An idea to fix the Vaal Pact+Ghost Reaver combo

Hi guys !

I'm not really the type to post over forums but I had an idea about Vaal Pact that I think is worth sharing (and I'm sure I can't be the only one to have it) so here it goes:


What if Vaal Pact would read: "Life Leech is converted to Life Gain on Hit at a rate of X%".

This would mean the following:

-If X is 100, Vaal Pact is unchanged for Life based characters as 100% of their life leech is converted to life gain on hit and therefore instant.
Maybe X value should be a bit lower than a 100 as VP is pretty broken on its own as it is even for life based.

-VP can no longer interact with Ghost Reaver as the leeching is converted to life gain on hit which apply to: Life (who would have known).


As a result, ES characters would still have access to leech, GR being unchanged but instant leech would be denied from them and life characters would have the advantage of instant sustain at the cost of a lower EHP pool.



Let me know what you think about this, if the same idea has already been posted and discussed about, feel free to correct my lazy ass and give the link to the discussion ;)

Well your idea would fix vaal pact+ ghost reaver by making it impossible to combine the two. I think something that still allows the basic idea but weakens it to make it less broken would be better.
Maybe something like instead of vaal pact giving all leech instantaneous it should only give 50% of leech instantaneous and the rest at normal speed similar to the flask mod.

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quarague wrote:

Well your idea would fix vaal pact+ ghost reaver by making it impossible to combine the two. I think something that still allows the basic idea but weakens it to make it less broken would be better.
Maybe something like instead of vaal pact giving all leech instantaneous it should only give 50% of leech instantaneous and the rest at normal speed similar to the flask mod.

The problem I see with your option is that it there would still be no upside to chose life over ES in the recovery departement.

To me, if you build life, this mean you have some kind of Evasion/Dodge or Armor and this mean that every once in a while, you will take a big hit that you need to recover from berfore the next, and the faster the better so instant recovery makes sense.

If you build ES, this mean that you have no mitigations beside flasks, charges and other means that are consistent in their functioning, unlike Ev/Dodge and Armor in case of big hits. You will take more damages but also more consistently which means sustain has to compensate this damage consistently over time and classic life leech with leech rate modifiers makes sense.

Maybe you're right and simply denying instant leech would be too hard of a nerf, I honestly cannot say because I never played GH without VP (why would someone do that ?) so I don't know the viability of GH alone. Maybe adding life leech or ES Gain on hit nodes after the Keystone would do the trick ?

Leave vaal pact as it is, but add "spells deal 33% less damage".
Doesn't hurt melee and makes vaal pact less of a no brained for other skills.

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Bristoling wrote:

Leave vaal pact as it is, but add "spells deal 33% less damage".
Doesn't hurt melee and makes vaal pact less of a no brained for other skills.

But in this case Ranged Attack Skills would be unaffected by the change and you can't deny that they are pretty powerfull and totally useable with Ghost Reaver and ES (HoWA Spectral Throw for example).

I would rephrase your idea into "Non Melee skills deal 33% less damage".

VP + GR is not a combo, it's the only way ES builds can function apart from some ridiculous super-high ES + ES regen tanks and other fringe cases.

Also, ES is not a problem. The problem is life being fucking terrible and disproportionately low to the damage output of high-tier maps. Hell, it's too low even for mid-tier maps nowadays. Try playing a life-based Shadow, Witch or Ranger in a SSF league and it becomes glaringly obvious. You pick every life node along the way, get life on gear, and it's still between the 4-5k mark at around level 80, which is inadequate even for tier 6-7 maps if you're in HC.

X%less leech and relocate it back to bottomleftside of tree

Would capping the Life Leech you could do instantly to a percentage of you Max Leech per second work?

Like, so baseline you have 20% max life as LPS, what if instant leech became capped at 50% that value so you could at best instantly leech 10% of your max life in a single hit?

This would mean you'd want to prioritize getting more leech per second modifiers (Which, mostly are on the opposite side of the tree from GR and the ES nodes, meaning more investment)

As well as wanting to opt into other defences to boot, since instead of being focused on just getting a ridiculous health pool and sit there healing 99% of your life instantly each hit, you'd have to otherwise mitigate damage to buy time to heal up from your Leech.

This would also bring it more in line with regular leech. Where it's a choice between more leech OR the invaluable benefit that is instant leech. You know, instead of now where Instant Leech not only has the value of being instant, but also lets you leech MORE because the only limiter is your own damage rather than the LPS cap.

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Bars wrote:

VP + GR is not a combo, it's the only way ES builds can function apart from some ridiculous super-high ES + ES regen tanks and other fringe cases.

Also, ES is not a problem. The problem is life being fucking terrible and disproportionately low to the damage output of high-tier maps. Hell, it's too low even for mid-tier maps nowadays. Try playing a life-based Shadow, Witch or Ranger in a SSF league and it becomes glaringly obvious. You pick every life node along the way, get life on gear, and it's still between the 4-5k mark at around level 80, which is inadequate even for tier 6-7 maps if you're in HC.

So you pretty much confirm that Ghost Reaver on its own is a no go.

Your approach would be to simply buff life nodes (armor would need some love too I think) to bring it on the level that ES currently is.
I agree that it would be the easy way, the only difficulty being not buffing it to much so it doesn't become OP. But wouldn't it be another step in the power creeping that everyone screams about ?


Also I'm not sure balancing the game around Hardcore and SSF is a good idea, I mean it is suppose to be harder (I get it, harder =/= impossible) and if content must be facerollable in SC (which it already is) to be doable in HC then that means everyone that do not want to reroll on every death or not praying RNGeesus enough would have to play a boring game of mashing whatever key they binded on their main skill.
Maybe that is what the players want and I'm mistaken thinking content in SC can be challenging even if you're near the end of your build and well geared.

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Tarille wrote:

Would capping the Life Leech you could do instantly to a percentage of you Max Leech per second work?

Like, so baseline you have 20% max life as LPS, what if instant leech became capped at 50% that value so you could at best instantly leech 10% of your max life in a single hit?

This would mean you'd want to prioritize getting more leech per second modifiers (Which, mostly are on the opposite side of the tree from GR and the ES nodes, meaning more investment)

As well as wanting to opt into other defences to boot, since instead of being focused on just getting a ridiculous health pool and sit there healing 99% of your life instantly each hit, you'd have to otherwise mitigate damage to buy time to heal up from your Leech.

This would also bring it more in line with regular leech. Where it's a choice between more leech OR the invaluable benefit that is instant leech. You know, instead of now where Instant Leech not only has the value of being instant, but also lets you leech MORE because the only limiter is your own damage rather than the LPS cap.

This would be a good solution to nerf ES sustain but it would mean Life based with VP would have to invest in Max Life Leeched per second to have the level of leech they have currently and this would mean even more skill points investment in the defence departement where they already have to invest more than ES due to low values on Life nodes. So it would nerf both when the need is more a rebalacing between the two.

Edit: Answer to Tarille

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Bouveti wrote:

This would be a good solution to nerf ES sustain but it would mean Life based with VP would have to invest in Max Life Leeched per second to have the level of leech they have currently and this would mean even more skill points investment in the defence departement where they already have to invest more than ES due to low values on Life nodes. So it would nerf both when the need is more a rebalacing between the two.

Well, Life would still get an advantage. What with Lust for Carnage, Hematophagy and Vitality Void being so close to strong Life nodes.

Life also has the advantage of more easily getting secondary defences to help with the new lower instant leech, due to ES sharing a spot on gear with Armour and Evades. Which, with lower leech could actually start being relevant (Instead of now where anything other than max health to survive any burst is irrelevant because you'll instantly heal up as long as it doesn't 1 shot you)

Then of course, buffing Life nodes wouldn't be amiss either. Given how mediocre they are as a whole, with significantly reduced throughput on most points in addition to being spread over a larger area compared to ES and their concentrated pockets of nodes.