I just realize than Aura of Decay was not gaining any points from my Tongue of the Aberrant Ring +1 to Poison Spells, & when a look the skill tags, does not have the “spell” tag. Even if u not consider a spell for being an aura it have sub spells within, like Poison Nova, Poison Bolt & Putrid Bombs. At least should Gain the tag w u invest in the sub spells. Also its a old Skill than need a little love to bring it up to be more tuned to the current state from the game. Thanks 4 this great game, as Always.
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Those sub skills have their own scaling tags separately from Aura of Decay. Aura of Decay doesn’t do any damage on its own from memory and just applies stacks of poison, so even if it did have a spell tag, you could have 8 billion spell damage and it would function identically as if you had 0 spell damage.
I’m about to fact check myself.
Edit:
Aura Of Decay
Toggles aura of decay, which poisons you every second, and leaves a trail of decay. Enemies near you or in the trail are poisoned four times a second, and your chance to poison on hit applies to each of these instances at 25% effectiveness.
While aura of decay is active you take 50% less poison damage.
Yep, all it does is apply poison.
Here’s the Poison Nova effect.
Poison Nova
Unleash a nova that poisons enemies, and has 25% increased effect of poison.
Mana Cost: 7
Cooldown: 0 seconds
Base Speed: 1.467 per secon
Use Delay: 0.4 seconds
Use Duration: 0.75 seconds
Scales with Cast Speed
100% chance to apply Poison to enemies
(100% increased duration
25% increased effect)
Scaling:
None
Scaling Tags:
Poison, Spell
Shockingly, this has the Spell tag, but doesn’t scale with anything but cast speed.
And the Poison Bolts (which is actually Poison Spit):
Poison Spit
Launch a projectile that inflicts poison.
Mana Cost: 0
Cooldown: 0 seconds
Base Speed: 0.917 per second
Use Delay: 0.7 seconds
Use Duration: 1.2 seconds
Scales with Cast Speed
100% chance to apply Poison to enemies
Scaling:
None
Scaling Tags:
None
This one also just applies poison and doesn’t scale (except cast speed).
Lastly, Putrid Bombs:
Putrid Bomb
Create a globule of poison that bursts after 2 seconds, applying a poison with 25% increased effectiveness on hit.
Mana Cost: 7
Cooldown: 0 seconds
Base Speed: 1.467 per second
Use Delay: 0.4 seconds
Use Duration: 0.75 seconds
Scales with Cast Speed
Poison Nova
100% chance to apply Poison to enemies
(100% increased duration
25% increased effect)
Scaling:
None
Scaling Tags:
Poison, Spell
Once again, technically has spell scaling tag with nothing to scale as it doesn’t do any damage.
Source: https://www.lastepochtools.com/skills/aura_of_decay/nodes
Edit 2: so aside from the Tongue of the Abberent Seer, there’s no item or affix that would benefit Aura of Decay getting the Spell tag. As they’re all “X on spell hit” or “spell damage/crit” which Aura of Decay doesn’t hit (Putrid Bombs and Poison Nova do and they have the Spell tag so yay for on hit effects, so does Poison Bolts but it doesn’t have a spell tag boo).
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Holy aura causes 0 damage by default, not even applying ailments and has the spell tag.
aura of decay not having the spell tag is an extremely weird choice that just honestly makes no sense regardless of it causing spell damage or not.
Healing hands is also a spell regardless if it does damage or not, VR/Anomoly also have the spell tags with 0 way to do damage by default.
So doing damage or scaling with spell damage is not a good qualifier for whether or not something gets the spell tag.
That is because Holy Aura has an active part to the skill. That is the spell part of Holy Aura. So you get an aura but you also get an active spell.
Aura of Decay only has turn on/off, no active part to it. So you only get an aura.
Well, yeah, but all he wanted, (and everyone who ever tried using Aura of Decay) was for it to have the Spell tag so it could get the +1 level from that ring, really XD
I understand it is not supposed to have the spell tag because it doesn’t do damage on it’s own, because most skills with spells in their tags do damage and it would be confusing if one was to get +spell damage and it didn’t increase the AoD poison’s damage.
But the same goes for the Paladin’s Aura and Sigils. They’re both spells and benefit from everything that should benefit spells, apart from +spell damage, and for it to make sense, they gave them the “buff” tag.
And as @DiceDragon mentioned, there’s also the VR and Anomaly, both spells that doesn’t benefit from +spell damage, but doesn’t have other tags to account for that.
So in the end, I think Aura of Decay should definitely get the spell tag (I mean, I cannot name another skill that is a “more poison spell” than AoD is) along with another tag, maybe “debuff”, which should definitely be given to VR and Anomaly also if it existed.
Well, it should have. To make it look more like the only other Aura that is an active skill in the game XD
Either way. As OP mentioned, it is a very underwhelming skill that will probably get reworked in the next balance patches.
I believe I’ve heard some dev talking about it, but I really can’t remember where, so I’m not gonne cite this for a fact, but I really remember they said they would work on this skill.
Going back over everything. The “Scaling” parts are for attributes, and “Scaling Tags” are everything else. So the Poison Nova and Putrid Bomb both benefit from the spell tags. It’s just most spells that have the tag and don’t gain any benefit only have it for flavor text or the niche +1 X Spell Levels where X = element/damage type (Poison in AoDs case). But even with +1 (+2 with both rings) it’s not going to make AoD a godlike skill. It’s good and fun to use in Poison Lich builds.
Im not saying they shouldn’t give it the spell tag, just saying that from a gameplay perspective it gains nothing for having it (neither does Holy Aura, VR, or Anomaly)
I guess the real problem in this situation is not even that skill. It’s actually the existence of that ring. If it didn’t exist, no threads would ever have been created about that ring not giving the AoD +1 level. (there were some in the past before this one)
I mean, the ring is the elephant in the room, because it only benefits Poison Spells specifically, but there are not such skills in their natural state. (In my head, Aura of Decay is definitely it XD)
Only ones I can think that would benefit from the Aberrant Seer is Wandering Spirits and Drain Life, but they’re not Poison spells… They’re both Necrotic spells that can be converted to poison in their trees.
And it is really weird to have an item that doesn’t work with any skills in their natural state.
Is there even another item such as this?
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That’s a really good point.
I just checked, no skill has the poison and Spell tags that benefit from +1 to skill levels for “Poison Spells” naturally.
The ring should be “Poison Skills” since the “Poison on spell hit” would only benefit Spells anyway and the other aspects of the ring are pretty generic. There aren’t many naturally poison skills in the game, not enough that removing the spell requirement on the ring would be broken.
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Lich as a whole is getting rebalanced and they’ll get a new skill.
But even in 1.0 as it is, I had a lot of fun with a channeled wandering spirits/aura of decay build.
It can be spec’d into applying the flameburst ailment.
And aura of decay can be specced into casting spells. So should it get the spell tag when it does?
Tags are inconsistent and dont make much sense all things considered.
Sometimes they are but not in the case of Holy Aura/Aura of Decay. It really is just how I explained it: Holy Aura has an active spell part to it which you can actively cast. Aura of Decay doesn’t. So that makes sense to me.
Applying ailments isn’t casting a spell, nor is proccing stuff casting a spell (the proc isn’t a cast and the spell being cast isn’t aura of decay).
Toggling on and off being “not a spell” is just semantics really imo.
And an extremely weird hill to die on for them to be like “uhm acktually it cant get the spell tag because its a toggle”
Buffs shouldnt have the spell tag if thats are logic, holy aura is an instant cast just like aura of decay, both have the “instant cast” tag, so neither scales with spell damage OR cast speed. So why does holy aura randomly get the spell tag? because its “an instant ability not a toggle” what a random ass tiny distinction that serves no purpose other then to say “fuck aura of decay”
I’d say no, I don’t think subskills affect the main skill’s tags from memory. For example, if you convert Smite to void and have either Fissure (fire) or the lightning bolts (lightning), Smite doesn’t get the relevant tags (from memory).
The main example of “odd” tags are the old version of Tempest Strike where it had both melee & spell and 3 element tags which only applied to the relevant proc. I can’t think of many current skills that have pseudotags like that anymore, though the current version of Tempest Strike probably does.
While DJ’s probably right, I agree with you on how it ideally should work.
That’s not what I said. I said Holy Aura gets the spell tag because it has an active spell skill linked to it. You don’t actually toggle it on or off, it’s always active and then you can use the active part of it that is considered a spell for an extra boost for 4s.
This is the part that Aura of Decay doesn’t have, which is why it doesn’t get the spell tag. It doesn’t have an active cast ability.
Both use the same terminology though thats why it makes no sense.
Holy aura does not say “when you cast holy aura” it says “when you activate holy aura”
“Activating holy aura cleanses ailments for you and your allies” This does not state “when you cast holy aura”
“When you activate aura of decay, you create a poison nova” they use the exact same verbage.
if we want to argue semantics, then Holy aura is never cast, it is only activated just like aura of decay.
The only effects that care about casting would be something like bleeding heart. Bleeding heart bleeds you when you activate holy aura and not aura of decay purely because of the tags.
Cause bleeding heart bleeds you when you use tempest strike because it has the spell tag and thus counts as using a spell for bleeding heart.
At the end of the day, tags simply exist to give scaling through +levels to skills. Because the tags dont even define how you scale all the time. using a dreamthorn with a non void skill still means you scale with %void, there just isnt a tag because its not a void skill, tags exist to make scaling make more sense to the user, but because of the way +levels work, it gets messy because iirc they had to add poison tags to several skills because just causing poison didnt get you the tag in the past, and only DoT skills can cause poison damage, as poison can never be dealt as hit based damage.
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Sure, I agree that the terminology should be clearer. They also should work similarly, since AoD is an aura which you can toggle on and off and nothing else, whereas HA is an aura that is always on and has an active “spell” component to it. This only leads to confusion as seen in this thread.
It also doesn’t help that, for example, Raptor’s active skill is a spell (and it triggers Bleeding Heart) but the skill itself doesn’t get the spell tag.
So there’s a lot of inconsistency on the terminology and the way things are tagged. Let’s see if anything changes with the upcoming Lich changes.
This is blatantly false, or misrepresentation of how the system works at the very least.
Dreamthorn adds a flat +40 melee void damage, and 40% void penetration. The only thing scaling with %void is the +40 melee void damage if you’re using all non-Void skills. For example, using an Unspecced Multi Strike will add a flat 40 void damage per hit, penetrating 40% of the enemy’s void resistance. Adding more void damage only. Affects that flat +40 and not the actual damage from Multistrike in any way.
Conversely, using Erasing Strike, which is a void skill with the void tag, also adds the +40 melee void damage and all of its damage and the +40 melee void damage are getting the 40% void penetration as well as any other %void damage scaling you have.
The tag absolutely dictates what the skill itself scales with.
Yes, it dictates what your adaptive damage becomes.
Thats it.
Hammer throw node that says 5% more hit damage scales all the damage of hammer throw, regardless of element. if you have 0 adaptive throwing, and 30 flat void throwing, hammer throw has something like 20 baseline physical damage because its a physical skill, so the majority of your damage, over 60% of it, is void. So scaling physical damage because you have the physical tag is actually losing you damage vs scaling void.
Yes in the majority of cases you will be getting mostly adaptive damage and thus scaling with the tags.
But there is lots and lots of type specific damage that is not tied to tags that defines builds.
Mourning frost gives flat cold, and turns any skill you use to majority cold if you build around it. Regardless of tags.
Some skills have specific nodes that call out specific elements, for example meteor has nodes that says “more NONFIRE damage” and so if you are scaling this type of build, you ignore fire damage, as you are focusing on NONFIRE damage.
So again, at the end of the day, tags exist to do two things if I can correct myself, shift your adaptive damage, and give you + levels from matching tags. The tags dont define what scaling works, because you can add whatever damage type you wish. And the damage type being dealt is what is important not the tag.
The tags honestly confuse a lot of people, and actually the reason they made adaptive damage for melee, before most bases were physical, leading to the majority of melee type skills being physical. And then people were building fire damage on say flame reave, when they had a +50 base physical weapon, and 15 flat fire from the skill itself meaning they were actually only scaling like 25% of their damage because they saw fire and went “ah this is what I build”
But again, that’s not Hammer Throw gaining power from scaling void. That’s your flat void throwing damage. If you lose the item that gives you +30 Void Throwing, all your void scaling poof vanishes.
Plus, the elemental tags are, as you said, adaptive bonuses. If I’m going for a fire throwing build, I’m looking for Flat Fire Throwing Damage, % Throwing Damage, and % Fire Damage. If I can convert the throwing skill to have a fire tag, like Shield Throw, that’s a bonus because now it’s also getting a benefit from the % Fire Damage and not just the % Throwing Damage.
Scaling isn’t done in a vacuum where you see + Flat Elemental and then deciding to scale based off that. You look for the +Flat for the element you’re wanting to use, and likely already scaling. Having skills to benefit that by also scaling with the correct tag just makes it better.
Edit: the people who get confused by the tags are just not understanding buildcraft in ARPG’s rather than getting confused by the tags.