Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-1.40.59.59-20160717064827/@comment-26397825-20171109100808

I tend to think of Yang’s semblance as part active, part passive.

The active part is building her metre; she has to have aura available for damage she takes to be counted towards her strength boost. Without aura, she doesn’t get stronger from the damage she takes.

The passive part is actually using her metre. She doesn’t have to have aura available to her for her to hit harder, but once the metre is gone she can’t build it back up until she has aura again.

This is part explains how she used her Semblance after the Ursa broke her aura in the V5 character short; her metre built up from the damage she took from the Ursa up until the moment her aura broke, and then when she came back she used her entire metre all at once.

Also, I think it was in this thread but I could be wrong, but SomeoneYouUsedToKnow mentioned the idea that aura has a threshold of damage it can block with each strike, and the reason Ruby’s aura sparked is that Tyrian’s kicks were breaking the threshold. This reminds me of Damage Reduction from DnD. If you have DR 5, it means that you ignore the first 5 points of damage from every hit, even if it’s from a Monk’s Flurry of Blows or a Wizard’s Magic Missile, which are counted as one attack but hit multiple times.

So I could see Aura having a threshold similar to DR, and also similar to Guard or Blocking like Someone suggested, and I can also see that threshold being something that increases as you train your aura.