonuses balanced around Parties. The quality now is useful as AoE is useful in a Party.

Ofcourse the Solo bonuses should be a bit more potent than the Party bonuses, obviously.

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I agree with the OP's points.
Auras should have already been made to have double effect - one for solo & one for party.

They should have 2 gems for each aura type;

Solo (2/3 the current effect, 60% the current reserve). Cannot be stacked with identical party auras (most powerful effect takes precedence).

Party - same as current, full screen AoE.

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I agree with the OP's points.

Auras should have already been made to have double effect - one for solo & one for party.

You go Solo? You get Solo-balanced bonuses based on Aura type and something useful from Quality (who needs AoE from Aura when playing Solo currently?)

You go in Party? The game automatically detects that & Auras now give other kind of bonuses balanced around Parties. The quality now is useful as AoE is useful in a Party.

Ofcourse the Solo bonuses should be a bit more potent than the Party bonuses, obviously.

Summoner.

Theoretically, they could do a Shaper's Seed with Aura's.

Give a base effect to your character, then have a secondary effect that states "Nearby Allies Get X"

Hence why SS will give 30-50% mana regen to you, but a flat 40% mana regen to allies.

On Topic:

Vitality would be fine with some flat life. It'd become sort of like Life Discipline then.

Grace, I like the ability to get flat evades on non-evades characters more than I like stacking percentage evades on characters who've already hit the massive DR stage of defences.

Sure, maybe there are some people who use it for Iron Grace combo, but at the end of the day, isn't that an interesting use of mechanics (Also, further proof that percentage increases to mitigation values sucks ass when Determination is worse than Grace for armour users)

Flat mitigation is just so much more versatile than percentage. Since percentage relies on people having high values from gear and that's it.

While Flat values helps people get a smidge of it on non-geared for it builds, and is also exacerbated by people who pick passives that give percent increases.

So yeah... I'd advocate flat Armour for Determination and keep Grace as flat evades personally.

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aleksandor wrote:

armor is balanced around the assumption not that you get your armor from gear as "average" armor levels for hits, but that you're getting Armor + iron reflexes grace +jade flasks

No it isn't.

The game take into consideration that you can do this, but definitely not that armour needs it to be significantly impactful.

"increase evasion by 51%" at level 20 ?
Even with 6% dodge, that would be terrible.
Same for determination.


Now viatlity with flat life ???
Screw that, that would destroy couple of builds, and become the "go-to" life builds aura eventually, that would be an aweful change, I'm glad that GGG will never do it.


Now having a small secondary effect on the aura ?
why not .... not sure if it would be good in term of balance though.