The meta of relying on the bulk of your defense by reserving mana should cease to exist

Right now, determination/grace/defiance banner are the holy trinity of defenses, they provide almost immunity to random bullshit mob deaths and most lethal things would then be players' mistakes, this is good.

But here is the problem, the problem is that our defenses are HIGHLY tied to our auras. We get 2-3x tankier by reserving mana, every meta character right now focuses on reserve the most mana they can.

This isn't fun, we don'have options here, it is either reserve mana to not be squishy, or play an objectively worse build. You have to invest in mana efficency nodes, you have to use auras and if you don't do that then the game is badly balanced for your character.

I think it would be much better if armor/evasion passives got buffed by 30-40% and armor/evasion on gear got buffed 30-40%, while decreasing grace/determination/defiance banner's effects by 50%.

Ideally, people with the auras are equally tanky, but people without the auras are significantly tankier. Right now these 3 auras are literal bandaids for the game, and they need to be ripped off, the fact that GGG hasn't even expressed any concerns here, to me, just shows their inept balance team or their flawed philosophy. You are stripping choices from us by making these 3 auras mandatory for HC, it is why so few builds are viable in HC, because we just lack DAMAGE due to having to use these auras.

Additionally, the whole passive tree was nerfed, with 3 exceptions, people that use ARC, spell suppression, and the mana reservation changes, this further pushed us into this aura meta which i personally think kills diversity. Too much power was put into auras, and it was already a problem before with us reserving the most mana we can.

ye u right but GGG see balance that way... what can do?

Your idea would just create massive power creep. Why? Because people will then just shift all that reservation to pure damage auras (and Purity of Elements). The "problem" you are trying to solve where people get out of reserving all their mana won't change, all you'll change is what auras they are actually reserving as "mandatory."

My opinion is that needs to be LESS power on auras general being defensive or offensive. Infact the whole game feels "power creep" cause of the multipliers everywhere. So a rework with less multipliers and more linear progression would be better for defense and offense (far easier to balance too)

honestly, this statement...

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You have to invest in mana efficency nodes, you have to use auras and if you don't do that then the game is badly balanced for your character.

has always been as true as it is now, unless you are a mom build which is the niche exception where it isnt true that was added to the game as a quirky anomaly at some stage.

i hear what ur saying but temjin is right, if you know it or not what ur actually asking for is that they take the pressure to get good defences away so you can get back to investing in mana efficiency and then reserving all your mana for damage, which if you dont do you are gimped and sub optimal.


what this boils down to is 'auras are important'. are you saying they are too important?




ill be honest, ive got some trouble here, some conflicting thoughts. cause changes were made recently to make aura stacking not as powerful, but you can get an extra aura in on your build easier if you just use a little investment.

the whole change with auras from open beta where we all stacked every aura was make individual auras more impactful and character defining, and then make it so the average build doesnt stack all the auras, in fact they only have 2 rather than 7 or 8. then we got in the mini auras of heralds and banners etc and now a lot of people use a bit of reserve on the tree to fit in a mini option like this on top of their 2, and the theres some room there for investing a bit more and having 3 actual auras or maybe 2 and 2 mini auras.


with the mini auras, i like them, but were creeping back to having more things. and its cool cause the banners and heralds do cool little things. but if we start nerfing auras so that theyre not impactful, these mini auras become what exactly? if we keep them as they are they will rival 50% auras and ud just be back to using 7 things but theyre all banner/herald/self buff things, and if u nerf them too do they even do anything at all?



i think theres a case, a lot of the perpetual outraged people who just cant see any reduction in numbers without crying about nerfs and ggg hates us etc, those people will never agree with this, but there IS a case that you bring down auras and support gems even more.

right now are we at about 35% 'more'? thats about an average multiplier right? for an aura or a support gem were in the ball park of 25%-45% 'more' of the thing ur getting depending on downsides etc. i think theres a valid case to say bring all that down, get everything into the 15%-28% range, bring the average down to about 20%. i think you make a much more balanced and balanceable game. but that would have to wait for poe2 probably, purely because of the really over the top outrage culture that the community has sadly (d)evolved.










but where i disagree is that this is about defences. you dont need grace, determination etc. heres my thoughts from what i see, a lot of people are jumping on these the way people used to with iron reflexes etc. its just become a 'go to', and people have forgot, or some newer players maybe never really knew, that you can get significant defence from gear.

i have characters running around with 80% chance to evade (base, not with flasks) and i dont have grace running, i dont use any defence aura. i have evasion on my gear, shocking i know. people at one point said armour and evasion are shit they dont do anything, so why would i get them on my gear? having an extra 30 life from a hybrid roll and writing off any defence i get from my body armour is better than getting a beefy defence value because armour and evasion are bad and dont do anything. that was the meta thinking.

now the meta thinking is run grace + determination on everything for some people?



i dont buy this "well they buffed them!" no, they kind of didnt, they made it so they did the same thing with less total amount of the defence. that is a buff to a certain source of getting it, but 80% chance to evade right now is the same thing it was when people were saying evasion is worthless, and they could get 80% chance to evade from their gear back then they can still get it now, but they completely laughed off having it back then and still dont get it now because the gear meta in their head hasnt changed. but suddenly running grace because it gives you 80% chance to evade is mandatory?

im just not buying it. i feel like if you want to be able to drop grace and put ur damage aura back on then get evasion on your gear. i have an armoured juggernaut marauder, it has 24k armour (no flasks), im not running determination. I have armour... on my gear. i run pride, dread banner and grace, no iron reflexes, the grace is evasion.



people said armour + evasion hybrid is garbage, it doesnt work, use iron reflexes. that was what i was hearing for years while i was saying armour + evasion is great for mapping. people say now oh well, its buffed! no, its rly not, with the changes to blind and raider and ondars guile and nerfs to granite and basalt flasks no, its not buffed, its the same now as it was in 2014 and has almost always been and youve never needed to run grace + determination to make it really effective.

people wrote off armour and evasion, the gearing meta said never get armour or evasion on your gear, now people realise what has always been true that if you have a bunch of armour and evasion its not gonna tank uber atziri but it will make you godlike against hordes of goblin shitters in day to day mapping.

but they havent re-evaluated their ideas on the gearing meta which are still stuck in 2014 where all that matters is life totals because ar and ev dont work.




evasion and armour have diminishing returns, so if you have strong defence from gear then also stacking the auras has a diminishing effect. stacking damage auras does not in a lot of cases, pride giving you more damage, malevolence giving you more damage, these things dont feed into a diminishing returns equation, they just make you kill the bosses that much faster. youre not always better stacking more and more core defences when theres damage you could be getting instead that makes the fight shorter. its not a case that if you have evasion on gear its still worth always using grace because its just even more bettererist. thats not a thing, it becomes worse as a tradeoff option vs a damage aura the more you have without it.








i dont think theres a defence problem, an argument that 'more multipliers of all kinds are still too strong' can be made imo. i just think auras are very significant, in line with supports atm, and i think its great that people care about defences. ive sat here for 9 years watching the meta thinking completely discount armour and evasion and all im really seeing change in terms of the aura meta here is that people actually care now.


i feel like now we see where peoples priorities are. cause some people are going full defence auras. but actually, you guys are not normal, i think more people are still going full dps auras. and theres some people who are running 50/50 on their 2 big auras. ive always run 50/50 since the big aura rework that stopped me running every aura on every build, i still go 50/50.


i think its totally fine the way it is.

I tried to do some random map on my old MoM character based around Agnostic, and the defensive capability is completely abysmal with just pure focus on mana.
I get that PoE is ever changing game, but removing dodge killed this archetype for me completely.

The only good way how to play MoM is basically with Eldrich Battery and by reserving your mana with defensive auras as OP said. That's not really great for the state of game.

Sure, there are bandaits that make certain reservation skills reserve no mana at all, but you still lose on valuable slots with very inefficient trade off. For me the rework seems halfassed, with too many lose ends that do not exactly inspire creativity in build creation.

It's not dead, you just might be building it wrong. If you want to make it work without determination, I can show you how. I can't see the tree you pieced together so I can't offer specific advice but (I assume you are a Hiero) one thing I will point to is that the jewel socket above Devotion is a really strong spot for an Energised Armour. That jewel makes all the radius hybrid armour/ES nodes give insane amounts of armour. Since you are Agnostic, you don't really have a downside either. Now Determination will really massively juice that up. But if you want to go without it and run damage, you can.

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TemjinGold wrote:

It's not dead, you just might be building it wrong. If you want to make it work without determination, I can show you how. I can't see the tree you pieced together so I can't offer specific advice but (I assume you are a Hiero) one thing I will point to is that the jewel socket above Devotion is a really strong spot for an Energised Armour. That jewel makes all the radius hybrid armour/ES nodes give insane amounts of armour. Since you are Agnostic, you don't really have a downside either. Now Determination will really massively juice that up. But if you want to go without it and run damage, you can.

I don't like Hiero, i had Ascendant (CentralInsurgent lvl 98)
I just put some scuffed up passive tree together without putting much thoought, i don't plan to play the character again.

Used to be dodge cap char, not it doesn't do dmg, has no defenses :D

Haha fair. But either way, if you are getting Agnostic from the tree, you are right next to the spot I'm referencing. If you did want to make this character tanky in the future, it's a good tidbit to remember.

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My opinion is that needs to be LESS power on auras general being defensive or offensive. Infact the whole game feels "power creep" cause of the multipliers everywhere. So a rework with less multipliers and more linear progression would be better for defense and offense (far easier to balance too)

true as well, but i feel like if auras are nerfed, then what do we use our mana for? right now i feel like mana has an identify crisis