Clarity

Like others have said, this is a good skill with a hefty cost. I had to link it to bloodmagic and rely on heavy energyshield to make this work in conjunction with other auras.

It should have reduced ammount of mana reserved
or increased mana regen per lvl.

The bonus mana regen it gives appears to be affected by % increases to mana regen passives. So it will be weak on anyone who doesn't have those passives, and strong on characters who do. I am currently inclined to think it may be too strong. I have a character I recently started who got lucky and found one, and with just a 40% mana regen bonus, it's allowing her to not need mana flasks anymore, when spamming Freezing Pulse. While Freezing Pulse is not an expensive spell, my character is also not focused on mana regen at all (this is a recently started crit-witch) and had been relying on flasks.

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Kldran wrote:

The bonus mana regen it gives appears to be affected by % increases to mana regen passives. So it will be weak on anyone who doesn't have those passives, and strong on characters who do.

I'm quite certain that % increases work: on my Ranger character (who I have a strong +mana regen multiplier built up on, around +80%) an ally with this aura basically eliminated all of my mana costs, as long as I stayed somewhat near them.

I was getting around +20 mana/sec from a level 44ish ally.

I'd recommend changing this skill into 2 gems. Rename the current on to "Greater Clarity", and make one with half the effect and half reserved called "Lesser Clarity". While this is the exact same thing as not leveling the gem, most players want to level the gems, and it would at least give the appearance of more choices, even though it really doesn't.

on ranger lvl 23, 58 intelligence, 183 mana:

I made the mistake to upgrade Clarity at lvl 5.
now, for 5.8 mana/sec I'm left with only 43 mana to work with.

much too big mana reserve for this type of character.

even more, the skills I use increase mana cost faster than the clarity can provide and mana reserve can't grow as fast as the required mana reserve.

all this makes Clarity unusable for Ranger after lvl 24ish and lvl 5 clarity.

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Incze wrote:

The skill is unusable for the moment. I just can't use it with other auras. The cost increase per level is way too high

Yeah, this is pretty much a wasted skill gem in it's current state. The mana reserve cost is WAY too high as you level it, and like Incze said, you can't use it in conjunction with another aura and/or tempest shield unless you want to be running on <10% mana.

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Qarl wrote:

Sorry to all those that feel this is overcosted, but this skill won't be changed for general use cases.

This skill offers a direct feedback loop, mana for mana. Because of this, we need to be very careful with it.

There are definitely ways to use this aura that can be very powerful, at all levels. We need to balance this one based on the abuse cases, which makes it a bit of an expert skill gem.

On top of that it improves a whole party, and all of your caster minions.

Then why not limit the mana regen to a low number and reduce the overall cost? As it stands, balancing it to be practically unusable but ok in abuse cases is quite absurd. I've never heard of developers balancing gems around abuse cases...just change the mechanic.

Otherwise, it's a wasted gem as far as I'm concerned. :/

This gem is partial "broken".

Class:- Ranger
Gem level - 7
Gem manage cost to activate - 180 mana
Mana regen of about 7.5 per sec

Ranger mana pool - 361 mana

Procedure:-
1. Activate Clarity
2. De-Activate Clarity

Issue:-
1. De-activate cost mana (zero cost when its lower)

2. Clarity went erratic there after. (especially the aura on you; you do not know if its turn on or off. But the Skill Bar is correctly shown)

3. Erratic behaviour include some skill causing Clarity to turn off (not sure about this one, cant pin-point to what. Not sure if it just no.2 or other skill causing it).


Final Thought:-
This could explain why sometime my Clarity Aura was turn off unknowningly. And running out of mana is not good in the middle of a battle.

I agree- the gem is useless in a single PVE, however- never tried it in party, may be OP. How about decreasing area of effect on lvl up? It may be a single player aura
ps. are there any minions which can benefit from this aura?