Passives to support Soul Generation

IT's that time again, close to new leagues and potential tree revamps and that is why I am bumping this to support the idea that the game needs something to add some spice into Vaal Skills.

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polo97 wrote:

I think the biggest Problem of vaal gems is, that you can only use them very less time. So it is not worth it to link the skill with many support gems. For example call fireball with no support gems is relatively weak then a 6linked firebal. This makes the gem useless. But if you 6link the call gem you waste 6 sockets for spell that you canuse one time per map. Which is also useless. My solution for the problem would be that if you have a vaal gem in a sockets you also have the normal version of the skill. Example: 6linked armor with vaalfireball gmp, LMP, fire pen,echo and faster casting,would also allow you to cast fireball 6linked. By this change the use of vaal gems would increase extremely, but I think it would reduce the power feeling if you use the normal version

I suggested this at one time, it seems to be the best solution on the table if this is to be addressed.

I still support having vaal skill soul costs lowered, but having the soul costs increased by mana cost multipliers of support gems. Considering most vaal skills are supported by around 2-3 support gems, it'd even be fair to have the increased costs per difficulty removed completely.

This way you could quite often be using an unsupported vaal skill, as often as you do in normal when they're still fun. Or, if you want to have a rarely used ultimate weapon of mass destruction, give it supports to make it even stronger. As an aside, vaal storm call is best gem. Super low soul costs are fun!

I thought about this before but then remembered what they did with chaos damage. Before chaos and DoT nodes, Viper Strike was a nice offslot skill to fight dangerous stuff as high dex melee. With the introduction of nodes GGG nerfed the base damage of the skills. Same would happen here I'd guess, without nodes you are worse off than before, with nodes you are slightly better off but invested precious passives. You can make a dedicated build but it is not suited to be a support skill for other builds.

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Kranyum wrote:

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polo97 wrote:

I think the biggest Problem of vaal gems is, that you can only use them very less time. So it is not worth it to link the skill with many support gems. For example call fireball with no support gems is relatively weak then a 6linked firebal. This makes the gem useless. But if you 6link the call gem you waste 6 sockets for spell that you canuse one time per map. Which is also useless. My solution for the problem would be that if you have a vaal gem in a sockets you also have the normal version of the skill. Example: 6linked armor with vaalfireball gmp, LMP, fire pen,echo and faster casting,would also allow you to cast fireball 6linked. By this change the use of vaal gems would increase extremely, but I think it would reduce the power feeling if you use the normal version

I suggested this at one time, it seems to be the best solution on the table if this is to be addressed.

Yes, active vall skills are the problem. Vaal grace/clarity/haste/discipline etc. all have their uses with 1-2 gem slots but unsupported active vaal skills are not viable in higher maps. Polo97's solution might be too strong but it would be better than the current implementation.

I've kind of had a problem with Vaal skills since their conception. Their design seems to have been either "too much bother to deal with using up slots" or "too good not to use." That just doesn't seem interesting to me, at all.

I like the idea of the soul mechanic, but it's implementation contributes to the "too much bother" side of it. It fails to actually balance anything on the "too good not to use" side of it.

I would have much rather if Vaal skills (re: corrupting skill gems) did interesting things to the base skill (like corrupting items does), instead of just give us an omgwtf version of the skill.

E.g. Vaal Spark.. could have been just a regular spark but with a couple different possible mutators. Some of them could be additional lines of rules text like "Launches unpredictable flying sparks" (e.g. not ground projectiles) or "Launches sparks that travel in a straight line until..." while others could modify base skill properties (projectile speed, duration, cast speed, damage effectiveness) in such a way that every increase to one property would randomly decrease another property. Others still could make use of some modified soul mechanic, whereby they behave like a regular spark but can consume souls for increased effect, or starts out weaker but grows in strength as it collects souls.

That would have been really freakin interesting! Not... releases 900,000 projectiles ftw. Not "oh, I found yet another Vaal Spark. Add it to the pile of ten million other identical gems other people have found."

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Sa_Re wrote:

I thought about this before but then remembered what they did with chaos damage. Before chaos and DoT nodes, Viper Strike was a nice offslot skill to fight dangerous stuff as high dex melee. With the introduction of nodes GGG nerfed the base damage of the skills. Same would happen here I'd guess, without nodes you are worse off than before, with nodes you are slightly better off but invested precious passives. You can make a dedicated build but it is not suited to be a support skill for other builds.

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Kranyum wrote:

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polo97 wrote:

I think the biggest Problem of vaal gems is, that you can only use them very less time. So it is not worth it to link the skill with many support gems. For example call fireball with no support gems is relatively weak then a 6linked firebal. This makes the gem useless. But if you 6link the call gem you waste 6 sockets for spell that you canuse one time per map. Which is also useless. My solution for the problem would be that if you have a vaal gem in a sockets you also have the normal version of the skill. Example: 6linked armor with vaalfireball gmp, LMP, fire pen,echo and faster casting,would also allow you to cast fireball 6linked. By this change the use of vaal gems would increase extremely, but I think it would reduce the power feeling if you use the normal version

I suggested this at one time, it seems to be the best solution on the table if this is to be addressed.

Yes, active vall skills are the problem. Vaal grace/clarity/haste/discipline etc. all have their uses with 1-2 gem slots but unsupported active vaal skills are not viable in higher maps. Polo97's solution might be too strong but it would be better than the current implementation.

Yes, I remember with sadness the way they ruined Viper Strike. If this is the direction of Vaal Skills should passives be added to the tree to support them, I retract my suggestion.

bumperino just before the league starts maybe one of these would get through...

maybe a keystone

I like the idea of adding more options for vaal gems, but the main issue is that some of them are already almost too good.

For example, with vaal reave and any normal amount of damage on a regular reave build, every other pack is basically a freebie.

Back during invasion, I was keeping one unsupported vaal spark gem for bosses. I could easily one shot most bosses with it if I used conductivity and lured them into a corner, even without any passives or support gems supporting it.

So while I'd really like to see some extra stuff with these gems (and seriously, can we fix some of the shittier ones - vaal double strike, wtf?) but they would overshadow regular gems at that point and become the only skills worth having, which I think would be bad. Careful balancing is needed if any changes would be made to these due to their nature of being too good if you use them at key moments.