Vaal Pact and general leech question

Hi, first to say that I played poe mostly in open beta and stopped playing when it went public and came back one month ago. Mostly because my CI dual claw shadow was nerfed at the time and now after latest patch it seems buffed again.

I'm not good with math so need your help. I got 6100 ES and, what I consider solid leech rate, of 25% (6% from dual claws, 3% from other gear and 6% passive + blood rage of 10%). My dmg output is from 61k - 75,5k depending on the charges Im running with (3 frenzy + 3 power).

My biggest problem is I die from phys reflect (or some bosses like one form Academy, when he starts tornados I cannot leech enough, my only chance is to kill him before).

Can someone explain what would be best to deal with the problem: increasing leech on gear further or increasing ES (and by how much), etc. ? Would Atziti Acuity help me considering their leech is not only 40% like VP ? Or just increasing dmg more ?

Some formula that explains this would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Acuity would solve the reflect problem in a flash, if you can afford them. Aside from that though, more ES would be a good idea, but I'm guessing you don't have much armour either? It's surprisingly easy to get a good chunk of armour as melee CI, and that would also be enormously helpful.

Edit: formulas for phys reflect are not straightforward (as they are for ele reflect) because of the way that bigger hits ignore armour to a larger extent than smaller ones.

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viperesque wrote:

Acuity would solve the reflect problem in a flash, if you can afford them. Aside from that though, more ES would be a good idea, but I'm guessing you don't have much armour either? It's surprisingly easy to get a good chunk of armour as melee CI, and that would also be enormously helpful.

Edit: formulas for phys reflect are not straightforward (as they are for ele reflect) because of the way that bigger hits ignore armour to a larger extent than smaller ones.

Armour I only have from granite flasks, nothing on gear, as my gear is mostly ES. And armour nodes are far away from me.

If I were to go that side of tree for armor nodes I could take Zealto's Oath instead of Vall Pact , but thats why I need to know numbers for this leech before I decide for something that big as I would need to respec the whole tree (which Im trying to avoid tbh).

bump?

Are you one shotting yourself on the reflect? Leech happens before you get the reflected damage, so if you can't handle the reflect from big hits, no amount of leech will help you.

Acuity gloves only leech when you crit, so you wouldn't get leech from all of your hits (since you can't have 100% chance to crit). Also wouldn't help if you are one shotting yourself.

ok, I need help with this. When having Vaal Pact, it apparently doesn't have any leech cap, correct me if I'm wrong. So basically that would mean the more phys dmg I deal, the more life I leech ?

So how come considering the amount of dmg I deal (42582 phys dmg ) and I have 25% leech , thats 10645 life leeched instantly with each hit (and how this exactly scale with multistrike ? Is it with each hit or with each action ?). My ES pool is around 6,4K, so I should be able to leech myself to full ES, however, sometimes thats not the case. Now Im not talking about reflect but lets say academy boss, from whom I cannot leech enough even when Im constantly hitting him, when his tornados keep hitting me.

Any help with this ?

Basically , my other idea is to go block as well with shield (rathpith having Es boost and spell dmg), but then I lose dual wield , meaning lose much of phys dmg, and loosing 3% leech from one claw, which means Im loosing a lot of leech? How would that affect my build then ? Is it viable thing to do or not ?

Any help with this is appreciated.

Also, if I could get around 30% leech instead of current 25%, how much would it help with survivability ?

Basically , do I need even more dmg or even more leech in order to counter this 40% leech from VP ?

What would be best to do in your opinion ?

Thanks.

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PerpetualWar wrote:

ok, I need help with this. When having Vaal Pact, it apparently doesn't have any leech cap, correct me if I'm wrong. So basically that would mean the more phys dmg I deal, the more life I leech ?

So how come considering the amount of dmg I deal (42582 phys dmg ) and I have 25% leech , thats 10645 life leeched instantly with each hit (and how this exactly scale with multistrike ? Is it with each hit or with each action ?). My ES pool is around 6,4K, so I should be able to leech myself to full ES, however, sometimes thats not the case. Now Im not talking about reflect but lets say academy boss, from whom I cannot leech enough even when Im constantly hitting him, when his tornados keep hitting me.

Any help with this ?

Basically , my other idea is to go block as well with shield (rathpith having Es boost and spell dmg), but then I lose dual wield , meaning lose much of phys dmg, and loosing 3% leech from one claw, which means Im loosing a lot of leech? How would that affect my build then ? Is it viable thing to do or not ?

Any help with this is appreciated.

ok, forgot to count only 40% of that 10645 so that would be 4258 life leeched instantly. So basically increasing my phys dmg and my leech on gear should theoretically give me higher survivability, if Im not mistaken.

Still not sure how it works with multistrike and my accuracy, can it be calculated correctly ?

There are two ways Vaal Pact helps a characters survivability.

One is against reflect. In this case you'd need to leech equal or more life/es back than you lose to reflect and you need to not get oneshot by a single instance of reflect damage. Since reflected physical damage is mitigated by armour the exact amount leech and life/es you'd need is a bit complicated to calculate but if you have no armour and hit for 42k phys damage then:

• map reflect is 18%: You'd need 18% effective leech and 7560 life/es to be guaranteed to survive hitting one or more targets
• aura reflect is 14%: You'd need 14% effective leech and 5880 life/es to be guaranteed to survive hitting one or more targets
• both together stack to 32%: You'd need 32% effective leech and 13440 life/es to be guaranteed to survive hitting one or more targets
• Being shocked or cursed with vulnerability will further increase the needed amount of effective leech and life/es, well beyond what's actually possible to surive.

Multistrike and accuracy doesn't mean much here. When you hit multiple targets you start with one of them, leech from that one target, then take damage from that one target, then move to the next one and repeat. Accuracy can make it harder to evade your own reflect but the formula is exponential so if you have enough accuracy to hit monsters in a reliable fashion chances are you will hit yourself quite a lot as well. In my opinion, only ranged characters with ondar's guile has the option of effectively utilizing evasion to mitigate reflect.

tl;dr if you die to reflect with vaal pact sacrifice some dps to get more leech and more life/es


The other way Vaal Pact helps survivability is by letting you man up and face tank strong bosses. In this case you need to be able to survive getting hit and then be able to leech back the life/es you lost before getting hit again. What kind of stats you need to pull that off is obviously something that is going to differ a lot from situation to situation but my experience is that a vaal pact character would rather leech 1k life/es back 8 times a second than 4k life/es 2 times a second. In other words, you want attack speed more than dps. Multistrike is great in that regard but you also need all the accuracy you can get because missing means not leeching which means you might die. Reliable leech rate is the key.

tl;dr if you die to strong enemies with vaal pact get more atk speed, unless you're getting oneshot; then get more life/es

A 4-L lighting strike or spectral throw works for reflect mobs if you have space. Both have decent damage for a secondary attack and safe against the Academy boss. You can also use them for getting power charges at the start of a fight. Spectral throw is very forgiving to reflect, probably because you can dodge/evade/block each smaller hit. Or use an unsupported puncture.