Determination

This needs to at the very least give More Armor rather than Increased Armor.

Quite simply this buff isn't good, and I cannot determine what situation you would want it in.

What's the point of the huge mana penalty? It's a high percentage supposedly because it benefits your whole party but it can't actually benefit your party unless they use armor.

So basically this skill is only useful in specific, highly-specialized groups.

try looking at it this way, a character that is devoted to atr mostly/only, will NOT have much mana. if the skill was a fixed number and increased on improvements, then that character would rapidly run out of mana space and forced to split into int or mana boosts.

while that doesn't sound so bad. lets try some numbers instead of promoting diversity the wrong way =p.

lv 40 marader, no extra int, roughly 170 mp (not really but from what i remember, that is close). 40% mp is 68 mp. if same character gained 10 mp, that would only be a 4 mp increase in cost.
anger is 60 mp resurve, increasing by 5 per lv.
clarity was 80 increasing by 10 per lv.

so think a little, low mp players will have better benefit of % auras, while the fixed cost ones require large pools. those also require int eventually to equip but thats only to "help" players meet the costs.

"

soul4hdwn wrote:

try looking at it this way, a character that is devoted to atr mostly/only, will NOT have much mana. if the skill was a fixed number and increased on improvements, then that character would rapidly run out of mana space and forced to split into int or mana boosts.

while that doesn't sound so bad. lets try some numbers instead of promoting diversity the wrong way =p.

lv 40 marader, no extra int, roughly 170 mp (not really but from what i remember, that is close). 40% mp is 68 mp. if same character gained 10 mp, that would only be a 4 mp increase in cost.
anger is 60 mp resurve, increasing by 5 per lv.
clarity was 80 increasing by 10 per lv.

so think a little, low mp players will have better benefit of % auras, while the fixed cost ones require large pools. those also require int eventually to equip but thats only to "help" players meet the costs.

That doesn't address how small the benefit is.

And I'd expect a low mana marauder to spec into blood magic anyway, at which point 40% is unuseable.

i didn't address the horribly low amount, yes, and i understand that which is why i avoided mentioning it.

i do have a suggestion to devs. someone else said chance the increase to a "more" based increase. however just doing that is a bit far... even if the other two defense increasing auras are far stronger due to thier fixed numbers scaling rapidly... and before passives.

for determination to be more fitting, it should look like this: 35% reserve, 10% (+1% per lv) more armor to allies. basically half the current increases to make it a multiplier. that way templars and duelists (or anyone using any type of armor... armor) can get a more noticeable benefit while giving pure armors slightly higher improvement.

granted not enough people honestly only grab defense nodes passed the ones directly next to thier starting location, this feels about right globally. it'll only be broken if someone wants to devote thier entire build on defense, which is pretty bad considering diminishing returns, AND you'd lack ability to kill.

Yeah, im using IR to convert Evasion to Armor. At 1.5k armor this skill-gem is giving me +134 armor.

Is 134 armor worth 40% of my Mana/HP? No.

This one definately needs reworking.

1st.

I have no idea how it works. But on the other hand what matters is that it works badly or tooltip is pretty much usless.

Tooltop says:

"You and nearby allies gain 20% increased armor"

Before socketing: 914 Armor
After Socketing: 1042 Armor

Sorry guys but it's not 20% in any way. If you guys use some "hidden base armor bonus shit" please make tooltips that specify what's going on exactly.

I work as "information designer" at branding company and trust me this is simply as missleading as it can get.


2nd.

As few players stated before me. 40% seems quite expensive for such a low boost. 15% ~ 20% is an absolute max in my opinion but I might be missing the whole picture at max level.

It seems clear that people are unhappy with this aura and it is underpowered. I do not see why it consumes 40% mana whereas Grace and Discipline do not.

"

FishCookies wrote:

1st.

I have no idea how it works. But on the other hand what matters is that it works badly or tooltip is pretty much usless.

Tooltop says:

"You and nearby allies gain 20% increased armor"

Before socketing: 914 Armor
After Socketing: 1042 Armor

Sorry guys but it's not 20% in any way. If you guys use some "hidden base armor bonus shit" please make tooltips that specify what's going on exactly.

I work as "information designer" at branding company and trust me this is simply as missleading as it can get.

I realize that outside of the game's terminology, this can be viewed as misleading (as well as every single other "increased" bonus). But once you understand the game's use of "increased" and "more", it makes much more sense.

All "increased" bonuses are added together, and then that total is multiplied by the base value, stacking additively. All "more" bonuses simply multiply the value, and stack multiplicatively.

To give an example, let's say you have 500 base armor from gear.

If you have 40% increased armor, 30% increased armor, and 20% increased armor, no matter what the sources of those, they all add together into 90% increased armor. Then your 190% is multiplied by 500, making it 950 armor total.
(1+(.4+.3+.2)*500=950

If you have 40% more, 30% more, and 20% more armor, then each of them is multiplied seperately by the 500.
1.4*1.3*1.2*500=1092

If you have 40% increased armor, 30% increased armor, and 20% more armor, the increases are all added together for 70%, and then the 70% and the 20% are both multiplied seperately.
(1+(.4+.3))*1.2*500=1020

Sorry for the massive wall of text, but hopefully now that the math is explained, you can understand. The same system holds true for all aspects of PoE, all "increase" bonuses get lumped together into one value before being applied, whereas all "more" bonuses are applied individually (decrease and less are the keywords for the opposites, respectively). As per these calculations, this makes "more" effects significantly stronger.

I understand that this can be misleading for new players, but it is hard to come up with a way to explain the difference between these two effects in a single word. So I am glad that GGG has simply chosen their keyword for each and created a very clear distinction between the two. As for confusing new players, how many people expect to come to a new game with the ability to immediately understand every aspect and keyword of that game? Maybe GGG will include some sort of tutorial for players after open beta, or maybe someone confused about a mechanic can just go look it up in the Mechanics thread.



All of that aside, I think that 40% mana reserve for a 20% increase to armor is rather weak. A player who is building armor will probably also have picked up the increased armor passives, thereby diminishing the effect of this passive. The two ways to change this would be to make it a flat value like the two other defensive auras, or to make it a "more" effect.