GGG Why should auras be meaningful instead of compensate in builds?

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charmolipi wrote:

all is nice and dandy with your line of thinking until i mention the following word. party

now i do not have to "make meaningful choices" i just need a friend who runs the other 2 auras that i do not. you run anger , i run wrath , exactly the same as yesterday in party play . game-breaking-ly different in solo play

bad decision is bad

That's a fair point, but I don't think it's insurmountable. Just brainstorming here, we can see several different approaches.

A) You can enable a party member's aura to apply to your character, but have it reserve a portion of your mana.

B) You can only have X number of auras active on your character at a time (this seems like a bad option since it's very arbitrary).

C) Reduce aura radius to within melee range of the caster.

Just throwing some thoughts out there. It is possible to find a solution to the party problem.

@OP:

"Covering up holes in your build" and "making meaningful choices" are not mutually exclusive. Prior to change, you might have two holes in your build, and patch both of them over, making your build rather boring without strong weaknesses. After the change, you might have two holes in your build, and you can patch one of them up so well you actually turn it into a strength, while the other hole remains and must be played around. That last option is both covering a hole and meaningful choice.

Meaningful choice is good. Builds with actual weaknesses, believe it or not, are good; they are more fun to play because you actually have specific threats you are very scared of. Allowing players to min/max as hard as they want to is bad. You should have to choose between on thing and another.

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GGprime wrote:

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so far players make a build and use auras to supplement areas in which the gear/passives is lacking. for example, you make a build and realize you need more defense and resists. so you slap on purity and grace. or someone may want to augment damage so they slap on the elemental auras.

What you are describing there is actualy what will happen after the change...now people just use 6 auras because they can, not because they need it to make their build work.

stop putting everyone into the same bucket. i'm running 4 auras due to passive point investment in mana. when i solo, my build depends on running at least 3 of the 4 auras that i do. now i don't give a damn about exploiters who use 6-7 auras on them with BM items that they don't use. why should i be penalized for this?

@Scrotie: with the auras i'm running (grace, purity, hatered, wrath) i had to make really tough choices about my gear to make it all work and get enough mana and at least cap my resists while keeping evasion above bare minumum. so don't tell me that as it is now, auras are something easy to use.

i don't care about the low life shav users and the kaom users that spam all auras on them because these are the 2% of the player base. i couldn't care less how OP those ppl are. but i do care that the regular player like me is going to be gimped because they can't run those vital 3-4 auras for their build should they decide to solo play.

what good is running a buffed purity if i can't run grace, losing 10% base evasion which really gimps my evasion build? what if i can't run hatred, losing at least 8k dps? i might as well make something else.

and about builds having weakness, well it's hard enough not to get 1 shotted when u run evasion. it's hard enough to deal with reflect and it's hard enough to cap resist for hard maps. now removing my auras, might as well trash current builds and make another sporker.

u'll see that this aura change leads to less builds because now auras are going to dictate what build u make instead of thinking of a concept and building your gear/passives around that. we have 10 auras in the game so we'll have possibly 6 different main builds as i assume most will run 2 auras and 1 will spec into heavy aura passives.

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DirkAustin wrote:

Wall of text. Auras dont define builds, my current dual dagger shadow doesn't use any and hes fine.

And you probably play softcore, so you don't need to worry about survivability at all.

Auras were never intended to be run 10 at a time.

They are fixing a problem.

Instead you can pick which 1 or 2 auras you wanna run and have them be more powerful than they were.

Or if you wanna run more you're going to have build specifically for it now, more so than you used to.

GGG's smart and I approve the changes.

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Zaqwert wrote:

Auras were never intended to be run 10 at a time.

They are fixing a problem.

Instead you can pick which 1 or 2 auras you wanna run and have them be more powerful than they were.

Or if you wanna run more you're going to have build specifically for it now, more so than you used to.

GGG's smart and I approve the changes.

why post in my thread without even reading it?

Whith each new bit of info the release just gets grimmer and grimmer...less and less build diversity, isn't that the selling point of the game?
Want to make crazy build going to another side of tree? Well tough luck, make scion and be gimped. Want to solo mid-high content - tough luck, go get a party. But if you want to bot in docks yo uare free to do so to lvl 100. Yay!

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Shmez wrote:

That's a fair point, but I don't think it's insurmountable. Just brainstorming here, we can see several different approaches.

A) You can enable a party member's aura to apply to your character, but have it reserve a portion of your mana.

B) You can only have X number of auras active on your character at a time (this seems like a bad option since it's very arbitrary).

C) Reduce aura radius to within melee range of the caster.

Just throwing some thoughts out there. It is possible to find a solution to the party problem.

a - yes kill party play

b - you got arbitrary right

c - yes, kill summoner builds, and AURA is not equal to a BUFF.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

@OP:


Meaningful choice is good. Builds with actual weaknesses, believe it or not, are good; they are more fun to play because you actually have specific threats you are very scared of. Allowing players to min/max as hard as they want to is bad. You should have to choose between on thing and another.

This goes against every intent and desire of arpg end game character building. If you are unable to do basic reflect or no regen maps then you might as well relegate yourself to docks because you will never progress past level 82 (which might hilariously change come 1.0). No one is going to burn another exalt rolling that maze map because your build is crippled by every 5th map modifier. Thorns and reflect are separate issue and most builds can not completely nullify both.

End game builds should be able to do even the most impossible of map modifier combinations with the possible of blood magic for obvious reasons. The very bases of character building involves carefully balancing offense, defense, utility and versatility through good gear itemization and an optimized passive tree. A well built character will have very few if any glaring weaknesses with regards to what kind of maps they can run.

GGG caters to the hard core gamers and by extension end game players and I think they will balance accordingly.

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Nephalim wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Spoiler

@OP:


Meaningful choice is good. Builds with actual weaknesses, believe it or not, are good; they are more fun to play because you actually have specific threats you are very scared of. Allowing players to min/max as hard as they want to is bad. You should have to choose between on thing and another.

This goes against every intent and desire of arpg end game character building. If you are unable to do basic reflect or no regen maps then you might as well relegate yourself to docks because you will never progress past level 82 (which might hilariously change come 1.0). No one is going to burn another exalt rolling that maze map because your build is crippled by every 5th map modifier. Thorns and reflect are separate issue and most builds can not completely nullify both.

End game builds should be able to do even the most impossible of map modifier combinations with the possible of blood magic for obvious reasons. The very bases of character building involves carefully balancing offense, defense, utility and versatility through good gear itemization and an optimized passive tree. A well built character will have very few if any glaring weaknesses with regards to what kind of maps they can run.

GGG caters to the hard core gamers and by extension end game players and I think they will balance accordingly.

I ran low maps with two negative elemental resistances on my summoner. I think I had like +17% fire. Although, to be totally fair, it was softcore, and I did die quite a few times. Personally, I didn't mind, because it was pretty darn fun. Got the adrenaline flowing.

More to the point, I watch streamers do week races (most recently Turbo), and that isn't softcore. They can't die. And do you really think they have all resistances capped, and impervious defenses? Hell no they don't. They are undergeared, underleveled, and quite often are using an inferior build (Kripparrian isn't exactly known as "top theorycrafter" by anyone sane). But they survive, because they play smart and compensate for those weaknesses. And they do well. Very well. It's publicly available proof-of-concept.

Here's what's really going on: people don't want to play the hack-and-slash game, they want to play the gear-and-skilltree game, then zombie-mode their way through the hack-and-slash part. It seems the objective is to make a build so powerful that it won't die to virtually any threat in the game even if piloted by a trained chimp, dedicating all your brainpower and energy into build design and theorycrafting... and then pilot it like a trained chimp.

But I'm actually not trying to shit all over that playstyle. Seriously. I get it; you want the entire game to be about your choice of build and your choice of items, and if you cared about mouse micro you'd fucking play Starcraft. However, I think the cost of that choice should be that you can't just farm anywhere you want, or any map mods you want. You could selectively choose areas and maps where you can do your trained-chimp thing, get your fix of abnegation, farm some uniques, and so on. No problem.

But in all dead seriousness, the most difficult content in the game should be gated by actual play skill. Even with the best, most OP builds in the game and literally perfect items, how you move and click should be the determining factor in whether you beat said content or not. This means: characters should have defensive weaknesses. Yes, every character should have map affixes they cannot auto-pilot their way through alone; I'm not saying every character should have a map affix which kills them instantly (like Blood Magic for CI), but an affix where you're pretty much gimped and you're relying on your party members to carry you? Absolutely. That, or if you're solo... just reroll the thing. Or, better yet, grow some hair on your balls and actually risk your character's life trying something extraordinarily risky.

Anything less isn't catering to the hardcore gamer, it's catering to the no-lifer. There is a difference. The hardcore gamer is a challenge-seeker, a thrill-seeker; the no-lifer just plays a lot, and thus reaches the endgame quickly, and is willing to do the same thing over and over and over again. No-lifers are the ones who follow the trained-chimp school of ARPG play the hardest. And I hope GGG can make the distinction between the two and keep adrenaline, truly difficult content, and meaningful choice all important factors in endgame maps.

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inamory wrote:

i think it has a negative impact on build diversity.

I really don't know how anyone can make this argument. Right now you can throw a stick and hit a player who is running all of the damage auras and maybe a defensive one on top of that. Auras aren't really interesting because basically everyone is just stacking them like crazy.

After the patch you will be choosing the absolute best auras for your chosen build. For example my first build after the patch will be an attack based fire build. It makes the most sense for me to stack as much fire damage as possible to get the most proliferating burn damage that I can. So I will no longer be using wrath or hatred they would be dumb choices for that build. I will certainly be using Anger.

This ecourages build diversity. People will immediately have a clue that my build is fire based because I am running Anger and not the other Auras.