Kill Aura bots - Spirit should only be for minions.

Got your attention? Sorry. Though I am serious.

Here me out on this. Auras aren't a very interactive way to support a team. We know this. So why is GGG still doing it? IF this game can maintain the speed and combat of Act 1-3 would it not be far more engaging to use targeted AoE buffs which are much stronger?

Curses already work this way. Shouts are already point blank AoE buffs so I don't see why we're keeping a mechanic that was pretty much just for Paladins from D2. Supports can be fun and interactive to play but you have to give them the tools to do so.

I get it, each class wants their 2 passive options. That's not what this is about. This is about enhancing and bring forward a group role which has always been lacking in PoE.

There are many ways to play a "Support" and it's a very untapped aspect.

You can bring out a slew of support gems and trigger gems based on this aspect as well. Trigger offensive spells when you 'bless allies' to create a hybrid support. Blessing allies buffs you with the same effects. Allies who Crit Marked enemy gain supported Blessing. Link to all Blessed allies.


EDIT: As my final case to why Spirit should die for buff effects.

In PoE1 we reverse mana for buffs. We do so because using a 4 or even 6 link skill has little impact and in most cases just further improves our character compared to using two skills.

In PoE 2 we 'should' be sacrificing both an Affix and a Skill slot but we don't have skills and especially Supports to care and the Affix we use for Spirit is more powerful as a buff instead.

Triggered casting is what most of these are based on. If you get rid of it they will go away.

It would be a lot more interesting and engaging if we had more buttons to press. Most builds are just 1-2 button builds with a slew of spirit buffs.

My Monk literally uses Ice Strike, Tempest Bell, and this list of passive buffs:

Harold of Thunder
Harold of Ice
Grim Feast
Ghost Dance
Wind Dancer
Combat Frenzy
Blink

Swap out the heralds + Blink for Elemental Invocation and Cast on Shock for pinnacle bosses. The entire build is based around spirit buffs, really. Same with my Lightning Arrow Deadeye.

"

Kraythax#2592 wrote:

Triggered casting is what most of these are based on. If you get rid of it they will go away.

Some. Not all.

-Blessing Allies gives you the same effect.
-Link to all Blessed allies.

Just spitballing ideas. More supports and probably alter the passive tree as well.

-Allies cannot be blessed with the same effect. Increase potency, decays over time.
-Gain XYZ for each type of Blessing you have used recently.
-When you cast a Blessing enemies inside the area suffer X.
-Allies near Marked target gain X Blessing.
-After casting a Bless your next 3 spells have 0 mana cost.

There's all sorts of interactions that can work with target casting. Spirit is mostly fine for Minions but I don't feel it's appropriate for any hybrid or full support.

"

Blasphemous84#2190 wrote:

It would be a lot more interesting and engaging if we had more buttons to press. Most builds are just 1-2 button builds with a slew of spirit buffs.

My Monk literally uses Ice Strike, Tempest Bell, and this list of passive buffs:

Harold of Thunder
Harold of Ice
Grim Feast
Ghost Dance
Wind Dancer
Combat Frenzy
Blink

Swap out the heralds + Blink for Elemental Invocation and Cast on Shock for pinnacle bosses. The entire build is based around spirit buffs, really. Same with my Lightning Arrow Deadeye.

Yep, they should implement some kind of spirit penalty making every persistent buff above the first one cost about 35% more spirit per each. If you'll use more buffs with different cost the game will sort them from the most expensive which will be count as the first. This will probably need a little lower inital cost of the most expensive buffs (let's say 90 spirit).

"

It would be a lot more interesting and engaging if we had more buttons to press. Most builds are just 1-2 button builds with a slew of spirit buffs.

My Monk literally uses Ice Strike, Tempest Bell, and this list of passive buffs:

Harold of Thunder
Harold of Ice
Grim Feast
Ghost Dance
Wind Dancer
Combat Frenzy
Blink

Swap out the heralds + Blink for Elemental Invocation and Cast on Shock for pinnacle bosses. The entire build is based around spirit buffs, really. Same with my Lightning Arrow Deadeye.

So change the skills.

The only ones in here that are actually causing your character to perform the way it does are the heralds, the rest of them are defensive buffs that you are forgoing other stats to obtain. A lot of the defensive buffs (Grim Feast) are a bit overpowered and need to be tuned differently but that is something that can actually be done relativeley easily.

Especially for Quaterstaff and those using HoWA and Pillar, the interaction with certain items/stats are what are causing the insane power inflation with the mega OP builds, not the skills themselves. The skils are a biproduct of the scaling from those items.

Please don't lose sight of the ACTUAL problem.

If only they gave life/armour builds more love with auras.

"

Sakanabi#6664 wrote:

"

Blasphemous84#2190 wrote:

It would be a lot more interesting and engaging if we had more buttons to press. Most builds are just 1-2 button builds with a slew of spirit buffs.

My Monk literally uses Ice Strike, Tempest Bell, and this list of passive buffs:

Harold of Thunder
Harold of Ice
Grim Feast
Ghost Dance
Wind Dancer
Combat Frenzy
Blink

Swap out the heralds + Blink for Elemental Invocation and Cast on Shock for pinnacle bosses. The entire build is based around spirit buffs, really. Same with my Lightning Arrow Deadeye.

Yep, they should implement some kind of spirit penalty making every persistent buff above the first one cost about 35% more spirit per each. If you'll use more buffs with different cost the game will sort them from the most expensive which will be count as the first. This will probably need a little lower inital cost of the most expensive buffs (let's say 90 spirit).

What if instead of using spirit at all characters simply got 2-3 passives as they level. One at 20, another at 50 then 80. Something like that. These passives don't take up skill slots either.

Some of these things I can only see a reason for taking off the Passive tree like Ghost Dance because they wanted us to customize them. Excluding the 1 Support limit which an entirely different Topic. This would make for more interesting interactions.

With some of the suggestions I mentioned you could transition into support skills. At which point they would take up a skill slot. Consider this example.

Herald Blessing (Allies gain supported Herald effect). Heralds are mostly lower cost versions of Anger, Hatred, etc anyways. Herald of Thunder + Herald Blessing + Supported Skill gains +2 Changes +6s CD + Blessing Link + Destructive Link.

You create a Hybrid DPS + Support skill that gives 2 free changes on Herald of Thunder to the group when cast while linking them to you granting additional Crit. Like a custom Shout.