So, Vaal pact nerf?

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LaiTash wrote:

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unTop wrote:

Maybe because GGG doesn't like it entirely dominating the, more popular, SC mode?

So you're suggesting SC folk to either play HC builds with "no DPS" by their standards? Guess what, not going to happen. There are plenty of SC builds that don't rely on leech and are still able do 50 billion DPS.

I'm not saying that at all. I'm suggesting that GGG may not want the game to be dominated by a single build path for most skills. It's not neccessarily a good thing when one choice is clearly better than the other in most cases.

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unTop wrote:

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You'll also notice that there are some classes that are almost never played. Like assassin, who is, in fact, probably the least played class on HC and loosing to even non-ascended ranger. A few people that choose this class anyway DO take Vaal Pact. Of course i can always take Marauder or duelist as a starting point and then tell people "hey, i don't see a problem, the game is totally playable without VP you whiners!". Because yeah, my gladiator is nearly immortal with conventional leec. My cyclone slayer too (and oh he's going to be GODLIKE in less than a month). Even my DP vaalpactless zerkers (ok they're all dead but they felt immortal while it lasted). And that being said, i don't even really invest in defences on them. Who cares about defences when you can have max block+spellblock or 10k life, fortify is cheap when put on a movement skill and AA takes only 25% mana?

I really don't understand how can people be happy about the fact that GGG are adding a double leech keystone to a duelist area and how they don't see they'll be forced to take it now to be competitive.

Some things just aren't going to be viable. It sucks, especially when it's a build you made before that was just bordering viable because of one interaction/item. I've wanted to play cold snap for a while, but even with indirect buffs it was always sub par compared to other skills and maybe only borderline viable for higher end bosses. Ultimately it's going to be difficult to balance every interaction between nodes, class, ascendancies, and items and someone is going to get the short end of the stick.

Well at the very least it was *barely* viable. There's a huge difference between barely viable and unplayable.

As for standard, GGG balances for new leagues. So, personally, I'm fine with broken builds staying in Standard to reward long-term players. Tons of people don't play standard anyway.

personally I'm just sad I sold out of my Atziri's Acuity investment before I realised this would happen

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LaiTash wrote:

Well at the very least it was *barely* viable. There's a huge difference between barely viable and unplayable.

Well, its too early to say that with the new items, but isn't there non-vaal pact assassin builds? I mean isn't it too early to say an entire class needs vaal-pact?

If its really that bad. GGG might just buff assassin's next, next league.

Edit: Well, I just glanced at the shadow forums cuz I don't play shadow, and looks like they are just fine, lots of builds that don't care about vaal-pact. Just someone overgeneralizing about builds that were never gonna make it to end-game without some serious help.

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1453R wrote:

But man, watching all these folks raise such a ruckus over problems that, for the most part, everybody else has already solved is just fun.

Now that is a little bit dishonest, i gotta say. Wasn't VP a top-1 keystone taken in Harbinger back in the end of September, when the statistics came out?
Not sure if those stats changed today, but i'd wager a large percentage of "everybody else" is still playing VP.

Personally, dunno how to react to this yet, i don't think things will be _as_ dire as some of the posters here suggest.
Still, this is now a third major build-"archetype" that gets canned in a span of half a year - first we got rid of double-dipping (which was good, too bad new poison seems rather mediocre and new ignite seems like shit, to me at least), then we got CI removed from the game (not really, but let's be honest here, who plays it now :D), now it's insta-leech's turn.

I'm trying to get the overall plan here.


Also, fuck, didn't bother with getting atziri gloves, and now their price is, well, slightly up :D.

honestly this is going to be the best thing thats happened to the game.

speed clear meta is going to still exist, clearly, but we may not have quite as many 10m dps builds. why? because those builds were able to forget about actual defense. just stack hp and damage and as long as you're doing damage you're not dead.

for a while now our offense has been our best defense. but now we'll have to remember about actual defense. mitigation and avoidance. people will have to adapt to think about armor, evasion, dodge, block, mitigation, endurance charges, etc all over again instead of just "stack life stack life stack life".

now belly of the beast will drop in price and other chests will balance out in price. life will not be the only "defense" sought after any longer.

this being said - i think this could be a difficult league. it will take a bit for us to adapt to the change, and not only that but the game has been tweaked in order to "handle" the life/insta leech meta in a number of ways, and i think it'll take time for GGG to identify what is now going to become a problem and retweak it back to a normalized condition. *coughdoublebosshpcough*

Atziri gloves have their own mod, its separate from everything else. Theyve proven before they can change what they do while leaving no legacy versions around, I wouldnt be so sure that they are going to keep instant leech on them and whatever they do, if they fuck them up theyre going to fuck up the existing ones too so youre playing with fire investing in those things at this point.

You could find the patch lands and the line has simply been changed to "vaal pact", and all they do is grant the keystone.



the thread was amusing. Weve gone from we cant play melee or close range builds at all to they will be slower at mapping to a retreat to the position of an inability to survive on a build that kills a guardian in 10 seconds.

are 10 second guardian kills a thing of the past? Well lets hope so because thats a rather silly place the game has found itself in. If it manages to kill that then good, sadly Im not sure it will even be that impactful, I think unfortunately even this claim will be found wanting after the update.

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

Atziri gloves have their own mod, its separate from everything else. Theyve proven before they can change what they do while leaving no legacy versions around, I wouldnt be so sure that they are going to keep instant leech on them and whatever they do, if they fuck them up theyre going to fuck up the existing ones too so youre playing with fire investing in those things at this point.

You could find the patch lands and the line has simply been changed to "vaal pact", and all they do is grant the keystone.



the thread was amusing. Weve gone from we cant play melee or close range builds at all to they will be slower at mapping to a retreat to the position of an inability to survive on a build that kills a guardian in 10 seconds.

are 10 second guardian kills a thing of the past? Well lets hope so because thats a rather silly place the game has found itself in. If it manages to kill that then good, sadly Im not sure it will even be that impactful, I think unfortunately even this claim will be found wanting after the update.

When instant leech was changed to work with only life and ES , acuity and VP were both changed accordingly. There is no way in hell GGG will allow a true source of instant leech in the game if they butcher VP.

Everyone trying to hoard acuity is in for a sour surprise in 3 weeks.

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

Atziri gloves have their own mod, its separate from everything else. Theyve proven before they can change what they do while leaving no legacy versions around, I wouldnt be so sure that they are going to keep instant leech on them and whatever they do, if they fuck them up theyre going to fuck up the existing ones too so youre playing with fire investing in those things at this point.

You could find the patch lands and the line has simply been changed to "vaal pact", and all they do is grant the keystone.



the thread was amusing. Weve gone from we cant play melee or close range builds at all to they will be slower at mapping to a retreat to the position of an inability to survive on a build that kills a guardian in 10 seconds.

are 10 second guardian kills a thing of the past? Well lets hope so because thats a rather silly place the game has found itself in. If it manages to kill that then good, sadly Im not sure it will even be that impactful, I think unfortunately even this claim will be found wanting after the update.

I really dont get the issue with 10second guardian kills

IF you make a build specifically for huge single target damage
AND you sink a lot of currency into it

then why shouldnt it be great at that?

this isnt an MMORPG, there doesnt need to be 11 minute bossfights