Damage Auras look lackluster

[Peter Pan]

Hey all,

Help me understand damage Auras. They reserve a lot of mana, but the damage looks really lackluster.

For example, level 20 Anger aura gives 83 to 138 fire damage to attacks. Only max 138.

I play a summoner, and assuming I reach level 70, a golem will do 743–1857 damage.

138 of 1857 is only about 7.4% damage increase.

I understand that you can increase it through passive skills. But so can you increase minion damage. The point is that while the damage of either the aura or minion can scale, the base damage of auras is really low.

Even increasing the quality of the gem doesn't increase the damage, but increasing quality of the golem gem does.

So help me understand why auras are like this? Does the strength of the aura lie in numbers, where the more party members you have, the "stronger" it's power?
Are auras what you use once you have increased damage through everything else, sort of like the last way to increase damage (that's why it's so low)?

Why do auras look weak? What is their purpose in the game?

Edit: Updated my post, meant to talk about Anger aura and not Hatred.

[Awesome!]

they scale with things like weapon elemental damage. you most likely arent using that mana anyway so why not increase your damage with it?

[Multi. Track. Drifter.]

i think hatred gives u a percentage of your damage as cold...so if your trtying to scale fire damage it wont work well for u. If you run hatred in mercyless and turn it off you will notice the difference big time if its not making a difference there could be something wrong with your build, sozry to say. Every bit of extra damage helps especially percentage increases they are far more worth while than a straight numerical addition. Without all the damage you can get you may struggle to clear breaches

[jbridso]

Think about it like this... how much is 83-138, unbuffed, or 200-500 buffed, to 10+ zombies and 20 Raging spirits....

[Awesome!]

he was talking about anger in his post not hatred

[-]

The skill tree adds massive numbers to Aura's

[Peter Pan]

Originally posted by jbridso:

Think about it like this... how much is 83-138, unbuffed, or 200-500 buffed, to 10+ zombies and 20 Raging spirits....

Yes that's true, but using a Minion Damage support gem for zombies and raging spirits will increase all 10 zombies and 20 raging spirits damage by up to 49%.

Anger aura just adds a mere ~100 damage for them, tops.

My question is why are auras so low in damage increase, and also difficult to boost the power.

What do the devs have in mind when they created auras?

Originally posted by Computer Time:

The skill tree adds massive numbers to Aura's

Only increases by about 51% if you take all the far nodes. Again, 51% of 138 only adds ~70 extra fire damage.

When minions do thousands of damage per hit at level 70, it feels lackluster.

[Peter Pan]

Originally posted by aarondamian:

i think hatred gives u a percentage of your damage as cold...so if your trtying to scale fire damage it wont work well for u. If you run hatred in mercyless and turn it off you will notice the difference big time if its not making a difference there could be something wrong with your build, sozry to say. Every bit of extra damage helps especially percentage increases they are far more worth while than a straight numerical addition. Without all the damage you can get you may struggle to clear breaches

Sorry I was talking about Anger. Yes Hatred looks much better since it is based on physical damage.

[Awesome!]

Originally posted by Peter Pan:

Originally posted by jbridso:

Think about it like this... how much is 83-138, unbuffed, or 200-500 buffed, to 10+ zombies and 20 Raging spirits....

Yes that's true, but using a Minion Damage support gem for zombies and raging spirits will increase all 10 zombies and 20 raging spirits damage by up to 49%.

Anger aura just adds a mere ~100 damage for them, tops.

you can use both

[The_Driver]

Originally posted by Peter Pan:

My question is why are auras so low in damage increase, and also difficult to boost the power.

What do the devs have in mind when they created auras?

Just look at the cases where they are effective, to scale attacks that have low damage by themselves. Or where it's hard to up the flat damage, see spells.

Also, if you're in a group, same name auras won't stack, so you'd want diversity, and more auras mean more potential benefit from groups/aurabots.

Originally posted by Peter Pan:

Sorry I was talking about Anger. Yes Hatred looks much better since it is based on physical damage.

Which only works if you have physical damage in return. Which e.g. most spellcasters don't. (There are some though.)

[Awesome!]

Originally posted by Peter Pan:

Originally posted by Computer Time:

The skill tree adds massive numbers to Aura's

Only increases by about 51% if you take all the far nodes. Again, 51% of 138 only adds ~70 extra fire damage.

When minions do thousands of damage per hit at level 70, it feels lackluster.

as i said in the first post, damage auras are also scaled by things other than regular aura nodes like elemental damage.

[DoEFotGS]

Originally posted by Peter Pan:

Yes that's true, but using a Minion Damage support gem for zombies and raging spirits will increase all 10 zombies and 20 raging spirits damage by up to 49%.

Anger aura just adds a mere ~100 damage for them, tops.

Anger at lvl 20 add 83-138 base fire damage, and after that it modified by your more/less and increase/decrease gems and skill three nodes. Minion damage work as global damage and affect to every damage type on minions. So 100 fire damage to minion from aura wirh +15% minion damage from any source = 115 fire damage to minions. And we have generosity gem what provide to linked non-curse auras +39% increased effectibenes at lvl 20, but auras can't affect you, only you allyes or minions.

And yes, minion tooltip does not shown they real damage.

Sorry for my bad English.

[jbridso]

You're using the skill in a worst case scenario as a summoner by buffing a minion which normally has a summons limit of 1. Thus, the minion has higher than normal stats and damage which decreases the relative effectiveness of the gem.

A better comparison is Summon Raging Spirit which has a summons limit of 20.

So comparing level 20 skill gems:

Anger = 83 - 138 x 100% increased aura effect = +166 - 276 fire damage

Summon Raging Spirit = 293 - 438 base damage

Overall ~60% increase = (166+276)/(293 + 438)


When you consider that you can easily summon 20 Raging Spirits you end up with +4,420
base fire damage overall which is a staggering amount.

So sure Anger might be kinda mediocre for your specific build, but from a well built auramancer it can add anywhere from ~30-60% more damage to a build.

[-]

jbridso wins /thread

[Peter Pan]

Originally posted by DoEFotGS:

Originally posted by Peter Pan:

Yes that's true, but using a Minion Damage support gem for zombies and raging spirits will increase all 10 zombies and 20 raging spirits damage by up to 49%.

Anger aura just adds a mere ~100 damage for them, tops.

Anger at lvl 20 add 83-138 base fire damage, and after that it modified by your more/less and increase/decrease gems and skill three nodes. Minion damage work as global damage and affect to every damage type on minions. So 100 fire damage to minion from aura wirh +15% minion damage from any source = 115 fire damage to minions. And we have generosity gem what provide to linked non-curse auras +39% increased effectibenes at lvl 20, but auras can't affect you, only you allyes or minions.

And yes, minion tooltip does not shown they real damage.

Sorry for my bad English.

It's fine, but I'm surprised.

You're saying +minion damage nodes will also increase the fire damage that they get from Anger aura?

All this time I thought it only increases the minion's own damage.

[jbridso]

Ya, the aura damage is considered base...

As an example with my mirror/blink arrow clones it would be the following:

83-138 x 100%(increased aura) = 166-276 added base

166-276 x ~400% (increased minion dmg) x 0.49 (minion dmg gem) x 0.59 (weapon elemental dmg) x 1.75 (mirror/blink arrow more dmg)

so about 3441-5721 damage added per hit...

when you factor in 6 clones attacking at 1.7 attacks per second = ~46,726 added dps from anger alone...

This doesn't include ignites/crits/negative resists etc... which you typically run with this type of build.

*note that weapon elemental dmg will not work with most minions as it requires a weapon to use*