Mortal Conviction - Another Look

I personally LOVE blood magic for leveling physical damage characters. There's a 2% life leech node right by it, and combined with slitherpinch, wurms molt or life on hit I can spam 4 link physical skills without ever worrying about MP, as well as using totems/leap(mobility), curses, enduring cry, etc. It's such a fantastic leveling node...but once I get to 70-80 I spec out of it because auras are too powerful, and every good build should always fit at least 2 auras into their build.

Mortal conviction should be changed to not effect auras at all, and instead give some unique nodes behind blood magic to make it special end game.

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Islidox написал:

But to bring it back to the main point, I still think BM is weak. At the end of the day, MC has not really done any favors for BM. Those EA-Burnproliferate-QR builds? They don't use auras either because they can't.

Although I readily agree that MC does nothing for traditional BMK (Blood Magic keystone) builds, it does do something for very unorthodox ones. That's precisely how notables behind keystones should be designed; not automatic gimmes, but niche stuff which is often, but not always, skipped. As far as I'm concerned, MC is doing it right, while the nodes behind CI are bad design (who gets CI and doesn't get them?).

That said, BMK does need some kind of boost for solo lategame; not hard to agree there. A keystone combo is in order, although I wouldn't suggest messing with MC itself (beyond a possible boost to 50% less). However, to prevent BMK from being OP in group play (where other players provide the auras), it is pivotally important that the drawback of the other keystone in the combo prevent (or at least hinder) the player from benefiting from Auras, while having essentially zero drawback for solo BMK builds. Hence my suggestion for Sever the Tie earlier in this thread.

Remember that BMK is still strong for leveling and only becomes weak later on, so giving some tree distance betweeen it and its combo also helps to prevent BMK from being (more?) OP early-game.

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ScrotieMcB написал:

while the nodes behind CI are bad design (who gets CI and doesn't get them?).

That's your opinion.
CI would be underpowered without an ES boost, and they wanted to make people spend more than one point for the whole thing, works perfectly fine to me.
Nodes beyond keystones are just nodes that could not be used by someone not taking the keystone, nothing else, period.
There is no "ideal design" for those one, they could have any purpose as long as it fits GGG's intentions and the overall balance.

For MC to be upped ( imho ), we need prism guardian to be nerfed, so that people would not abuse it.

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Fruz написал:

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ScrotieMcB написал:

while the nodes behind CI are bad design (who gets CI and doesn't get them?).

That's your opinion.
CI would be underpowered without an ES boost, and they wanted to make people spend more than one point for the whole thing, works perfectly fine to me.

It is my opinion. Just because CI would be underpowered without an extra oomph doesn't mean that the current solution was an ideal one. Or even a good one. Around the time in OB when the nodes behind CI didn't yet exist, and people were discussing possible solutions, I had some things to say. It's too bad they went with such an unoriginal solution.

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Fruz написал:

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ScrotieMcB написал:

while the nodes behind CI are bad design (who gets CI and doesn't get them?).

That's your opinion.
CI would be underpowered without an ES boost, and they wanted to make people spend more than one point for the whole thing, works perfectly fine to me.
Nodes beyond keystones are just nodes that could not be used by someone not taking the keystone, nothing else, period.
There is no "ideal design" for those one, they could have any purpose as long as it fits GGG's intentions and the overall balance.

For MC to be upped ( imho ), we need prism guardian to be nerfed, so that people would not abuse it.

CI was underpowered when they removed the 50% bonus ES shield, thats why those nodes where put behind CI. At that time, CI was impractical to use unless yuo already had godly gear set up for the character you were using

@Scrotie: I still question the viability of said unorthodox builds. If someone can make one succeed in lategame, then it'll prove me wrong. However, I think said unorthodox builds are far more effective without BMK and on mana without sacrificing that much survivability. The fact that it would require a Shavs to pull off presents a huge gearing wall that's better off spent on other optimal builds.

You say putting a notable behind BMK or the Infused Shield notable behind CI is bad design. You would laugh to know that at one point CI granted 80% MORE ES. And that was a benefit granted BY the keystone. Then it got nerfed to 50%, then 20%, then now a notable granting 12% more. Following that line of thought, then keystones locked behind another keystone (Whispers of Doom, Phase Acrobatics) are also bad design. As long as the passives require a bit more effort to reach them, I don't mind the designs. Not everything is meant to have a drawback, and this was stated by Qarl himself regarding the strength of the Ondar's Guile keystone. If there's any keystone that's OP, it'll be that one. (And IR) If everything was changed akin to the current positions VP and MoM are located in the skilltree (considering they're synergy with keystones on the other side of the skilltree), I would imagine the entire community up in arms in being forced to travel across the tree and waste precious points. No one would be playing any class but the Scion.

Yes, BMK builds are somewhat OP midgame, but as far as I'm concerned, the party-play is less of a concern when everyone else can benefit from each other auras, not just BMK builds. It isn't a mutually-exclusive benefit like you're thinking of. BMK build's just don't contribute to the number of active auras present is the bottom line, and I think that's fine considering most builds don't use BMK in lategame. Nor does it make a BMK build uber-strong either, just more survivable. I don't think a keystone is required to fix BMK if a notable can fix it.

MC simply can't fix the BMK.

The only way to make MC work would be removing PG. Because it already is kinda strong. And honestly I don't even agree that you need Shavs. The point is you can make Auras so strong and have enough of them (you can run 3 at least, which is hatred, grace, determination propably or Disciplin). Since you are now allowed to reach 75% Chaos-Resist and there aren't any hard-hitting chaos-based enemies (most off them also only deal partial chaos-damage) you should be fine. It is also a bit harder to use Ghost Reaver, since it is on the opposite side of the tree.

I just thought about my scion build and when I drop EB and use BM with Zealoths Oath I end up with about 1300 HP (since I need to be on low-life) and well disciplin alone gives me about 1,2k ES propably due to the 102% increased Aura-Efficiency (well 78 + 24% buff-effects).

And it doesn't really matter if I use Ghost Reaver and regenerate life or use Zealoths and leech life. I can do this as a mana-build, I'm doing it right now, but there are several limitations and several benefits.

1. Mana-Reg sucks, while Life-Reg is godly. I actually need to use EB and to just use my spells. And dropping a slot for the BM-Gem sucks, because spells don't really benefit from Auras.

2. The large benefit of mana-usage is the ability to use Arctic Armor, however I noticed that arctic armor works somehow with a high leveled cwdt-gem.

3. Due to Grace + Determination actually wearing Armor is kind of useless. There basically is no real reason to wear any armor when you can reach above 20k just with 2 Auras and invest in ES instead.


It is something odd and I don't argue that it is even better with Shavronnes, but I'm convinced that you can do without for most things and once you are hitting high maps you should be able to afford Shavs and you don't really need a high one, heck if there would be the same mod on a simple robe it would propably be enough.

The biggest problem is that this is a somehow rare use and something you need to really prepare for. And any EB char is propably stronger. But than again I feel that EB is insanely strong right now for Spells, which is mainly because mana-reg sucks.

My biggest problem with MC isn't even that it is propably useless... I don't mind useless things, PoE has a lot of them. My problem is that MC is such a boring implementation. It is nothing that defines your gameplay. The BM-Keystone doesn't change how you play a character in any other way than the BM-Gem... and that's a bit boring for a keystone that could do so much more.

If I was in charge of CI balancing...
the main keystone would be changed to "Reserves all but 1 Life" and the nodes behind would be replaced with a single notable, One with Nothing, which reads simply "You maximum Life becomes 1." This would allow CI builds to easily get low-life benefits, or full-life with an extra point spent, but no extra ES for going CI; the anticipated advantage for caster CI would be the obvious combo with Pain Attunement, which might be moved a little further away (perhaps switching spots with Necromantic Aegis). Shav's would be less mandatory for low-life builds, but still useful for reserving Life for Auras; it would just become an Auramancer chest.

I'd also make all the 6% ES nodes elsewhere in the tree 8%.

I'd also make Righteous Fire care not one bit about Life, instead being based off 100% of ES and turning off when you hit 0 ES.

In terms of MC...
Make it 50% less. I'm inclined to agree that 40% isn't really attractive for unorthodox Auramancer builds, at best breaking even and not worth the passive points; 50% would be attractive; 60% would be OP.

Disagree with the idea that notables behind keystones should be mandatory; not changing my mind there. Would rather see something like Sever the Tie added as a keystone, probably near where Vaal Pact used to be in OB.

I think the best way to fix Mortal Conviction is to cumulative reduce the "less mana reserved"-facter per aura activated. To clarify: the first aura you will activate will have a 90% less factor, the second activated would have 70% less, third 50% and so on. Not sure about the exact numbers, but you get the principle. This would go against insane aura stacking shenanigans. Although I'm not sure if thats really a problem, because I would require such a extreme investment.

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Baelrog написал:

I think the best way to fix Mortal Conviction is to cumulative reduce the "less mana reserved"-facter per aura activated. To clarify: the first aura you will activate will have a 90% less factor, the second activated would have 70% less, third 50% and so on. Not sure about the exact numbers, but you get the principle. This would go against insane aura stacking shenanigans. Although I'm not sure if thats really a problem, because I would require such a extreme investment.

Too complicated, therefore unrealistic. Regardless of whether it would fix the problem or not.