How to best use these gems?

Saved another bit of information from You. :P

Btw what do you think would be best way to utilize Vaal Clarity? I played as Elementalist a bit and as Deadeye a lot but up to this moment - I had enough mana regeneration / mana leech to utilize everything I needed, so I don't have much ideas. Which skills are insanely powerful and greeady for mana up to the point where character can't support them on their own? Can V Clarity allow you to use infinite ammount of mana reserving auras or it doesn't work with auras?

I'll do two for you


VRF one shot all non phase boss - dont blink haha.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVY-keG5Vpg

Skellis pull agro

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYjNR8FcVDE&t=2m35s

if you are playing a pure summoner Vaal summon skeletons is wonderful for bosses and oh shit moments when you suddenly need a lot of bodies between you and whatever fast

I'm a bit surprised Vipermagi put VDD in the "plain bad" category. I play an AoF melee witch that has pretty nice clear with just Infernal Blow, and then Desecrate-Trap-Cluster Trap generates a few corpses for a sizeable chunk off tough single targets like Beyond bosses or Map bosses. It's been one of the more useful Vaal skills for me.

vaal detonate dead is also usefull in one of the unique maps that just piles waves of shite on you in the last room. wait for the boss to come out and pop it and watch the boss go boom

I've seen Vaal Power Siphon used for clearing Dried Lake in a jiffy! It's only good if you one-shot the screen and refill all the charges instantly though.

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SunL4D2 wrote:

Btw what do you think would be best way to utilize Vaal Clarity?

Most Vaal skills are good for focusing down a single boss or tough enemy. Vaal Clarity can be used like that too.

Often it is easy to get your mana back against packs without using regeneration (eg mana on kill, mana leech etc), but against a boss you might not get the same mana return (more powerful single-target skill, less curse effectiveness, way fewer leech instances etc). In those cases Vaal Clarity would be really useful.

It can be a life-saver too for builds using MoM. If you are taking a lot of damage with MoM, you might not have enough mana to use your spells. Vaal Clarity basically ensures you can escape (or use skills to get your life/mana back) even if you're taking a lot of hits; whereas a mana potion or whatever wouldn't guarantee the same results.

Also you can use it to reserve all of your mana and still cast skills - that's pretty hard to build around though!

adghar, so you basically create corpses with Desecrate and somehow kill boss with Vaal Detonade Dead? What set up you use for this?

SimianJyhad, don't really follow summoner / corpse targeting stuff but sounds good.

Aim_Deep, just when I read description of Vaal Righteous Fire knew it's gonna be insanely powerful with a lof of Life / Es.

ThatsSoGoodman, feel the power of full screen clear.

dudiobugtron, affording few more auras opens interesting possibilities. Didn't considered possible lack of mana leech from single target - VC should be pretty useful here as well indeed.

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SunL4D2 wrote:

adghar, so you basically create corpses with Desecrate and somehow kill boss with Vaal Detonade Dead? What set up you use for this?

Well, disclaimer that I do not consider myself a "power player," so what is really strong for me may be weak for someone else. I've never even tried Uber Atziri, and after 3 years of play my highest level character is 90 in Standard.

Anyways, since my melee Witch is AoF, I mainly scale her through x% Fire Damage nodes*, which of course benefit DD and VDD. I get major use out of Desecrate-Trap-Cluster Trap like I mentioned because I'm using the Necromancer ascendancy to max out block chance for cheap. Using Trap Support allows you to sort of bypass Desecrate's natural cooldown, or more accurately replace it with the much more forgiving Trap cooldown. This means with one click you can create 1 x 4 x 3 corpses, or 12 corpses, with the proper positioning. With ideal positioning, you can get 50+ corpses out in no time, but I don't think this actually happens most of the time. I'm usually lazy and just spam 3 clicks or so (36 potential corpses, probably more like 18 in reality usually due to positioning) and then hit the button. With no links, it usually takes out sometimes 25%, sometimes 50%, sometimes 100% of a Map boss's Life bar, depending. (based on maps of tier 7 through 11)

It comes in handy as general "oh shit" button too, but I tend to prefer relying on main attacks, and like I said, Infernal Blow is very good at clearing if you spec fire damage, kind of similar to the old Exploding Palm in D3 if you ever played that when it scaled with monster Life.

VDD definitely shines when Beyond bosses pop up because you get closer to max potential corpse generation AND you probably had a lot of corpses out on the field already (to summon the Beyond boss). As long as it isn't Bameth come to steal ur corpsez, you can usually one-shot or nearly one-shot Beyond bosses with a bit of patient trap throwing.

Potential of VDD would probably be vastly improved with Fire Penetration, and maybe Elemental Focus. Controlled Destruction would be nice as well. But like I said I tend to rely on main attacks, so I only dedicate 1 socket to VDD.

*In this statement I include Elemental Overload, which I keep up with CwDT Ice Spear and a bit of crit chance investment