Auras are WAY overpowered: Remove reservation, cap them like totems and save blood magic!

I agree but didn't GGG increase the mana reservation just to reduce aura stacking just like they are going to get rid of snapshotting?

I don't think the mana reservation matters much for certain builds, the snapshotting does fortunately...

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Startkabels wrote:

I agree but didn't GGG increase the mana reservation just to reduce aura stacking just like they are going to get rid of snapshotting?

I don't think the mana reservation matters much for certain builds, the snapshotting does fortunately...

What they did was increase aura reservations so that the only way to stack a bunch of them was heavy investment in passives that reduce that reservation. They didn't want to get rid of aura stacking. They wanted to make you have to use a large percentage of your passive points in order to do it.

I'm now starting to be in favor of reducing auras power by up to around 30-40%. They are vastly more powerful than + dmg on gears. They are out of balance, and if they are reduced enough, that would make it less attractive to use so many points to stack them. It also adds greatly to the issue of: "faster weapons or go home".

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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CanHasPants wrote:

I absolutely agree with you here. I am not in favor of hard-caps, but am supportive of the idea for its merits as an idea.

For example, Crackmonster's suggestion, "Change the [notable] behind [Blood Magic] to remove reservation costs but allow a maximum of 2 auras," doesn't sound that bad at first glance, at least as a potentially future build-defining idea. It does not sound like a very good "solution" to Blood Magic, as it's very clearly a non-choice; however, placed behind something perhaps like EB, it could offer interesting trade-offs.. real decisions.

Crackmoster's suggestion, however, is still completely in the "quantity of auras" mindset, and totally incompatible with the "quality of auras" mindset. If you get two (or even one) Auras for free and you actually have the capability to support it to increase the quality of its effect, you are going to have one massively supported aura, for free. It would, at the very least, be a major balancing hinderance which would prevent the "quality over quantity" idea from realizing its full potential.

In re: specifically, compatibility: It is not incompatible. Note: I said I was supportive of the idea for its merits as an idea. Not as a "solution to Blood Magic." (as per: the rest of your post)

Consider for a moment, a keystone that sat behind Eldritch Battery (not Blood Magic!!), that read "Your auras reserve no mana. You have a maximum of one aura"

Now consider that keystone, in a game where auras were powerful because the quantity was appropriately supported by aura support gems.

Support gems have mana cost multipliers; EB is good at mitigating MCM; EB blocks a keystone that circumvents mana reservations, which are now considered dependent upon what MCM is added.

My point is, that while the intention was misplaced, the idea behind it is not without merit, and it is certainly not incompatible with your idealized aura situration. Actually, if you'd take the time, I think it adds to it considerably.

Aside from the power imbalance, what's cheesy about auras is how they make a mockery of PoE's skill+support gems paradigm. Unlike virtually every other skill choice, auras have and require just one support: Reduced Mana. The fact that RM is mandatory for every build that uses auras is a dead giveaway of a design that's dysfunctional without its crutches. Here's one way to overhaul it:

1. Make Reduced Mana additive (like Clarity's cost) to recover some reserved mana.
2. Reduce 60% and 40% aura reservation percentages to 45% and 30%.
3. Make Added Cold, Fire, Lightning dmg and penetration work on their respective auras.
4. Make Concentrated Effect work on both offensive and defensive auras.
5. Reduce base damage of offensive auras by around 50%.
6. Reduce buffs of defensive auras by around 50% (except Vitality and Clarity).

With this scheme, Reduced Mana would work as usual with regular skills, but with auras it would only recover a fixed amount of mana per level, similar to how Clarity costs a fixed amount per level.

Added Cold/Pen gems would only work on Hatred, Added Fire/Pen gems on Anger, and Add Light/Pen on Wrath auras. (Of course, they'd still work the same on attacks.)

Conc Effect could be combined with Increased AOE gem to boost aura effect and radius.

With these changes, you could choose to specialize in 1-2 auras buffed with linked support gems, rather than simply running as many auras as possible.

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RogueMage wrote:

4. Make Concentrated Effect work on both offensive and defensive auras.

Only if they make conc effect 'less radius' instead of 'reduced' while at that, as it is now, it's a free multiplier (and a hefty one at that) instead of a tradeoff between power and area.

I don't like the flat reduced mana idea, it would enable you to run auras for free if your mana pool is small enough or do virtually nothing if it's large. I'd like to see reduced mana increased in magnitude but working only as a skill 'cost' multiplier, not for reservation. There are a few skills like dominating blow which could really use some support to lop off, say, 50% of mana consumption, it would get a bit more use than it does now maybe, I don't really count this aura thing as an honest use of the gem.

But really, do we need a better sign that resource system is flawed than lack of use for skill cost nodes and RM? In Titan Quest, for instance, skill cost passives and gear bonuses are very useful. And that's because it has percentage restoration only on potions, for mana and life regen you have a flat regen per second bonuses and a percentage increase of that base regen, you need both to have a meaningful amount. In PoE it's just the opposite, life and mana regen is percentage based (with flat life regen being a total joke) and potions are flat, well, I think we can see how well that worked out. Clarity is an exception, but they made it an exclusive source of flat mana regen to muck up things even further.

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raics wrote:

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RogueMage wrote:

4. Make Concentrated Effect work on both offensive and defensive auras.

Only if they make conc effect 'less radius' instead of 'reduced' while at that, as it is now, it's a free multiplier (and a hefty one at that) instead of a tradeoff between power and area.

I don't like the flat reduced mana idea, it would enable you to run auras for free if your mana pool is small enough or do virtually nothing if it's large.

Agreed on Conc Effect, it should cut down a percentage of your radius rather than reduce it by a fixed amount.

I see what you mean with a fixed amount Reduced Mana on a small mana pool. It should probably just not work on mana reservation at all.

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mark1030 wrote:

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Startkabels wrote:

I agree but didn't GGG increase the mana reservation just to reduce aura stacking just like they are going to get rid of snapshotting?

I don't think the mana reservation matters much for certain builds, the snapshotting does fortunately...

What they did was increase aura reservations so that the only way to stack a bunch of them was heavy investment in passives that reduce that reservation. They didn't want to get rid of aura stacking. They wanted to make you have to use a large percentage of your passive points in order to do it.

Yeah that's what I said...

Anyway, still like ggnorekthx already mentioned: People are now pretending auras are overpowered without any good arguments really...

There are just a couple of builds that use a combination of mechanics like the broken skill ST which was designed completely wrong, combined with Crown of Eyes, auras and the aura passives and a dagger with crit.

If you're just playing a common build that specs into aura passives, there is nothing wrong with his auras being strong as that is was he specced for.

When people come across an OP build, many immediately want to nerf the components it's build from into the ground which is totally unfair for other builds and a very short sighted solution really.

Auras became twice as good as before really, they boosted them baseline and gave them up to additional 78% boost...

Yes because auras were not powerful at all before, GGG has made them more meaningful by reserving more mana but making them more powerful.

Speccing into auras is now a more meaningful choice, but you have to see it separately from those very specific build setups everybody is throwing in as the base argument for their nerfs.