Inner Force

Can we move or have a similar node or cluster somewhere outside of the witch tree? At the moment, if you want a heavy aura or buffish build, and want them to be more potent via skill tree, the only way to accomplish that is to travel into the witch tree and get inner force.

Just a thought. Perhaps somewhere near the shadow or perhaps in the middle of it, since auras are universally used, it makes little sense to put the most potent of aura passives, randomly in the witch tree, rather then in the middle, where most of the universally wanted/used passives are.

I was thinking Inner Force and auras is meant to be a Templar-style specialisation. Its opposite in the skill tree, increased Skill Duration, can also be very useful for casters (but difficult to get to).

So, I'm not really for making every part of the tree have access to these kinds of special nodes.

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zharmad wrote:

I was thinking Inner Force and auras is meant to be a Templar-style specialisation. Its opposite in the skill tree, increased Skill Duration, can also be very useful for casters (but difficult to get to).

So, I'm not really for making every part of the tree have access to these kinds of special nodes.

However, you have no real "Basis" so to speak on auras being made for templars, IMO it makes absolutely no sense. Increased skill duriation is also relatively closer to the center, by two nodes, and is at the intersection of 4 clusters. Inner force is relatively stranded in the middle of a rather desolate highway that very few builds outside of witch/templar go to.

On the inverse, I have this to say, of all the auras, likely one of the strongest is universally agreed to be discipline. Now, ES itself is exceptionally strong in almost all scenarios. My specific thought is that with inner force located closer to Iron Reflexes, it would encourage people to pick up the node, simply because, quite frankly, ES doesn't NEED any extra handouts, OTOH, Armor and evasion specifically, can do with all of the small hand outs they can get.

Also, a fair point to say is, why do you say that its meant for Templar/caster when only 1 of the auras directly affects casting, while 2 more are commonly used. Of all the classes, and all the specs, Inner force is quite frankly, LEAST useful for witches. With the exception of summoners. We all know summoners need some considerable re balancing.

I don't quite like it's placement either, but moving it towards the duelist/ranger area or even the shadow area seems like a truly bad idea. Discipline is strong no doubt. Wrath, anger and hatred are also strong and moving inner force in to an area with high attack speeds just isn't wise because of those three auras.

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grogor wrote:

I don't quite like it's placement either, but moving it towards the duelist/ranger area or even the shadow area seems like a truly bad idea. Discipline is strong no doubt. Wrath, anger and hatred are also strong and moving inner force in to an area with high attack speeds just isn't wise because of those three auras.

Like I said, it can go into the middle or anywhere else. I am disagreeing with the placement, because, atm, the only people commonly using that highway are ele based rangers and casters. Since ele based rangers are already in the area of catalyze and the templar nodes, why exactly do we have that cluster so accessible?

I agree, but it's more of an issue of where could it even be moved? Marauder sure doesn't need the help so that's out. The shadow/duelist area has too much attack speed to exploit the elemental auras and elemental damage has already been nerfed repeatedly because of how it works with attack speed.

If it's moved to the center of the tree, anyone going elemental damage is probably picking up those center 3 10% nodes anyway. I guess you could move those center elemental weapon nodes to shadow, then move inner force down to where those previously were?

I was specifically thinking the duelist - marauder area myself, but left it open to discussion. Its already strong on the caster side, giving them basically a free 160 ES from discipline. At least if its in the duelist/marauder area and they pick it up, it will be giving them some evasion from grace, which is sorely needed, since evasion is trashy, even if its converted to armor, armor still needs more help then ES.

Honestly, Im not even sure what the skill duriation passives exist for. They don't affect charges, I guess blood rage, but that's about it as far as I can remember atm.

At the very least move it to a better skill intersection, with HP there aswell, rather then stranded in scenic nowhere as far as skills go. I can't justify getting it when theres literally nothing else to get there.

Also, to be fair, at level 20, the damage aura gems wont give more then 60 elemental damage from auras usually if they're using reasonable aspeed weapons. The whole cluster gives top end 30 damage from wrath, 18 from anger and 7.5% phys damage added to their total, so it wouldn't be game BREAKING, but would give some build diversity in allowing builds to have auras and leveraging said auras as a focal point. At the moment, auras are simply icing on the cake.

I wanted to ask if its intended that inner force increases the dmg that righteous fire deals to you.

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EpsiIon wrote:

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One reason would be because I don't usually imagine a witch who doesn't use some necromancy, and templars with methods of attack. ^^

Templars also have broader selection of auras earlier in the current quest reward sequence. They receive all auras except vitality and grace, and get every elemental damage aura after Cruel Hillock. Only Templar and Witches currently get Purity. Intelligence characters also get more mana to power multiple auras and receive more benefits from Inner force, without recourse to Blood Magic. Some extra nodes will give you an ability to power 4-6 auras. While you can also do this with rangers and duelists, they don't have either the minion passives nor all the necessary skill gems unless traded for.

The only reason you can say witches have the least benefit is because their wand repertoir sucks. The passive tree contain 4 wand clusters, but nobody picks them now because of lack of skills and +physical dmg and +accuracy mods are so hard to get on a wand as well. That the devs haven't changed it means that they're still looking to make more wand skills, so we're not finished with attack witches yet..

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EDIT:
I can potentially see the node moved slightly closer to the center, and I can understand the balance problem between ES and armour/evasion (Although IMO it's the balance between chaos damage and CI. For example, viable templars have to *choose* either life+armour or ES+CI, they can't have both right now - that is a design flaw).

However, I would suggest that the solution be to adjust the skills Vitality, Grace (evasion mechanic problem) and Determination (too expensive) - or their base mechanism. Inner Force is not worth getting over other more effective nodes unless you have at least 3-4 auras, or high attack speed, or minions.

EDIT2:
On Increased Skill Duration, I honestly would like to see more skills with a skill duration that can be used with ISD. Poison-arrows, punctures, ice-shots, etc. seem to be designed for this, but most people would rather kill faster instead.
If it became Increased Damage over Time, well... :P (There's an existing problem of not having enough synergies for DoT skills)