Idea for handling auras

[:1]Ok, so right now auras are buffs that are cast and consume spirit. I get that. It seems like a decent system.

But how about this. You have a passive buff that only gets powerful if you maintain a certain level of spirit. So, if your spirit is full, then your aura is working at it's full potential.

This way, the play can choose to use skills and have a lousy aura, or he can just keep his spirit high and have his aura that much more powerful.|||Sounds good to me. I think the pure aura usage should be weaker though - only viable when in a low level area where you dont feel like clicking every mob.|||Sounds like it would encourage spirit hoarding at certain times, like before a boss fight. I'd rather not have to worry about my aura getting weaker as I used combo moves and instead just refresh when needed for 100% power.

My 2 cents.|||err, I've never played a demo, but my gut feeling is that spirit is supposed to build up rather quickly and spent regularly, so that we can enjoy Monk's other skills that much more often. So if an aura (or a buff) gets more powerful at the cost of not using the other awesome skills (to keep the spirit at a certain level), then the increase in power better be quite visible. Otherwise people will just spend all their spirit to end a fight quickly and with more epic actions.|||Why encourage NOT using spirit?

You need a good balance between passive and active skills. You suggestion might encourage players to use normal attacks only while using the aura ... which is a passive way to play the game and will be less fun to play, I think, unless the aura effect is more fun compared to use combos and other skills. I say 'more fun' and not 'better' beacuse 'better' could be used to encoruage a less fun gameplay - which is bad game design. imo (for instance, the hellfire monk using fists rather than a weapon).

So what aura effects would be fun enough to replace all other skills you can use for energy? I wouldn't go down that path...|||I like the idea of an aura scaling like that, but it would probably work better in the opposite direction. So the aura would be minimal when your spirit is full and it would be strongest when you have low spirit. This would encourage constant spirit use and you would have better survivability if you get ambushed with low spirit.