Mortal Conviction - Another Look

There are so many potential ways to change aura costs both to prevent abusive stacking and make BM auras more attractive. Not that I think BM needs to be more attractive, if not for the gem which lets you have your cake and eat it too, it would already be borderline OP with the super easy resource management. I say borderline because if anything is OP, it's not BM but % life regen and leech, ehh but I'm straying too far off topic into things that will never change.


My point is if GGG wants to make a change - that's a big if, I don't know their position on all this - how about:

solution a
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Run totem_nerf.exe in aura directory. Now have max 1 aura by default, couple of +1 maximum aura passives and/or uniques. Reduce mana reservation cost of auras.


solution b
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Change reduced reservation to linear scaling. Enough already with all the non linear stuff, lol.
"5% Reduced mana reserved" nodes changed to "-5% total mana reserved".

eg:
with 1 5% node, and a 40% aura, you would reserve 40 - 5 = 35%.
with 1 5% node, and two 40% auras, you would reserve 40 + 40 - 5 = 75%.
with 10 5% nodes, and two 40% auras, you would reserve 40 + 40 - 50 = 30%.

Get enough nodes and you might completely nullify the cost of 1 aura, without allowing you to stack 10 of them. Put a couple of big ones or a MC-like keystone somewhere if you still want to allow dedicated aura builds.


solution c
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Change cost mechanic completely, so instead of reserving mana, they act as global mana multiplier for skills - the same way mana cost multipliers on support gems work, but for all skills, and with much higher cost (because no gem slot use and applies to all skills). Now you can forget about explaining to newbies how to calculate how reduced mana reserved nodes stack with reduced mana gem, why reduced mana gem is actualy less mana gem, why reduced mana cost doesn't affect auras etc.
Everything that affects mana costs like the reduced mana cost nodes in the strength area of the tree would now counteract aura costs, for mana and BM users alike. EB - or just general investment in mana - would still be beneficial for aura stacking, etc.
The aura cap in this case would most likely still be decided by leech rate cap, max mana, mana regen, and so forth. Want more auras? The price of your skills will skyrocket, so get more mana, use mana flasks etc.




There are probably many more ways. These are just off the top of my head while reading this thread. No idea if GGG has any interest in changing auras for the benefit of BM users. No real opinion on the matter myself.

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Islidox wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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Islidox wrote:

Making MC a 60% less mana reserved would bring it to a good place.

No, it would be OP for the use described earlier in this post. 40% less means instead of two pools of 100% you get one pool of 166%; 50% less means one pool of 200%; 60% means one pool of 240%. The first is inarguably safe from a game design perspective, the last is obviously overpowered, the middle is somewhat daring but still sane (one 200% pool is more flexible than two 100% pools, and the BM support gem normally taxes the 100% life pool extra, although Prism Guardian can get around that). I understand that use of MC isn't the use you're thinking of, but it's important not to make notables degenerately powerful for any use.

In simpler terms with a 60% aura for the base, 40% LMR means 36% of life reserved, 50% LMR means 30% of life reserved, and 60& LMR means 24% of life reserved. Considering that BM builds can only rely on armor, block/dodge, and life (regen/leech), any percentage greater than 20% of life reserved is unacceptable for a damage buffer/sponge.

With Reduced Mana gem, a 60 aura is really a 42 and a 40 aura is really a 28. That's before MC and reductions; with the 3 strengths of MC we're looking at and zero reduction, it's 60 becomes 26/21/17 and 40 becomes 17/14/12. Forgetting to include Reduced Mana in your calculations is borderline criminal.

with lvl 20 reduced mana and MC 60% auras becomes 25.56% reserved. two 60% auras's (hatred, grace) will take 51.12% of your HP, and 25.56% is already criminal for one aura unless they make Kaom's Heart back at 1000 and make it common unique.

Just rebuild Mortal Conviction as if a BM character did not want to use auras. MC just will not work with 40 and 60% auras, give it up. Ignore auras, and make BM assistive passives useful.

@Scrotie: Read my post further. I put in a lvl 20 RM gem and a hypothetical 21% RMR passives into the next set of calculations. This 21% RMR number is taken from the nearest set of RMR passives from BM key (4+4+8+5 = 21). A build that picks up all RMR passives around the tree would never spec into BM key at that point. This then begs the question of where the 17 from your "26/21/17" and the 12 from your "17/14/12" comes from. If you're going to throw numbers out, at least back them up with premises and calculations.

Also, a 40% aura with lvl 20 RM and MC is 18% of life reserved because it always rounds up. (40*.6*.71 = 17.04, rounds up to 18)

This is on the assumption that players are willing to spend that many passives on RMR passives, and it's still a stretch of a journey from the 5% RMR near BM key to the Sovereignty notable. Spell/trap builds may pull this off, but attack-based builds would be hard pressed to even spend that many points for RMR passives like such.

I'm of the mind to completely sever the connection of auras with BM - it simply doesn't work in this current incarnation of auras. But to give up the power of auras, BM key needs something else to help it.

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Malice wrote:

solution c
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Change cost mechanic completely, so instead of reserving mana, they act as global mana multiplier for skills - the same way mana cost multipliers on support gems work, but for all skills, and with much higher cost (because no gem slot use and applies to all skills). Now you can forget about explaining to newbies how to calculate how reduced mana reserved nodes stack with reduced mana gem, why reduced mana gem is actualy less mana gem, why reduced mana cost doesn't affect auras etc.
Everything that affects mana costs like the reduced mana cost nodes in the strength area of the tree would now counteract aura costs, for mana and BM users alike. EB - or just general investment in mana - would still be beneficial for aura stacking, etc.
The aura cap in this case would most likely still be decided by leech rate cap, max mana, mana regen, and so forth. Want more auras? The price of your skills will skyrocket, so get more mana, use mana flasks etc.

I like this idea a lot. I'd just like to see regen work as well as leech, or leech to be nerfed to regen's potential.

By far the best alternative solution I've heard so far though. I had the idea of putting a hard limit on things. I, and seems GGG like the idea of people working to stack multiple auras, but it should come at a cost.

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Moosifer wrote:

I'd just like to see regen work as well as leech, or leech to be nerfed to regen's potential.

Any change in leech would lead to need to rebalance whole game with monsters damage and players EHP etc. We have seen in 2013, how it could be painful, I don't think GGG will decide to do this.

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tmaciak wrote:

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Moosifer wrote:

I'd just like to see regen work as well as leech, or leech to be nerfed to regen's potential.

Any change in leech would lead to need to rebalance whole game with monsters damage and players EHP etc. We have seen in 2013, how it could be painful, I don't think GGG will decide to do this.

There isn't really a reason not to do it. I except some major balance-changes for every new 4 month-league.

Exspecially when they implement new stuff or uniques they have to change things. Just imagine another non-shield unique that increases max-resists. Alpha-Howl + Saffels already is criminal since you can achieve +15% permanent increased resistances, although you could get the same without Alphas Howl, but you don't need lvl20 Auras that way... add a flask and bäm. Add Immortal Call and you are invulnerable to anything but chaos-damage. Add CI and... you just need enough crit-chance to perma-fill the flasks... should be doable :P (although you have to travel the whole way to the aura-nodes near Iron Grip for it to work, since you need to reach 102% increased Aura-Efficiency (you reach 78 + Innerforce 21 and 3% from the HP-node near Sovereignty).

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Islidox wrote:

This then begs the question of where the 17 from your "26/21/17" and the 12 from your "17/14/12" comes from. If you're going to throw numbers out, at least back them up with premises and calculaciones.

MC at 40% less, 50% less, and 60% less, in order. With absolutely no passive commitment outside MC itself.

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Islidox wrote:

Also, a 40% aura with lvl 20 RM and MC is 18% of life reserved because it always rounds up. (40*.6*.71 = 17.04, rounds up to 18)

Wrong! Mana cost multipliers, such as Reduced Mana and Blood Magic, always round down. The cost after reduced and less modifiers is rounded up. Thus, it's 40*.71=28.4, round to 28, 28*.6=16.8, round to 17. Try it out if you disbelieve!

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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Islidox wrote:

This then begs the question of where the 17 from your "26/21/17" and the 12 from your "17/14/12" comes from. If you're going to throw numbers out, at least back them up with premises and calculaciones.

MC at 40% less, 50% less, and 60% less, in order. With absolutely no passive commitment outside MC itself.

I see now.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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Islidox wrote:

Also, a 40% aura with lvl 20 RM and MC is 18% of life reserved because it always rounds up. (40*.6*.71 = 17.04, rounds up to 18)

Wrong! Mana cost multipliers, such as Reduced Mana and Blood Magic, always round down. The cost after reduced and less modifiers is rounded up. Thus, it's 40*.71=28.4, round to 28, 28*.6=16.8, round to 17. Try it out if you disbelieve!

Now that's interesting to know. I was always under the assumption that everything rounded up for aura reservation calculations.


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But to bring it back to the main point, I still think BM is weak. At the end of the day, MC has not really done any favors for BM. Those EA-Burnproliferate-QR builds? They don't use auras either because they can't.