Clarity

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Brixtan wrote:

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Qarl wrote:

Sorry to all those that feel this is overcosted, but this skill won't be changed for general use cases.

This skill offers a direct feedback loop, mana for mana. Because of this, we need to be very careful with it.

There are definitely ways to use this aura that can be very powerful, at all levels. We need to balance this one based on the abuse cases, which makes it a bit of an expert skill gem.

On top of that it improves a whole party, and all of your caster minions.

Then why not limit the mana regen to a low number and reduce the overall cost? As it stands, balancing it to be practically unusable but ok in abuse cases is quite absurd. I've never heard of developers balancing gems around abuse cases...just change the mechanic.

Otherwise, it's a wasted gem as far as I'm concerned. :/

I feel that it is perfectly usable for almost any witch spec.

You can get a decent amount of +regen on gear without even really trying too hard (50-100% easily), and getting 100% regen from passives is trivial (takes 3 passives that are on the way to commonly taken things).

At this point you're getting upwards of 40 mp/s at gemlvl ~15, and as a witch you should have somewhere around 1k mana at this lvl (about lvl 60), so the reservation cost is easy to sustain (attaching it to a reduced mana support is assumed, as for all auras).

All in all a fine skill even if you only do a couple small things to support it.

Having peered over the patch notes I saw the following:

"Clarity Aura: Increased progression at higher levels"

I'm having a dumb moment, anyone else have an opinion of what this exactly means (It's been a long time since I did some pragmatics in English Language class :p). To me it's saying that either the experience required to reach the higher levels of gem is going to increase or the mana regeneration rate is going to increase more at higher levels in comparison to the lower levels, how do you guys interpret the note?

I use the skill on my duelist and it works like a charm almost keeping me at a constant 'infinite' mana pool. :)

Cheers for any help!

It is the latter, the mana regeneration will increase at higher levels.

I don't understand why people have an issue with this gem. Reserving less than 100 mana should be no problem for most int builds, and you receive a static boost to mana regen which can be improved with percent boosts. Have a larger mana pool that has room for more reserved mana? It's time to level up your clarity for an added boost. The reason you're having trouble with it is you're doing it wrong. Someone stated earlier that they don't see a point in a gem that's only useable in abusive cases, this gem is not even close to that.

This gem seemed absurdly strong after getting a few levels on it for my witch (yes I fully leveled it)

Picking up one mana regen % increase in the tree and later on, and with one mana regen % increase item, I could stay mana neutral with a large number of spells

This Aura is Awesome i mean it was Hard to Reserve that high Amount of Mana at first but now, i feel if i don´t have it Activated i am in more Trouble, also for a Flame Caster/Necromancer this is a Must have i am always happy to lvl this Gem up:).

The Good.(IMO)

Its no % reservation like 25% of my Mana
i don´t like % Reservation...

Nice Mana Regen (i think it was something like
18+MP/sec) whit that i can easily Cast my Fire Balls of Lightning.

Good for High lvl Chars whit Much o Mana.

The Bad(IMO)

Its a realy High Amount of Mana Reserved the Higher the
Gem is, also if you are someone whit low Mana don´t Touch it, this Gem will Eat your Mana and spit it in your Face!

Extremely powerful support on my Ice caster shadow, at least while leveling. Single-handedly makes %mana regen nodes worthwhile. Even with the high mana reservation amount it more than makes up for it with the regen it gives.

Seems well balanced imo. I don't expect this to be an optimal solo choice except on Eldritch Battery and low-life builds since flask regen can still outdo it, but it's useful in plenty of scenarios.

Good skill to use for pain attunement with a blood magic support gem. That said, I personally haven't heard of any effective pain attunement builds due to the occasional chaos damage in the game though.

Also good to use with Eldritch battery, since the extra mana pool gained from it not only increases default regen due to having a larger pool (which would maybe make this unnecessary), but would allow for even more regeneration since you have extra mana pool to work with.

I've been using Clarity on my Duelist with mana cost reduction and increased mana regeneration rate.

I run Hatred at the same time.

I can continuously spam Cleave, Double Strike, or Frenzy as much as I want, and I never run out of mana, because Clarity is recharging me faster than I can use it (along with the passive skill pts. I put into mana cost reduction, mana regen, etc.)

Is this intended?

Seems like once you get your regen greater than your per second usage through passives, then you have what I call "unlimited ammo" for high speed, spammable skills.

It's great with Cleave, as I can spam PBAOE all day and never run out.

I'm working Clarity into pretty much every character and build I have.

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iPan wrote:

Is this intended?

I'm guessing yes, because mana costs increase exponentially as you add more support gems.