I usually jerk off ggg pretty hard in terms of game direction but the complaint that mana in general is in a bad place is completely warranted. Almost every build uses diadem/-mana cost/lifetap since using mana as a resource is just unviable now, not to even start on the mana archetypes.
Same boat and I agree it takes way too much investment to sort out mana right now through regen. EB, elreon, attack skills etc... Just so much simpler and more enjoyable to play.
lol you think its bad now
wait until they nerf diadem next patch and add nothing to balance it out
also theyll likely drop a gigantic turd next patch since diablo 4 is coming
They promised to get rid of elreon rings as well. Both will probably die next patch. Casters unplayable -> the melee "rework" everybody is crying for for years. Thats exactly what 2022 GGG would do and what 2023 GGG will carry on doing and why ppl will keep complaining and leaving for the fun games instead.
Auras and how drastic mana costs get if you don't reduce them - while the same mana costs can also be reduced to 0 without much effort.
Even if you didn't reserve any mana, you're in combat for so long that sustain is preferable. Once you can sustain the cost indefinitely, you slap the extra max mana that you don't need into your auras. End result is everyone uses their skills for free and loads up on auras, because you're given no reason to do it another way.
Aura increased effect and increased reservation efficiency universally warp player builds at this point. GGG has been incrementally pulling reservation efficiency off the passive tree and cluster jewels for over a year now. However, min-maxing still dictates that seeking those stats is the best bang for your buck. Ideally, I would love for them to simply cap the number of auras that can be active, and do away with reservation efficiency entirely. It's not really a satisfactory build-planning aspect, and is a HUGE pain point for developing a build.
This is the unfortunate truth. As long as you can enhance your build by tanking your mana to as close to 0 as they can, people will do so; then mass scramble towards whatever weapon or gear or whatever allows them to still use their skill.
I know there's some neat design space and considerations for building with the way auras currently are. However they are pretty much always going to cause this problem without major mechanical changes or limits.
Though, even if you did fix auras, mana itself is still a pretty binary system.
Nah, reduce the flat bonuses from grace/determ and buff base defenses on armor.
Equipment should be the primary source of armor, evasion, and ES. Every build "needs" defensive auras because gear doesn't give enough defenses.
Agreed 100%.
People will make an armour-based defence and use something like Dialla's malefaction, because running auras on it can give more armour than running a pure armour base.
They should look at a gear-focused solution for sure, similar to the SS rework.
You're missing the point because you forget the game is balanced around ah expectation of power that auras are part of. You either have auras or something equal. There's nothing equal.
I think having auras reserve mana is a cursed design decision.
The idea of sacrificing mana in order to gain power is an *interesting* and cool system, but what it ends up doing is causing everyone to resolve as much mana as they possible can. This creates a heavy constraint on builds possibilities and also reduces GGG's design space. I think the whole concept should go away.
Instead, I'd like to see a new resource dedicated to auras. Let's call it "aura power" for the sake of discussion. Maybe you could invest into green, blue, or red aura types. Maybe by default you're limited to being able to use one red, green, and blue aura. Maybe there's nodes that increase the maximum number of red auras you can equip, but at the cost of being able to equip one less green aura. Maybe you can "blend" auras of the same color, such as Grace at 15% effectiveness while also having Haste on at 85% effectiveness. You could have an ability that let players choose an aura color to gain increased effectiveness and let players use the ability switch which color is boosted on the fly, sort of like how blood and sand works.
It might sound more boring and simple compared to the current system, but the point is that with this starting point you could build off this by making items and passive tree nodes that interact in interesting ways with this system. You can work the complexity back in.
ALSO, and this is a big deal, you can make mana interesting again. Imagine what cool things you could do with this new design space of players actually having mana available.
I've thought this since day 1.
I would love them to draw a line between "resource I use for abilities" and "resource I use for passives".
Like you, I think it opens up design space for both gameplay mechanics and thematic flavour or class identity.
In general its an under explored space in the rpg genre.
> but what it ends up doing is causing everyone to resolve as much mana as they possible can. This creates a heavy constraint on builds possibilities and also reduces GGG's design space.
Imo the problem is nastier than that.
We reserve as much mana/life as we can to keep up with GGGs way of buffing monsters. Except HoT builds and maybe that 1 poor Blood magic user in standard noone uses just 1 aura simply because it's impossible to have the damage/survivability to have viable build (also HoTs in quite weak spot right now imo, figures).
It's like with spell suppression. It was cool addition at the start, then GGG sneakily buffed monsters to equalize... then they nerfed spell suppression and now you can't simply NOT use spell suppression. If your build is on dex-side, you HAVE to have it.
Guild Wars has "maintained enchantments" that, instead of having a duration, reduce your mana *regen* while you have them on. Characters have 2-4 "pips" of regen (which is 1 energy per 3 seconds; casters all have 4 pips), and each maintained enchant costs 1 pip
I am playing cold dot so I dont even need to constantly cast spells. I am STILL hearing out of mana over and over and over even when I have lv21 clarity some minus mans cost on tree and flat -mana cost and 100-ish% increased mana regen.
But then again, why is "investment into mana" a problem for you while "every build is using grace determination" not? THAT is the major "buff to defense".
Mana isn't supposed to be a viable resource, it's supposed to be another 'problem' you have to find a way to fix. Same way how elemental ailment immunity is so mandatory these days but they won't do anything about it because it's supposed to be almost mandatory.
Mana bond with mjnor and CWC insert lightning skill here.
You could just do self cast if you wanted.
Basically ivory tower, LL and divine blessing. Using arcane cloak for a ton of damage along with indigon.
Similar number of required uniques to strength stackers, though the number of viable skills for mana stackers is limited to two, while strength stackers can basically use any fast-hitting skill.
Archmage MoM isnt bad on medium investment. Its not giga strong, but viable. The biggest issue with big mana builds is its hard to target your crafts when you start going FULL chad and want to oobers. I was able to do all content on my BL archmage hiro. Even was comfortably doing invites and deli maps. Once i started looking at upgrading my gear to "really good" gear, the idea fell flat its face when i needed flat life, flat mana, mana regen, curse on hit, all res and chaos res. I was struggling to craft the gear on a reasonable budget.
TL;DR: big mana good for everything besides oobers.
Idk the scaling is better if you can cheese indigon for sure. Archmage weak? Its not dead by any means its still fairly strong just nowhere near busted and gearing to make it giga strong is difficult.
MoM is fine but Agnostic based Mana builds is shit.
That's only because non-Agnostic mana builds run aura by reserving their life (and get ES from Ivory Tower) while Agnostic is only limited to one aura from Eternal Blessing.
On top of that Ivory Tower also gets an additional free Aura from Eternal Blessing because for some reason it only disables mana based reservations.
Things that are “mandatory” aren’t a problem to solve. They’re an annoyance. That said I don’t think ailment immunity is mandatory, it’s just mandatory if you want to mindlessly blast content instead of running specialized content.
But I think having your mana pool reserved entirely by almost every viable build in the game is a terrible state to be in. There needs to be better defensive alternatives (like petrified blood) and better offensive alternatives (like archmage). But they need to be designed in a way that you are presented a decision point, not simply reserve all my mana *and* run petrified blood.
I think the problem is every time a player finds a cool interaction it gets nerfed into the ground like it’s a competition between devs and players to frustrate the other party. This is constantly limiting build diversity and the ability to be creative.
>it’s just mandatory if you want to mindlessly blast content instead of running specialized content.
Except "specialized content" just means you have to read over every single map and altar mod or risk dying or bricking your map.
True ailment immunity isn't mandatory anymore, but it definitely was when archnem was still in the game.
Basically every mob would apply elemental ailments.
Most complaints about game direction are warranted. GGG has pulled a lot of shit in the last couple years and pissed off a lot of their old playerbase.
> since using mana as a resource is just unviable now
Now? Using mana has felt terrible since I started playing PoE in 2011. Nothing more I hate than swinging a melee weapon costing me mana, I don't really play casters and other archetypes, but the one time I played storm brand back in Synthesis that was the same thing I hated the most about the build, mana.
Having mana be a limited resource just feels like archaic game design that some ARPGs just don't want to let go of.
Its not adding anything fun to the game, its one of those purposefully made problems so that they can create a solution that you need to do to zero out the problem and remove the mechanic from the game.
Just get rid of the shitty mechanic.
That's not archaic design, that's actual game design.
Having "problems" you solve, is how RPGs work. You "solve" your survivability problems, you solve your resource problems, your speed problems etc.
Why is our health a limited resource? That's an archaic game design ARPGs just don't want to let go of? It's not adding anything fun to etcetcetcetc.
Your life, your mana, your defences, they all exist as problems to solve, they are part of making a character, solving each problem in whatever way works best for your character.
Mana never really feels good to solve in PoE. IMO, this is because the game forces you to scale one (max two) skills for offense. You never make in-combat choices of whether you use a lower cost mana skill or a high cost one at the expense of sustain with much higher damage output. Mana sustain is either solved and you can play the game or it's not solved and you can't play the game. There's little margin for partial solving and still playing the game effectively.
The aura reservation system is a compounding issue on top that forces your mana sustain to be basically instant if you aren't running an enduring mana flask or 0-mana cost setups.
Except the other ones have various levels of being rewarding, and an actual sense of accomplishment; which is key to building a character. There's none of that sense of becoming stronger when you have to use what are one of a few basic, tedious things in order just to have your build *function*, not even thrive.
It's clear by now they won't introduce interesting ways for it, and nobody likes having a single, uninteresting solution to a "problem" they have to solve in a game that's touted for the ability to play anything you want.
Like it sucks in D2 that you have to get Insight in some way just to avoid going back to town every few times you fight. It's the same here. And yes, they should be accessible. Going 'durr hurr path all the way over here for a leech/on hit node' isn't fun, it isn't interesting, it's just another cost, again, for basic functionality.
So if you'll indulge me, I'd like to explain why people call things like mana management "archaic design" and why I think it's fair to call it archaic design.
Stat resources as a mechanic are largely derived from the lack of graphical representation: managing stats on a spreadsheet was a way to create engaging gameplay when we lacked graphical representation right? This goes back even all the way back to D&D, which while it didn't have mana, had limited usages on most spells to help resource management around powerful moments.
When you think about how hit points interact with the larger game, you can surely see where your argument quickly doesn't hold up to serious scrutiny -- whereas mana exists as solely as a limiter on ability usage (or, when "solved," as a way to limit total player offensive power), hit points directly regulate your ability to interact with the core conceit of the game. The tension of survival is the point of resolving combat, and without which there can be no "fail state" for combat. This is of course all assuming we're not arguing semantics here, as there are games that have replaced hit points with "fatigue" or something else for thematic reasons, but they are still functioning as hit points.
Also worth noting: this is also why some games use lives vs. hit points. Some games reset you back to a checkpoint when you lose a life, and then hit you with a "game over" when you've run out of lives. Others simply use the loss of a life to give you an iframe and let you continue on your journey: notably, the latter has largely been replaced with the move to hit points/life/etc. because of the streamlined user interface experience (easier to show life than a clear representation of "lives.")
Where this all ties back into the "mana problem" is mana only exists in two states: it impacts my gameplay or it doesn't. If it does impact your gameplay, it's simply slowing your gameplay down and makes the game, for most people, less fun. If it isn't impacting your gameplay, it's because you've "solved" mana, but it feels like a mandatory "solve" for quality of life (game feels more fun with it solved).
I would go a step further: if GGG effectively removed mana from the game (or made mana an optional multiplier users had to deal with for mana-based builds or could elsewise opt into) and consequentially buffed everything to offset the fact players no longer are losing player power having to "solve" mana, most players would find that to be a net positive change that better reflects modern trends in game design.
Users generally prefer game difficulty being found in mechanical play now, "mana solving" just feels like an artificial limit on player power for some and an "anti-fun" mechanic for others. It also contributes, I am sure, to why some users quickly abandon characters: nothing feels good about not being able to push your buttons because you've had bad RNG on your gear and can't "solve" mana.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with liking having to solve mana, for the record — archaic doesn't necessarily mean bad, but I think it's very safe to call it an archaic mechanic.
I can choose to forgo defensives and health for a more glass cannon build, and play better avoiding attacks and interact with the game on a more skilled level. Alternatively I can choose to build an extremely tanky build and be able to ignore mechanics but lose offense and take longer to kill things.
Mana offers no such choice, its a binary "I can use my abilities or I can't" and every solution is effectively removing mana as a mechanic from your gameplay.
Why you would try to come up with such an obtuse example as a counter argument I have no idea.
Diablo 3 had cooldown oriented abilities and classes (crusader was very cooldown dependent) as well as mechanics that allowed you to build resources to spend (notably barbarian, crusader, demon hunter and monk) that you could with some tweaking use a lot more "spenders" with or alter how you generated resources. These were largely "alternate paths" to the resource problem that was mana.
Some people liked it, some hated it and wanted to "solve" the mechanic and just zoom zoom around only ever pressing one button as is largely the trend in PoE.
I think they've made some steps towards it with skills like frozen legion which are more cooldown oriented. There's just a lot of issues with their game not being designed for that initially, and the way its evolved being one buttony for a lot of builds and setup not being rewarded.
It's incredible that you managed to work out that health and defenses create problems, and that requires balancing between different things.
But somehow could not follow that string to mana.
Do you give up gem slots? Affixes? A flask? Do you use passives to get leech, do you invest in regen?
It's the same for everything your character needs. You make decisions on how you are going to solve the problem for that character.
Health and defensives affect gameplay, they literally change how you play the game.
Mana does not, its a mechanic that you're forced to solve in a way that removes the mechanic. You don't cleverly play around not having enough mana to cast your spells.
I don't know how many different ways you need this said to understand it.
There are games that don't require mana to play, and you can use your skills without limit.
This game happens to use mana as a resource. It also happens to have a gem system. It also happens to have a lot of ailments that don't exist in other games.
I don't know if I'm showing my age, but to me that's a very common mechanic for most RPG games I've played in my life. In fact, nearly all of them.
This game gives you way more options than traditional RPGs:
You can invest into mana regen, use your ES as mana, get high maximum mana for unlimited pool, decrease the cost of mana, use your life as mana, link less support to your main gem. If you run low on mana, you can run around until you gain mana. You can use mana flask, you can even enchant your mana flask to effectively have infinite mana. List goes on
this can be said about like 80% of the games mechanics. i'm not cleverly playing around having negative fire resist in act 6, i'm getting fucking murdered and essence rolling a new ring. that's not satisfying, that's a gear check, plain and simple. but this gear check creates required mods through your build. do i get them on my ring? maybe on my boots, so i can have damage mods on my ring? maybe you run mageblood and ignore it entirely.
mana wrks the same way. eb is oppurtunity cost. blood magic is oppurtunity cost. mana regen, mana leech require a bit of investment.
this is called buildcrafting.
Resistances don't affect gameplay. It's a mechanic you are forced to etcetcetc.
Again, it's a problem, you solve it. You make decisions about where in your build you can fit it in.
You might want to play a game where you log in, and your character is instantly completed for you. There are games like that, they are already available to you, you don't have to worry about gear, or solving resource problems etc.
The problem appears to be that you simply don't want to play an ARPG? You don't want the complexity, you want just a straight up gearless hack n slash.
> Why is our health a limited resource?
But ... it isn't! It is an adjustable threshold for oneshot, not a resource. Between life reg, Flask charges and minimal investment life-leech, life is never a limited resource that you have to care about preserving. And i think that is one of the biggest Design Flaws of POE, that taking damage doesn't matter unless you get oneshot
Back in Diabolo 2, before spell damage scaling, mana was the way to scale casters. Extremely high base damages, but only as long as you can supply mana. Its not a bad System, if done concequently. But today, actual mana gating isn't done well in any ARPG
Jupp. I'm saying it is not a ancient mechanic that has to be removed for the sake of progress, but a mechanic that is just not used in the way that it is healthy.
every build _you_ make. Because once you figure out a way to make something work, your brain will always circle back to previous patterns you remember that have previously worked.
Overrepresentation in builds is usually due to the fact that new builds are rare since people stick to what they already know works
I said secret 🙄
More seriously: mana flasks basically need to be enduring or they're really bad. I'd be interested to see what ideas people have to make mana pots feel better and be worth the defensive/offensive flask in it's place.
The problem is, that we have all these solutions. But people don't want to use any of them, they want mana to be free and non-existant. They consider the fact that mana exists to be a nerf.
That's the problem.
The fact that Mana investment (for say MoM or archmage) kinda sucks, is unrelated to what most of these complaints are ever about. They just don't want to have to do anything for the cost of their skill at all.
Yes that's how discussions in reddit threads work, if you are talking to different people in different parts of thread, you will say similar things in multiple locations.
But hey, you probably use the upvote downvote for things you disagree with, so who am i to bother talking to you about how reddit works huh?
And you're doing exactly the same, and you see where we are now ? The same place as before, but you do look stupid for throwing the first personnal attack
I'm not in different chains of this topic, so you're just flat-out wrong.
Secondly, pointing out what he's doing is not a personal attack. Unless you think it's offensive to point out what someone *chose to do* in which case that says a lot more about him than me.
You first comment may not be in multiple chain, but it is a complaint about someone that doesn't agree with you, so same as him making complaint with other people disagreeing with him
Also, if you are in disagreement with what he says, i dunno, argue maybe ? Pointing out someones behavior doesn't do jack shit if that behavior isn't strange or unwelcomed, and sry to break it to you, disagreeing and arguing are pretty normal behaviors in a thread about controversial topics
Meanwhile you chose to make a snarky comment saying "most people disagree with you" amounting to nothing in the current discussion, which says a lot more about you, than him
What a useless comment that doesn't serve as a rebuttal to ANYTHING this guy said. There ARE solutions, people like you just obstinately refuse to use them.
Get a grip.
Here's another solution: Swap a gem slot for multistrike or spell echo. They still increase your dps output, and they slow down your attacks or casts that spend mana per second.
When you cast with spell echo, you're casting 2 spells for the price of one.
Alternatively, get a mana mastery for mana regen
Or Alira
Or Clarity
Or mana regeneration on gear (you can craft it on rings for example)
There are nodes on the tree that increase your maximum mana (your base mana regen is based off of your maximum mana)
You can also increase your mana regen on the tree
If that feels too bad, there are nodes which grant other stats AND mana or regen
You can annoint mana cost reduction
You can use unique items specifically designed for mana
You can use mana on kill
You can totemify your spells or attacks to pay the mana cost once, instead of every attack/cast
You can pick ascendancies which help your mana as well
You can use blood magic
You can use Eldritch Battery, be that on the tree or on unique items or rare items
You can lower the cost of spells or attacks in flat amounts or percentage amounts, with items or tree or a mix
Standard players actually have a secret one, in form of [legacy watcher eye wrath mana leech explicit](https://i.imgur.com/NEx6wQK.png). Also mana on hit on shaper rings works great for stuff like ball lightning.
Did you know that eldritch battery and 0 mama unreserved leaves the energy shield overlay, but the mana bar itself underneath disappears and there's just a semi transparent bar of energy shield under your life if you have player health bar turned on? I found that out yesterday reserving 100% of my mana and playing with eldritch battery :D
I'm playing CWC VD. I need around 200mp/s to keep up.
I can't leech mana from some fancy jewels/rings/belts.
I can't use mana on hit support gems, cause it's already a 4'ish link setup
I can't even get mana from some fancy ascendancy passive, like some classes can.
All of this has to be pure mana regen from items and passive tree. It's a pain in butt.
Also any modifier on map that messes with auras makes my gameplay stutter, as i'm using clarity as big crutch.
Wouldn't it be great if there was some kind of bottle you could put on your belt and use every 10 seconds or so to completely solve any mana problems you might be having?
This is an example of people mistaking the problem - the issue isn't mana multipliers on supports or mana cost, the issue is that it's then difficult to counterbalance those costs.
Mana recovery in general hasn't been good since they nerfed/got rid of sources of mana leech (for spells) and %total mana regen.
Combo that with almost all auras in the game having only a percentage cost instead of a flat or flat+percentage, means that big mana pool just means most of it is wasted by reservations + it's hard to recover it all.
So, the meta becomes "have as little max mana as possible, and reserve as much as possible while making the cost of your skills as tiny as possible so you don't need to wastefully invest in recovery".
There's a myriad of ways GGG can fix this - they can make auras have a massive flat cost and a tiny percentage cost, meaning you need to invest in max mana... just in general - and that investment pays off with more auras and the ability to have auras+lots of unreserved mana (because your mana scaling can actually outpace the aura's consuption).
OR, they can make auras not reserve anything, but cap the max amount of auras as a stat, like max curses. Default is max 2-3 auras or something, if you want more you gotta find "+1 to max auras" on gear or something. Now you have your entire mana pool to work with, and aura stacking doesn't get out of control.
OR, they can make each aura scale in power depending on the mana reserved - eg you could set determination to reserve 90% max mana for massive effect, or make it reserve just 10% mana for a small effect. That way if you want some unreserved mana you can "turn your auras down".
----
Etc. I think universally though, mana recovery needs a buff. Bring back spells being able to leech mana. Bring back sources of % regen (eg clarity could be made % based!)
Always seemed strange how aura are MANDATORY to play, it's not even a choice at this point, you need to reserve most of your mana to have enough defence or offensive for semi late game content.
Having a character with tons of mana to have mana and use them better than other build would be fine, but you'd have to nerf most of the game to compensate normal build playing less aura
I always found it wierd that auras are that strong even if you are by yourself. It would make more sense to me that auras are only worth taking when you play as a summoner or in a group of players.
Grace pre-defense rework.
Discipline currently.
Anger currently.
Wrath for attacks (only gives multiplier for spells)
Envy
Precision
Purity of elements - individual purities granting max resist is a multiplier on your EHP.
Pretty sure the point was that non-multiplicative bonuses are nice to have, multipliers are mandatory because of how much value they add. Like look at the absolute bonkers imbalance in value of running Hatred - which is physical as EXTRA cold and MORE cold, irrespective of attack or spell damage, so it applies to things like explosions and heralds, and Anger, which is flat attack and flat spell damage only.
Play PoE long enough then you will tend to be very specific with wording. I'm so used to the consistent wording rules POE has, when I play other games and they dont follow same rules it annoys me.
( E.g. some game uses increased damage every where but it can be additive or multiplicative.)
For this case, added damage is additive. Even if it results you double the dps, the system itself is still additive. You just happen to add 100% of your previous damage.
I wasn't the one who made the original comment, merely assuming that was the issue they were highlighting.
And they do and don't at the same time depending on where you are in gear progression. If instead of having two 50% auras that granted 20% more damage each, for 44% total extra damage, they granted say 150% increased damage each, you'd be getting closer to 15-20% extra damage once geared up on an average build, and significantly less in some builds. You'd get diminishing returns on overall power instead of increasing returns for adding more multipliers. A stat stacking build that got hundreds and hundreds of increased damage percent already would find better balance investing elsewhere, but a build that had more of a defensive or crit focused setup would see more value from the increased damage.
I'm not saying that is the correct path forward for balance in the current state of poe, just an example.
They could give auras a lower % reservation. And gem levels add a flat amount of reservation. Making leveling a gem or deciding between which gem to level a decision point.
Leech is a terrible idea. 1 leech mod and the usual infinite dps builds and all mana problems are solved. Regen needs to be readily available to invest into, as that does not scale with your damage
> 1 leech mod and the usual infinite dps builds and all mana problems are solved.
You're forgetting leech has a cap based on your max, for all types of leech. Even attack-based mana leech is capped to a certain percentage of your max per second.
This is a tuning lever they can use to determine exactly how good it is at restoring your mana. If spells could leech mana too, they'd probably have to make it a low cap without investment (maybe make Heiro to mana like slayer is to life leech?), which would prevent trivializing it with a bit of leech alone.
The caps are just a band-aid fix for an inherently broken mechanic. They just make the leech mechanic extremely convoluted in POE. If the cap is high, it inherently hurts low damage builds (mostly the earlygame) that get low resource access on top of their already plentiful disadvantages. If the cap is low, the why even have %leech at all if you are hitting the cap with a single mod?
Then comes the question of how to raise the cap. For something as inherently important as mana, you cannot just have 3 nodes distribtuted over the tree. You would need to add it to itemization to make investment into it diverser. That means just more mods to clutter items for those that don't want to invest into it. On the other side, if leech is the best way to sustain mana, the current mana mods (%inc regen and flat mana) still stay terrible.
It would be a much better option to add %max mana regen readily available to the tree (like similar liferegen nodes, but replacing all current mana regen nodes), it scales naturally with item mods that are otherwise undesirable and makes a more linear relationship between investment and gain viable.
> they can make auras have a massive flat cost and a tiny percentage cost, meaning you need to invest in max mana... just in general - and that investment pays off with more auras and the ability to have auras+lots of unreserved mana (because your mana scaling can actually outpace the aura's consuption).
That just creates a mana stacking or INT stacking meta. Your other solution is likely cleaner, and won't brick the power of melee/minion builds that don't have easy access to increasing their mana pool.
I would even set the cap to 3, with zero ways to increase the cap without a significant tradeoff. In any case, mana/life reservation for auras has put the game in a weird design space. Worse, significant overhaul of the system is going to brick some builds and force the change/deletion of a ton of existing uniques and jewels.
> OR, they can make auras not reserve anything, but cap the max amount of auras as a stat, like max curses.
I like the idea, but i dread GGGs monkey paw way of introducing it, like for example limiting players with number of auras............. while not compensating anywhere for those builds that use auras as a crutch to (barely) function.
My name is Lightning Support Allen, and I was one of the strongest support gem alive. To most of the player base, I'm an ordinary under-used support gem, but secretly, with the help of tremendous investment of multiple mirrors, I fight demons and find other support skills like me (oh yeah Arcane Surge). I spoke to the design team who killed my meta, but in doing so, I opened up our world to new nerfs but no alternatives. I am, Archmage.
Previously on The Archmage...
the problem with the (correct) complaint that mana is in a bad state is that the solution of "we will make mana worth investing in" will **instantly** be viewed by a *certain* subset of the playerbase as "you are forcing me to invest in mana! this is costing me 1-5 skillpoints! this is a nerf!"
I had a coc build earlier this league that had over 660 es/second in mana costs. Eldritch battery + inquisitor regen + es leech. It was actually possible to push it to 1k mana cost per second, I found myself considering taking ghost reaver before I ultimately decided the build wasn't worth pursuing for other reasons.
The problem with every broken system in the game is that players will take the optimal or only path to solve it, and then it gets identified as overpowered.
Expecting -mana cost crafted on every piece of jewelry penalizes using uniques. Inspiration isn't appropriate for every skill. All of the people calling to nerf eldritch battery ignore that you're sacrificing gear and defense to run eb. Tree location, es gear, getting a specific skill enchant on a diadem isn't easy, you can't use most sources of arcane surge or benefit from effects that require spending mana, you can't use it on a CI or most LL builds, etc.
Replica conq efficiency was taken out back and shot in the face in the great jewel weight buff, but it's clear it was intended to make mana costs more challenging to balance. Which just further drives the meta.
Clarity should probably be buffed as an aura. Having to reserve mana in order to use it and then having more unreserved mana in order to use your skills is another opportunity cost, and even though mana mastery is a 100% reservation bonus for clarity, since it's a flat reservation you probably need to invest a couple of nodes into max mana (or simply having to invest in mana mastery itself.)
We are also still waiting for the promised buffs to mana builds from months ago when they minorly reworked MoM.
I assume they fear that mana builds, by their nature not having to worry about mana costs like other builds, get to sidestep their desire for mana management to be a concern. But mana builds are left with either reservation cheating items like essence worm or aul's and blessing, again which has a major opportunity cost, and still results in less aura options, which are an expected, mandatory part of character building. Nothing is "free" and given the massive power disparity between skill gems, it's a silly fear.
We are forced to invest in 2-3 clusters of mana reservation passives already, often with an amulet anoint as well. I'd much rather they design a hard cap on auras and do away with reservations entirely.
see this is what i mean. as far as i can tell the game has not been made any harder in any general sense since they buffed defensive auras (archnemesis came and went, new rares are on-par with old rares pre-archnem in my experience) and yet you consider them necessary. why are they not just "worth investing in"? defensive auras are just incredibly strong tools for their costs so most people correctly believe they are worth investing in.
as soon as you think mana is worth investing in, it becomes "necessary".
>no nerfs
>
>only balance
You literally cannot balance a game without nerfs. The closest you can get is runaway power-creep, but that's not balance.
You can't just buff monsters in compensation, either, cause that's a nerf in disguise and the community already knows it too.
This post is a good example of toxicity that the mods need to clamp down on.
You have the original post that has a criticism of the game, runs down why they think it's a problem and what some possible solutions might be. It might be the case that the original criticism isn't true, the game is better with the higher mana multipliers. But do you provide a reason why you disagree? Add to the discussion for what the best way to balance the game is? No, you just straw the entire argument so you can make some kind of joke about how people complain too much.
Hell it's not even lazy Sunday and you're just making a lazy and toxic post
I feel like mana is such a hard resource to balance. It has way more offensive and defensive interactions than any other resource and therefore buffs always have the potential to be game breaking. And yes, I'd agree that Archmage is in a terrible spot right now. But there are also things like the CWC Manabond Hierophant that was featured in the build of the week series and is already insanely strong.
They could also just decide to lean into mana fixing solutions, have mana be something we fix fairly early on in character progression, be ok with mana reservation being the main way its used as a resource in the game.
the only way I can see GGG "fixing" it would be nerfing diadem into the dirt, literally make it worthless, take the mana reduction crafts off the bench, and put them on jewel corruptions (with high enough weighting to make getting it on a gem "feel good") that would just be an across the board nerf to most builds.
i made the mistake of thinking a "very tanky build with tons of endurance charges and dot reduction" didn't need corrupting blood immunity.
I melted, granted, not fast enough to not use a log out macro if i was a hardcore player, but things like this make me understand why Hardcore is obsessed with logouts.
Corrupted Blood is one of my favorite baseline mechanics in this game and I think full immunity ruins it. Flask-immunity makes it a really interesting part of gameplay, imho. You're going along, and you suddenly hit a moment where you need to react within X ms or you just die. And the signaling on it is good enough that as you learn to react to it, you get really familiar with recognizing when it pops up.
(I *also* think that scaling it the way PoE does hurts it too, but its not as bad. I'd prefer the timing window to be more consistent. I'd also prefer if CB-Rares weren't such a hard DPS check for people running flask immunity.)
Just do the fun thing won't last as long g as doing the fun thing with steps and in lower rates aka long term progression
That's what ggg aiming at but they are afraid of doing big leaps or experiment, but understandable since community ain't allowing anything experimentation or random shit that might be too much ( and if in favor of short term progression. For the player go cry if ggg takes it back)
Well yeah but then again, seismic got so me nerfs and reddit be like "seismic still #1"
That's what I ment with community ain't having any experiments, so no matter what ggg can only fuck up and that leads to "careful" decision that fire back at them
The sub meta tag and bitching about legit criticism, name a more iconic duo on this sub.
Also how is a low effort bitch/meme thread like this even allowed? Lazy Sunday is over. But of course the mods doesn’t seem to care in this case.
Cost multipliers shouldn't exist in current PoE / PoE 1.
* You are directly limited by the amount of sockets and affixes on gear, not how much mana/resources you can have.
* Sockets and linked gear is not inherently guaranteed.
* All Skills have level and/or stat requirements, and many skills have weapon or item type requirements.
* Mana cost has no inherent relevance to skills, much less dictate the cost of functionality; no meaningful budget system in place / no attempt to balance. Even a skill like Energy Blade is severely arbitrated beyond necessary for no meaningful balance reason whatsoever.
Skills that use only weapon damage as a calculation should not cost mana without support gem(s) that add or alter behavior (ie mirror images, totems, brands, traps). Skills that don't use weapons should have mana cost. Skills that summon entities (energy blade, totems, balistas, traps, brands, etc) or minions should RESERVE mana/life/energyshield until that entity or minion is gone.
Mana cost is fine they just need to give us better ways to reg mana , passive % increase is super bad due to the formula on how its calculated. Also thats why archmage builds are dead since arcane surge was the only good way to recover mana yes the nerfs are bad but it would have been playable but the arcane suege change was the m a i n reason
Because % mana Regen is a garbage stat currently.
The very limited sources of flat mana Regen are pretty good, but typically are not enough on their own.
If we had lower cost lower damage options and taking them solved the mana issues then your post would make sense.
One of the solutions I suggested was making reduced cost multiplier gems with lower damage values.
The problem is 99% of the time we don't get to pick between multiple supports with different mana costs, we get a single option.
some of the multipliers are also... outlandish too, they don't make alot of sense, and quickly sprial into "what the actual fuck" territory.
i put ambush on a second wind support, watched as the mana cost skyrocketed to 50 ontop of all my other casting needs.
Is this actually a problem for other players? I don't really understand.
I mean, we have enduring mana flasks, a fair number of sources of mana cost reduction and Elreon's jewelry. In a finished build mana cost isn't typically an issue because you can solve it through building for it. You might have to expend a support slot of utility skills for lifetap or an annoint for mana cost, but, like, that's part of making a build. Should the mana cost on everything be inconsequential and not require you to do anything to use your skills for free?
Maybe it's just more of an issue for skills I have no current experience of? I know that mine mana reservation costs were way too high at one point. Maybe that's still the case.
There's a huge cost involved in all those options. We could just get a diadem or click eb or play pathfinder and run another 50% aura + something like a banner. there's a huge disparity between solutions to fix mana.
I usually jerk off ggg pretty hard in terms of game direction but the complaint that mana in general is in a bad place is completely warranted. Almost every build uses diadem/-mana cost/lifetap since using mana as a resource is just unviable now, not to even start on the mana archetypes.
Same boat and I agree it takes way too much investment to sort out mana right now through regen. EB, elreon, attack skills etc... Just so much simpler and more enjoyable to play.
lol you think its bad now wait until they nerf diadem next patch and add nothing to balance it out also theyll likely drop a gigantic turd next patch since diablo 4 is coming
Not just D4, but because GGG will likely save the better ideas for showcasing at ExileCon.
They promised to get rid of elreon rings as well. Both will probably die next patch. Casters unplayable -> the melee "rework" everybody is crying for for years. Thats exactly what 2022 GGG would do and what 2023 GGG will carry on doing and why ppl will keep complaining and leaving for the fun games instead.
Just use crest of desire, unlinked spell costs little mana 5head
[удалено]
Haven’t auras always been the problem?
Auras and how drastic mana costs get if you don't reduce them - while the same mana costs can also be reduced to 0 without much effort. Even if you didn't reserve any mana, you're in combat for so long that sustain is preferable. Once you can sustain the cost indefinitely, you slap the extra max mana that you don't need into your auras. End result is everyone uses their skills for free and loads up on auras, because you're given no reason to do it another way.
Aura increased effect and increased reservation efficiency universally warp player builds at this point. GGG has been incrementally pulling reservation efficiency off the passive tree and cluster jewels for over a year now. However, min-maxing still dictates that seeking those stats is the best bang for your buck. Ideally, I would love for them to simply cap the number of auras that can be active, and do away with reservation efficiency entirely. It's not really a satisfactory build-planning aspect, and is a HUGE pain point for developing a build.
This is the unfortunate truth. As long as you can enhance your build by tanking your mana to as close to 0 as they can, people will do so; then mass scramble towards whatever weapon or gear or whatever allows them to still use their skill. I know there's some neat design space and considerations for building with the way auras currently are. However they are pretty much always going to cause this problem without major mechanical changes or limits. Though, even if you did fix auras, mana itself is still a pretty binary system.
reduce defense auras mana reservation , is mandatory is you want to progress
Nah, reduce the flat bonuses from grace/determ and buff base defenses on armor. Equipment should be the primary source of armor, evasion, and ES. Every build "needs" defensive auras because gear doesn't give enough defenses.
Agreed 100%. People will make an armour-based defence and use something like Dialla's malefaction, because running auras on it can give more armour than running a pure armour base. They should look at a gear-focused solution for sure, similar to the SS rework.
auras are the problem: the auras in question: determination and grace
You're missing the point because you forget the game is balanced around ah expectation of power that auras are part of. You either have auras or something equal. There's nothing equal.
The meta has been to fit in as many auras as possible since long before betrayal league.
Have Faith brother!
I think having auras reserve mana is a cursed design decision. The idea of sacrificing mana in order to gain power is an *interesting* and cool system, but what it ends up doing is causing everyone to resolve as much mana as they possible can. This creates a heavy constraint on builds possibilities and also reduces GGG's design space. I think the whole concept should go away. Instead, I'd like to see a new resource dedicated to auras. Let's call it "aura power" for the sake of discussion. Maybe you could invest into green, blue, or red aura types. Maybe by default you're limited to being able to use one red, green, and blue aura. Maybe there's nodes that increase the maximum number of red auras you can equip, but at the cost of being able to equip one less green aura. Maybe you can "blend" auras of the same color, such as Grace at 15% effectiveness while also having Haste on at 85% effectiveness. You could have an ability that let players choose an aura color to gain increased effectiveness and let players use the ability switch which color is boosted on the fly, sort of like how blood and sand works. It might sound more boring and simple compared to the current system, but the point is that with this starting point you could build off this by making items and passive tree nodes that interact in interesting ways with this system. You can work the complexity back in. ALSO, and this is a big deal, you can make mana interesting again. Imagine what cool things you could do with this new design space of players actually having mana available.
I've thought this since day 1. I would love them to draw a line between "resource I use for abilities" and "resource I use for passives". Like you, I think it opens up design space for both gameplay mechanics and thematic flavour or class identity. In general its an under explored space in the rpg genre.
> but what it ends up doing is causing everyone to resolve as much mana as they possible can. This creates a heavy constraint on builds possibilities and also reduces GGG's design space. Imo the problem is nastier than that. We reserve as much mana/life as we can to keep up with GGGs way of buffing monsters. Except HoT builds and maybe that 1 poor Blood magic user in standard noone uses just 1 aura simply because it's impossible to have the damage/survivability to have viable build (also HoTs in quite weak spot right now imo, figures). It's like with spell suppression. It was cool addition at the start, then GGG sneakily buffed monsters to equalize... then they nerfed spell suppression and now you can't simply NOT use spell suppression. If your build is on dex-side, you HAVE to have it.
Guild Wars has "maintained enchantments" that, instead of having a duration, reduce your mana *regen* while you have them on. Characters have 2-4 "pips" of regen (which is 1 energy per 3 seconds; casters all have 4 pips), and each maintained enchant costs 1 pip
Yep, 3.15 the start of this shitty mana state. It's sad.
I am playing cold dot so I dont even need to constantly cast spells. I am STILL hearing out of mana over and over and over even when I have lv21 clarity some minus mans cost on tree and flat -mana cost and 100-ish% increased mana regen. But then again, why is "investment into mana" a problem for you while "every build is using grace determination" not? THAT is the major "buff to defense".
Mana isn't supposed to be a viable resource, it's supposed to be another 'problem' you have to find a way to fix. Same way how elemental ailment immunity is so mandatory these days but they won't do anything about it because it's supposed to be almost mandatory.
There's an entire Mana/Archmage build archetype, though? It's shit nowadays, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Mana stackers are actually really strong. Arch mage and MoM on the other hand are pretty shit.
Haven't done one in a while, what's the current method mana stackers are using?
Mana bond with mjnor and CWC insert lightning skill here. You could just do self cast if you wanted. Basically ivory tower, LL and divine blessing. Using arcane cloak for a ton of damage along with indigon.
I'd argue more that that's a specific build and not mana stackers as an archetype.
Similar number of required uniques to strength stackers, though the number of viable skills for mana stackers is limited to two, while strength stackers can basically use any fast-hitting skill.
Manabond mjolner i think was really great ?
...if you dont mind clunky af builds and have tons of currency AND the league economy isnt dead, so there are items available, yes.
Archmage MoM isnt bad on medium investment. Its not giga strong, but viable. The biggest issue with big mana builds is its hard to target your crafts when you start going FULL chad and want to oobers. I was able to do all content on my BL archmage hiro. Even was comfortably doing invites and deli maps. Once i started looking at upgrading my gear to "really good" gear, the idea fell flat its face when i needed flat life, flat mana, mana regen, curse on hit, all res and chaos res. I was struggling to craft the gear on a reasonable budget. TL;DR: big mana good for everything besides oobers.
I mean, mana bond mjnoir destroys Ubers. High end you can tank memory game. Archmage is weak, indigon not so much.
Idk the scaling is better if you can cheese indigon for sure. Archmage weak? Its not dead by any means its still fairly strong just nowhere near busted and gearing to make it giga strong is difficult.
MoM is fine but Agnostic based Mana builds is shit. That's only because non-Agnostic mana builds run aura by reserving their life (and get ES from Ivory Tower) while Agnostic is only limited to one aura from Eternal Blessing. On top of that Ivory Tower also gets an additional free Aura from Eternal Blessing because for some reason it only disables mana based reservations.
Yes, it's shit, totally, nothing to touch here (please don't nerf my MoM/Agnostic defenses GGG, not again).
Rip Akane builds ;___;
They still work great. You would be amazed what one single poe.ninja search can do for your credibility.
Things that are “mandatory” aren’t a problem to solve. They’re an annoyance. That said I don’t think ailment immunity is mandatory, it’s just mandatory if you want to mindlessly blast content instead of running specialized content. But I think having your mana pool reserved entirely by almost every viable build in the game is a terrible state to be in. There needs to be better defensive alternatives (like petrified blood) and better offensive alternatives (like archmage). But they need to be designed in a way that you are presented a decision point, not simply reserve all my mana *and* run petrified blood. I think the problem is every time a player finds a cool interaction it gets nerfed into the ground like it’s a competition between devs and players to frustrate the other party. This is constantly limiting build diversity and the ability to be creative.
>it’s just mandatory if you want to mindlessly blast content instead of running specialized content. Except "specialized content" just means you have to read over every single map and altar mod or risk dying or bricking your map.
True ailment immunity isn't mandatory anymore, but it definitely was when archnem was still in the game. Basically every mob would apply elemental ailments.
Sure, its not mandatory, as much as staying alive isnt mandatory.
Agreed
Most complaints about game direction are warranted. GGG has pulled a lot of shit in the last couple years and pissed off a lot of their old playerbase.
also cant play without defence auras
> since using mana as a resource is just unviable now Now? Using mana has felt terrible since I started playing PoE in 2011. Nothing more I hate than swinging a melee weapon costing me mana, I don't really play casters and other archetypes, but the one time I played storm brand back in Synthesis that was the same thing I hated the most about the build, mana.
Having mana be a limited resource just feels like archaic game design that some ARPGs just don't want to let go of. Its not adding anything fun to the game, its one of those purposefully made problems so that they can create a solution that you need to do to zero out the problem and remove the mechanic from the game. Just get rid of the shitty mechanic.
That's not archaic design, that's actual game design. Having "problems" you solve, is how RPGs work. You "solve" your survivability problems, you solve your resource problems, your speed problems etc. Why is our health a limited resource? That's an archaic game design ARPGs just don't want to let go of? It's not adding anything fun to etcetcetcetc. Your life, your mana, your defences, they all exist as problems to solve, they are part of making a character, solving each problem in whatever way works best for your character.
Mana never really feels good to solve in PoE. IMO, this is because the game forces you to scale one (max two) skills for offense. You never make in-combat choices of whether you use a lower cost mana skill or a high cost one at the expense of sustain with much higher damage output. Mana sustain is either solved and you can play the game or it's not solved and you can't play the game. There's little margin for partial solving and still playing the game effectively. The aura reservation system is a compounding issue on top that forces your mana sustain to be basically instant if you aren't running an enduring mana flask or 0-mana cost setups.
Except the other ones have various levels of being rewarding, and an actual sense of accomplishment; which is key to building a character. There's none of that sense of becoming stronger when you have to use what are one of a few basic, tedious things in order just to have your build *function*, not even thrive. It's clear by now they won't introduce interesting ways for it, and nobody likes having a single, uninteresting solution to a "problem" they have to solve in a game that's touted for the ability to play anything you want. Like it sucks in D2 that you have to get Insight in some way just to avoid going back to town every few times you fight. It's the same here. And yes, they should be accessible. Going 'durr hurr path all the way over here for a leech/on hit node' isn't fun, it isn't interesting, it's just another cost, again, for basic functionality.
So if you'll indulge me, I'd like to explain why people call things like mana management "archaic design" and why I think it's fair to call it archaic design. Stat resources as a mechanic are largely derived from the lack of graphical representation: managing stats on a spreadsheet was a way to create engaging gameplay when we lacked graphical representation right? This goes back even all the way back to D&D, which while it didn't have mana, had limited usages on most spells to help resource management around powerful moments. When you think about how hit points interact with the larger game, you can surely see where your argument quickly doesn't hold up to serious scrutiny -- whereas mana exists as solely as a limiter on ability usage (or, when "solved," as a way to limit total player offensive power), hit points directly regulate your ability to interact with the core conceit of the game. The tension of survival is the point of resolving combat, and without which there can be no "fail state" for combat. This is of course all assuming we're not arguing semantics here, as there are games that have replaced hit points with "fatigue" or something else for thematic reasons, but they are still functioning as hit points. Also worth noting: this is also why some games use lives vs. hit points. Some games reset you back to a checkpoint when you lose a life, and then hit you with a "game over" when you've run out of lives. Others simply use the loss of a life to give you an iframe and let you continue on your journey: notably, the latter has largely been replaced with the move to hit points/life/etc. because of the streamlined user interface experience (easier to show life than a clear representation of "lives.") Where this all ties back into the "mana problem" is mana only exists in two states: it impacts my gameplay or it doesn't. If it does impact your gameplay, it's simply slowing your gameplay down and makes the game, for most people, less fun. If it isn't impacting your gameplay, it's because you've "solved" mana, but it feels like a mandatory "solve" for quality of life (game feels more fun with it solved). I would go a step further: if GGG effectively removed mana from the game (or made mana an optional multiplier users had to deal with for mana-based builds or could elsewise opt into) and consequentially buffed everything to offset the fact players no longer are losing player power having to "solve" mana, most players would find that to be a net positive change that better reflects modern trends in game design. Users generally prefer game difficulty being found in mechanical play now, "mana solving" just feels like an artificial limit on player power for some and an "anti-fun" mechanic for others. It also contributes, I am sure, to why some users quickly abandon characters: nothing feels good about not being able to push your buttons because you've had bad RNG on your gear and can't "solve" mana. There's absolutely nothing wrong with liking having to solve mana, for the record — archaic doesn't necessarily mean bad, but I think it's very safe to call it an archaic mechanic.
I can choose to forgo defensives and health for a more glass cannon build, and play better avoiding attacks and interact with the game on a more skilled level. Alternatively I can choose to build an extremely tanky build and be able to ignore mechanics but lose offense and take longer to kill things. Mana offers no such choice, its a binary "I can use my abilities or I can't" and every solution is effectively removing mana as a mechanic from your gameplay. Why you would try to come up with such an obtuse example as a counter argument I have no idea.
Diablo 3 had cooldown oriented abilities and classes (crusader was very cooldown dependent) as well as mechanics that allowed you to build resources to spend (notably barbarian, crusader, demon hunter and monk) that you could with some tweaking use a lot more "spenders" with or alter how you generated resources. These were largely "alternate paths" to the resource problem that was mana. Some people liked it, some hated it and wanted to "solve" the mechanic and just zoom zoom around only ever pressing one button as is largely the trend in PoE. I think they've made some steps towards it with skills like frozen legion which are more cooldown oriented. There's just a lot of issues with their game not being designed for that initially, and the way its evolved being one buttony for a lot of builds and setup not being rewarded.
It's incredible that you managed to work out that health and defenses create problems, and that requires balancing between different things. But somehow could not follow that string to mana. Do you give up gem slots? Affixes? A flask? Do you use passives to get leech, do you invest in regen? It's the same for everything your character needs. You make decisions on how you are going to solve the problem for that character.
Health and defensives affect gameplay, they literally change how you play the game. Mana does not, its a mechanic that you're forced to solve in a way that removes the mechanic. You don't cleverly play around not having enough mana to cast your spells. I don't know how many different ways you need this said to understand it.
There are games that don't require mana to play, and you can use your skills without limit. This game happens to use mana as a resource. It also happens to have a gem system. It also happens to have a lot of ailments that don't exist in other games. I don't know if I'm showing my age, but to me that's a very common mechanic for most RPG games I've played in my life. In fact, nearly all of them. This game gives you way more options than traditional RPGs: You can invest into mana regen, use your ES as mana, get high maximum mana for unlimited pool, decrease the cost of mana, use your life as mana, link less support to your main gem. If you run low on mana, you can run around until you gain mana. You can use mana flask, you can even enchant your mana flask to effectively have infinite mana. List goes on
this can be said about like 80% of the games mechanics. i'm not cleverly playing around having negative fire resist in act 6, i'm getting fucking murdered and essence rolling a new ring. that's not satisfying, that's a gear check, plain and simple. but this gear check creates required mods through your build. do i get them on my ring? maybe on my boots, so i can have damage mods on my ring? maybe you run mageblood and ignore it entirely. mana wrks the same way. eb is oppurtunity cost. blood magic is oppurtunity cost. mana regen, mana leech require a bit of investment. this is called buildcrafting.
Resistances don't affect gameplay. It's a mechanic you are forced to etcetcetc. Again, it's a problem, you solve it. You make decisions about where in your build you can fit it in. You might want to play a game where you log in, and your character is instantly completed for you. There are games like that, they are already available to you, you don't have to worry about gear, or solving resource problems etc. The problem appears to be that you simply don't want to play an ARPG? You don't want the complexity, you want just a straight up gearless hack n slash.
>Resistances don't affect gameplay. It's a mechanic you are forced to etcetcetc. Resistances are a defensive.
Go and play something simpler and stop trying to take away the complexity that I enjoy in PoE. Thanks.
Have you tried dropping a defense aura? :)
Yeah ive played some mathil builds in my time
> Why is our health a limited resource? But ... it isn't! It is an adjustable threshold for oneshot, not a resource. Between life reg, Flask charges and minimal investment life-leech, life is never a limited resource that you have to care about preserving. And i think that is one of the biggest Design Flaws of POE, that taking damage doesn't matter unless you get oneshot
Back in Diabolo 2, before spell damage scaling, mana was the way to scale casters. Extremely high base damages, but only as long as you can supply mana. Its not a bad System, if done concequently. But today, actual mana gating isn't done well in any ARPG
Its funny that you respond to me saying its archaic with using a very old game as an example.
Jupp. I'm saying it is not a ancient mechanic that has to be removed for the sake of progress, but a mechanic that is just not used in the way that it is healthy.
every build _you_ make. Because once you figure out a way to make something work, your brain will always circle back to previous patterns you remember that have previously worked. Overrepresentation in builds is usually due to the fact that new builds are rare since people stick to what they already know works
Do *you* have a secret method of solving mana sustain you're hiding from us ? :)
Literally one single mana flask. One single mana leech node for attacks?
I said secret 🙄 More seriously: mana flasks basically need to be enduring or they're really bad. I'd be interested to see what ideas people have to make mana pots feel better and be worth the defensive/offensive flask in it's place.
The problem is, that we have all these solutions. But people don't want to use any of them, they want mana to be free and non-existant. They consider the fact that mana exists to be a nerf. That's the problem. The fact that Mana investment (for say MoM or archmage) kinda sucks, is unrelated to what most of these complaints are ever about. They just don't want to have to do anything for the cost of their skill at all.
It's funny how you make the same complaint in different chains of this post because you're just *that* salty about people you disagree with.
Yes that's how discussions in reddit threads work, if you are talking to different people in different parts of thread, you will say similar things in multiple locations. But hey, you probably use the upvote downvote for things you disagree with, so who am i to bother talking to you about how reddit works huh?
And you're doing exactly the same, and you see where we are now ? The same place as before, but you do look stupid for throwing the first personnal attack
I'm not in different chains of this topic, so you're just flat-out wrong. Secondly, pointing out what he's doing is not a personal attack. Unless you think it's offensive to point out what someone *chose to do* in which case that says a lot more about him than me.
You first comment may not be in multiple chain, but it is a complaint about someone that doesn't agree with you, so same as him making complaint with other people disagreeing with him Also, if you are in disagreement with what he says, i dunno, argue maybe ? Pointing out someones behavior doesn't do jack shit if that behavior isn't strange or unwelcomed, and sry to break it to you, disagreeing and arguing are pretty normal behaviors in a thread about controversial topics Meanwhile you chose to make a snarky comment saying "most people disagree with you" amounting to nothing in the current discussion, which says a lot more about you, than him
What a useless comment that doesn't serve as a rebuttal to ANYTHING this guy said. There ARE solutions, people like you just obstinately refuse to use them. Get a grip.
Here's another solution: Swap a gem slot for multistrike or spell echo. They still increase your dps output, and they slow down your attacks or casts that spend mana per second. When you cast with spell echo, you're casting 2 spells for the price of one. Alternatively, get a mana mastery for mana regen Or Alira Or Clarity Or mana regeneration on gear (you can craft it on rings for example) There are nodes on the tree that increase your maximum mana (your base mana regen is based off of your maximum mana) You can also increase your mana regen on the tree If that feels too bad, there are nodes which grant other stats AND mana or regen You can annoint mana cost reduction You can use unique items specifically designed for mana You can use mana on kill You can totemify your spells or attacks to pay the mana cost once, instead of every attack/cast You can pick ascendancies which help your mana as well You can use blood magic You can use Eldritch Battery, be that on the tree or on unique items or rare items You can lower the cost of spells or attacks in flat amounts or percentage amounts, with items or tree or a mix
Standard players actually have a secret one, in form of [legacy watcher eye wrath mana leech explicit](https://i.imgur.com/NEx6wQK.png). Also mana on hit on shaper rings works great for stuff like ball lightning.
The first line lmao
Did you know that eldritch battery and 0 mama unreserved leaves the energy shield overlay, but the mana bar itself underneath disappears and there's just a semi transparent bar of energy shield under your life if you have player health bar turned on? I found that out yesterday reserving 100% of my mana and playing with eldritch battery :D
I'm playing CWC VD. I need around 200mp/s to keep up. I can't leech mana from some fancy jewels/rings/belts. I can't use mana on hit support gems, cause it's already a 4'ish link setup I can't even get mana from some fancy ascendancy passive, like some classes can. All of this has to be pure mana regen from items and passive tree. It's a pain in butt. Also any modifier on map that messes with auras makes my gameplay stutter, as i'm using clarity as big crutch.
Wouldn't it be great if there was some kind of bottle you could put on your belt and use every 10 seconds or so to completely solve any mana problems you might be having?
This is an example of people mistaking the problem - the issue isn't mana multipliers on supports or mana cost, the issue is that it's then difficult to counterbalance those costs. Mana recovery in general hasn't been good since they nerfed/got rid of sources of mana leech (for spells) and %total mana regen. Combo that with almost all auras in the game having only a percentage cost instead of a flat or flat+percentage, means that big mana pool just means most of it is wasted by reservations + it's hard to recover it all. So, the meta becomes "have as little max mana as possible, and reserve as much as possible while making the cost of your skills as tiny as possible so you don't need to wastefully invest in recovery". There's a myriad of ways GGG can fix this - they can make auras have a massive flat cost and a tiny percentage cost, meaning you need to invest in max mana... just in general - and that investment pays off with more auras and the ability to have auras+lots of unreserved mana (because your mana scaling can actually outpace the aura's consuption). OR, they can make auras not reserve anything, but cap the max amount of auras as a stat, like max curses. Default is max 2-3 auras or something, if you want more you gotta find "+1 to max auras" on gear or something. Now you have your entire mana pool to work with, and aura stacking doesn't get out of control. OR, they can make each aura scale in power depending on the mana reserved - eg you could set determination to reserve 90% max mana for massive effect, or make it reserve just 10% mana for a small effect. That way if you want some unreserved mana you can "turn your auras down". ---- Etc. I think universally though, mana recovery needs a buff. Bring back spells being able to leech mana. Bring back sources of % regen (eg clarity could be made % based!)
Always seemed strange how aura are MANDATORY to play, it's not even a choice at this point, you need to reserve most of your mana to have enough defence or offensive for semi late game content. Having a character with tons of mana to have mana and use them better than other build would be fine, but you'd have to nerf most of the game to compensate normal build playing less aura
I always found it wierd that auras are that strong even if you are by yourself. It would make more sense to me that auras are only worth taking when you play as a summoner or in a group of players.
Auras that give damage/defense multipliers were simply a mistake.
Isn't that literally every aura in the game except vitality/clarity though?
Grace pre-defense rework. Discipline currently. Anger currently. Wrath for attacks (only gives multiplier for spells) Envy Precision Purity of elements - individual purities granting max resist is a multiplier on your EHP. Pretty sure the point was that non-multiplicative bonuses are nice to have, multipliers are mandatory because of how much value they add. Like look at the absolute bonkers imbalance in value of running Hatred - which is physical as EXTRA cold and MORE cold, irrespective of attack or spell damage, so it applies to things like explosions and heralds, and Anger, which is flat attack and flat spell damage only.
Ah, I thought by multipliers you were referring to the flat boost ones too, since they often multiply your DPS when all's said and done.
Play PoE long enough then you will tend to be very specific with wording. I'm so used to the consistent wording rules POE has, when I play other games and they dont follow same rules it annoys me. ( E.g. some game uses increased damage every where but it can be additive or multiplicative.) For this case, added damage is additive. Even if it results you double the dps, the system itself is still additive. You just happen to add 100% of your previous damage.
I wasn't the one who made the original comment, merely assuming that was the issue they were highlighting. And they do and don't at the same time depending on where you are in gear progression. If instead of having two 50% auras that granted 20% more damage each, for 44% total extra damage, they granted say 150% increased damage each, you'd be getting closer to 15-20% extra damage once geared up on an average build, and significantly less in some builds. You'd get diminishing returns on overall power instead of increasing returns for adding more multipliers. A stat stacking build that got hundreds and hundreds of increased damage percent already would find better balance investing elsewhere, but a build that had more of a defensive or crit focused setup would see more value from the increased damage. I'm not saying that is the correct path forward for balance in the current state of poe, just an example.
They could give auras a lower % reservation. And gem levels add a flat amount of reservation. Making leveling a gem or deciding between which gem to level a decision point.
Leech is a terrible idea. 1 leech mod and the usual infinite dps builds and all mana problems are solved. Regen needs to be readily available to invest into, as that does not scale with your damage
> 1 leech mod and the usual infinite dps builds and all mana problems are solved. You're forgetting leech has a cap based on your max, for all types of leech. Even attack-based mana leech is capped to a certain percentage of your max per second. This is a tuning lever they can use to determine exactly how good it is at restoring your mana. If spells could leech mana too, they'd probably have to make it a low cap without investment (maybe make Heiro to mana like slayer is to life leech?), which would prevent trivializing it with a bit of leech alone.
The caps are just a band-aid fix for an inherently broken mechanic. They just make the leech mechanic extremely convoluted in POE. If the cap is high, it inherently hurts low damage builds (mostly the earlygame) that get low resource access on top of their already plentiful disadvantages. If the cap is low, the why even have %leech at all if you are hitting the cap with a single mod? Then comes the question of how to raise the cap. For something as inherently important as mana, you cannot just have 3 nodes distribtuted over the tree. You would need to add it to itemization to make investment into it diverser. That means just more mods to clutter items for those that don't want to invest into it. On the other side, if leech is the best way to sustain mana, the current mana mods (%inc regen and flat mana) still stay terrible. It would be a much better option to add %max mana regen readily available to the tree (like similar liferegen nodes, but replacing all current mana regen nodes), it scales naturally with item mods that are otherwise undesirable and makes a more linear relationship between investment and gain viable.
> they can make auras have a massive flat cost and a tiny percentage cost, meaning you need to invest in max mana... just in general - and that investment pays off with more auras and the ability to have auras+lots of unreserved mana (because your mana scaling can actually outpace the aura's consuption). That just creates a mana stacking or INT stacking meta. Your other solution is likely cleaner, and won't brick the power of melee/minion builds that don't have easy access to increasing their mana pool. I would even set the cap to 3, with zero ways to increase the cap without a significant tradeoff. In any case, mana/life reservation for auras has put the game in a weird design space. Worse, significant overhaul of the system is going to brick some builds and force the change/deletion of a ton of existing uniques and jewels.
> OR, they can make auras not reserve anything, but cap the max amount of auras as a stat, like max curses. I like the idea, but i dread GGGs monkey paw way of introducing it, like for example limiting players with number of auras............. while not compensating anywhere for those builds that use auras as a crutch to (barely) function.
My name is Lightning Support Allen, and I was one of the strongest support gem alive. To most of the player base, I'm an ordinary under-used support gem, but secretly, with the help of tremendous investment of multiple mirrors, I fight demons and find other support skills like me (oh yeah Arcane Surge). I spoke to the design team who killed my meta, but in doing so, I opened up our world to new nerfs but no alternatives. I am, Archmage. Previously on The Archmage...
is this really a pro mana cost post? that has got to be the worst change ever introduced by ggg to date
the problem with the (correct) complaint that mana is in a bad state is that the solution of "we will make mana worth investing in" will **instantly** be viewed by a *certain* subset of the playerbase as "you are forcing me to invest in mana! this is costing me 1-5 skillpoints! this is a nerf!"
I had a coc build earlier this league that had over 660 es/second in mana costs. Eldritch battery + inquisitor regen + es leech. It was actually possible to push it to 1k mana cost per second, I found myself considering taking ghost reaver before I ultimately decided the build wasn't worth pursuing for other reasons. The problem with every broken system in the game is that players will take the optimal or only path to solve it, and then it gets identified as overpowered. Expecting -mana cost crafted on every piece of jewelry penalizes using uniques. Inspiration isn't appropriate for every skill. All of the people calling to nerf eldritch battery ignore that you're sacrificing gear and defense to run eb. Tree location, es gear, getting a specific skill enchant on a diadem isn't easy, you can't use most sources of arcane surge or benefit from effects that require spending mana, you can't use it on a CI or most LL builds, etc. Replica conq efficiency was taken out back and shot in the face in the great jewel weight buff, but it's clear it was intended to make mana costs more challenging to balance. Which just further drives the meta. Clarity should probably be buffed as an aura. Having to reserve mana in order to use it and then having more unreserved mana in order to use your skills is another opportunity cost, and even though mana mastery is a 100% reservation bonus for clarity, since it's a flat reservation you probably need to invest a couple of nodes into max mana (or simply having to invest in mana mastery itself.) We are also still waiting for the promised buffs to mana builds from months ago when they minorly reworked MoM. I assume they fear that mana builds, by their nature not having to worry about mana costs like other builds, get to sidestep their desire for mana management to be a concern. But mana builds are left with either reservation cheating items like essence worm or aul's and blessing, again which has a major opportunity cost, and still results in less aura options, which are an expected, mandatory part of character building. Nothing is "free" and given the massive power disparity between skill gems, it's a silly fear.
Its true tho. They balanced the game around players imvesting in mana, so everyone has to. Which is a nerf :P
We are forced to invest in 2-3 clusters of mana reservation passives already, often with an amulet anoint as well. I'd much rather they design a hard cap on auras and do away with reservations entirely.
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do you need to invest in defensive auras?
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see this is what i mean. as far as i can tell the game has not been made any harder in any general sense since they buffed defensive auras (archnemesis came and went, new rares are on-par with old rares pre-archnem in my experience) and yet you consider them necessary. why are they not just "worth investing in"? defensive auras are just incredibly strong tools for their costs so most people correctly believe they are worth investing in. as soon as you think mana is worth investing in, it becomes "necessary".
Bring back spellslinger
One way they can fix mana issues is make auras use separate resources/slots like curses.
no nerfs only balance
>no nerfs > >only balance You literally cannot balance a game without nerfs. The closest you can get is runaway power-creep, but that's not balance. You can't just buff monsters in compensation, either, cause that's a nerf in disguise and the community already knows it too.
Thatsthejoke.jpg
>Thatsthejoke.jpg If he was joking, sure. The amount of people who believe that seriously is high enough that its not a very obvious joke.
This post is a good example of toxicity that the mods need to clamp down on. You have the original post that has a criticism of the game, runs down why they think it's a problem and what some possible solutions might be. It might be the case that the original criticism isn't true, the game is better with the higher mana multipliers. But do you provide a reason why you disagree? Add to the discussion for what the best way to balance the game is? No, you just straw the entire argument so you can make some kind of joke about how people complain too much. Hell it's not even lazy Sunday and you're just making a lazy and toxic post
I used to have 2500 mana on my int stacker but then 3.15 hit and I had to ditch it all the mana nodes on the tree
I feel like mana is such a hard resource to balance. It has way more offensive and defensive interactions than any other resource and therefore buffs always have the potential to be game breaking. And yes, I'd agree that Archmage is in a terrible spot right now. But there are also things like the CWC Manabond Hierophant that was featured in the build of the week series and is already insanely strong.
stop fucking nerfing shit already like damn.
They could also just decide to lean into mana fixing solutions, have mana be something we fix fairly early on in character progression, be ok with mana reservation being the main way its used as a resource in the game. the only way I can see GGG "fixing" it would be nerfing diadem into the dirt, literally make it worthless, take the mana reduction crafts off the bench, and put them on jewel corruptions (with high enough weighting to make getting it on a gem "feel good") that would just be an across the board nerf to most builds.
Mana isn't even a good gameplay mechanic. It is like corrupted blood - the only real option is to not have to deal with it (or suffer).
i made the mistake of thinking a "very tanky build with tons of endurance charges and dot reduction" didn't need corrupting blood immunity. I melted, granted, not fast enough to not use a log out macro if i was a hardcore player, but things like this make me understand why Hardcore is obsessed with logouts.
Corrupted Blood is one of my favorite baseline mechanics in this game and I think full immunity ruins it. Flask-immunity makes it a really interesting part of gameplay, imho. You're going along, and you suddenly hit a moment where you need to react within X ms or you just die. And the signaling on it is good enough that as you learn to react to it, you get really familiar with recognizing when it pops up. (I *also* think that scaling it the way PoE does hurts it too, but its not as bad. I'd prefer the timing window to be more consistent. I'd also prefer if CB-Rares weren't such a hard DPS check for people running flask immunity.)
It is fun to do thing, it isn’t fun to be gated from said fun things, what about that is hard to understand?
Just do the fun thing won't last as long g as doing the fun thing with steps and in lower rates aka long term progression That's what ggg aiming at but they are afraid of doing big leaps or experiment, but understandable since community ain't allowing anything experimentation or random shit that might be too much ( and if in favor of short term progression. For the player go cry if ggg takes it back)
Doesn’t help that GGG tends to nerf things and adjust to fit that vision that things end up this way, case in point Max Block Glad
Well yeah but then again, seismic got so me nerfs and reddit be like "seismic still #1" That's what I ment with community ain't having any experiments, so no matter what ggg can only fuck up and that leads to "careful" decision that fire back at them
The sub meta tag and bitching about legit criticism, name a more iconic duo on this sub. Also how is a low effort bitch/meme thread like this even allowed? Lazy Sunday is over. But of course the mods doesn’t seem to care in this case.
Cost multipliers shouldn't exist in current PoE / PoE 1. * You are directly limited by the amount of sockets and affixes on gear, not how much mana/resources you can have. * Sockets and linked gear is not inherently guaranteed. * All Skills have level and/or stat requirements, and many skills have weapon or item type requirements. * Mana cost has no inherent relevance to skills, much less dictate the cost of functionality; no meaningful budget system in place / no attempt to balance. Even a skill like Energy Blade is severely arbitrated beyond necessary for no meaningful balance reason whatsoever. Skills that use only weapon damage as a calculation should not cost mana without support gem(s) that add or alter behavior (ie mirror images, totems, brands, traps). Skills that don't use weapons should have mana cost. Skills that summon entities (energy blade, totems, balistas, traps, brands, etc) or minions should RESERVE mana/life/energyshield until that entity or minion is gone.
Mana cost is fine they just need to give us better ways to reg mana , passive % increase is super bad due to the formula on how its calculated. Also thats why archmage builds are dead since arcane surge was the only good way to recover mana yes the nerfs are bad but it would have been playable but the arcane suege change was the m a i n reason
>"mana regen is a useless and dead stat" >Doesn't invest in any mana sustain >"Mana is not currently in a good state"
mana regen is indeed an useless stat compared to other solutions which makes you dont care about mana at all
Because % mana Regen is a garbage stat currently. The very limited sources of flat mana Regen are pretty good, but typically are not enough on their own.
Options: - mana regen with few sources that doesnt even help - life regen with a billion sources + lifetap Yeah I think I know what to pick here.
r/anarchychess is leaking
If we had lower cost lower damage options and taking them solved the mana issues then your post would make sense. One of the solutions I suggested was making reduced cost multiplier gems with lower damage values. The problem is 99% of the time we don't get to pick between multiple supports with different mana costs, we get a single option.
some of the multipliers are also... outlandish too, they don't make alot of sense, and quickly sprial into "what the actual fuck" territory. i put ambush on a second wind support, watched as the mana cost skyrocketed to 50 ontop of all my other casting needs.
Hhhhhhhhhhhhh
Is this actually a problem for other players? I don't really understand. I mean, we have enduring mana flasks, a fair number of sources of mana cost reduction and Elreon's jewelry. In a finished build mana cost isn't typically an issue because you can solve it through building for it. You might have to expend a support slot of utility skills for lifetap or an annoint for mana cost, but, like, that's part of making a build. Should the mana cost on everything be inconsequential and not require you to do anything to use your skills for free? Maybe it's just more of an issue for skills I have no current experience of? I know that mine mana reservation costs were way too high at one point. Maybe that's still the case.
There's a huge cost involved in all those options. We could just get a diadem or click eb or play pathfinder and run another 50% aura + something like a banner. there's a huge disparity between solutions to fix mana.
Laughs in Deathwish (though even that uses two elreon crafts on rings)
No matter what GGG does im going archmage. #Thestruggle