Ashes of the Stars: Nerf or Buff?

This is definetly a nerf for all Aurastacking Builds and by that a major one.
The stat is Reservation Efficency of skills, so it is 20% Life AND Mana Reservation Efficency and by that a huge blow to reserving Auras with your life, as Life Reservation Efficency is very scarce (remember, no Tattoos anymore).

The reservation efficiency is what ever. You can get that else where. You know what is harder to get?

+ quality
+ skill gem levels

+ both above on one item

If you think the quality on the current gems is crazy, which is just alt quality gem stat pushed to base gem, then wait till we see the transfigured gems. Quality is huge now for a wider variety of skills and support gems. Ashes is actually going to go up in value thanks to this change.

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. Ashes is actually going to go up in value thanks to this change.

except it would be HH tier if the reservation mod stay

I'm surprised so many think it was nerfed overall, I can't see anything but straight buff.

as Jgizle said reservation you can get elsewhere, quality is very rare and quality got buffed by a huge degree. Can't see it as anything other than a buff unless you are running a specific build that loses a full aura and you have literally no way to get it back on.

Even then I think you could end up with better stats overall if you take the extra damage into account and shift some passives.

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Draegnarrr wrote:

I'm surprised so many think it was nerfed overall, I can't see anything but straight buff.

as Jgizle said reservation you can get elsewhere, quality is very rare and quality got buffed by a huge degree. Can't see it as anything other than a buff unless you are running a specific build that loses a full aura and you have literally no way to get it back on.

Even then I think you could end up with better stats overall if you take the extra damage into account and shift some passives.

Only some skills got quality buffed to the point it's worth building for. For those skills, it's a buff. But for most, it's a nerf.

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ExiledSarin wrote:

Only some skills got quality buffed to the point it's worth building for. For those skills, it's a buff. But for most, it's a nerf.

Fair point, but is it stronger overall was the question? My gut feeling is more expensive in the upcoming league to the previous - Certainly could be wrong.

If your build gets nothing from the quality its obviously just a nerf.

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ExiledSarin wrote:

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Draegnarrr wrote:

I'm surprised so many think it was nerfed overall, I can't see anything but straight buff.

as Jgizle said reservation you can get elsewhere, quality is very rare and quality got buffed by a huge degree. Can't see it as anything other than a buff unless you are running a specific build that loses a full aura and you have literally no way to get it back on.

Even then I think you could end up with better stats overall if you take the extra damage into account and shift some passives.

Only some skills got quality buffed to the point it's worth building for. For those skills, it's a buff. But for most, it's a nerf.

Only the base gems that got nerfs received nerfs. In actuality this is what happened.

1. Gems with poor quality stats had their best alternate quality gem stat from heist gems added to the base gem instead.

2. Skill gem's that currently have a unique play style have had their base gem changed, and that unique playstyle has now been moved to a transfigured gem which allows them to better control that specific playstyle, and in some cases improve how that play style is actually played and built around. This is big because so many skills can be played in a plethora of ways, but realistically there was a best version of how you should play many of the skills. By separating them out into their own gems, it allows them to amplify that style, how you gear for it, and how you play it, while allowing potentially new styles to emerge that can be just as good and are built differently.

They specifically state this in the patch notes that gems with stats completely removed have had those moved to transfigured gems. So for example RF lost base damage, and was changed to require more investment in hp / energy shield and hp regen. As a starter build this is a huge nerf to the early to mid game mapping. It is not an issue at all while leveling, and in reality the end game version of this build was actually buffed due to this change. However there is obviously a transfigured version of Righteous Fire which will likely have a lot more base damage than even the original gem had, and will probably have either a higher or lower than original percentage of hp / es damage over time converted into RF's base damage.

For most skills, a nerf, if there was actually a nerf, was nerfed only on the base version of the skill, and that means players will likely need to swap to a transfigured gem in mid game after running lab a few times, or just buying it from someone. There will be many cases where people will not play the transfigured version of a skill, and in many cases people will. What is important here is that build variety has just opened up a ton.

What this also means is anything related to quality for gems is going to increase in value, and ashes is one of those. With Ashes and a +20 quality cyclone a player will be able to nearly remove the movement speed penalty of cyclone. With an enhance on top even if its only level 3, the player will actually gain a more movement speed modifier to their base movement speed when ever they use cyclone. This is huge and there are many examples of cases like this where quality is going to make a huge difference.