Auras are WAY overpowered: Remove reservation, cap them like totems and save blood magic!

Just wanted to pop in and post some things from a thread I made a while ago.

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MosesXIII wrote:
1: Auras. I've heard a lot of talk about nerfing aura nodes but I don't personally think that's a good idea. I think aura nodes (and their spaced out positions on the tree) perfectly represent the kind of investment one should have to make to run multiple auras. My suggestion is to actually buff these nodes, but make the reduced mana gem have no effect on auras. Overall, I think reservation costs should be slightly higher and require more tree investment all around (maybe one cluster to run two 60's, two clusters to run two 60's and a 40, etc.)
EDIT: I'm talking about buffing reduced reservation here, not effectiveness.

2: The Reduced Mana Gem. Currently useless except with auras (unless the above change is made). If the above change is made, then the reduced mana gem can be buffed to see actual usage with actual skills.

3: The Blood Magic Gem. Though many disagree, I think the passive is currently in an OK spot (in other words, aura usage needs to be changed to consider the passive, not the other way around), and with change #1 making 4+ auras less enticing, I think the passive would be in an even better spot. However, I feel the gem is too powerful and should be given a higher life cost. As is, it's really just a way to take all those points you might consider spending on mana and cram them into more survivability.


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MosesXIII wrote:
5: This is another idea I can't take credit for (or give credit for, as I don't remember where I read it), but if Pain Attunement was changed to a cast speed bonus instead of spell damage, I am fairly sure that most of the low life CoE problems would be solved.

Additionally (this part is my own idea), Pain Attunement could carry a reduced mana multiplier. This would essentially give it (if the numbers are tweaked properly) a similar DPS boost to spells, without adding to attacks made with CoE, without boosting trigger spells, and without costing any more mana.


So the gist is:
  • Make auras require more of an investment to stack multiples
  • Remove the necessity of reduced mana as a support for all auras
  • Nerf the blood magic gem to make reserving 100% of your mana less enticing
  • Change the Pain Attunement passive to one that does not translate to an attack bonus with Crown of Eyes.
Aura Reservation Calculator: https://poe.mikelat.com/
Chromatic Calculator: http://siveran.github.io/calc.html
Tired of using GGG's crappy skill planner? Tell them here: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1555283
Okay, so i've been thinking a bit about this, and realized i misunderstood scotie as well when he said removing reservation costs will stop low-life alltogether.

That's not gonna work, so this half the point of this thread is already redundant.

Auras are still a problem. I'm not gonna start a new thread about it for now, but thinking about it there were a couple of possible ways for it to still be done.

One is keep reservation costs, but hardcap them still by amount, just like totems and curses to simply prevent stacking.

Another way would be simply disabling blood magic support gem from working with it.

How to fix blood magic passive? Change the keystone behind it to remove reservation costs but allow a maximum of 2 auras.

I also like the idea of changing pain attunement.
I am the light of the morning and the shadow on the wall, I am nothing and I am all.
LOL.
Knowing GGG next patch's changes will be: Aura reservation from 60% to 80%.
Followed by 4-5 more powerful mana reducing uniques in the next year.

hahahaha.
"
Cyan_ogeN wrote:
I suspect that the reason why auras are perceived to be so powerful is that speccing into auras is often the cheapest way to build a character's offense and defense


This here is part of the indication that auras are completely out of balance.

They are the cheapest way to gain power, they are also the best way to gain power. They remain the best way from all gear levels and powerlevels, from weak to godlike, from rag-wearing to kingsclothed.


@fuzen

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If every build is an "aura stacker," and you make a build that also "aura stacks," that's kind of the opposite of being creative, no?


I get what you're saying, if it's standard to go auras, then it's creative to not go auras. However, they don't encourage you to be creative by making some choices far more powerful than others. That's why it hurt the creative process, people will make less creative builds.

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To be honest, I'm not really sure that auras really further the gap between Shavronne's builds and non-Shavronne's builds. I think the gap may or may not be that 90 or so exalts (for unlinked, non-legacy).


There is no doubt here, it does always further the gab, because you suddenly get 3 extra auras.

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Right, so what would happen to reduced mana? I can't think of an instance where it would be used except for reducing mana reservations. Maybe reduced mana was designed to actually reduce mana costs, but very rarely would someone pick reduced mana over a different support gem, especially for their main damage skill.


Just for the sake of the argument. It adds next to zero quality to the game to have auras always required to be linked with reduced mana if you ask me. The only quality it adds is that auras are best placed in 4-links so you can link 3 per reduced mana, something for you to puzzle together when creating builds.

There are cases such as Lightning warp where you can use the gem to reduce the mana cost so that you can afford it while having reserved your mana, i have one build that uses that, then there are cases where it's better than mana leech, in fact in most cases it is. Even if it had almost no uses that would be better, not every gem has to have a constant usage. Really it adds so little and it steals a socket. Slower projectiles is another gem they added full well knowing it would have very few uses.

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Not everyone runs in parties, so what would solo players do if they wished to get more auras? Actually, what would solo players do about auras in general? At the moment, I do understand that auras are underwhelming in parties when the same ones are being used, but there are many, many builds that benefit greatly from joining parties because they don't and can't stack auras.


They shouldn't have all damn auras in solo! That defeats the original concept of the auras! They are supposed to be a core buff type that brings people together because they provide different things.

Also with your argument below, did i really hear you arguing for everyone to have all auras so that it's not unfair for solo? HP scaling in parties takes care of that, if it get's "unfair".

When i said "Powerful auras, but the standard won't be to run all.", i didn't mean make them uber powerful, i hinted at them already being powerful enough to justify not everyone having all.

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You can't change aura stacking to prevent elemental builds from having enormous amounts of damage without hurting the summoner builds.


Boost summons base damage? Very simple.

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You can't cap auras without impacting solo and party play.


Again, you imply that everyone should have everything so it isn't unfair for solo.

I am the light of the morning and the shadow on the wall, I am nothing and I am all.
Last edited by Crackmonster on Jul 20, 2014, 12:09:59 PM
Auras are strong because you can be wearing white items and still wreck with them. They're gear independant. The best auras give flat bonuses that are often stronger than any item or passive you're gonna have available. It's the same sort of deal with spells and +level gear, flat bonuses will always trump +10% melee damage with your level 2 driftwood mace.

Now what's the solution? Make all auras scale off your gear? The game would lose a lot of complexity. I'm ok with auras being a part of every build, as they're the alternative to short duration buffs in other games that you just recast every few seconds. But the current metagame of "spec out of whatever it is you are, reserve 99%, use blood magic gem" is out of order with the rest of the game. It's like back when everyone knew CI was better than maining life, even with kaoms (though now it's just shavs and crown of eyes lol).


IMO, dump reduced mana working with auras and being mandatory, lower the mana reservation appropriately, then introduce increased mana costs of skills while active. That way they'd be like global support gems. 60% auras brought to 40%, they increase mana costs by ~30%. 40% auras made 30% with ~15% increased costs, etc. In this case it would be MUCH harder to get to the point where you can ignore your mana costs and reserve all you want.

To top it all off, to really make blood magic gem balance with the keystone, have it reduce life leech recovery rate with linked skills. 50% less, 10% maxlife/s improved up to a max of 12% with 20% LL gem. It needs to hurt more when it matters.
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Last edited by Wooser69 on Jul 20, 2014, 3:10:33 PM
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ScrotieMcB wrote:
Spoiler
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CanHasPants wrote:
@Scrotie:
I wouldn't so quickly dismiss hard-caps. Hard caps and reservation costs need not be mutually exclusive.
I understand they needn't be, but I kind of agree with GGG that such a system would be rather arbitrary; thus, it would rub me the wrong way in regards to giving players freedom of choice.

Right now, auras use a softcap system which isn't really much of a softcap system at all. By using Reduced Mana support, taking reduced reservation nodes, and/or using Shavronne's/Lorica, you increase the size of your "aura resources." Thus the argument that aura resources are softcapped is very similar to the argument that Life or ES are softcapped. In some vague way, they are: you can only get so much Life (even with Kaom's), or so much ES, you can't go infinite. Auras are essentially a similar system; you build to increase your aura reservation pool as large as reasonably possible. In the same way that some builds have more Life or more Mana than other builds, some builds have more reservation pool than others. More reservation pool is always good, but sometimes other things are better.

So far, this isn't a problem.

The problem is what you then do with your reservation pool. You spend it pure on quantity of auras. After you add one aura, the only thing you can do from there is: add another aura. So everyone ends up running pretty much all of the same auras, the highest number they can squeeze in.

I'd like to see more options where you can choose to spend your reservation pool on quality of auras. You might start with Hatred as an aura, and instead of deciding to add another aura to the stack, you decide to buff your Hatred further. Because you'd be running a smaller number of auras, there would be a better chance of partying with someone who is running an aura you are not. If implemented properly, you could actually begin to see players making meaningful choices.

I absolutely agree with you here. I am not in favor of hard-caps, but am supportive of the idea for its merits as an idea.

For example, Crackmonster's suggestion, "Change the [notable] behind [Blood Magic] to remove reservation costs but allow a maximum of 2 auras," doesn't sound that bad at first glance, at least as a potentially future build-defining idea. It does not sound like a very good "solution" to Blood Magic, as it's very clearly a non-choice; however, placed behind something perhaps like EB, it could offer interesting trade-offs.. real decisions.

At any rate, I believe the actual problem is more systemic (relating to mana management and power creep pressuring highly optimized choices--a distortion of true decision making), but part of the solution is absolutely the lack of support options to make mana reservation a meaningful balancing mechanic. Successful implementation of your (Scrotie's) ideas would still fail to change much, on their own. Shuffle the cards around, deal you a new hand, but ultimately it'd still be the same deck.
Devolving Wilds
Land
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While all of this is rather more theoretical than practical, at least in PoE's case of already being released.

One advantage of hard caps would be that it'd allow much more creativity when it comes to reservations without having to deal with potential abuse since the hard cap's always there.

Currently all auras reservation-wise are pretty much exactly the same bar Clarity. Understandable since the only way currently to cap their number is by making them compete for the same resource.

With hard caps however you could theoretically have auras that reserve life regeneration, auras that increase mana costs, auras that reduce movement speed etc.

If implemented in such a way I don't think they'd be taking away player choice but rather giving players a different type of choice, if both the cost and benefit of auras differ then even with hard-caps there's still a significant decision to be made there.

For example, I imagine something like Vitality noticeable reducing movement speed, Anger reducing maximum Frost Resistance etc.

Stuff like that could present interesting choices in their own right and would probably only work if hard caps were present.

Not expecting something like that to be implemented in PoE though, especially not at this stage but nonetheless an interesting idea.
My vision for a better PoE: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/863780
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CanHasPants wrote:
"
ScrotieMcB wrote:
Spoiler
"
CanHasPants wrote:
@Scrotie:
I wouldn't so quickly dismiss hard-caps. Hard caps and reservation costs need not be mutually exclusive.
I understand they needn't be, but I kind of agree with GGG that such a system would be rather arbitrary; thus, it would rub me the wrong way in regards to giving players freedom of choice.

Right now, auras use a softcap system which isn't really much of a softcap system at all. By using Reduced Mana support, taking reduced reservation nodes, and/or using Shavronne's/Lorica, you increase the size of your "aura resources." Thus the argument that aura resources are softcapped is very similar to the argument that Life or ES are softcapped. In some vague way, they are: you can only get so much Life (even with Kaom's), or so much ES, you can't go infinite. Auras are essentially a similar system; you build to increase your aura reservation pool as large as reasonably possible. In the same way that some builds have more Life or more Mana than other builds, some builds have more reservation pool than others. More reservation pool is always good, but sometimes other things are better.

So far, this isn't a problem.

The problem is what you then do with your reservation pool. You spend it pure on quantity of auras. After you add one aura, the only thing you can do from there is: add another aura. So everyone ends up running pretty much all of the same auras, the highest number they can squeeze in.

I'd like to see more options where you can choose to spend your reservation pool on quality of auras. You might start with Hatred as an aura, and instead of deciding to add another aura to the stack, you decide to buff your Hatred further. Because you'd be running a smaller number of auras, there would be a better chance of partying with someone who is running an aura you are not. If implemented properly, you could actually begin to see players making meaningful choices.

I absolutely agree with you here. I am not in favor of hard-caps, but am supportive of the idea for its merits as an idea.

For example, Crackmonster's suggestion, "Change the [notable] behind [Blood Magic] to remove reservation costs but allow a maximum of 2 auras," doesn't sound that bad at first glance, at least as a potentially future build-defining idea. It does not sound like a very good "solution" to Blood Magic, as it's very clearly a non-choice; however, placed behind something perhaps like EB, it could offer interesting trade-offs.. real decisions.
Crackmoster's suggestion, however, is still completely in the "quantity of auras" mindset, and totally incompatible with the "quality of auras" mindset. If you get two (or even one) Auras for free and you actually have the capability to support it to increase the quality of its effect, you are going to have one massively supported aura, for free. It would, at the very least, be a major balancing hinderance which would prevent the "quality over quantity" idea from realizing its full potential.

The Blood Magic keystone, however, presents a unique problem, which I haven't touched on yet in this thread.

My suggestion for Blood Magic is somewhat simple: just don't remove the mana pool. The Blood Magic keystone by itself already makes it so that you can't use that mana pool for costs, to include reservation costs, but that doesn't mean you can't find ways to use it, like Arctic Armour or Mind over Matter.

And for people who aren't willing to get creative with it, I'd put a keystone behind BM which would convert your Mana to Armour. Not super-powerful or anything, and definitely not a combo with Eldritch Battery, but it's only one extra point.
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Last edited by ScrotieMcB on Jul 21, 2014, 6:46:49 AM
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ScrotieMcB wrote:

And for people who aren't willing to get creative with it, I'd put a keystone behind BM which would convert your Mana to Armour. Not super-powerful or anything, and definitely not a combo with Eldritch Battery, but it's only one extra point.


How would that make BM comparable to the mana-builds? Sure it's a "buff", but... that's about 500 more base armour.

And why armour? Isn't it enough that we got those shitty life + armour nodes? With elemental damage being the king of damage, flasks, charges and IC, why do we need more of those almost useless armour nodes (this would be an armour node in a way)?
I still don't understand how anyone can act like auras are "overpowered." Overpowered compared to what? They are part of the base game design philosophy. There is nothing in the game that they compete with. It's not like armor or evasion, where you can make an argument that they are out of line with their peers. As a mechanic, they have no peers. So it's not that they are "way overpowered", it's that you subjectively wish they were less important. Which is fine, but call it like it is.

I'm not saying you can't post that here because feedback is feedback, but I don't see why people are acting like they can objectively argue that they are "too good". That's like saying that Life is "way overpowered" and then trying to objectively defend that argument.

I think a lot of people enjoy the idea of auras. Aura stacking is fun, passive bonuses are fun, and seeing your character radiate with power is exciting. Most of the issues being raised in this thread are more about certain uniques making aura stacking too easy or overpowered skills like ST being combined with damage auras. In all of these cases I don't think the culprit is the aura(s).

Anyways, I hope I never see the day where aura effectiveness is nerfed into the ground. I think they work as is and the only things I want are more auras to choose from.
Team Won
Last edited by ggnorekthx on Jul 21, 2014, 7:02:17 PM

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