Aura Reservation and Reduced Mana Support Gem Change

This is an incredibly stupid change

I seriously cant wrap my head around this change. The reduction of mana reservation on auras is too low from description. Nobody sane enough to play PoE would ever use Reduced mana support to lower skill mana costs--that would be wasted gem slots. If anyone has mana issues they opt for blood magic support gems.

The alternative option for this is Enlighten that is far more rare and also significantly harder to level.

Reduced mana was easily obtainable so nobody would be left without it for long. New tested reduced mana is useless too. Wow! Lastly, auras shoul be compensated also by increasing their benefits rather than just reducing their reservation costs.

I would love to see detailed reasoning behind this change because OP was not enough. Were players too powerful with auras?

This change currently feels more like changer sake of change than anything balance driven. Such change to just stir the waters is bad.

Which characters didn't have access to reduced mana????? lol

So, you do realize you did the exact opposite of what you set out to do right? You say you want to reduce the reservation of the aura gems so that people without access to reduced mana (which is no one btw) can still use auras. Okay, well if you were not running any reduction nodes or equipement (before heralds went up to 30%) you could run a 25 and a 60 without reduced mana pretty easily. Now...you can do the same thing...and thats it. Nothing changed.

So you make no change to the build that can't get reduced mana (which again, does not exist) and you hurt the builds that depend on it by only reducing costs to something like what a level 10 or so reduced mana would give...but make one of the 3 rarest gems in the game the new reduced mana. So you make no change to the former group and make mana reservation reduction harder for everyone else? I'm sorry, but that does not make any sense at all.


I like that Enlighten will actually be useful now, but you are full of it if you think your goals make sense relative to what your change actually did. I have NEVER, even on my very first character that i got past cruel, played any character that could not run, or did not have room for reduced mana. 2 Auras
on a ground slam character? Reduced mana. 5 Auras on a witch summoner? Reduced mana.


If you really want to actually do what your goals claim then you do the following:
Give reduced mana earlier as a quest reward, and do so 2x (1 in normal and 1 in cruel)
Give Enlighten MORE mana reduction than reduced mana so it still has a place with people who can find/buy/level the gem.
Reduce the reduction of reduced mana so that Enlighten doesn't have to be too OP to be better than reduced mana (maybe make it to be what it is now, but nerf reduced mana's current values).


Honestly if you do anything else there is zero reason to even have reduced mana in the game. No one uses it for their mana cost on abilities. Why reduce the cost of something when you can increase damage, and deal with the cost with skill tree or equipment choices that would also help your aura's or other damage sources? Makes no sense. I've had 300 mana per sec abilities and i just grab mana leech or carry pots. No way i'm giving up a legit support to reduce the cost to like 200 per second since that still requires either heavy mana investment or mana leech.


If you plan on keeping reduced mana the way it is, then just throw the gem out. It'll be just as useless in the future as Enlighten was before this patch (but worse, because i actually used the old Enlighten)

Here's a development manifesto from an alternate universe where Enhance was released reducing mana reservation and Reduced Mana only affected skills until 2.0, GGG.

"

Rory wrote:

We're trying out a change to aura costs, the Reduced Mana support, and the Enlighten gem on Beta. This change involves reducing the base mana reservation on reservation skills, changing the Reduced Mana gem to apply to reservation costs but with a much smaller reduction, and having the Enlighten support gem reduce skill costs at lower values than Reduced Mana gave.

These are the intended results of the change:
As they no longer work with Enhance, we can make reservation costs less mana intensive for characters that previously wouldn't have access to Enhance, and reduce socket pressure for players that previously would have needed an Enhance support to reach the same reservation levels.
Reduced Mana becomes a much more desirable support. It now gives an option for end-game builds that are willing to give up sockets to reduce reservation, without the support being so impactful that every build that uses auras feels that it's absolutely necessary.
Enhance can have much higher values than previously, making it a better choice for reducing skill mana costs.

It's worth noting that a very high level Reduced Mana gem can reduce aura reservation costs to the point of the old Enlighten support and below, and that aura reservation costs are now often lower than otherwise possible until player level 45. We're also planning to increase the power of Mana passives in the tree that will give mana constrained builds more access to larger total mana pools

That's why this change makes no sense. It's just swapping one problem mandatory gem for another. Except you're going from the common one that is literally given to every class on live (edit: except Duelist apparently) to one that is given to nobody and is extremely cumbersome to level.

I'm fine with enlighten being changed to be useful. There are tons of things they could change it to that are not this and would be useful.

Empower is far from mandatory for every spell, and even if it were, there are tons of builds that don't use it. Every build uses auras. Melee, ranged, summoners, casters, whatever. Nerfing RM like this nerfs literally every build. As long as auras are used in every build, reduced mana res will be mandatory, therefore all this accomplishes is driving up the cost of mana res.

Suggestion to GGG: add Enlighten gem to Library quest reward in A Fixture of Fate Act 3 Merciless or any ACT 4 quest rewards which requires a choice.

1. Leveling the playing field so not only the rich players has easy acquiring it.
2. It becomes a decision since the other gems in this reward is important too in builds.

Excellent changes

Keep slaughtering the sacred cows that don't make any sense, no mercy!

1. Removing reduced mana from reservations: Good change.

2. Adding enlighten for reduction: Good change.

3. Reducing auras to where people running 2-3 can't run them as before: Bad change.

#3 makes #2 mandatory.

Lower the values on the high-end auras a touch more to where folks can run the same amount without enlighten.

Or, if an enlighten level 3 works like a reduced mana 20, bringing aura costs down to what they are now, that works too. That's harder to get, but still easily achievable.

"

Moose65 wrote:

So much Salt......

I actually like the new reduced mana. Also, why shouldn't Enlighten become a powerful gem? Its not even as good as the old reduced mana, yet everyone is complaining how its mandatory and they won't have level 4s.

Empower is pretty much mandatory for most spells, and you don't see everyone throwing a fit about it. Enlighten was literally crap, and now it has a place as being a buff to auras. You don't HAVE to have a level 4, and can use a level 3 until you can obtain a level 4 one.

I've never run any spell caster with Empower because its too much of a pain to get or level...lol