An appropriate downside for Vaal Pact

I don't understand why all of a sudden people started to think as though VP was seriously broken. Because of the nerf of other keystones/ES, your beloved builds are inferior to life-based Vaal Pact trees, and therefore you want to see it rendered useless? Come on...

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(...) yes i know, burst damage/high dps mobs. Dodge them.

Are you f'kin serious? By the same token, you're getting 1-shot from *insert a boss name*? L2DODGE SCRUB! If it was so easy why should one care about defenses at all, skip life nodes and run yolo abyssus and FACEDODGE everything.

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or
- 50% less life/ES :D

I know ES is so OP right now it needs a further nerf. Life is for the weak anyway.

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or
- 50% less damage

Make it 80% or even 90%, make the game a challenge.

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or
- Vaal Pact need 1 Sec. to start leech after a leech hit.
this means 1 sec no leech, then full leech, 1 sec no leech, then full leech.(destroy the stupid face-tanking)

With this cooldown you'd be better off leeching even without any leech speed modifiers. An insta-leech once a sec from one hit is probably the strongest idea here. Don't you dare putting any skill point in VP's radius, just so your passive tree won't get corrupted from its very name.

VP does not make a character invincible. Nor does 1-shot mechanic make it the only way to kill such a character. If you really wanted to introduce AN APPROPRIATE downside for the skill, you'd come up with something like: "Your life leech is halved", so if you have, let's say, 3% of total life leech (this number is straight from Uranus), VP would make it 1,5%. Even though IT IS NOT NEEDED in any damn way.

Just admit it, you guys don't want this skill to be used anymore for some reason, instead of claiming you want to "make it slightly less op" (as if it was op).

Just my 2 cents.

/E: clarification for the sake of clarification: the abovementioned "halved leech" was just a possible example of a downside I would've taken seriously if there was at least an attempt to justify the need for VP nerf in the first place. I did not contradict myself in providing an argument against my own stance towards the passive skill. I merely gave a contrast between a somewhat "serious" kind of a downside (mind you, VP already has a drawback in case someone hadn't noticed) and those foolish downsides you have introduced (e.g. the ones quoted above).

nerf ES-> life meta->nerf VP-> totem/mine meta->nerf that-> pet meta->then ES suddenly is the best thing again

go on the path enough and you cant do tier 2 maps

there's nothing wrong with vaal pact

if it's such an easy choice for every build, then give them better alternatives

and anyway, why does balance matter in a pseudo single player game that's not competitive even in the slightest, if you dont wanna run a VP build, dont run it.

you could argue that balance affects the level ladders, but it's not really populated by VP builds

(one of the firsts this season, was a SRS build for example, no VP)

totem/mine builds are already all over the place, and none of them run VP, most slayer builds dont run it either.

also if you think nerfing VP will fix the berserker issue, then yoU're wrong, all it'll do is make it comparably stronger to other builds that used VP, and make it an even clearer choice for any build that needs leech since now you dont even have to travel to VP

Haha and here i thought my idea was OK. You leave the leech exactly as is, but you can't get the op buffs from flasks. That way people cant abuse vinktars, and you become more vulnerable to status effects (unless you are pathfinder or have key gear i guess).

Because really, a lot of life builds that rely on leech don't really rely on regen, so losing that 100 life regen per second that you might have gotten by pathing through regen, to be able to leech 5k+ per second isn't really a major downside.

Having sustain tied to DPS stats is a terrible design. Why bother with defence in such a case.

GGG's Solution: 1 shot damage.

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CaptainWARLORD wrote:

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BigFatCaeZZar wrote:

Why is vaal pact such a hot topic?

Because of Berserker.

People think VP is op because there's 1 Ascendancy practically built for it and few others that work well with it, too. That doesn't make VP imbalanced, it's the Ascendancies who are.

VP is great. Berserker is stupid. And people who can't see that are as well.

Too bad VP was problematic last league, and the league before, and even before ascendancies even existed, all while zerkers weren't really the focus of the meta and VP still was. Just like how people will find another source of leech to exploit if zerker is nerfed and vp isn't, and the meta will change to revolve around that. (If i had to guess? Physical claws. Maybe eye of innocence.)

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shaunika90 wrote:

and anyway, why does balance matter in a pseudo single player game that's not competitive even in the slightest, if you dont wanna run a VP build, dont run it.

...because it warps opposing content for everyone and ultimately leaves the gameplay shallower. You're blind if you can't see that the game has become balanced around oneshot mechs, and the very reason for that is because oneshots are effectively the only thing (besides being leechproof) that can threaten instant leech builds. Besides ubiquitous oneshots being a shitty excuse for 'difficulty' in this day and age, that balance winds up collaterally hurting any non-instant-leech builds, which are equally as threatened by those oneshots as well as by many other damage sources that vp can ignore.

A lot of people seem to believe that removing VP in its current form will also lead to a massive rework of all monster damage mechanics. I'm kinda skeptical about that.

WTF is the problem with vaal pact if i didnt have it and im lvl 91 cyclone build most melee builds would never exist without it. i mean vaal pact is super nice and saves time on hitting a heal pot unless u REALLY need it. ok yes the end game where people can do 4m dps is crazy with it but still. theres plenty of builds that work around it like 100% dodge evade on witch sicon and shadow, i guess u should have then nurfed too because they found a way to make a build work.

if ur gonna cry beccause u went to pvp and got owned by some one using vaal pact eather stay out of pvp or dont use it and u can be happy, most builds need it to stay alive.

I dont like playing without regen so i never take VP on any char i make i feel like it has draw backs but if you build right and dont mind the no regen its OP and nothing can kill you unless you get 1 hit

Every time i try VP i can never leech full each hit either so thats another reason i dont use it since that is what it is for lol

I came back after three years, and was playing vaal pact marauder back then. I remember that i had to use devouring totem (if there was no monsters nearby) back then to heal as I couldn't use hp potions and couldn't regenerate. Also, skill was nearby to select it. I also remember dying too often to progress behind 84 lvl so i gave up on the game.

Fast forward to today, skill is miles away from where it used to be, they removed potion parts and ofc, no way of getting it now as I'm still playing my only char, ground slam marauder. (back then it was near Crimson dance somewhere).

Yes, guys.

Let's shit on Vaal Pact.

I have several thread drafts saved for the topic, "So Now Life and ES are Both Garbage," and I'd like to start posting 'em.