ToK Aura Tier-List

This article is part of my section on passives (ToK skills). Passives are the most important thing to understand in IK if you want to craft a strong march setup and win the many battles ahead. They are extreemly powerful and makes a huge difference in a fight. A strong well thoughtout setup can beat enemies with FAR superior power numbers with ease. Passives are what defines the meta and you should spend a long time studying the effects and the many options available if you are an ambitious player.

It is through (1) Immortal compositions and (2) passive setup that you can craft counter marches.

This article will dive into the AURA passives available in the Tower of Knowledge (ToK). I will explain every aura and how it works, and how you need to think about the aura when creating setups with them. I will also link to some usecases for each aura to explain the rationale behind the passive.

It is recommended to always have 2 auras in your setup. Though only very rarely should you have 3 or 4.

Aura Tier List

S-tier

Malice, Weakness and Coercion are all S-tier auras. This is simply because these are the three auras with the absolute highest impact in the game. Crits are hugely important in IK, as critical hits are sometimes avg. 3-4 times a normal attack (even at low tech). Therefore, using Malice and Weakness are the two best auras for 99% of all setups you can make. You will never go wrong setting both of them in your main – even if your team is not crit-reliant as in running chase-synergies or Cyrus. You will still see very high impact from both these crit-auras.

Coercion is somewhere in between S and A tier. Simply because, not every march / setup relies on physical damage. For physical damage Immortals, accuracy is the most valuable stat you can get. A miss/dodged attack is a 100% damage reduction, and as such even a small amout of misses means you are missing out on a lot of DPS. If you rely on physical damage from e.g. Alexander + Bathony or Barca + Saladin + Atalanta or YSG + Peter + Khan you MUST have coercion. However, for someone relying on big damage spells, coercion is absolutely pointless, your auto attacks on mages are very small and magic skills cannot miss. Because it is a must have for physical damage dealers, I cannot get myself to set it as a A-tier skill. But note that it shouldn’t be used on magic setups. If you run 2-3 physical damage dealers in your march, it is mostly recommended to run all three of these auras. Only in some niche occations you need to do otherwise (see below).

A-tier

Shelter and Berserk are both A-tier auras. These two auras are ranked highly, as they are both high impact and versatile auras. They provide sustain (and Berserk attack speed) which is very strong for both PvE and PvP combat. This makes them some of the most valuable ToK skills to unlock.

Beware, that in PvP situations where you are faced with an enemy with “wounds” debuff. The value of these auras drop hard. In any other situation, they provide very strong sustain to your march and are always a good choice.

Berserk synergizes especially well with Immortals which scale off of attack speed (i.e. Immortals like Hannibal Barca and Alexander the Great).

B-Tier

Sacrifice and Missleading I have ranked as B-tier, i.e. situational auras. These are the auras I rarely use and only in specific situations / setups.

Missleading is situational very solid in a setup with other means of sustaining itself, made to fight versus physical damage immortals. Since hit-rate is the most valuable stat for a physical damage dealing immortal, adding to your dodge chance can be a huge factor when fighting physical damage dealers. However, this aura is countered quite hard by coercion, making its value quite low versus enemies with coercion IF you do not stack it with anything else. As such, I personally run it in my third march because I run holy with Manco and Afterimage too. Making my dodge a real factor of survival and ‘overcapping’ on dodge to make coercion not able to saturate the deficit imposed on enemy hit chance.

Sacrifice is a decent aura, on paper it is insanely strong. But I do not like it when running 2 supports and 2 damage dealers (which is most setups). Sacrifice is valuable in situations where you have a support Immortal with 0 damage output AND have 3 other Immortals all with decent damage output. This could e.g. be Dido, Merlin, Ragnar, Attila.

C-Tier

I cannot get myself to set any of the auras as less than decent. Every aura available in the game has a high impact relative to most of the other ToK passive skills. As such, the lowest ranked aura Paralysis is ranked as decent.

Paralysis is a decent aura in that it provides a bit of a slowdown on enemy autoattacks. This creates a slight damage output reduction for any enemy you face, yet it is a lot more impactful in highly specific encounters. Basically, I only like Paralysis when fighting against: Alexander, Barca, Attila and Peter. Yet even against these opponents I would ALWAYS prioritize one of the above auras. Paralysis works nicely in your second or third march, IF you are going for sustain / defense versus auto-attack (white hit) Immortals.

Published: 22-07-2022