Are Mines being turned into a support skill now?

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When placed, it has a stacking aura that increases the damage nearby enemies take by 3%. This means that it provides 45% increased damage taken when you've got a full set of mines placed

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When placed, it has a stacking aura that increases critical chance for hits against enemies around it by 10%.

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When placed, it has a stacking aura that adds fire damage to hits against enemies near it, which grows as the gem levels.

All of those sound like global effects. If they are, that would be really stupid. Just toss out a bunch of Stormblast Mines to get a 45% damage boost even on a Tornado Shot character now, at the cost of just 1 (or 2 with Minefield, for convenience) gem sockets? Please tell me these aren't global effects. Should only apply to damage done by mines, or at most by mines and traps. Even the mana reservation cost doesn't look too significant, judging by their video.

Similarly the Skitterbots with their shocking and chilling auras sound like even non-miner and trapper builds will use them, just for the added utility.

Blight would be a bit of a failure of the poison ass and sabo miner archetypes turned out to be anything less than stellar.

As shallow as it seems, it does attract the attention of a lot players who want to abuse the hell out of a build for 1.5 months and hibernate until the next league. I really hope some baseline powerful builds (for melee especially) remain league after league instead of completely dumping the rooster for a new one.

GGG recognized how broken aurabots are and decides to turn everyone into aurabot themselves.

While I could see mines being used by pure support builds or in certain niche cases such as DoT and totem builds(for the aura and to proc EE)I don't think mines will be a auto include in most builds.

main reason is simply that you have to place the mines. Might sound dumb but many people don't enjoy having to press more then 1 button (and perhaps a second for a move skill) or have so many bindings another would cause issues (will need to see how the extra bindings are implemented for this).

Additionally assuming your playing any build that relies on attacking/casting multiple time quickly (so... probably most skills in the game?) there is the question of aura/buff up time. With out lay speed or duration scaling once you place all mines you would only have ~1 second to attack/cast before mines start to expire. Sure there are fights where that's enough and you likely don't need the full effect but if that's the case your damage is probably fine already and you might be better off using time and sockets for other things.

Lastly there is the question of normal auras. You probably only want to use mines this way if no auras really help you given there always in effect and the power of some watchers eye mods.

Anyway long rant short: yes they sound like they could be used for support, but no I don't think this is as strong as it seems in most cases... also yes i will be using skitter bots in any build that can spare the mana/sockets but that's because i think there adorable and yay more pets...

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stomatopod wrote:

Additionally assuming your playing any build that relies on attacking/casting multiple time quickly (so... probably most skills in the game?) there is the question of aura/buff up time. With out lay speed or duration scaling once you place all mines you would only have ~1 second to attack/cast before mines start to expire. Sure there are fights where that's enough and you likely don't need the full effect but if that's the case your damage is probably fine already and you might be better off using time and sockets for other things.

I don't expect they'll be used in normal play. Rather I was thinking of boss fights, particularly boss fights that involve a significant dialogue or other wind-up time before the actual fight begins (both Shaper and Uber Elder begin with dialogue, for instance). You can't do anything then anyway, you might as well just set yourself up for a massive first hit. With enough boosting, we already have people turning that first hit into the only hit they need aka a 1-hit kill. And now this fits in with that perfectly - lay down your mines (and whatever else you do) and then as soon as the fight starts, BOOM! and they're dead. Trappers and miners already do this, but now all the non-trap/mine builds can indulge in it as well, without any of the tradeoffs that full trap/mine builds have to make in other areas of the game to be able to hit like that.

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stomatopod wrote:

Lastly there is the question of normal auras. You probably only want to use mines this way if no auras really help you given there always in effect and the power of some watchers eye mods.

Regarding auras, this seems like it should only be an issue if your build fully reserves all its mana aka an EB build. That's why I briefly mentioned the reservation "cost" in my original post as well - from the video it seems really small, which means if you have just a bit of free mana, then you should be able to do this without sacrificing any auras.

You do know the difference between "45% increased" and "45% more" don't you?

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Shagsbeard wrote:

You do know the difference between "45% increased" and "45% more" don't you?

In this case it's true global 1,45x multiplier.

How do you figure that?

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Shagsbeard wrote:

How do you figure that?

because increased damage taken pretty much operates as a more multiplier unless you have a shitload of sources of it, even then its still a considerably higher bonus than an increased on the other side of the equation.

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Shagsbeard wrote:

How do you figure that?

General "X% increased damage" is affecting you.

However when it's worded like this:

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Enemies Taunted by you take 20% increased Damage
Enemies Taunted by you cannot Evade Attacks

It's affecting enemies not you.

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Stormblast Mine is a new skill available at level 1. When placed, it has a stacking aura that increases the damage nearby enemies take by 3%

So it's a negative aura of your ally (mine) that affects enemies.
It doesn't change your dps but the amount of damage enemies are taking.