Board Thread:Off Topic/@comment-24534644-20170213012304/@comment-26397825-20170406025450

I think a forced activation could work. The user would have to specifically activate it to reduce the damage, which means they could still be hit by sneak attacks, but it would work well for larger attacks.

The way I'm looking at it is like this. An attack would do 5 damage. Activating the semblance costs 1 Aura to take 2/5 damage away. The user ends up losing 4 Aura once everything is said and done. It's near worthless at that level.

But if an attack would do 20 damage and aura cost is 1, then they stop 8 damage and only lose 13 aura once the 1 for activation cost is added back on. It becomes much more viable at higher levels.

The conscious activation on my part is because I feel like it's straying into OP territory if it just activates automatically, even when the user doesn't know they're going to get hit. Not because it mitigates damage entirely, but because how does the semblance and aura know that it should activate when the user doesn't.