Elemental Auras: Critique and Suggested Re-work

[Downstate.4697]

Youve been stunned by shocking aura recently havent you

[agrippastrilemma.8741]

The concept here is solid, that you get a stronger consume effect the more stacks you have left. This forces you to decide between consuming the aura early versus getting the full duration of the passive effect. Currently, the optimal move is always to consume it as late as possible, which doesn't promote skillful gameplay.

[Swagg.9236]

9 hours ago, FrownyClown.8402 said:

Youve been stunned by shocking aura recently havent you

I actually play loads of tempest, and I think it's honestly depressing how cripplingly dependent the spec/whole class is on a passive stun that triggers when somebody hits you.

[Downstate.4697]

3 hours ago, Swagg.9236 said:

I actually play loads of tempest, and I think it's honestly depressing how cripplingly dependent the spec/whole class is on a passive stun that triggers when somebody hits you.

Why though? It counters rev and its not like you passively get the aura. Are you gonna blame the mesmer for applying 10 stacks of confusion or the player for spamming attacks

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

Its really strange that out of all the subclasses we've had, there's never been one that could manipulate Light/Dark/Chaos auras the same way that Elementalist can manipulate FIre/Ice/Shocking/Magnetic auras.

 

Those three really seem to be left out for the most part.

Edited February 14, 2022 by Hannelore.8153

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

6 hours ago, Swagg.9236 said:

I actually play loads of tempest, and I think it's honestly depressing how cripplingly dependent the spec/whole class is on a passive stun that triggers when somebody hits you.

The physical skill that gives Shocking Aura has a flip-over direct stun skill, though? You can also stun players with the Air Elemental elite skill. (It's my main class with thousands of hours of play..)

Edited February 14, 2022 by Hannelore.8153

[Swagg.9236]

17 minutes ago, FrownyClown.8402 said:

Why though? It counters rev and its not like you passively get the aura. Are you gonna blame the mesmer for applying 10 stacks of confusion or the player for spamming attacks

I'm saying that none of it is good.  Rev teleporting, blocking and healing all incoming damage for a protracted 5-7 seconds straight with a random, passive blind thrown in there for good measure isn't fun, skillful or interactive gameplay.  Mesmer chaining passive evades off of instant skills and signet casts covered by effective invulnerability isn't anything different.  That all said, the answer to gameplay design as annoying and silly as a a guy dealing damage while teleporting and passively evading all incoming effects shouldn't be "lol press this button and instantly stun him when he hits you lmao;" it should probably just be a redesign of rev/mesmer/guard/ele/thief/spellbreaker (bruh, they all do the same thing on some level).  Why submit all players to that same flowchart paradigm instead of just making combat more open-ended and creative?  That's boring for everybody.

What I am also saying is that auras (in all cases, but in this one specifically, the elemental ones) are not only very one-dimensional, but also either negligible or needlessly annoying. 

• Static Aura can be bypassed with stability, but it's super oppressive if an attacker doesn't have consistent access to stacks of it. It's either worthless or way too powerful for no justifiable reason.
• Direct-target/teleporting damage is so accessible and high at this point that it's very possible to brute-force damage through the entire support ele kit without much trouble, so Frost Aura chill is a questionable counter to anybody (especially if that somebody is already going to be touching your face with 2-4k auto crits or initiative-attacks on a contested point). 
• Magnetic Aura positively GRINDS games to a halt when a single player can give a whole area projectile immunity for 12 seconds straight.
• Popping Transmute Fire every 10s is just mindless, keyboard-monkey cooldown work, doing so isn't really a substantial gameplay element, and Fire Aura itself CONSISTENTLY DOES NOTHING within the scope of all the mountains of freebies passively generated by any build right now.

Considering their weird place within GW2's metagame, it'd be pretty easy to re-work them into a model contributor to a more interactive combat paradigm without disturbing everything else.  They could serve as a stepping stone to a better combat system (not that I'm really holding my breath for that to happen, but it's still a vision).

[Swagg.9236]

1 hour ago, Hannelore.8153 said:

The physical skill that gives Shocking Aura has a flip-over direct stun skill, though? You can also stun players with the Air Elemental elite skill. (It's my main class with thousands of hours of play..)

OK, but the passive stun is still far more powerful than the active one.  The passive one hits through evasion and block, functioning more like a personal, on-demand ward wall which always follows you around.  Moreover, it can hit a single target multiple times per instance.  The Air Elemental can at least die; there's no way to interact with a static aura except to either bathe yourself in stability (if you have it) or literally stop playing the video game for a few seconds.  Moreover, the Air Elemental is not what I would recommend for consistent utility lmao.  Sure, it can stun, but it's bound to an area on a minion that isn't super wieldy, the minion can die, and honestly the fire minion is, hands-down, far better at applying pressure (and bursting) even though it brings no CC to the table.

It doesn't matter how many thousands of hours you have when you can't look at me straight and honestly tell me that stunning a dude passively (even from ridiculous range) with an instant-activation, personal-buff which cannot be removed is ANYWHERE on the same level as using an active stun which can miss or trying to stun somebody with an unwieldy minion that can die.  The latter is completely outclassed for no reason except needless bloat, a lack of developer creativity, and zero holistic design philosophy which could have established meaningful roles.

[Sahne.6950]

On 7/30/2021 at 12:10 AM, Swagg.9236 said:

[Magnetic Aura] (Staff - Earth 3a)

Gain stacks of Magnetic Aura.  Each stack reflects an incoming projectile.

sounds pretty useless to me....  just imagine using "aftershock"- utilityskill or overloading earth just for some ranger to pew pew pew pew pew pew pew you and you cant even block half of the Rapidfire.... a single "sevenshot" from Renegade could also break it completly and still deliver damage. There is alot of ranged hits that produce multiple hits... 10 stacks would be fine.. but 5 for WvW/PvP is simply not enough.

on the other hand the Frostaura is VERY overtuned... just imagine a 5 man group in WvW for example that has 2 eles just spamming out frostauras.... NEAR INVINCIBLE.... there is alot of traits that give frostaura passive and on a low interval. pair that with wateroverloads and that "Freeze"-shout, add a little bit of "Blasting the icefields" and you have near permanent frosaura... THAT would be uninteractive and just overall way to strong. -75%...OHHH BOY! even if that decays by 15% on every hit it would still make THE WHOLE GROUP hella t0nky! its worth mentioning that tempest already has +40%mitigation from protection... that with the possible -75%mitigation will simply be to much.

But other than that its good ideas!

Edited February 16, 2022 by Sahne.6950

[Swagg.9236]

12 hours ago, Sahne.6950 said:

sounds pretty useless to me....  just imagine using "aftershock"- utilityskill or overloading earth just for some ranger to pew pew pew pew pew pew pew you and you cant even block half of the Rapidfire.... a single "sevenshot" from Renegade could also break it completly and still deliver damage. There is alot of ranged hits that produce multiple hits... 10 stacks would be fine.. but 5 for WvW/PvP is simply not enough.

on the other hand the Frostaura is VERY overtuned... just imagine a 5 man group in WvW for example that has 2 eles just spamming out frostauras.... NEAR INVINCIBLE.... there is alot of traits that give frostaura passive and on a low interval. pair that with wateroverloads and that "Freeze"-shout, add a little bit of "Blasting the icefields" and you have near permanent frosaura... THAT would be uninteractive and just overall way to strong. -75%...OHHH BOY! even if that decays by 15% on every hit it would still make THE WHOLE GROUP hella t0nky! its worth mentioning that tempest already has +40%mitigation from protection... that with the possible -75%mitigation will simply be to much.

But other than that its good ideas!

I REALLY appreciate this input.  It's one thing for me to make all this from the perspective of PvP, but I kind of forget that WvW exists sometimes.  I capped mag aura at 5 stacks mainly because I think it's enough in the presence of all the trash that tempest can squeeze out over a long-winded rotation of passive mitigation, but ultimately it is sort of flimsy when single skills can blow an entire aura to pieces.  That said, having 5/7s of a rev burst blow back into the rev's face is a massive HP swing, and the same goes for a Rapid Fire.  Maybe more stacks but a slightly shorter duration.  The main thing to avoid is giving tempest a 1/4 minute of projectile immunity.

Overtuned is a problem that can be solved pretty easily, but it's important to know where the lines need to be drawn.  I do appreciate the WvW perspective.  It's kind of tragic that GW2 fell apart so badly that so many skills had to get broken up in multiple ways, but there's always that solution:  a wvw-unique version of the skill with tapered effects.  It might also just be easier to adjust the numbers globally too.  Frankly, making the aura weaker overall and then making up the difference in class-specific trait options might be the better choice to avoid headache in WvW and also provide design outlets for different professions.

[aelska.4609]

Please dont ask Anet to modify auras.
Last time they did, they made them almost invisible 🙄 

[Ovark.2514]

I like these suggestions. It might make the skills too complicated but it seems like it would pair down the skill stacking that plagues the game.

[Swagg.9236]

Did a quick update with WvW in mind, and also added in/re-worked a bunch of trait ideas.  It's still probably not complete, and nothing is ever perfect, but it's probably worth just leaving everything here for now.  I don't really expect anet to ever do anything interesting with their game, so I probably shouldn't burn more time thinking about it lol.  Thanks for the input so far, and it's not like I wouldn't welcome more discussion and critiques.

Edited February 19, 2022 by Swagg.9236