How does make vaal skills more usefull ?

I think vaal skills should get some love. I think only a little Vaal skills are rly used.
Most of them are just buffs for normal active skills (vaal haste, vaal clarity).
We just spam 1 active skill one by one and nobody use vaal skills such as Vaal burning arrow etc.
What about removing souls requirement and replace it with cool down (they should be viable without monsters).
I would also make them far superior than before (not vaal haste and such).

I think it would bring some new crazy builds and diversity to the game.
We would still spam 1 active sklil one by one but it should be less effective compared to mixed playstyle (1-2 vaal skill + 1 active sklil).

On the other hand monster´s life should be buffed and maybe new equipment (pants or smth) would be introduced to the game ... because of lacking space for new toys :)

What u guyes think ?

I don't like the cooldown thing. If you want to use vaal skils more often or increase their duration there are ways to do so.


In terms of so few being used, I don't really think thats true, I would say that very few are actually not used. For example we've seen many of the vaal gems used by popular builds.


The core ones or ones used by the builds the most applicable are, these are all vaal gems:

molten shell (very nerfed this patch)
DD (good for various maps and builds, perhaps with the new spectrum jewels would be pretty insane)
grace (good defensively)
haste (obviously one of the top ones)
reave (important for reave to have its AoE)
clarity (important on lesser regen maps or mana extensive builds)
disciple (basically life flask for ES builds that requires souls)
lightning trap (good because 3 charges, great for bosses or tougher mobs)
spark (recently nerfed, still probably good for bosses, just not clearing whole instances)


These are useful to their applicable builds or playstyle:

cyclone (was common for ghost busting, might return, might not)
ground slam (was really good, now decent)
burning arrow (as you've described its fell out of favor, but prolif might be "back")
cold snap (dont see it used often, but its pretty strong)
fireball (this COULD be the new vaal spark, but people have to figure that out first)
power siphon (this clears packs fast while leveling, maybe can get it to work well in a pseudo 5 link)
Righteous fire, this requires specific builds, but is really good.
storm call (enough really said)
summon skeletons (more useful as a temp meat shield, unfort. summoners don't really have enough sockets to support this making it hard to do)


Which leaves the very little used or "useless ones"

Glacial hammer, you can do funny things with this but its not practical.
Immortal call, again requires too much to make it work, you could perhaps cheese a boss maybe if you were scared.
Double strike, this is just not good.
Lighting strike, its something, but not enough
rain of arrow, useful for CC a bit, but this is more scary against you then it is "for you"
spectral throw, these projectiles travel in a circle around where it was cast, if it followed you it could be good.
Arc, I don't see anyone using this, i think I tried it once :/
Ice nova, decent for leveling, nothing else though :/
Lightning warp, pretty useless IMO


Given the list of the gems I'd say its ok. I'd like to see some more added over time as it seems that its been a while since new ones were added.

The issue with them being cooldown based is it encourages players to go slower to wait for this or that to get back up, like a boss fight or whatever, thats a HUGE issue for me, especially given the power that these can provide.


Just no to buffing monster life, that isn't the solution to everything, when you buff monster life you create a more difficult game for newer players, while doing nothing to "hurt" the experienced players.

Pants aren't going to happen, no additional gear slots should happen, because as they've stated before the more and more gear slots you have, the less stats they can give you on the items and the less important each slot choice is.


If your not using any of these vaal skills or playing in an "interactive" way, that is your fault. Aside from vaal skills there are a ton of things you can do based on different builds to supplement offense or defensive stats. Its completely up to you though.

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goetzjam wrote:

I don't like the cooldown thing. If you want to use vaal skils more often or increase their duration there are ways to do so.

But without monsters you can´t use them ...

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goetzjam wrote:

In terms of so few being used, I don't really think thats true, I would say that very few are actually not used. For example we've seen many of the vaal gems used by popular builds.

I would rly like having some relevant data here. Btw what vaal skills are you actually using (besides the buffing ones)?

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goetzjam wrote:

The issue with them being cooldown based is it encourages players to go slower to wait for this or that to get back up, like a boss fight or whatever, thats a HUGE issue for me, especially given the power that these can provide..

Whats the difference with actual state ? Btw its a possible choice nothing else.

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goetzjam wrote:

Just no to buffing monster life, that isn't the solution to everything, when you buff monster life you create a more difficult game for newer players, while doing nothing to "hurt" the experienced players.

It´s not but if you might buff skill damage its possible solution and new players shouldn t be affected at all (you can buff f.e. only merciless etc)

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goetzjam wrote:

Pants aren't going to happen, no additional gear slots should happen, because as they've stated before the more and more gear slots you have, the less stats they can give you on the items and the less important each slot choice is.

Are you their speaker or what? What´s your opinion? I think 1-2 more item slots would fit their changes to game in the past (after adding cwdt things and such)

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goetzjam wrote:

If your not using any of these vaal skills or playing in an "interactive" way, that is your fault. Aside from vaal skills there are a ton of things you can do based on different builds to supplement offense or defensive stats. Its completely up to you though

Sure I use some of them but mostly because of their buffs to normal gems.
My opinion is that the game in its current state is just 1 click button thing and thats all unless you play some weird builds (which I usually do)
But whatever.

Just want to make it clear, these are my opinions of the matter, not GGG's. Unless I quote or link you a GGG source assume everything I write is based on my experience\observations.

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But without monsters you can´t use them ...

Thats kind of the point, its either like an ultimate skill you save for specific situations or a skill you know isn't going to come off cooldown until you kill more stuff.

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I would rly like having some relevant data here. Btw what vaal skills are you actually using (besides the buffing ones)?

I broke down all the vaal gems for you, the buffing ones are by far the most popular ones, there are skill ones that used to be commonly used, but because they are powerful its hard to keep a balance between it. I mean the last few leagues has had builds that actually used vaal skills (and sustained them) as primary skills.

There is more room for perhaps vaal auras or curses, as well as new skills, but its a secondary (or smaller) thought for GGG to work on I think.

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Whats the difference with actual state ? Btw its a possible choice nothing else.

The difference is one encourages a faster paced game, while the other encourages a "staged" style fight. Its similar reasons why flask don't refill automatically over time as well (except with pathfinder)

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It´s not but if you might buff skill damage its possible solution and new players shouldn t be affected at all (you can buff f.e. only merciless etc)

The physical damage buff they did in 2.0 still really hurts various builds. If they just do merciless (globally) new players that come from cruel>merciless will suffer significantly. Its very difficult to say "just buff like" even if you want to put it on a particular difficulty or higher.

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Are you their speaker or what? What´s your opinion? I think 1-2 more item slots would fit their changes to game in the past (after adding cwdt things and such)

As I prefaced this with the "speaker thing" i don't feel I need to address it here. You are talking about a change that happened 2.5 years ago and that its somewhat "ok" to make this change now because of what happened back then? You do realize also that CWDT is pretty mediocre compared to its previous glory people no longer "have to" use it.


Adding more slots would require GGG to do a global reduction on various stats across all gear, or increase various penalties to accommodate for the changes. At most you gain the ability to have 1-2 more unique items, but whats more then likely going to happen if more slots were added is GGG would have to increase the merciless resist penalty to -80 or higher and reduce the life and es % on the tree too. Its not like they are going to add new slots just to give you additional power without you losing something in the process.

The other "issue" is that there are only so many hotkeys on the bar, unless they were to add the ability to have alternative keys for various builds, those additional sockets would be WASTED.

If they become more useful it gets nerfed like there's no way around that.

Thanks community.

Vaal gems are fine in my opinion. There are 3-4 strong ones and a big mass of useless ones. It's exactly the same as with other skill gems 3-4 strong ones for every class and a big mass of useless ones.

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goetzjam wrote:

The difference is one encourages a faster paced game, while the other encourages a "staged" style fight. Its similar reasons why flask don't refill automatically over time as well (except with pathfinder)

I think game might become slower anyway. I don´t think they have intended game to be speedrunning (smth like 1000x 1-2 min gorge runs to lvl 100) but whatever it should be possible to make a choice.

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goetzjam wrote:

The physical damage buff they did in 2.0 still really hurts various builds. If they just do merciless (globally) new players that come from cruel>merciless will suffer significantly. Its very difficult to say "just buff like" even if you want to put it on a particular difficulty or higher.

No, they shouldn´t be affected anyway because the difference of the difficulty between cruel malachai and merciless starting area is joke (u know what I mean here).
I also think physical damage change was bad decision (fortify should have been the solution probably ...).
The mechanic of physical damage mitigation is still broken. It should be changed in diablo 2 style (flat%) to be clear especially for new players.

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goetzjam wrote:

Adding more slots would require GGG to do a global reduction on various stats across all gear, or increase various penalties to accommodate for the changes. At most you gain the ability to have 1-2 more unique items, but whats more then likely going to happen if more slots were added is GGG would have to increase the merciless resist penalty to -80 or higher and reduce the life and es % on the tree too. Its not like they are going to add new slots just to give you additional power without you losing something in the process.

The other "issue" is that there are only so many hotkeys on the bar, unless they were to add the ability to have alternative keys for various builds, those additional sockets would be WASTED.

Hm,... they gave us so much power with ascendancy classes that 1-2 more slots shouldn´t change anything. We can still 1 shot packs regardless 1-2 more uniqs or whatever being added(even without ascendancy we can do that)
On the other hand they would increase monster´s life (not damage cos damage spikes should be reduced anyway), adding life regen or other mechanics to make them harder to kill.

They have intended to give us more hotkeys on the bar (or extra panel) anyway (seen statement from GGG about that months ago .. dno what are their plans though)
At the and after many waves of nerfing they would give us something more exciting.
I think the comunity would appreciate that more than smth being nerfed.

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I_NO wrote:

If they become more useful it gets nerfed like there's no way around that.

Thanks community.

But we as customers might change things. Well at least we can have an opinion.

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666lol666 wrote:

Vaal gems are fine in my opinion. There are 3-4 strong ones and a big mass of useless ones. It's exactly the same as with other skill gems 3-4 strong ones for every class and a big mass of useless ones.

It´s a bit schizophrenic answer don´t you? I would love to have all gems balanced and vaal gems as a much stronger version of normal ones with CD.

lightning strike little used or not used enough ? huh ?

vaal lightning strike is a beast for bosses in melee builds, especially 2H builds. it's literally one of the most powerful skills for single-target and just annihilates bosses

vaal burning arrow is a beast for bosses combined with trap as well.


I think the bigger issue now is that vaal skills are kinda useless for things like uber lab and lab in general (aside from vaal haste maybe)

I still think they are weak (vaal spark was an exception) compared to normal gems that are spamable.
There´s problem that you can anihilate the bosses with normal skills anyway (f.e. poison trap can nulify uber etc) but this is problem with game balance.
I don´t like they are dependent on monsters.

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Rakiii wrote:

I still think they are weak (vaal spark was an exception) compared to normal gems that are spamable.
There´s problem that you can anihilate the bosses with normal skills anyway (f.e. poison trap can nulify uber etc) but this is problem with game balance.
I don´t like they are dependent on monsters.

there are many skills that are great aoe clearers and not as good for single target

then there are skills good for ST and bad for aoe clears. bladefall miner has a pretty mediocre clear speed compared to other builds out there.

and then there are skills that are both great aoe clears and great ST for some reason. these are considered by the community to be 't1' skills