Determination

Hi,

I have not used much of this gem yet but wanted to leave a bit of feedback.

You can already read my reply on the Vitality thread to get an idea of my tank character.

Anyways,

The only thing that strikes me a bit odd about this gem is that you still have flasks in the game that give +80% to armor during flask effect.

My point is, I would always choose the flask over the aura since the aura has the reserve detriment. That is, unless there was an aura-build templar in my party supporting me with it. Then I would use both :P

My ramblings here are just things to think about in terms of balance, I suppose.

40% mana? o.O

I would prefer to see this changed to a flat armor increase (or maybe a hybrid percentage+flat amount?) so that it can still be useful to allies who don't have decent armor in the first place, which is probably why I would be using the aura to begin with.

Also on a general note on auras as a whole: I think they would be better balanced if they had a personal benefit on top of the actual aura effect, basically meaning that their usefulness doesn't scale linearly with the number of allies, i.e. anger aura doesn't suddenly become 500% as useful if you party with a minion witch with 2 zombies and 2 wraiths.

for example:
Personal benefit: +9% armor (stacking with the below effect.)
Party benefit: +120 armor, +4% armor

This aura gives me 2% extra DR at the cost of 40% of my mana. It does not seem like a good tradeoff.

Maybe it's not intended for a melee build, even though it seems so at first glance?

40% of mana seems expensive but with blood magic is totaly crazy ^^

I can accept mobs damages must be increased and the builds must be more defensives. This aura could be nice but for the moment I can't find a good compromise :-/

I agree that with auras it is a huge compromise, and definitely only appropriate on certain builds.

However, after more tweaking and playing recently I have figured out how to incorporate this aura into my tanking build. See my comments on the Vitality skill gem thread.

At first glance this armor bonus seems like a bad tradeoff, but it is quite good once you can work it into SOMEONE's build. The reason I say "someone" is that I have recently started inviting more and more people into my party and it is obvious just how overpowered auras become once you get 4+ people +some minions in a group together. It's like a giant explosive steamroller that just powers forward through things, lol. I think a lot of the reason that some of the auras seem bad on paper is that you consider the + and - for YOUR CHARACTER only. These really seem balanced around the benefit that they give the entire party. Either way, at around 30% mana reserved (link to mana reduction gem) for 20% armor for all members in the aura, I think this is a sweet gem and I am now incorporating it into my tank build.

Beyond tanking, I think this would also be a great gem for a templar who focused a build on auras and minion summoning.

I prefer designs which allow you to both solo and enjoy different group sizes. A large hunk of the budget needs to become personal benefit, or maybe the benefit per person reduces as group size increases so that the overall utility scales more modestly.

40% reserved mana is way too much for the little benefit that you get. I haven't played in super large groups so I can't say much about the unbalancing effects of boosting the base percentage, but how about adding an equal percentage of extra personal armor on top of the aura effect? That way the group effects are entirely the same, but it becomes viable for solo play too... (40% mana for 40% armor)

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Valarauka wrote:

40% reserved mana is way too much for the little benefit that you get. I haven't played in super large groups so I can't say much about the unbalancing effects of boosting the base percentage, but how about adding an equal percentage of extra personal armor on top of the aura effect? That way the group effects are entirely the same, but it becomes viable for solo play too... (40% mana for 40% armor)

Pretty good suggestion here- giving it an additional flat armor rating increase to the caster of the aura only, not the other party members. That would definitely make it more solo viable and worth considering, if the developers are interested in taking it down this route. Simple and effective suggestion. I like it. I don't think a lot of people even use Determination as it is...