Dear Rory

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Rory написал:

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NeroNoah написал:

Some word about the most controversial changes (aura dependent builds being hit, like aurabots or elemental builds, and having a weak version of Reduced Mana with Enlighten, that feels like wealth gating auras...)?

If we really are wealth-gating any otherwise accessible build absolutely dependent on having a specific number of auras, then the values are too high on Enlighten (Which is entirely possible, as we didn't want it to feel worthless). The support is designed to be an additional bonus that players can work towards to let them have slightly more mana or an additional aura in extreme cases, but a gem level of enlighten should be equal or inferior to a single aura reservation cost passive. We need fresh perspectives to know if this is the case; Many opinions I'm seeing are based on making adjustments to existing builds, rather than builds that take the new costs into account during character growth.

As for builds that get the majority of their damage from aura bonuses, we've got some new tools and balance adjustments coming that should give new interesting avenues for boosting or granting added damage. These boosts will be incremental, though; We want a clear path for progression for core builds that involves more than leveling gems and taking a small subset of passives.

An issue is that you're making these changes on beta but leaving out further changes that help make it work. Like for example the quest reward changes.
Right now the quest rewards in beta suck compared to live but once you implement the gem vendor the new quest rewards will suck much less.

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Season4Warrior написал:

Just out of curiosity... If I have: a weapon, shield, helmet, chest piece, boots, and a pair of gloves.. That is 6 possible setups on my character... Does GGG think people actively use more than 3 or something? Because currently... That is a NO.

This is what people use:

Chest piece(Most links): Main Skill
Boots: Auras(+1 for Boots)
Gloves: Probably a vaal skill
Shield: Probably a movement ability
Weapon: Probably a CWDT Setup
Helmet: Some random crap maybe a single-target version of our main-skill...

We already have too many links because we can't do anything useful with shield/weapon... I guess we can put more random gems in our gear to level them up? Seeing as we'll need to constantly level enlightens and corrupt them just to get half our f@#$ing auras back.

This change is crap with the current skill tree.

Currently for me, bolding all that is useful for a character:

Chest Piece: Main Skill
Weapon: Movement Ability
Helmet: Auras
Gloves: Single Target
Boots: Reckoning/Vengeance/CWdt
Shield: Vaal Skill

And with aura changes:

Chest Piece: Main Skill
Weapon: Movement Ability
Helmet: Vaal Skill
Gloves: Single Target
Boots: Reckoning/Vengeance/CWdt
Shield: Auras

Small change, but gives more flexibility. And that's if I use 3 auras, when I'll likely end up using only 2 on some characters. With 1h melee characters or dual wielders, you could replace single target or vaal skill with a reckoning/vengeance and having Cwdt on boots.

Of course, if we were to look at a 2h weapon setup - bow, staff casting or 2h melee:

Chest Piece: Main Skill
Weapon: Single Target
Helmet: Auras
Gloves: Movement Ability
Boots: Reckoning/Vengeance/CWdt

Letting us no longer have to use auras would give 2h weapon characters a chance to use more sets of skills. Auras could go down to 3 or 2 auras, instead of 3 + reduced mana, and you could put in a vaal skill like vaal cyclone or vaal haste, both of which are very useful to characters needing an extra burst in maps. Or potentially a golem, with the golems coming in with the aura changes (and golems are AWESOME).


I like the aura changes as they are, but I think Enlighten should be giving 3% mana reduction per level, rather than the 4% currently. Would give 9% mana reduction with a level 4 enlighten, which is enough for a person who's specialising in auras to use to squeeze in another few auras, but is not as good to be necessary for all builds.

Posting here to show my support for Rory. When he talked about melee in the podcast he really hit on the nail the issues with melee: survivability and clear speed and how cyclone is the only currently well performing melee skill.

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mazul написал:

Posting here to show my support for Rory. When he talked about melee in the podcast he really hit on the nail the issues with melee: survivability and clear speed and how cyclone is the only currently well performing melee skill.

a thought on cyclone tho, its a bm gem skill, aka, run hatred + defense aura now reserving 100% of your mana... youre fine, business as usual, bm gem.

Reave, Cleave, Dual Strike, Double Strike, all the mana leech based skills who were running hatred + a defense aura and fueling off 2% mana leech with the 16% unreserved mana they had from 2x 60%s with reduced mana gem? those builds just got shafted by the aura change. So we went completely backwards on that situation. If cyclone was the only well performing melee skill before this change, the gap between them just got even bigger.

It's been an ongoing trend with ggg to remove nerf or destroy any and all popular builds. Thing is popular builds are by necesity either accessible and good enough or way too strong and accesible enough. No problem with nerfing the way too strong no matter the accesibility but ggg seems to be very afraid of balancing at high wealth. Those mirror item builds get a pass because not enough people can flip or rmt their way to them. Accessibility is the issue here and aparently a mortal sin in ggg book. Just look at the beta changes
-eb was cheap way to make casters work both defensively and resource magementwise it's now niche gimmicky and doesn't help the defensive side at all
-Ele prolif was cheap it never compared to a acuity or vaal pact crit instant leech build for both basic immortality and insane clear speeds but it was cheap and somehow got on the bad side of streamers so it had to die no matter that it made lots of builds work all gone now, the new aoe is a joke and it also killed the shock and ice prolifs that weren't even efficient builds
-elemental damage aura builds could work from tree alone almost among the cheapest builds get a fast weapon or some sort of minions and you're set, no longer though because it doesn't serve the almighty god economy enough good thing they fixed it with level 5 enlighten
-cwdt ec ic was broken but everyone could figure that the moment trigger gems were in but it was broken because ic is a brokenly designed gem but the main issue eith it was that it was cheap, no need to buy high end armor gear when cwdt did it all for cheap so it had to die instead of redigning ic

Remember diablo2 it had crazy stupid expensive runewords but it also had good old frozen orb sorceress that could do mephisto well enough with no gear. Ggg seems to go out of their way to remove frozen orb from poe. Right now we're left with totems and only totems because traps also got killed with eb. I wonder how long till they get the axe again.

Anyway all hail the mighty god economy praised be its prophet chris and his apostles the balance team.

Saw this thread of the subreddit and figured I'd chime in as well.

I think the problem most people are having is the cost of Hatred, how weak Haste is and how absolutely horrendous and almost useless armor is.

First off, Hatred and Haste are both 50% auras. Currently, pretty much every physical build -must- run Hatred. The amount of bonus damage it grants is equivalent or greater than an additional gem link and nothing else in the game grants this much of a bonus. I highly suggest this aura be reworked or re-envisioned. It is currently the most powerful aura in the game statistically.

Haste is extremely weak compared to every other damage increasing option. In Haste's case, the amount of cast speed and attack speed it grants has been gated towards being worth a certain volume of passive points. No other aura has this problem. It appears that it's bonus movement speed is weighed so heavily that everything else must fall with it. While attack and cast speed are arguably the most direct increases of DPS in the game, Vaal Haste honestly fits the bill for this kind of affect much better than Haste itself.

Lastly, armor. It's been butchered and thrown in the gutter because GGG realized that more than half the players were running Grace and Determination to boost their armor to massive values. Seriously. An entire archetype of character is fundamentally weaker than all other defensive options in such a way that it feels unfair. Grace and Determination were the problem before. You're adjusting auras, I highly suggest to rework the way these work OR remove Iron Reflexes ENTIRELY and make armor more valuable.

tl;dr I'm really, really upset that armor makes me feel like a worthless pincushion.

What I gathered from this whole mess so far:

- Enlighten is the new Reduced Mana (already cheap Reduced Mana will become complete and utter trash, Enlighten prices will skyrocket)
- Current Enlighten is expensive already (rare + takes forever to level) and unrewarding so basically no-one expect speculators have it in stock
- For the common player this directly translates into: New default Auras are 50% instead of 42%
- 1 Aura (50%) + 2 Heralds (each 25%?) wont be possible for builds that didn't pick up Aura nodes and can't afford Enlighten

So your options are a) If your build isn't already intended to pick up aura nodes you need to go out of your way in order to do so (direct nerf to every build that runs just one Aura+ 2 Heralds)

b) be rich and buy some high level Enlighten, continue whatever you want to do

Conclusion:
Poor players will again need to play under the nerf for a long time until they can afford/level Enlighten, while rich players will be able to continue with whatever build they want, just like before.

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Rory написал:

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NeroNoah написал:

Some word about the most controversial changes (aura dependent builds being hit, like aurabots or elemental builds, and having a weak version of Reduced Mana with Enlighten, that feels like wealth gating auras...)?

If we really are wealth-gating any otherwise accessible build absolutely dependent on having a specific number of auras, then the values are too high on Enlighten (Which is entirely possible, as we didn't want it to feel worthless). The support is designed to be an additional bonus that players can work towards to let them have slightly more mana or an additional aura in extreme cases, but a gem level of enlighten should be equal or inferior to a single aura reservation cost passive. We need fresh perspectives to know if this is the case; Many opinions I'm seeing are based on making adjustments to existing builds, rather than builds that take the new costs into account during character growth.

As for builds that get the majority of their damage from aura bonuses, we've got some new tools and balance adjustments coming that should give new interesting avenues for boosting or granting added damage. These boosts will be incremental, though; We want a clear path for progression for core builds that involves more than leveling gems and taking a small subset of passives.

Sry but your idea of this is great. execution is to say the least. horrible.

First off you change the color needed to reduce auras so right off the bat you basically kicked everyone who spent 250ex+ on gear in the balls due to being set so you cant change colors of mirrored gear. To give you an example i have 5 pieces of mirrored gear. do the math on the cost of mirrors + fees. Luckily two are rings and one amulet so only weapon and shield needs changing but that is still 700ex+ that does not grow on trees.

Secondly you now make it take 3months+ to level 6 enlightens in the hope of getting a lvl 4 corrupted to get even remotely close to running same auras. Keep in mind we need more than one enlighten for aura builds.

Thirdly the aura builds like aura wanders, kinetic blast, spectral throw and alike are all good builds but they have been nerfed to shit time and time again. Literally now we will have to spend more exalts and still end up with even further nerfed builds. this is just retarded.

I do not mind getting nerfed dmg if it is warranted and i understand you are nerfing some places and boosting dps others. however please for the love of god PLEASE do not change colors needed as this affects thousands of people on standard league that now have to save up the better part of a year for new gear.

Whether aura builds will be viable or not is only a guess at this point but from seeing liftingnerdbro's video on mana reservation it looks like a shit solution on top of bad gem color change. Your tools for increasing dps in other ways still remain to be seen in practice with endgame gear so numbers can be evaluated. I hope they will live up to the rather big gape in gear loss, aura loss and overall killing of mainstream builds. Just so it is not all bad, i love the dedication you guys put in and that you always try to better the game. I hope this message is not falling on deaf ears.

Sorry to be negative but i would rather be honest than not speak and then be told "why didn't anyone say anything".

If the main requirement for the aura changes is the alteration of the gem color, you could just turn RM into a blue gem and adjust it's mana efficiency. No need for enlighten gems that way. Case closed.

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Decimus_Ros написал:

If the main requirement for the aura changes is the alteration of the gem color, you could just turn RM into a blue gem and adjust it's mana efficiency. No need for enlighten gems that way. Case closed.

In Stat of the Exile he said it's changed to enlighten to basically screw the poor, not in those words of course but yeah! It's on purpose! He said they wanted to put pressure on aura use, the free gem slot is only free if you look past using a enlighten gem to get what you had before... >_< ...so in their eye's most of use can't afford that gem nor is it a gem that drops frequent, and require's immense leveling, so that was the way to put pressure on us...so messed up!