Refreshing self-buff auras feels like a chore and is ruining gameplay for me

Yes, that is pretty useless. Only makes the problem of pushing buttons worse. And two of those also duplicate dual wield on a mastery that aleady has it.

Permanent is a good idea, but for potions, it will likely require measures to prevent abuse (currently, buffs lasts even after switching the Potion Modifier at table).

enjoy :saluting_face:
Continuing the discussion from "Permanent" temporary buffs:

sounds like a perfectly good reason to nerf pots to be 8-10sec duration :scorv: (as mentioned in OP things)

Lolwut? The other point of those transmuters is to provide more healing and in the current meta is very important as it helps heal from all the incoming damage. And in the case of Implements of War, also help save Onslaught Stacks.

Mav, the transmuter doesn’t serve as redundant dual wield enabler, it acts as item block criteria - similar like how WoR bonus effect or PB don’t apply if you don’t meet the weapon requirement

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Rallying Cry transmuter does not save onlslaught stacks.

And if someone requires a healing skill every few seconds then quite frankly they need to make a better build.

I find all these transmuters useless.

While I definitely like what @Ceno suggested about healing skills, I’m pretty fine with potions. I think the design behind 30 sec duration was to prevent overstacking all possible bonuses at once but I agree some of the… more passive mods (Primordis, Ventorus, Phillom etc) can get duration increased.

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Blood of Dreeg is a heal though.

I’ve bound everything to two buttons on controller. My buffs, and all my attacks (my pet build isn’t so simple). I have my attacks repeat at different intervals while the button is pressed since I don’t need them to repeat every 200ms. This is done through Steam Input. With controller, anything but the default A button will repeat cast if those buttons are held down. My biggest issue is controller is missing two button slots M&K users get.

An elegant solution to the “heals are perma buffs but what if they can’t be both a pressable heal and an aura due to engine limitations” conundrum would be to give them a % health activation with a cooldown, so they function as a circuit breaker. By all means, make the cooldown longer to compensate for the convenience, but at least they’d kinda simulate the intended gameplay while freeing up the skillbar. The only difference then between the current version of the skill and the updated one would be that technically, the current iteration can kinda help you bypass Arcane cause you can reapply the buff yourself. I think that’s a negligible price to pay for the convenience of having fewer buttons to constantly press for little meaningful gameplay impact.

As for potions, on one hand it is an extra button to press even if you don’t need to potion, just cause it buffs you. On the other hand, in high difficulty content I’m kinda chugging pots anyway so it feels less like an extra button, and more like a bonus on something I’d already be doing. Some feel so mandatory and integral (cough Terrobullum cough) to overcoming the current difficulty of some content that turning them into a short term superbuff would require the nerfing of some encounters so they’re more doable (e.g. Uber Mog) for a “naked” char. It’s interesting how we’ve had phys res sources nerfed for it to be less restrictive, we’ve had health sources nerfed, and yet it feels like being able to withstand massive physical nukes is more important than ever so armor, phys res and health are in more demand than ever despite the goal of the nerfs.

There’s definitely a pass to be done on some potion mods even if the overall design of the potion buffs doesn’t change. Especially the exclusive ones feel like a waste of a slot and the one that procs your potion at 30% seems like you’re incurring a ridiculous penalty and wasting a potion slot for something that may not even save your ass in the end if you go from 40% to dead.

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Definitely going to be a +1 from me.

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Oh absolutely, this would be a great change. Especially with the new mastery coming with another one of those buffs, experimenting with new berserker class combinations is quickly turning into a “do I really want to constantly press ANOTHER button?” Convenience should not be a factor when deciding on what to play. Ceno’s 3600 second duration seems to be a pretty simple solution if anything else would risk breaking the engine.

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It shouldn’t have been created in the first place, unless testing proved these buffs are really needed in the highest levels of difficulty. I suspect the idea was to allow access to a wider range of classes and remove some of the stress over skill and gear balancing for them to be able to compete. But this implementation as a temporary buff assigned to pots really disappoints.

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+1 from me.

If this is simplest solution from a technical perspective, I’m aligned with this.

The idea of temporary buffs didn’t bother me as much pre-FoA. Yes, they were annoying but I had learned to live with them.

But adding Potion buffs makes things way more bothersome.

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There were few suggestions to circumvent that like make duration 99999 seconds and hide duration from the tooltip. Or make it refresh by x seconds when hit or something (and also hide it and just write a new tooltip that says “permanent”). Impossible things were made possible before. Trust in THE PROGRAMMER.

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Extra mental load.
Pressing 2 buttons every few seconds.
Extra mental load.

While I agree on your point, I would solve it a different way:

  • buff those skills by quite a bit,
  • increase cooldown to 30+ seconds,
  • decrease duration to ~10 seconds.

Basically, they should be just like Ascension.
They should either be strong temporary buffs to be used when needed or aura skills just like every other aura skill in the game.
Currently they are aura skills with maintenance. Turning them into normal auras with press-to-heal component would be boring. Give it more power and turn them into a proper, short buff.
There’s some kind of small satisfaction to be gained from timely and skillfully using utility skills like well-timed Mirror, Nullification, Mark of Torment or Ascension saving your skin - there should be more skills like that instead passives and permanent auras.

It’s exactly that. A lot of builds turn into buff management fest where I am watching mostly at skill icons and cooldowns. It’s not fun.

I think this just feed into philosophy of playing flask/buff management fest. Especially when combined with classes that already have a lot of those. If game wants us to focus on encounters and dodge big telegraphed attacks that can one shot you no matter what build you are playing I would rather focus on that than trying to remember which temporary buff I should use now and not feel bad for not using it.

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A programmer can do only so much with the engine that is given.

Attaching effects onto the main skill like the “activate / refresh by X seconds when hit” would be akin to adding a devotion proc to the skill, which would then prevent people from attaching true devotion skills to it.

I’m personally not a fan of “potions create more universal buffs” playstyle at all, and have already made a thread about it (though my thread is more about the TDM potions while your potions grant %increased armor and leech). Potions should be the “you only need to press when you’re in danger” buttons and shouldn’t create a FOMO effect where people feel like they’re losing out on something if the buff effect isn’t active 24/7.

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BenoBalance ftw! :partying_face:

Please just make the duration of PB, BoD, WoR and RC an hour and call it a day.

Then remove -RR% from rings so we can have some variety in those slots.

The button mashing required for maintaining potion modifiers is a real mental drain over time and does not fit with GD. I think it’s been mentioned previously, but perhaps another potion bottle type could be made that is a permanent buff and removes the base functionality. That would be a life-saver!

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The issue with this is it can cause issues in other ways.

For example, promoting CDR builds to have better (Or permanent) uptime.

Or metas where you just stack multiple of these powerful “Temporary buffs” and blow up targets before they wear off (Similar to the issue in regards to One-Shot builds in ER where it doesn’t matter that you only get 5s of uptime of all buffs when you just blow up the boss in one hit).

Or rolling skill metas where you just acquire enough of them (With enough CDR) so you’re just constantly having some bonus effect active (While being piano af).

One has to be careful about what temporary buffs are available and their uptimes.

Which is why temporary buff implementation is so complex. It’s very easy to cause many issues. Between easily maintained 100% uptime effects, to short buffs that promote builds that can maintain uptime on them.

Passive effects are more boring, but they’re at least simple to implement as the only impact they have is the literal bonuses they apply. As opposed to active skills that have to factor in player usage (As well as other things like the Nullification mechanic that can strip them, something that was a more common problem before recent changes to auras that made them passively toggle on as well as removing active energy costs that made Energy Leech also able to turn off things like Maiven’s)

If only there existed some sort of mechanic that could be used to provide long lasting effects in the game outside of skills…

There’s a lot in here to unpack.

I’d start by asking this question: Consider a build that does not need health or energy potions for health or energy; are they not continually experiencing the “Missing Out” part of FOMO by virtue of never interacting with their potions?

But backing away from that scenario, I think there’s more to this. Ignoring the mildly-failed experiment that was Ointments and Oils, I think there is a good fantasy to be had from drinking empowering brews from a Witch’s cauldron. Potion of Stoneskin! Potion of Infinite Might! Or…um…whatever’s happening here :flushed:

image

So I think there’s definitely a fantasy to be captured through potions, and I think the modifier system is a step in the right direction toward achieving that.

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