Honestly, I feel that giving up running auras would be more palatable if blood magic was more powerful: like instead of mortal conviction there was a life leech keystone and some Life nodes behind it instead of mortal conviction.
Basically, that you understand that you're giving up the ability to Run auras when you take blood magic (just scrap mortal conviction altogether) and balance it around it making the melee character extra beefy themselves on a singular level.
This here, just make BM about a lot of life and life regen instead of auras or any better idea than we can coem up with. Make something behind BM that make it truly different. There is so much room left there we could make a 2nd f'n passive tree. Whatever is behind it should say: Auras are fucking OP, but this is an interesting (OP) trade for it.
Last edited by Ozgwald on Nov 30, 2013, 3:52:08 AM
I have several builds that don't bother with auras, even clarity. If I think being able to mindlessly spam all of my skills while using a mana flask every now and then would benefit me more than any aura would, then I just don't use one.
That's not to say that auras aren't powerful, and if you have the points/sockets/mana to spare then you should definitely get one or two, but they're far from necessary.
I disagree completely, seems auras here are underestimated. Grace gives me more armour or evasion than my gear does through the entire leveling experience. At some point determination takes over, but nothing beats combining the two, especially since the wise decision was taken to nerf shields, which only with recent aura changes makes running grace and determination even stronger, let alone if you combine the two.
Pretty much everyone is taking grace + hatred or determination + hatred for melee builds atm. No one is considering trading in added fire dmg for that aure combination, every says: I rather have that BM support gem. Anyways goign added fir dmg means you spend on mana nodes now, than you could use an aura or two. If you do you go a different route often ending up with MoM and at least artic armour. The other options is BM, which gives you no aura and a rather meaningless difference on mana cost compared to the support gem. The support gem isn;t so bad, the keystone is.
@Ozgwald: Can I sum up your post with "Grace + Determination is awesome for Iron Reflexes, and all builds are Iron Reflexes, therefore Blood Magic is bad?"
Because that's what it sounded like to me.
Also, unless you're playing Hardcore, survivability isn't everything. The whole running defensive auras thing matters less in Standard and Domination, and the whole having an extra socket for your 6L matters more.
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Last edited by ScrotieMcB on Nov 30, 2013, 5:49:32 AM
@Ozgwald: Can I sum up your post with "Grace + Determination is awesome for Iron Reflexes, and all builds are Iron Reflexes, therefore Blood Magic is bad?"
Because that's what it sounded like to me.
Also, unless you're playing Hardcore, survivability isn't everything. The whole running defensive auras thing matters less in Standard and Domination, and the whole having an extra socket for your 6L matters more.
No you cannot as I added numerous arguments in other threads about this issue. Want to do an elemental melee build or bow build? Than having wrath and anger is also useful. It was a direct counter against the poster that marginalized the strength of auras. The meta changed and the old balance cases for BM Keystone are no longer existent, so it needs to evolve or you got a dead keystone there only used by newbies/ players who don't know how the game works and people that might find it useful for leveling.
I am runnign wrath and anger on an ele melee build right now, but I am planning to grab soem more reductions nodes to add either determination or grace to that for the endgame, since the auras are so f'n strong already individually. If I need to kill Kole or Brutus I lower my dps by a fair amount atm to run grace and get 3k armour to my character at level 50 that is pretty damn significant and that is without determination. This should matter for standard dps builds, in fact hatred > added fire dmg, especially with aura nodes and the fact you can run 2.
I don't feel like always writing 50 pages to reiterate words I brought up in previous discussions.
Iron reflexes btw sucks and dexterity sucks (the whole mechanics involving evasion, dex node, accuracy etc. deserve some work). Iron reflexes is nothing but a pompous leveling node for gears and sockets. Any actual meaning got nerfed out of it. If you feel it still has too much meaning because you can combine the auras: That whole discussion takes place in other threads, so I dunno why that possibly is being brought up here. You can also run these two auras on a hybrid, it is a lot of defense even 1 of them especially if you give up life. Either way give up a lot of defense or insane defense or give up a lot of dps, the meta change impacts on BM and why BM needs to evolve.
Last edited by Ozgwald on Nov 30, 2013, 7:48:13 AM
If I think being able to mindlessly spam all of my skills while using a mana flask every now and then would benefit me more than any aura would, then I just don't use one.
Every my build uses at least 2 auras, every my build spams mindlessly all of my skills and is not using mana flask since early cruel...
Anticipation slowly dissipates...
Last edited by tmaciak on Nov 30, 2013, 7:55:02 AM
Honestly, I feel that giving up running auras would be more palatable if blood magic was more powerful: like instead of mortal conviction there was a life leech keystone and some Life nodes behind it instead of mortal conviction.
Basically, that you understand that you're giving up the ability to Run auras when you take blood magic (just scrap mortal conviction altogether) and balance it around it making the melee character extra beefy themselves on a singular level.
I spent quite a while thinking about potential changes to MC, then I realised aleksandor was right. MC is pretty useless in it's current position, and should just be abandoned and replaced with something a BM character would actually need. If you don't want to go auras, or simply cannot, then make the passives behind BM useful for a LIFE ONLY character.
Do to BM what you've done to CI. For example, possible passive group BEHIND BM:
The Last Stand: Doubles life regeneration when on low life
Kaom's Justice: 8% more maximum life
+ a couple of % life nodes to get to Kaom's Justice, I expect.
At least then people would be able to explore BM builds.
BM is in dire need of a buff, Mortal Conviction or no.
At its current state, very few builds will opt for the BM keystone due to the power of the new auras and the cost to use those auras. MC barely makes a dent in the problem, and you end up investing way too much life to use a single aura.
MC is useless because BM is poorly designed. With BM, the only keystones that you can compare to are CI and EB. Here's where BM falls short:
CI - You trade one defense for another (life for chaos immunity)
EB - You trade a defense for a resource (ES for mana)
BM - You trade a resource for a resource (mana to use life)
Note that in the three comparisons, BM is not a 1:1 trade. You're not giving up something and gaining another thing. You're giving up a resource to use another - "use" versus "for". Therein lies the problem with BM as it is not an equivalent trade. You've gained the ability to use life as a resource, but you haven't gained something tangible in return like CI/EB (chaos immunity/mana).
True, you could fix MC and make it 50% less MCR (or more), but that doesn't treat the main issue, which has persisted since OB.
My recommendation to improving the BM keystone would be this:
> Base mana is added as life.
In other words, the mana you have at the start (level 1 has base 40 mana) and gained while leveling will be added to life (+4 per level). +Mana or %mana or Int does not affect your life total. This means that an level 80 player would have +356 (40 + 4*79) to life. Assuming a 3x mulitplier on life (total of 200% increased life passives), that's an additional 1038 to life.
Do that, and you will have balanced BM to the point where it's nearly as viable compared to the other keystones. I would also bump MC up to 50% less MCR, making the usage of one aura less onerous than before.
For more of my thoughts and analysis of MC/BM, open spoiler.
I don't mind the aura change. Stacking 5+ auras was nuts. However, certain auras that have been changed completely fall off the list of usefulness. And the obvious ones are the auras that had a flat cost. This also ties into the role BM/MC.
Anger and Wrath have become almost useless. The reason being is that the incredible cost hoisted on these auras doesn't correspond to their added power. In fact, it's hard to say that the change was necessary at all. From what I saw of the new Anger/Wrath, the increase in damage from the old version was a 1.5x multiplier. By changing the flat cost of the aura into a high reserve aura, the cost of mana has basically been multiplied 10 times over. Essentially, the new cost of these two auras render them near useless because no one would sacrifice so much mana/life for their benefits, and only 1.5x more damage than their previous versions. This needs a revisit. The same concept applies to Discipline but not as extreme. Only CI builds could benefit from using Discipline - no other builds could utilize it unless they heavily invested in auras and use aura-enabling uniques.
The interesting case lies with Grace and how it compares to Determination. Let's not kid ourselves here; the majority of people use IR and utilize Grace as and extra set of armor. However, the benefits provided by Grace is so good (has always been good) that I don't mind the conversion of flat to % cost. The issue is comparing Grace to Determination. Determination was changed to a higher % cost but nothing changed in terms of aura power. While Determination has always been strong, this really struck me as odd considering that it should've been expected that some sort of increase was necessary. What I found was that characters that did not have a lot of base armor/armor-passives were better off using Grace. Characters with lots of armor/armor-passives gained more by using Determination. This is noted comparing 2hander/DualWieldiers versus 1hander+shield useres. The shield users benefited more from using Determination than Grace.
I find that determining which aura provides more armor shouldn't even take place. If GGG wants to make our skill/aura selection meaningful, then the benefits should be meaningful. In the case of Grace/Determinaion, that line is marred. You essentially have 2 auras that perform almost the same function. Obviously for evasion-based characters, Grace is worth using as is. I suggest that the Determinaion aura be buffed a bit more, that way it allows people to make the choice easier. Anyone who has played this game long enough knows what a joke armor is due to its formula. I'd say armor needs all the help it can get.
And Vitality, this aura has been weak since the start of the game and is still weak as the change to the life regen does not warrant the usage of this aura when compared to its cost. At the very least, Vitality should provide the minimum of 2% of life regen.
......
So how does this tie into BM/MC?
BM users are people who use BM as a way to sustain really expensive skills or have very high attack speed, or both. BM allows a socket in a 4-6L to be freed from using the Mana Leech or Blood Magic support gems. This allows BM users to have more DPS by virtue of having the extra socket to put in a DPS-adding support or defensive like LL/LOH. This basically rules out 1hander+shield builds since those are not usually specced with high attack speed. This leaves dual-wielding and bow-users. (Dominating Blow and Cyclone also fall into this category.)
However, this also means that characters give up the benefits of being able to stack 2 auras on mana. Given the above analysis and the current 60% cost of the other auras, it's safe to say that most auras aren't even worth using on a BM character. In fact, the main issue with BM characters now is that they give up defense for a resource with no conversion, no added benefit. This is unlike EB where you trade a defense for a resource. With the BM keystone, you give up a resource to universally power up your skills on your primary defense, life. I strictly view BM as inferior to EB. When built properly, EB builds are much stronger than BM builds, and moreso in this incarnation of PoE.
Essentially Grace or Determination are the only auras worth using on BM. Anger/Wrath has been rendered near useless as previously mentioned, and Hatred isn't really needed when you can link more DPS-related supports. Bow-users and DWers are essentially bereft of a defense given by shield users. Coming full circle to the OP of this thread, the use of a single 60% aura is so cost-prohibitive that even BM-users can't really use ONE SINGLE aura comfortably. This ties into how BM operates. You can change all the numbers that MC provides (40-60%), but BM users will always lose out because by eliminating your mana, you gain nothing in return even though you gain the ability to use your skills on life.
I say the main culpirt of why players can't reliably use a single aura is due to how BM works. If BM had a benefit like the Infused Shield notable (1.2 more life) or something along those lines (like +### to life), players would be incentivized to use the BM keystone AND be able to run a single aura comfortably.
That's my analysis/suggestions on the interaction of auras with BM/MC. I find that the fault originates from the weak keystone itself, which is then compounded with the new aura changes.
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