Why are auras so necessary?

I still to this day of playing this game still don't understand why auras are so embedded into this game and the balance of it.

What would be so wrong to nerf them and spread their power around the passive tree and onto equipment?

Or make them just single target buffs but limit them to like 3 per character so everybody can use them and have special exceptions on chase items to give an extra buff? Call them prayers or something and don't make them as broken as they are.

PS I love the ruthless change that determination lost its inherent armor # buff. I think this should go into base game and just spread it across the passive tree.

Well what else you got for the use of mana except MoM, Arcane Cloak and Archmage?

They provide an interesting balance consideration for character development - primarily by asking the question what are you going to use your mana for?

That being said I think Auras are too powerful and I doubt GGG or most anyone would disagree but its where balance has currently got to and its difficult to change those things without major ramifications. This is why they don't use mana in PoE2.

I prefer the Blessing mechanic over Auras.

The history of Auras is a very long one. Back in beta there were 6 or so total.

As time went on more got added for build variation. Defensive Auras were rarely used because the base Defense stats didn't work, flat DR was simply better. Now we do ridiculous damage and given Defensive stats sorta work now. We all got pigeon holed into being Defense Aura bots.

In short it wasn't a good mechanic to start. Now it's mostly for groups cuz everyone moves warp speed so there's no way to build an actual target support role.

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Heidern2880 wrote:

Well what else you got for the use of mana except MoM, Arcane Cloak and Archmage?

since most auras reserve a % of mana having 100 mana or 15k mana makes no diference.

leaving guardian aside, auras don't work with stacking mana. wish we had a support that actually made mana stacking builds viable with auras say:

linked auras reserve an aditional 1% mana * lv of this support
linked auras gain increased effect every "x" amount of mana / life reserved

To be honest, I would never play a game that has no aura or aura-like skills.

I do not enjoy having to micro every single little buff in my arsenal. For me to enjoy the gameplay, certain things HAVE to be automated. And certain buffs have to be PERMANENT. The whole "blessing" mechanic was DoA for me.

I know not everyone feels this way, but it is where I gravitate in any arpg I have ever played. From D1 all the way to now. The classes, games, and skills I like the most all include at least some kind of permanent aura-like buff effect.

Perhaps developers feel the same as me....it would be interesting to have a legit poll of player opinions on auras.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

To be honest, I would never play a game that has no aura or aura-like skills.

I do not enjoy having to micro every single little buff in my arsenal. For me to enjoy the gameplay, certain things HAVE to be automated. And certain buffs have to be PERMANENT. The whole "blessing" mechanic was DoA for me.

I know not everyone feels this way, but it is where I gravitate in any arpg I have ever played. From D1 all the way to now. The classes, games, and skills I like the most all include at least some kind of permanent aura-like buff effect.

Perhaps developers feel the same as me....it would be interesting to have a legit poll of player opinions on auras.

Depends on combat pace. If action is slow, having 1 button build will quickly make players bored and posting videos of playing with paper press on their keyboard + lazily dragging the mouse.

The faster game is, the more things have to be automated, to at least show baseline respect for your players. Which is why I've always ranted about poe not having automated currency pickup (which Chinese poe does have in the form of pets, wonder why :)). All those thousands of clicks/keystrokes on flask piano (before) and blessings (now), combined with managing dozens currency types, only deduct from the current game state and negatively affect player health too.

Official answer of "but we have D2 atmosphere!"... well... D2 atmosphere in poe went out of the window years ago.

Auras and flasks are in a rather silly spot tbh

They are too strong

Offense-speaking, auras gives true % damage increase that makes them significantly stronger than almost every other type of damage increase in the game. At super high level of dps, even a 70% damage increase dont makes much difference, but since auras gives "true" "more damage", squeezing an extra aura does makes a noticeable impact on every level of play

Defense-speaking, auras and flasks are just OP, even ignoring the elephants that is mageblood and the exclusive elemental reduction on elemental flasks, a character that is able to mantain 100% uptime of granite flask+pride gets more defense than a character with top tier affixes on every armor slot, its just dumb

I feel its quite clear they are both balanced towards the time when flasks were temporary buffs you activated when things got intense and auras are balanced for old times when reservation was rare and most players only had 3 at most and had to choose between offensive and defensive auras. Devs plain didnt updated their power for the current reality of players having 100% uptime on flasks AND 6-ish auras(but instead, slowly, and maybe without noticing, balanced the whole game around perma flasks with 5 auras and now auras and flasks are near mandatory)

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feike wrote:

I feel its quite clear they are both balanced towards the time when flasks were temporary buffs you activated when things got intense and auras are balanced for old times when reservation was rare and most players only had 3 at most and had to choose between offensive and defensive auras. Devs plain didnt updated their power for the current reality of players having 100% uptime on flasks AND 6-ish auras(but instead, slowly, and maybe without noticing, balanced the whole game around perma flasks with 5 auras and now auras and flasks are near mandatory)

....except that GGG has nerfed both of these things HARD in the very recent past. They nerfed flask power over 50%. They nerfed reservation well over 50%. So it can't really be said that these things are from a "previous" balance time: they have been balanced and rebalanced multiple times in very recent history. GGG has recognized and shown that they KNOW its a problem.

The issue is that GGG can't balance things...

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jsuslak313 wrote:

....except that GGG has nerfed both of these things HARD in the very recent past. They nerfed flask power over 50%. They nerfed reservation well over 50%. So it can't really be said that these things are from a "previous" balance time: they have been balanced and rebalanced multiple times in very recent history. GGG has recognized and shown that they KNOW its a problem.

The issue is that GGG can't balance things...

I would say the nerf was kinda... well... moot

The flask nerf came along with flask orbs(they mentioned they didnt wanted the finguer-work required for 100% uptime, but we can infer that they embraced 100% uptime as "default" from that quote and the introduction of flask orbs), and ofc, the exact same patch that nerfed flasks was also the patch that introduced mageblood, so basically, they gave us the means to neutralize the nerf literally at the same time

The reservation rework was accompanied with many buffs to the auras, they mentioned that things were getting out of hand as with the original mechanic(that i cant quite recall what it was called... reservation reduction i think?) it was possible to reduce reservation costs to extremely small costs that enabled players with enough currency to have ALL the auras in the game(thats not an exageration) and almost as if to drive the point home, aurabot players were complaining that with the rework, they woudnt be able to easily have 20+ auras on their bots(and thats also not hyperbole)
But the nerf/rework also gave buffs on auras to compensate, many auras had numeric buffs and determination and grace both recieved major buffs(they used to only give % increase to existing defense or only base defense with no % increase before that patch, they did not gave both)
In short, big buffs along with the nerfs, many players even before the patch noted that the changes just culled abuse and finguerwork but changed very little balance big picture-wise