Auras: Are they bad for gameplay?

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Repeats wrote:

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.

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Repeats wrote:

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...

Uh, dude. When RWs came out for D2, loads and loads of people were getting their Beasts and Faiths and Infinities, and had mercs running Doom, Insight, Prides. Plus you occasionally got a weirdo running less popular RWs with still decent auras.

Maybe Paladins felt really special in early D2, but later on, parties were aura stacking anyway, it was just a matter of how efficient the aura set was.

Also, POE is designed such that each character does not have a uniquely exclusive skillset, enabling any class to do anything with enough dedication and effort (although of course, some classes are just that much more suited to certain builds due to their starting positions). So you can't really exclusive-fy auras to certain classes like in D2, anyway.

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Cruxation wrote:

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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...

Blood Magic gem with 3 % Auras >>>>> Blood Magic Node in almost all cases from an efficiency standpoint.

It depends on the exact build, but it's true in the vast majority of cases.

If you have a six link this is probably true. But in most cases not so much.

Most Heroes in Dota have Auras, Dota is best game, therefore Auras being mandatory in PoE isn't bad.

^pro-tier logic right there :P

I think auras are slightly abused in this game. they are mandatory unless you are terrible. and they make partying a joke

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Wooser69 wrote:

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 :/

I thought everyone was just using BM support gems by now and reserving all mana to auras.

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Serefkana wrote:

Most Heroes in Dota have Auras, Dota is best game, therefore Auras being mandatory in PoE isn't bad.

^pro-tier logic right there :P

what does a kiddie moba game have to do with an ARPG?

(and yes I'm guessing you aren't serious.. still wondering why people keep bringing up dota like it has anything to do with arpg games.)

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_avenged_ wrote:

Uh, dude. When RWs came out for D2, loads and loads of people were getting their Beasts and Faiths and Infinities, and had mercs running Doom, Insight, Prides. Plus you occasionally got a weirdo running less popular RWs with still decent auras.

Maybe Paladins felt really special in early D2, but later on, parties were aura stacking anyway, it was just a matter of how efficient the aura set was.

This is really what it's about.

Auras should cost considerably more than they do now. Maybe in return, they should do more than they do now... that's up to you. The point is, resources should be limited enough that, even in parties, there are auras you won't be able to afford, so you'll have to actually make decisions about which ones stay and which ones go.

Also, auras should provide more benefit to the source than to beneficiaries (if strengthening them to correspond to greater cost, you could keep the beneficiary effect the same while strengthening the source effect). This would also lead to more interesting group decisionmaking.

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thepmrc wrote:

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Wooser69 wrote:

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 :/

I thought everyone was just using BM support gems by now and reserving all mana to auras.

Well, that too, but not everyone runs a char with life regen.

Curses and auras are both pretty lame in PoE. In D2 they were build defining. In PoE they are cookie cutter.


The basic design of auras is pretty flawed because mana regen is all that matters and mana pool is largely irrelevant, because having a large mana pool without enough mana regen to sustain your mana consumption is useless anyway.

With the current design of auras, it's more of a "why not" thing than a legitimately balanced game mechanic.