Empower

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Legendknewl wrote:

It IS working as intended, one of the downsides of RF is once you turn it on, the only way you can turn it off it by going to town, using a dispels burning potion, or going down to 1 life. If they made it so weapon swapping turned it off, it would completely remove this downside.

No, see, proper design would be to turn it back on whenever it goes on your active skills. Fixes for auras and any other skills that currently snapshot, like minions, are on the way so I expect to see this go away soon enough.

Right now this 'downside' is being abused since everyone always wants RF active. Extra gem slots on your gear is not a feature of RF. If the tech to fix this properly doesn't exist just disable this 'downside' that isn't a downside at all currently.

ps I own a Shavs myself, although I only use it for an extra aura, the 30% more spelldamage keystone and wondertraps. RF just feels too broken to go into.

As for empower, it does feel underwhelming to me too. RF, possibly Purity if you still have gem slots free in your gear, possibly Raise Zombie even though a lifeleech or extra dmg to support lifeleech gives more zombie survivability anyway, some traps, again if you have spare gem slots... that's about it. When it first came out I thought it'd be a +1/+2 all supported gems, not just active ones. Way too niche at the moment.

Empower is boring and adds nothing new to the game, it's a boring more damage increase for spells and now bloody mandatory for maxing things like arctic armor or righteous fire.

It's just bad design for a support gem in my opinion.

i still think that this gem is a flat spellcaster buff with absolutely no reason to be used by melee players

also - it is a very shallow and uninteresting mechanic that is worrying

also - Righteous Fire.. LOL GGG

inbefore someone says 'you moan because you cant afford it'

(sold it :) )

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Legendknewl wrote:

It IS working as intended, one of the downsides of RF is once you turn it on, the only way you can turn it off it by going to town, using a dispels burning potion, or going down to 1 life. If they made it so weapon swapping turned it off, it would completely remove this downside.

Lol, Blood rage also cant be turned off, and unlike RF, it CAN kill you. Why does blood rage fade, then, when you swap weapon it inserted into? I'll answer - because it works AS INTENDED! If you remove skill gem from current equipment, or disable it due to lack of stats, you should immediately become unable to use that skill, including dispelling all buffs the skill apply.

People said the same thing about auras, used with BM-items, but developers said it's a bug and fixed it. The same thing will happen with RF, and i hope, quite soon.

I dont think that RF-casters are so weak, that cant survive that fix. And i also think that empower gem and +2 firegem, +1 allgem weapons shouldnt be used mainly as "RF-buff swapping".

As for empower itself - well, there are a lot of support gems (especially melee ones), that provide +40-50% more damage. I doubt that empower will give that bulk of damage to ANY spell, even assuming it is inserted into +1 gems item (+3 levels from empower). And most spells and ranged attacks also have a plenty of useful supports.

In my opinion, Empower will be used only for:
1. Improve buffs (RF, AA, Molten Shell, etc)
2. Improve summons
3. Improve abilities, that lack of useful supports (Viper Strike, Poison Arrow, and some others.... probably, including discharge, for some builds).

righteous fire being turned off on weapon swap would cause more problems than it would fix since it's supposed to take commitment to be able to manage it (burn-dispelling)

Does Empower work with Auras (Tempest Shield) and with Curses?

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Kabushiki wrote:

Does Empower work with Auras (Tempest Shield) and with Curses?

every gem just main gems i later found out

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Legendknewl wrote:

It IS working as intended, one of the downsides of RF is once you turn it on, the only way you can turn it off it by going to town, using a dispels burning potion, or going down to 1 life. If they made it so weapon swapping turned it off, it would completely remove this downside.

bullshit its an exploit which hasnt been fixed yet nothing works when you switch to alternate weaponslot its just a weak attempt to justify it

there is a reason why i cant have 6 aura on alternative weaponslot and just switch weapons
as someone already said i could run a lvl 24 arctic armor the same way but i cant so one buff is allowed and the other is not and your only explanation is you have to switch it off in town ?

Mark has gone on record that righteous fire's behavior is intentional.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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Zealflare wrote:

Question for GGG employees in charge of skills: Is it intentional that Righteous Fire is the only buff-type skill in the game capable of working despite being weapon-swapped?

Both Arctic Armor and Blood Rage, as well as every aura/tempest shield stop working when they are weapon swapped, but it seems that RF is the only one that is still capable of working post-swap.

It's not - blood rage works the same, and for the same reason. The point of RF is you can't freely turn it off. It's supposed to be dangerous. Allowing weapon swap to be a free way to remove the buff would be counter to that.

He went on to say he was mistaken about blood rage, but his point on righteous fire still stood.