The Vaal Orb implicit mods are just god awful

Vaal orbs are the riskiest currency, period. They are often the last threshold that separates the best from the godly. I understand some mods need to be bad, but the risks need to match the reward. I feel some mods are missing on certain items and some shouldn't be there in the first place...+1 power charge appears on a 2H mace, but not on a wand? What? I can understand it's "bad" on the mace to get that, but why can't it be "good" for the wand to get it?

The wand exclusive "chance of projectiles piercing" only goes up to 8%! Compare that in power to a quiver "adds 1 arrow". Look at the discrepancy between the two, and you will understand what I am mad about. Projectile piercing is a great mod, but it is useless when you bottleneck it in such a small percent, when it is further bottle-necked by the huge risk Vaal orbs are when used on very high value items. I should NOT be looking at a list of all available mods for an item and be like "Meh, I don't want any of these"...and this is the case for a lot of these items.

I understand you guys have a lot on your plate for 2.0, but please can you start making big strides in re-balancing old content? I will try to give my input on all the mods and what I think should be changed over the course of this post's lifetime..if I see this post take off ill post more.

Thoughts:
1. Looking through a lot of these, a re-occurring theme seems to be that a lot of these have been balanced keeping early/mid game in mind...they are all very underwhelming and "balanced" as in bottle-necked super hard to make sure it can never be broken. Like the support gems never appearing on 2H or chest piece. I think they should be kept on 1Hs but brought onto 2Hs as well but made rarer. The support gems that do something unique be kept low level, but the ones that just alter an existing stat should be higher. I.E fork vs increased AoE.

2. Some of these are just balanced in weird ways..like why does quiver have so many good mods? The damage conversion mod is so good..it goes to quiver and sceptres only? I think it'd be more appropriate to be on gloves only.

3. Adds 1 additional arrow is so good and build-enabling, that's what makes it worth seeking. I dream of having a bow and quiver with that mod so I can drop LMP, it give's me a dream to look forward to, which is what a "god-tier" mod should do. Every item should have a mod like that, which means adding a lot of mods that simply are not there right now.

4. 95% mana multiplier...on a chest piece? A 5% mana reduction on a skill gem is not going to make the difference. This value should be raised on a chest piece, or moved to gloves/boots at the same value.

5. A lot of the skills you can get are auras...this isn't very fun...they can't even be used 99% of the time without a reduced mana... at least make them spells or something..the curse for rings is nice though and gloves.

6. The chaos damage additive on weapons should be changed to elemental at least so it can be scaled.

Closing thoughts: Overall I'd just like to see Vaal mods become funner and more powerful, they are the finishing touch, and if it goes wrong it can ruin hours upon hours of work and you cannot alter the final result in any way. Even if the fear is that a mod is too powerful if gotten easily and cheaply on a mid-tier item, that item can no longer be modified in any way...

TL:DR : Vaal Orbs are a huge risk and the reward isn't there right now. Funner more power and build-enabling mods should make using this cheap currency on crazy expensive items worth it.

Thank you for reading!

There are plenty of very valuable corrupted mods...so it's not aweful at all, they are very risky however because quite a few of those mods make some builds very powerful

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FoolyCoolant wrote:

the risks need to match the reward

Risk outweighs reward everywhere else in crafting... why should it not do so here as well? GGG's design throughout the currency/crafting system has not been for risk/reward to be balanced at all.

Rather or not this is a good thing I think is debatable. But Vaal orbs are just in line with the rest of how currency works in this game.

I like the wide variety of Vaal mods, with some being almost always useless, some being situationally useful, and some being very useful. I like the bricking too. Only result I don't like is the "do nothing" result. That's just boring.

Vaal Orbs are the ultimate prayer to RNGesus, sometimes they can make a beastly item beastlier (I once saw someone Ex x2 a potential elecleave sword to get 2 ele damage mods, and then vaal orbed it to get another useful mod, it was crazy good RNG), and sometimes they can take a great item and poop on it. Makes it a real debate if you want to risk it or not.

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Archwizard wrote:

I like the wide variety of Vaal mods, with some being almost always useless, some being situationally useful, and some being very useful. I like the bricking too. Only result I don't like is the "do nothing" result. That's just boring.

Vaal Orbs are the ultimate prayer to RNGesus, sometimes they can make a beastly item beastlier (I once saw someone Ex x2 a potential elecleave sword to get 2 ele damage mods, and then vaal orbed it to get another useful mod, it was crazy good RNG), and sometimes they can take a great item and poop on it. Makes it a real debate if you want to risk it or not.

I agree, but some base items are never worth it to Vaal orb if your item is too good which is what I don't like. While you'll always be temped to vaal orb some items no matter how good they are.

there is some rule with rng no matter what the game is. I don't know if it's written or just a blindly adhered to principle, but it's prevalent in all games.

.....Every roll must include the chance for completely worthless crap, hidden under the veil of a game stat or bonus...

In me3 multiplayer they had these packs you bought. they included the standard rng pack stuff. The more expensive the pack, the better the chance for the best weapons and upgrades. Yet there was always a chance to get experience for a core player type as one of the chances. It also had the highest chance. So after your characters were all raised to max level, you would still get these experience points as a chance. It was simply there to take up a spot, but it was hidden under the guise of "some people want the experience".

It's a rule of rng.

Nothing about Vaal orbs is awful, sir. You take that BACK.

Using Vaal Orbs has to be one of the greatest things to be experienced in PoE. I love the randomness and every once in a while you hit the jackpot (I have twice).

Chance orbs are also a great currency as far as I'm concerned, I just wish the odds were better of getting a rare/unique... but I go through those like a kid and candy on hallowe'en!

Some are rather lackluster, but all in all I think they are great.
And what else would you do to the xth Quillrain, Blackgleam and whatnot if not vaal or vendor?

The white sockets can be useful, too.


Really not bad

Well, this is, granted.

But you can't say that about these Facebreakers.

Every single Vaal corruption should be a rare affix. Vaal Orbs shouldn't need to exist; they only exist because of Eternal Orbs stupidly being added to game. Their primary function is to punish you for actually wanting interesting affixes.