Allow Vaal skills to be used without souls

Annnnnnnd... Starxsword is the winner. A very thoughtful and well laid out argument even pointing out some things I hadn't thought of such as poison arrow and totems etc. And he's right about the binary nature of how it would work vs bosses. Either you'd see no difference from how it already is or you'd wind up in an incredibly abusive situation.

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BearCares wrote:

Either you'd see no difference from how it already is or you'd wind up in an incredibly abusive situation.

Pretty much what I've been saying. Good on him for explaining it in a way other people understand though.

"Cooldown that ticks down extra per kill" is pretty much a straight rip-off of D3's Blood Vengeance passive and Discipline system (which I mentioned earlier) but that's not a bad thing. If you can't beat a good mechanic, steal it. (Wouldn't be a PoE first.)

I will say one thing about the "slow trickle of +souls over time, fast +souls through kills" idea though: it is very awkward with town portals. If you don't fill souls to max on town, then when players enter an instance in a safe area they have an inclination to just wait for it to fill up (do something other than play for a minute or so). Make it refill on town, and then you have town portal abuse spam. So in order for the mechanic to work, you need to treat town portals much as D3 does: not spammable, summoning delay.

Personally, I think TPs should have a 1 or 2 second delay on principle, because I consider death cheating by any method (altf4, logout, or tp) to be detrimental to game design. If combined with this idea, then 2 seconds without moving or getting hit should be more than sufficient. But such a position may be controversial. All I'm saying is portal delays would be a prerequisite for Star's idea.

@ScrotieMcB
So escaping death through town portals is detrimental, but using town portals to refill resources is not?

Because no challenge but too challenging?

@BearCares
Did you even read my posts? Or at least my reply to Star?
Not diagonnally, not with the red glasses on, but properly?

You guys don't seem to realize you kind of drift way off the whole point of Vaal Skills and what they represent.

So having a cooldown (which is the same as getting Souls by doing absolutely nothing) is beneficial to gameplay, when it trivializes any sort of challenge the game might otherwise have...
... but letting players build Souls by dealing and suffering damage is bad and "abusable"?
Specially considering Vaal skills are meant to be finishers, not initiators?

The logics.
Mindblowing.

Dealing damage, yes. That is what we're saying. If flasks or Vaal skill charges are triggered by something which is also good, then good becomes better and better, which becomes bad for rea sons previously discussed.

Receiving damage? Eh, not nearly as OP. Surgeon's is OP, Avenger's isn't.

To simplify: only soul filling mechanics should be trigger on bad. Having to wait is bad, so waiting is fair game.

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You guys don't seem to realize you kind of drift way off the whole point of Vaal Skills and what they represent.

That is not true at all. Vaal skills represent sacrifice. Doing damage does not represent sacrifice in any way.

If you want to be more thematic, you can have a slight penalty when equipping Vaal skills. Something like equipping it will cause degeneration.

Here are some sample numbers I can throw out to prevent the use of multiple Vaal skills, as I feel like it is more of an "ultimate" in fighting games. And equipping more than one will have too much of a corrupting effect on you, as the character.
Equipping 1 Vaal skill will cause 10 hp degeneration per second.
Equipping 2 Vaal skills will cause 200 hp degeneration per second.
Equipping 3 Vaal skills will cause 3000 hp degeneration per second.
Equipping 4 Vaal skills will cause 40000 hp degeneration per second.

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Specially considering Vaal skills are meant to be finishers, not initiators?

As far as lore is concerned, Vaal skills are a more powerful version of the regular virtue (skill gems) gems. So much more powerful that you need to sacrifice in order to use it.

It being a finisher or initiator is a conclusion you made. The way I see it, it is a skill to be used as a last resort, not as a finisher or initiator.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Dealing damage, yes. That is what we're saying. If flasks or Vaal skill charges are triggered by something which is also good, then good becomes better and better, which becomes bad for rea sons previously discussed.

Receiving damage? Eh, not nearly as OP. Surgeon's is OP, Avenger's isn't.

To simplify: only soul filling mechanics should be trigger on bad. Having to wait is bad, so waiting is fair game.

I'll explain again in case you missed it the first 5 times:
1 - Killing involves dealing damage. It is dealing 100% of the enemy's Life in damage (a little less with Culling).
2 - High damage builds kill faster, and thus build souls faster.

1 + 2 = your point makes no sense, because the ONLY thing that changes with my suggestion, is that you can actually use Vaal Skills against bosses without adds.

Analog to what I said above, Flasks also fill faster by killing faster, which means taking many times 100% life from monsters. Surgeon just gives an extra boost to that.
Any sort of issue with faster killing/damage building more Flask charges or souls is a different matter and doesn't extrapolate to "my idea doesn't work".
I'll make a suggestion for Surgeon on another thread.

Perhaps "taking damage" builds more souls than "dealing damage", and "killing" builds even more souls than taking damage - details.

The bottom line is:
Dealing and taking damage "should mean" that you're in danger.
GGG just needs to make sure that no build can kill all enemies from complete safety and without any sort of danger. And not just against 1 or 2 enemy mods.

On one hand, whether a Boss has adds or not dictating if you can use Vaal Skills is plain stupid.

On the other hand, I simply consider drawing circles around enemies while waiting for a Vaal Skill to come off cooldown terrible design.
I don't understand how that could be considered fun or engaging, or even "bad".
You're not in danger. You're just waiting.
It's "bad" due to clear speed? That's the excuse? Lol...

Let me put this in a different way:
You should be cornerable.

If you get into a situation where engaging the enemy will get you killed, waiting a few seconds shouldn't save you.
Can't kill/deal or take damage? No Vaal Skill.
Change map or revise your build/gear.

Getting a "free kill" card every X seconds makes no sense to me.

Dealing damage doesn't mean you're in danger at all. I mean, are you serious? Apparently you didn't read the "trigger on bad, don't trigger on good" part at all. Dealing damage good: taking damage bad.

Btw, although I find Star's suggestion interesting, and much more plausible than anything Nurvus has said, let me be clear: I am not sold on it being in the game. I do think portal delay should be at least one second, perhaps two, perhaps with and perhaps without the qualification that you aren't hit during that delay. What I emphatically would not want to see is a 5 second delay - it slows pace of play too much... and if a delay of one second is functional at preventing players from escaping dangerous situations, the decision to extend to two seconds should not be taken lightly. So it might be that Star's suggestion is compatible with such a situation, or it might need even more portal delay to really come into its own. If the latter, then I'd no longer consider Star's suggestion viable. Dirk may be an extremist on this issue while I'm a moderate, but we're both against the (hypothetical) extremists on the opposite end of the spectrum.

1 - If you really defend that "trigger on bad, don't trigger on good" ideal, then maybe you should look at Life Gain on Hit and Life Leech because they trigger on good.
Maybe you should look at Shock, Freeze and Burn because they trigger on good.

You should really think through the implications of what you're saying.

2 - The whole idea around Vaal Skill cooldown, delays on portals due to the ability to go to town to fill souls/cooldowns does two things:
2.1 - It hurts those without Vaal Skills
2.2 - It allows you trivialize content by having free Vaal Skills purely by going to town.

Your whole concept of "trigger on bad" only applies here on paper, because anyone can go to town to sell gear and stash stuff right before a boss.

Ultimately, I'm against full recovery in town unless Monsters also get the same benefit.
The whole concept of cheesing content by abusing TPs should be gone.

And when we have these facts...
1 - Builds are mostly evaluated around survival and clear speed
2 - Builds that use Vaal Skills give up gem slots to use them
3 - Loads of builds can do fine without Vaal Skills. In fact a lot of people struggle to find reasons to use Vaal Skills.
4 - (you seem to keep ignoring this) Killing something is no different from dealing damage equal to 100% of its life, and soul generation already scales with mob "difficulty".
5 - Many bosses have adds and thus you can use/spam Vaal skills anyway.
...I ask this:
Why the hell is there a problem with gaining a small amount of Souls by dealing/taking damage?

If you're against killing faster making you kill even faster, then you're against the whole design of PoE.
Because killing things gives you Flask charges & Souls, which lets you kill things faster...
Using certain skills gets you Power or Frenzy charges on damage/crit/kill which makes you kill faster.
Stunning enemies gets you Endurance charges which lets you survive better so that you can keep killing faster.

Those changes of heart from thread to thread confuse me.

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Nurvus wrote:

1 - If you really defend that "trigger on bad, don't trigger on good" ideal, then maybe you should look at Life Gain on Hit and Life Leech because they trigger on good.
Maybe you should look at Shock, Freeze and Burn because they trigger on good.

The key difference here is that these are additional effects rather than actual skills. A standalone skill should be significantly stronger than an additional skill effect. This is particularly true with damaging effects, side killspeed is king. (Admittedly leech and ignite are both very strong, which is why I believe both should be reined in a bit.)

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Nurvus wrote:

2 - The whole idea around Vaal Skill cooldown, delays on portals due to the ability to go to town to fill souls/cooldowns does two things:
2.1 - It hurts those without Vaal Skills
2.2 - It allows you trivialize content by having free Vaal Skills purely by going to town.

Your whole concept of "trigger on bad" only applies here on paper, because anyone can go to town to sell gear and stash stuff right before a boss.

Ultimately, I'm against full recovery in town unless Monsters also get the same benefit.
The whole concept of cheesing content by abusing TPs should be gone.

That last sentence means: there should be a very small but nevertheless significant delay on portals so they are awkward if not impossible to use in combat. Even if no changes to Vaal skills.

But after thinking on this point, I agree: towning shouldn't refill your souls instantly. Probably still at a rate/second if that is implemented, but you'd still have to wait. Maybe a double/fast regen zone in town or something.

Why? Party vs solo balance. Because you can't do the "monsters full heal when you leave" thing, it is hugely biased against solo since that wouldn't happen if a party member stays behind. So therefore players shouldn't get a stupid instant full heal for town either; instead, it should be gradual heal in town, and also gradual heal for monsters in an empty instance. That way in parties TP to refill flasks, etc would require the rest of the party to fight at a penalty for a significant amount of time.

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Nurvus wrote:

...I ask this:
Why the hell is there a problem with gaining a small amount of Souls by dealing/taking damage?

Long answer already provided.

Short answer: they're cooldown-ish skills, not spam skills. Get out of the design space which isn't for players like you and go to the design space which is, so players who like cooldown-ish skills can enjoy their cooldown-ish skills.

Or to return the question: why the burning desire to make the unspammable spammable, thus obliterating its niche?