Vaal Spark

Great when I can use it.

Takes too long to charge, making me feel drawn to wander around an area begging for more mobs to kill. This is extremely distracting and aggrivating. I use it so infrequently that I lose track of its charges and will finish an area without even using it. Why should I even have it?

I recommend an audio queue and a glow to indicate when it's available. I'd also recommend separate hotkeys for triggering these, so they're not "wasting" skill slots.

I'd easily take a 6-12 soul charge (two packs of mobs) with a severely reduced effect.

As it stands now.. it's garbage. I'll hold onto it until it's fixed.

Agree, the souls needed to charge it is way too high.

Storm Call / caster / nuker Scion, currently level 30 ish, still in normal.

Found this skill and though it would be a handy 'holy crap' emergency spell for clearing out crowds. It works well enough when activated, but the charge time is insidious. I found it one zone before Merveil, and didn't successfully charge it until I got to Chamber of Sins. Even then, it charged up just before I found the staircase, so I ended up casting it at nothing just to see what it did. It basically requires a full zone clear to use, and thus is not available for use when it would actually be needed.

2/5. Would not socket again.

Staff build, very early on level 17 Templar that is using this and loving it.

With Iron Will and barely anything else to boost its damage (52 intelligence, nothing specced into spell damage passives and no real spell damage gear) It's doing 1-34 per ball, and there's a very simple way to turn that into a boss/unique mulcher with little effort.

Firstly, if you use fewer Vaal gems the souls are spread out between fewer gems (so it seems, but the empirical data's out on this one for me) and they charge up faster. One extra Vaal gem on top of this one, especially one with a low max soul count, ensures it'll be charged up in each area.

Secondly, Vaal Glacial hammer, the skill gem that just came out in 1.1.1. The ring of ice shards entraps you and your target for just long enough that all of the sparks will ricochet and turn it into a deathtrap for them. It would be a two move kill in PVP, assuming you had the souls built up for it. And while that's a rather large assumption to make considering the soul count, it would certainly be deadly if you manage it.

Don't believe me? Using my stats and a lot of averaging, Vaal spark on its own would deal 1950 (average) damage to someone with 28% electricity resistance, assuming all sparks hit them. When you consider that some a player my level might have as little as 300 health, you only need a fraction of them to hit in order to ensure a kill. On a boss you're saving it for, the combination proves equally as deadly. My math could certainly be wonky on this one, but my testing of it so far has proved its worth to me. I don't need anything else for killing bosses going forwards from here.

Besides all of that rambling, the skill looks fantastic when executed, and is worth it to me for that alone. Some skills you just want to make you feel awesome when you use them.

The "ramlbing" is not about leveling on normal, Sliiarhem. The amount of souls needed to activate Vaal Gems increases in Cruel and Merciless.

I like the skill but its really not worth the slot.

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Caliginosus wrote:

The "ramlbing" is not about leveling on normal, Sliiarhem. The amount of souls needed to activate Vaal Gems increases in Cruel and Merciless.

I like the skill but its really not worth the slot.

It is actually one of the few high soul requirement vaal skills that is worth it. Sure it can't compare to vaal power siphon, but killing bosses fast nad easy is a good thing. Unless it becomes impossible in merciless. In cruel, it helps me tear though very hard bosses on my arc self caster - Weaver didn't pose any kind of threat, while usually it is near impossible to kill him with this kind of build.

Using the skill on a 40ish trapper and so far, I think you might need to rebalance this one. Consider the ability to charge the skills before moving to a boss mob. In several cases, the boss mob will technically be placed on the same map as the level leading towards him, thus you'll retain the charges (e.g. Merveil).

I linked the skill with trap and GMP and just one-shot Cruel Merveil with it - no debuffs, no curses, just moved in and threw a single trap. Her health dropped in less than a second, and even her second form took > 50% damage from the remaining sparks on the map.

I also managed to one-shot Brutus and a few other lesser bosses. Granted, these are not map bosses, but arguably you should not be able to one-shot them, especially since there is absolute no gear investment whatsoever except for a 3-link item in this case.

Insanely fun, but unbelievably overpowered.

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vezuial wrote:

Using the skill on a 40ish trapper and so far, I think you might need to rebalance this one. Consider the ability to charge the skills before moving to a boss mob. In several cases, the boss mob will technically be placed on the same map as the level leading towards him, thus you'll retain the charges (e.g. Merveil).

I linked the skill with trap and GMP and just one-shot Cruel Merveil with it - no debuffs, no curses, just moved in and threw a single trap. Her health dropped in less than a second, and even her second form took > 50% damage from the remaining sparks on the map.

I also managed to one-shot Brutus and a few other lesser bosses. Granted, these are not map bosses, but arguably you should not be able to one-shot them, especially since there is absolute no gear investment whatsoever except for a 3-link item in this case.

Insanely fun, but unbelievably overpowered.

It really isn't, wait till you get to merciless - then sparks' low inherit damage will show itself and oneshotting some bosses will get harder. Plus 96 souls aren't that easy to get. All in all that is what vaal skills should be - crazy nukes.

P.S. You can oneshot bosses with some regular skills too - Flameblast (unless the nerf was too severe, haven't tested after it), discharge, puncture.