Vaal Skill QoL Suggestion

I love the changes to Vaal skills so far, it's given me a reason to actually use skills I wouldn't use before. That said, I have one suggestion to greatly improve (at least my) quality of life when using them. I think that when you attempt to use a Vaal skill that is not yet ready to be used, it would be great if it would just use the normal version instead. For those skills where holding on to charges isn't a big priority, and the normal skill is your primary dps you're using often, this would cut down on your skill bar usage. As-is, if you have even two vaal skill gems, you've already used 4 spaces on your bar and that doesn't leave room for much else. Making this change would not impact people that prefer the current method either, since you could still have both on your bar. Or maybe this could even be an option in the settings to do or don't use that functionality.

Anyways, that's my two cents from what I've experienced so far.

Agreed.

When a gem doesn't have enough souls then activating said gem should activate the gem for the non-Vaal portion of the skill. This would include toggling aura/herald skills.

Is it possible to enable using the same key for both regular and vaal versions of a skill, with a toggle key? for example:

Q - cast normal skill
alt+Q - cast vaal skill

that would be extremely helpful, with skill slots being so few, and the new change effectively giving us access to more skills per build.

+1 for both suggestions, except the Alt+Q (or whatever extra key) option should by no means disable the option to bind the skills to two different slots if we want to use them that way.

Great suggestion.

With the way they introduced the new "2 skills on 1 gem" system and the new "attack in place" hotbar toggle around the same time, I fully expected the Vaal gems to work this way, with the "use regular version while on cooldown" being another toggle option. Needless to say, I was disappoint.

It would make most "bread-and-butter" skills with Vaal counterparts (Burning Arrow, Double Strike, Blight etc.) sooo smooth and intuitive.

Edit: On a related note: More slots on the hotbar, please!

only problem with original suggestion would be vaal auras... ~turns off discipline in the middle of a hectic fight because i thought i would have enough souls by then~

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adghar wrote:

only problem with original suggestion would be vaal auras... ~turns off discipline in the middle of a hectic fight because i thought i would have enough souls by then~

Yes, it should definitely be a toggled option, default off.

The way I made the mental connection with the attack in place change was: I thought "OOOH now that the framework is in place, I bet all the Vaal skills will get such a toggle."

I feel like it's such a missed opportunity that they will most definitely add that functionality at some point. I think.

Honestly, it wouldnt be too hard to make the skill selection smarter. And removing Auras is pretty easy. I dont think there are other Vaal Skills were it would be hurtful to accidently use the normal one. Possibly RF if you are just using the Vaal version for some burst dps on a caster.

So overall adding that for most damage dealing skills is propably easy enough. It is kinda interesting that the game now actually has some supportive skills and encourages using different skills in combination a lot more, but you now run out of hotkeys to use them.

Agreed with above, as a lightening summoner a majority of my keys are summons and the odd aura. I use Ice nova and Arc. Having a vaal arc is essentially useless... There needs to be a way to cast the normal version while the vaal component is charging!

I like these ideas as well. I remember seeing something about controller support for the game a while back and one person said there aren't enough buttons for skills + flasks, but some other games do something like the alt+ method. I think Tera does where you can have the base ABXY skills, then holding LB gives you a different set of ABXY skills, all customizable.