Mortal Conviction - Another Look

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Wow. Before writing that, I should have asked myself a simple question: what if you didn't take the Blood Magic keystone at all, and tried to do this currently?

Nice catch! That never occurred to me, but then again, I don't use auras much.

EDIT: I still think Mortal Conviction needs a sizeable buff, and the proof is in this thread (sorta). From what I hear, low life builds were already hit hard anyways, so even if an MC buff would disproportionately favor LL builds, it's not like they couldn't use the help.

EDITS MORE: For what it's worth, I vote bumping MC up to 50%. For the Average Joe, this still means you can't even run a single aura unless you're super tanky, but at least it SOMEWHAT rewards putting an effort towards aura specialization.
(For reference, at 50% MC:
Lv. 20 Reduced Mana -> 1 aura takes ~22% of your life
Lv. 20 Reduced Mana + 5% reduced reservation passive + Alpha's Howl -> 1 aura takes ~19% of your life
Lv. 20 Reduced Mana + 21% reduced reservation passives (all) + Alpha's Howl -> 1 aura takes ~15% of your life
Lv. 20 Reduced Mana + 21% reduced reservation passives (all) + Alpha's Howl + Prism Guardian (2 auras only) -> 1 aura takes ~10% of your life)

So in order to run 6 60% auras, you need 2*10 + 4 * 15 , or about ~80% of your life reserved, which I would say is balanced considering you need Life to, y'know, live, AND use attacks/spells.

Conclusion: MC at 50% is totally balanced! Please implement nowwwww

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adghar wrote:

EDIT: I still think Mortal Conviction needs a sizeable buff, and the proof is in this thread (sorta). From what I hear, low life builds were already hit hard anyways, so even if an MC buff would disproportionately favor LL builds, it's not like they couldn't use the help.

Pretty much. I'm just saying that "sizeable" shouldn't be to 50%, or past 50%. Something in the 40s.

One more thing though: There is more to balancing Blood Magic aura use than merely the Mortal Conviction keystone. The aura cluster between Blood Magic and Iron Grip is the weakest in the game, and Blood Magic auras at least deserve to get the Charisma cluster there instead of its current location, to help mitigate aura costs. That's not to say Rangers deserve to get the shaft; I think, in compensation, the Influence cluster should go to where Charisma used to be. Lastly, the notable-less aura cluster can go where Influence was; that area of the tree is within striking distance two clusters with notables in it (and if it travels left, will eventually hit the Templar aura cluster), and thus needs the least help.

All auras have to go down to 50%, and reduced mana gem buffed to 61% at level 20

First:
Make Reduced Mana not work on auras at all, EVERYBODY is using it on EVERY aura - rough guess for level 65+ chars 98,5% - (mandatory = boring) and bring Auras down to 45%.

As for mortal Conviction.
"You can only cast ONE aura at a time but at 75% less life reserved", One Aura at the cost of 11,25% of your total life sounds fair.


In a total i dont get the point of GGGs aura politic. Every char should be able to choose one aura at litlle to no investment, 2 auras on heavy investment and 3 auras on heavy investment and special gearing commiting to it. Right now the balancing is really missing a hard cap "cant have more than 3 auras cast by yourself" would really give GGG a lot better balance chance..... much better than the idea above.

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return33 wrote:

First:
Make Reduced Mana not work on auras at all, EVERYBODY is using it on EVERY aura - rough guess for level 65+ chars 98,5% - (mandatory = boring) and bring Auras down to 45%.

This isn't necessarily true for items in which socketed Aura gems get special treatment, like Alpha's Howl (+2 levels) and Prism Guardian (Blood Magic and heavy cost reduction). Maybe in time, other items will give us other reasons (perhaps an item that boosts the effect of the auras in that item for yourself, but reduce that effect for others). Naturally, this is predicated on the concept of running more than 2 or 3 auras, which only certain builds can realistically accomplish.

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return33 wrote:

As for mortal Conviction.
"You can only cast ONE aura at a time but at 75% less life reserved", One Aura at the cost of 11,25% of your total life sounds fair.

I really don't like this suggestion because it destroys middle ground. Yes, there are intense aura-stacking build possibilities like what I described earlier in this thread, and there are also one-aura builds... but that doesn't mean the only options should be those two extremes.

The problem is to prevent EXXTREM stacking (more than 3) combining everything thats possible (and expensive) you basicly kill auras for the mass of players that dont want to take all aura nodes or simply cant afford all the expensive "special aura" gear.

In fact i still like my "the more auras you have, the less effecitive they are on you idea" 200% for 1 aura, 130% for 2 aura, 80% for 3 aura and so on (tweak numbers to make it a slow dimisihing return without turning the combiened effect lower) - in that you can dramaticly decrease all aura costs - balancing by "do i want one strong or many weak" not by costs primarly.

Either buff the Mortal Conviction notable to 40-50% or change the aura reservations to 50%.

A third choice is to add a few more life nodes behind the BM keystone, culminating in a notable that either grants a large number of flat life (200-300) or a % more life multiplier like Infused Shield notable behind the CI keystone.

Personally I think BM needs more of a buff beyond aura mechanics. You get rid of a resource and instead spend your primary defense (life) for skills. Seems even less enticing than EB where you're able to build up life.

The problem with BM + being able to use multiple auras is that there is no downfall to it. BM eleminates mana, which is a BIG deal, with my LA LMP Chain archer I have taken 3 mana + regeneration circle + use clarity and i can only use a very slow weapon 1.2 speed, if i wanna use a faster weapon or faster attacks or even any 5l or 6l i would not be able to unless i go hybrid es gear with EB and even then 6l is too much.

BM allows you to spam any skill 5l or 6l even with no problems, plus if you have some leech on gear or use warlords mark its like if your skill costs nothing. Saying you are using life which is a bigger risk is false because:

you don't invest any points in mana regen(i have at least 10 points invested there on my archer without even counting the "wasted +10 int/dex/str" points to get to the nodes. Translate that into more points spent on life, life regen, damage and more. BM is really strong. You could use the bm gem or mana leech or maybe reduced mana but then you would be wasting a slot where you can put more damage with BM passive. In the end, you get more damage or defence than the aura(s) will give you because of these reasons.

I think this is a deeper problem than with just BM, the fact is mana is a stat everyone tries to ignore, We don't use mana flasks instead we use BM gem, Mana Leech or very high regeneration or a skill/combo that doesnt require a lot of mana(like split arrow pierce vs la lmp chain) BM allows you to forget all this and just use any high mana skill you want by just taking 1 key passive node.

In the end I think the general mana pool of a char should be increased and auras should not reserve 60% its just too much, we need another way of limiting how much auras you can cast. At the moment even if you use just 2 auras with a mana build you will not have enough mana pool to use mana flasks and MUST find another way to deal with it like the gems mentioned above. Like, why do mana flasks even exist? we only use it when lvling in normal act1-2 by act3 you either have BM or clarity... Anyways.. getting back on topic.

A few suggestions I think for BM would be:

1: give it a downfall like most other notable passive like, skills costs life instead of mana but +50% cost, like a smaller effect of the gem, then you would have more room to allow auras
without making BM "op spam skill n stack auras fk mana"

2: Mortal conviction can have an effect like 75% reduced mana reserve for the first aura(this was mentioned already in this thread) This would allow BM users to run at least 1 aura like a non-aura non-bm build would.

or make it scale less hard by saying 75% reduced mana. This effect is reduced by a flat 25% for every additional aura meaning: first aura 75%, second 50%, third 25% and 0% for 4th aura.

or, my favorite option, give a real meaning to the "less" word in the Mortal Conviction description like we're used to with other parts of the game: make it so that 30% less means 30% of the original cost of the aura, regardless of other mana reserve reductions. It would mean if you have a 60% aura, Mortal conviction will reduce it by 18% after all other reductions are calculated. This way, using reduce mana(29% reduction) and 21% reduction from passives would make the following calculation (60 *.71 * .79) -18% from mortal conviction for a total of 15.65%

I was about to tell scrotie about how it's possible to run 9 aura's on the same char right now, but yeah, he figured it out :P

I think the simplest solution would be giving aura's different costs when reserved on life compared to mana. Not via a keystone, just by default a different value.

Yeah, when the Release patch dropped, I bricked my 84 Templar to check out the new aura costs.

With Blood Magic, Mortal Conviction, and 41% of the reservation in the tree it was 18% an aura after level 19 Reduced Mana.

Honestly, given how many points it cost me to actually achieve this (I have like no hp or anything else going on...) I feel that Mortal Conviction would probably be best at 40%. I realize that beyond this, it will start to reach super aura stack territory.

Honestly, for the most part I enjoy the aura changes, but they really screwed up Blood Magic. Running Grace, Wrath, and Anger pre-patch was a really fun way to play a BM Ranger. I can't imagine making that viable again without creating super-stacking nonsense for other builds.

Someone mentioned a notable that adds 200-300 life behind BM - I had thought of this, too. Interesting thought for sure, probably too strong with a legacy Kaom's though.