Auras: Are they bad for gameplay?

In the current state of the game, auras are mandatory for progression through content. You don't have any character that doesn't benefit from them at this point. People go as far as to massively boost their mana pool to stack as many auras as possible. But is this a good mechanic in the long run? I would argue no it is not. This is why.

1) No types of skills should ever be mandatory for every build.

In Diablo 2, auras were what gave the Paladin his power. Depending on what you wanted to do, there was a corresponding aura to help out. However, since every class in PoE has access to them, everyone uses them because of the obvious benefits of survival and damage boosting. They fill the void for buffs in the game that should be there in the first place.

2) People use auras because current skill buffs are basically non-existent

The skills that grant buffs are few and far between. The current buffs that ARE NOT auras are: Molten Shell, Arctic Armor, Righteous Fire, Blood Rage, and Phase Run. So essentially, there are only 4 skills in the entire game that give a buff without reserving mana. Two of which are very situational buffs that must be 100% build devoted to use effectively (Righteous Fire and Arctic Armor).

3) Parties are a joke because of aura stacking

Since everyone uses auras, this means that basically the whole party gains at least 4-5 unique auras, if not more from cooperation. This leads to insane survival and damage boosting for parties. While it is great that there are benefits to partying, this should never be the case in a game. From my example of Diablo 2, this is why having a Paladin on the team was so nice. Auras need to be something that is a large investment for party play; currently this is far from the case in PoE. The devs know there are serious concerns about party play and steam rolling content, this is one of the major reasons...

What could be done?

How are they a problem though really? This game encourages you to use a curse, a main dps skill, and a bunch of auras because if you're constantly casting buffs and other support spells, you aren't killing fast enough. The way links work only encourages this because of how powerful that dps skill gets with three or more supports.

Curses are worth it because they're a very strong debuff and have a very fast cast time. Auras are worth it because they're a nice buff with a set and forget mechanic. I think if they nerfed aura stacking, people wouldn't fill their skill bar or maybe we'd just see a lot more double curse builds.

totally disagree

auras are cool, and people going to great length to make room for more, is just more character customization, if you wanna run 5 auras you have to make sacrifices in other areas - you have to think about your character

1)buffs are good in every game they exist, and pretty much everyone uses them when they can why should poe be any different? the problem with mandatory skills is that you need that one specific, i dont see it as a problem when its whole type of skills you feel is mandatory, beacuse they all do different things and there is no "you need this one always" aura. you dont complain that every build uses curses? aura is just a type of skill like curses

2)dont see auras as D2 auras, see them as buffs and voila you have a cool and unique system for buffs called "aura". they grant a buff but they also reduces the flexibility of your build, you get something for something, which seems fair

3) you can pretty much achieve running with all beneficial auras on yourself, why dont you alone steamroll content then? auras isnt the problem, a very unbalanced game is (and thats what i love about arpg). if you removed auras completely, i believe after the metagame has adjusted the steamrolling would continue just as much

anyways my 2 cents

If anything I think that mana is either a nuisance or a complete afterthought for most builds, rather than an actual limiter on what you can do. Which is why EVERYONE uses at least 1 aura. I love the mana reservation system and not using pointless cooldowns like in torchlight where you just end up recasting buffs every 10 seconds. There's just not much management to do with mana, you're either constantly OOM, use a mana pot every now and then, or use mana leech. Or like me, invest points and gear slots into mana regen which should have been spent on life :/

Basically I don't like how every build can use multiple auras, cause there's no real difference between 100% mana and 90% reserved mana for most builds. IMO base regen should be upped and mana regen should scale to amount reserved. Also % auras should start at a lower % and gain with level so theres a consequence to levelling them like there is with base mana auras.


Now then, curses. I'm so tired of having a curse for every build and casting it on every monster I see. I really, really want a support gem that turns a curse into an on-hit effect like on the new asenath gloves, while turning the skill into a mana-reserving toggle. Auras exist to get rid of constant buff recasting, don't see why the same can't be done with debuffs.

Auras are okay, since it's just a permanent buff. Curses are far worse because they are sort of an "attack" and you have the same one for every single build (maybe different curses, but how you use them in combat is basicly exactly the same). It's boring.
On hit cursing sounds like a really good idea.

One aura per character, two using a keystone with a drawback. Make it a choice, not just 'stack as many of the good ones as you can.' You end up far stronger running 6 or 7 auras with a combination of blood magic and leech than if you just built using one or two auras; there's no sacrifice to speak of. Combined with Inner Force and IR and the whole thing scales to absurd levels. It's just more pigeonholing.

Not sure about curses. There's at least some variety to them and don't need to be built around.

I personally love auras.... not sure why everyone hates on them. It's yet another way to customize your chracter.

I like that Auras are good in multiplayer. That's what they should be for - everyone running a couple of auras and they all stack. Currently there's not enough to encourage multiplayer IMO, so these shouldn't be taken away.

I like the idea of limiting auras per-person. Everything else is limited like this (curses, traps, minions, totems etc...), so why not auras? Then there could be uniques and passives for increasing how many auras you could have (perhaps with some trade-off), so people who wanted lots of auras could still do it.

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Also, nothing in PoE is mandatory. People always confuse 'useful' with 'mandatory'.

Auras are useful. If you got rid of them, then builds based around auras would suck, but many builds would be fine. (Maybe everyone would want to swap their high aspd gear for high dmg gear, but anyway...)

Much as I hate to say this...

Auras should have a 2-per-character base limitation.

Then add "+1 Aura" notable nodes to various points in the passive tree. Specifically...

2 At templar
2 At Witch
1 At all others

To be honest auras in this game are terrible at "customizing" builds or differentiating characters. They homogenize builds because there are certain mandatory auras (Purity). And given the nature of mana you should ALWAYS have as much of your mana reserved in PoE as possible, Limiting truly heavy aura builds to players who focus on the auras (getting 6 auras is minimum 4 point investment above) wil encourage players branching into using aditional auras.

However as long as Purity exists in its current form it will be mandatory for all players.

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Autocthon wrote:

However as long as Purity exists in its current form it will be mandatory for all players.

The hoard of blood magic users behind me highly disagree with you...