Monday, April 16, 2012

Auras ??

After reading Jay Wilson's exclusive with Flux, a sick twisted feeling arose in my stomach, and it wasn't the hoagie i had for breakfast.

Seriously ... auras for the monk? seriously?

The only way I would want to see auras is if they were castable, and/or 2-3 auras were stackable. Didn't make much sense seeing as how the Barbarian had castable auras (BO), and the pally's right click was always occupied. Even the concept of some assassin skills, BoS, fade, were borderline castable aura type skills (no party benefit, i understand).

And how would auras, if they stick with a Diablo II mechanic, work with the new hotkey system? Ive heard of aura flashing ... but it was more of a design flaw, and exploit, and not really an intended game mechanic from the developers pov.

I love the idea of auras, but it has to be reworked. Diablo 2 pallys were accepted because of the 1-2 skill spamathon that was Diablo 2. If D3 really wants players to utilize different situation specific skills, then auras need a makeover.

Feel free to disagree, rant, flame, whine, cry, agree, ridicule .. whatever.. but i want a discussion! |||Castable channeling auras could be an interesting solution... Pretty much like some kind of "prayer" would fit the monk nicely. That way it could fit the hotkey system and there could be some different kind of "auras" (like a huge defensive sphere or something).

It would work in a simple way. The monk sits down and prays for some time, during the prayer the aura goes on. Of course the monk is vulnerable meanwhile (because as he's praying and concentrated he wouldn't be able to attack) but its good as an strategy thing.

Well, that or something like Barb's warcries.|||He said that monks MAY get auras. It is not that bad imo since they will most likely be way different than in DII where you had to sacrifice another skills slot to keep one going.

The Wizzard armor spells seem to work now like auras as well since they affect the party members near you.|||Party auras wouldn't fit the Monk for a very obvious reason, unlike the Paladin (maybe with the exception of a charger Paly) the Monk is dashing around all the time hitting and running and will mostly be a little ahead of other party members (Babs for example will hang around and will enjoy standing in place to take damage and generate tons of fury).

So when the Monk is going to be ahead of his party most of the time or at leaset away from them there is no point in chaining him with Party Buffs or Party Auras that force him to stay close to other party members to be useful.



So i guess it is unlikely that we will see permanent party auras for the Monk, as for normal personal auras that buff the monk alone and stay on all the time, there are few ways to handle those (mostly seen in TQ which has a skill bar like the one that will be in D3)

1-Permanent Auras that reserve part of your energy pool and lock it away when you activate them, i.e if Monk was using mana and has 100 points .. Aura (A) for example when activated from the skill bar would reserve up to 30 points of the mana pool for its use and results in reducing your active mana pool to 70 ... that type can be good for D3 becasue you can simply activate it then remove its icon from the skill bar unitl you need to deactivate it again so it won't take as skill slot permanently.

2-Permanent Auras that leech off your mana when they are active, like if the Monk was using mana and had 4.3 mana regen (base regen plus bonus from items) then that Aura would leech at least 2.5 of his mana regen thus resulting in slowing the Monks mana regen .. and if his regen rate was 2.5 or less it would leech and reduce his mana all the time .... could also work great in D3 since Mana regen is now affected by character level and there will be many varied ways to improve it (via items that has +Mana regen modifier or +VIT gear, or via weapons that has energy leech if they consider bringing them back)

Also this one will be necessary to keep on the skill par since when you are low on mana you will need to deactivate it to allow your mana/resource to regen faster.

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So permanent aura could work greatly for the monk, and those two methods are balanced by the fact that if you activate too many auras you will either be unable to cast any spell/use any skills (all your energy reserved) or your energy will be depleting at an extremely fast rate which also will prevent you from using any other skills ... but that in and of itself can be turned into an interesting aura-centered build ... as for party benefiting auras .. i don't think they are likely to make it on the Monk .. maybe another class.

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Of course lots of this can change depending on the resource the Monk will use, if it works drastically different from Mana then all that might not be possible, unless they design the new resource to support use of permanent auras.|||still feels kinda strange with auras for them

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