Vaal Gems - Half-Assed Design

I like vaalgems, you can use them any time you have aquired enough souls. luckily most bosses are actually only in their own lair which is part of the previous zone, so you will have collected enough souls to use it against a boss if you want to. would be neat to stack as many souls, as there are monsters to kill in a zone, but then again using a vaalgem 3 times in a bossfight is essentially uberlame and not neccessary at all, since bosses in this game don't really put up a fight anyway.

do you mind if i say, i don't really get what you guys (page 4) are argueing about. there is plenty of vaalgems, some are defensive, some offensive, some are crowd control, some are compared to their nonvaal equivalents of selfcasting type. they differ massivly and thus are best used for entirely different situations/playstyles. maybe you should just go through every single vaalgem and test them with a specific character build. a single gemslot isn't wasted at all by these marvellous things.

there is absolutely no point in complaining about not being able to explode corpses where no corpses are to be found. there is absolutely no point in complaining about a vaalspell that CCs the whole screen, when you are up against a single enemy.you chose the wrong vaalspell for your activity. if you can kill everything without a vaalspell, you are going to kill everything twice as fast if you make use of the apropriate vaalspell. there is also several vaalspells that need 6-12 souls which are easily aquired by just staring at goats. and you don't even need to be psychic do make good use of them.

I can do that too:

"

Natharias wrote:

I love missing the point of a discussion, so Nurvus and Caps Lock are here to help me.

Maybe I got the purpose of the Suggestions forum completely wrong, but I made this thread to discuss ways to make Vaal Gems better - not bitching about how useless they are.

You seem to think Vaal Gems will only EVER be useful if you can use the normal skill with them as well.
I already said in another thread I'm fine either way, and that there are good reasons supporting both situations.
In the end it's all about what GGG wants Vaal Gems to be - an alternative, or an upgrade.

However, regardless of whether your suggestion is implemented, Vaal Skills will ALWAYS suck as long as you can ONLY charge them through kills.
And that is what I suggest to change.

Between Trigger gems and Vaal gems, considering their concept and their current implementation:
Trigger gems are fairly well implemented, but have a terrible concept (trivialize part of the game and are mendatory).
Vaal gems have a great concept but are terribly implemented (charge from kills only and too weak to compete with Trigger Gems/Auras for sockets).

So if I had to choose between one of them, I'd remove Trigger Gems from the game and fix Vaal Gems.

Refined original post.

one more idea to improve vaal gems is:
add new support gem which can keep in own store souls, this permit use vaal gem often

"

Dzordz3 wrote:

one more idea to improve vaal gems is:
add new support gem which can keep in own store souls, this permit use vaal gem often

Not saying this is a bad idea, but it doesn't really deal with the issue I bring up in this thread.

If you only generate souls through kills, the problem will persist whether you can store 1 or 100 uses of a Vaal Gem - even if you can store them between areas and in town.

Personally, the vaal gem soul mechanism just strikes me as a more primitive version of flask recharging - both refill from kills, but flasks get more off magic/rare/boss kills, start off full rather than empty (because they aren't going to directly kill anything), and can be enchanted for a couple of non-kill recharge mechanisms.

Oh, and all flasks get recharged at once with the same soul, so to speak; way back before closed beta, they didn't, resulting in players leaving flask slots empty so that they could recharge the others faster.

These differences do add up, but the upshot is that they're mostly the same philosophy: more power, less spam, ranging from routine (vaal storm call/flameblast, ) to oh-shit buttons (vaal spark/cold snap).

Skivverus, none of the "good" sides of what you said changes with my suggestion.

They'll still be all about "more power, less spam, ranging from routine (vaal storm call/flameblast, ) to oh-shit buttons (vaal spark/cold snap)."

What needs to change is the stupid way Souls charge up.

It makes sense for Flasks to charge from kills because you're not just meant to have infinite healing.
The charge on crit doesn't change that because builds that invest into crit usually give up a good deal of defenses - it evens out.



Flasks need to STOP recharging in town.
Vaal Gems need to START charging from something you constantly do in ALL fights - even bosses.

i would rather replace the charges with a big drawback say:

vaal fireball:
does what vaal fireball does now
charges are replaced with "stun the caster for 3 secs on cast"
cant be used with"cant be stuned mod" but can be reduced with stun reduction nodes


vaal haste
same effect but with unlimited time
max resistances -30%

other negative aspects
freeze on cast
60% less armor/eva/ ress for "x" secs
"x"% of dmg done is reflected to caster
etc..

this will aloud people to create builds around them without making them overpowered.

Wrong caboom.
Your ideal is good, but your idea is not.

Vaal Gems can be something you use as a "finisher" or "ultimate" skill.

You would rather have them spammable or gimmicky.
That vaal fireball that stuns you either kills everything fast enough, or doesn't and you die.

It's a fundamentally flawed concept whatever way you put it.
If the damage is good enough to compensate the stun, everyone uses it.
Otherwise, no one uses it.

And any "spammable" version will inevitably need to be weaker than an "ultimate with a build up" mechanic.

"

Nurvus wrote:

I can do that too:

"

Natharias wrote:

I love missing the point of a discussion, so Nurvus and Caps Lock are here to help me.

Maybe I got the purpose of the Suggestions forum completely wrong, but I made this thread to discuss ways to make Vaal Gems better - not bitching about how useless they are.

You seem to think Vaal Gems will only EVER be useful if you can use the normal skill with them as well.
I already said in another thread I'm fine either way, and that there are good reasons supporting both situations.
In the end it's all about what GGG wants Vaal Gems to be - an alternative, or an upgrade.

However, regardless of whether your suggestion is implemented, Vaal Skills will ALWAYS suck as long as you can ONLY charge them through kills.
And that is what I suggest to change.

Between Trigger gems and Vaal gems, considering their concept and their current implementation:
Trigger gems are fairly well implemented, but have a terrible concept (trivialize part of the game and are mendatory).
Vaal gems have a great concept but are terribly implemented (charge from kills only and too weak to compete with Trigger Gems/Auras for sockets).

So if I had to choose between one of them, I'd remove Trigger Gems from the game and fix Vaal Gems.

Let me know when you want to cut the bullshit. Making up quotes just shows how well you take comments, and then criticism for attacking someone who simply comments.