Auras for phys builds

I find it stupid how phys builds are forced into hybrid ele dmg.
Hatred + hoa is by far the most used basic buff pair.

But what if I don't want to have any ele dmg?
There's only haste for more dps, but no direct flat dmg buff.
All the rest is defensive; determination, grace, arctic, vitality.

You need to give these auras more buffs on top of their current ones, like:

Determination: x% more phys dmg and adds x-y flat phys dmg
Haste: x% increased accuracy (and crit chance)
Vitality: increased stun threshold (or can't be stunned? Come on, 35% is a lot reserved)

so you get a phy damage aura and then die to reflect much more because your damage is all the one type.

You do have curses as auras, panishment and vurnability. But im more concerned in ways of suport gems this days if you dont go crit there is no suport gems other then elemental aside of utility gems. Utility is great when it got some sinergy but auras are still dicent in comparasion. In beta start things are gona be proably way difrent so we gona see more of valid points regarding actual content.

I think it is actually a good point, game is setup to almost force you to go hybrid.

You can't really become pure.

Too much corruption around to be pure. :)

You could use grace/arctic armour/discipline/purity of elements/virtality. I don't think I would use vitality though unless you already have a high life regen.

I know these don't directly help your physical build, but what they can do is free up resistance slots on your gear allowing you to get better mods there. Discipline can also grant ES which is nice if you can use it.

Sadly I agree that haste is rarely worth using unless you're an auramancer. Haste's reservation should probably be toned down to 30-40% to make it more in line with other auras. 16% increased attack/cast speed and 9% increased movement speed isn't worth 50% of your entire mana.

"

lagwin1980 wrote:

so you get a phy damage aura and then die to reflect much more because your damage is all the one type.

leaving aside the fact that return damage is a crappy way to counter glass cannons there are a fair share of anti reflect items/nodes now so its not that big of a deal.

that being said a phys aura is hard to balance, a large +flat source will make facebreaker skyrocket and a +more phys damage will then be converted to elemental damage.

the only way to avoid the above is by adding on the aura a heavy penalty to elemental damage wich is going to trigger more tha na few if their elemental builds get wreck by some party member


may be as a unique amulet or keystone

+1 flat phys damage to weapons per level
+1% more phy damage every 2 levels
50% less elemental damage

Maybe a better way would be an extremely weird support gem. Let's call it force manipulation.

Quality: Supported skills deal +.5% increased physical damage
Level: Supported skills deal 20-39% more physical damage.

Supported skills deal 25% reduced non-physical damage.

Or in aura form:

quality: increases radius like other auras
level: 26-36 more physical damage. 25% reduced non-physical damage. Aura radius increases like hatred.

50% mana reservation.

25% reduced is a drop in the bucket. There's a reason people slap Void Manipulation on Voltaxic builds and Controlled Destruction on critical builds without a second thought.

Coincidentally I've written on this topic a few times before and I'm pretty sure I also called my solution Force Manipulation, lol.

When Starforge was introduced I was pretty happy about it due to its pure physical enabling, but in retrospect it's kinda worrying since it seems to indicate GGG doesn't want pure physical to be a universally available build archetype.

Still, Starforge is better than Go Hatred or Go Home for all physical builds ever.

EDIT: Since my old suggestions already covered the brute force route (Supports or Keystone Passives that grant phys bonuses and have Deal no Elemental Damage) I guess I could put up a less intuitive solution, which may create more problems than it solves but which I think is cool:

Diction. Strength based Aura. Curses bypass Hexproof. 20% reduced curse effect, +1% increased per gem level.

Biggest problem is that it takes power away from Cospri's Will. But I don't know if Cospri's even needs that much power; it still has 2 other nice mods going for it.

Reasoning for making it an indirect solution to pure physical builds is that it adds reliability to Vulnerability and Punishment, which were mentioned above.

The brute force solution is probably still better, but it seems GGG already took Starforge for that route.

"

adghar wrote:

Diction. Strength based Aura. Curses bypass Hexproof. 20% reduced curse effect, +1% increased per gem level.

Biggest problem is that it takes power away from Cospri's Will. But I don't know if Cospri's even needs that much power; it still has 2 other nice mods going for it.

Reasoning for making it an indirect solution to pure physical builds is that it adds reliability to Vulnerability and Punishment, which were mentioned above.

The brute force solution is probably still better, but it seems GGG already took Starforge for that route.

The only real objection I have to your post is Diction. It doesn't make sense for it to be strength based. While certain curses are strength based, curses options in general are intelligence based: blasphemy, curse on hit. You could make a case for it to be green because of Cospri's will, but Cospri's will is a lengthy topic on its own about why it's evasion based and no ES based ... .