vaal skills are supposed to be ultimates, yet they are ready when you need them the least

During mapping:

You gain souls when you kill mobs, so you have to kill mobs to be able to ulti

If you kill mobs fast enough, why bother with a shortcut for an ultimate? it's pointless

If you don't kill mobs fast enough, then it'll take you longer to get to use your ulti

If you struggle to kill, then your ulti won't last enough for you to be able to keep going


During bossing:

???

You can't map during bosses, therefore your will never be able to cast your ulti


Solution:

Ulti should be helpful for thougher fights

Introduce a new builtin mechanic:

"You gain souls when you hit a Unique enemy, not more than 1 soul per second"


This mean, no matter how you do in a fight, you'll always have the ability to generate souls for a ulti:

- If your build struggle, keep cool, keep dodge, keep defending, attack often, and you'll be able to unleash high burst ulti to help you!

- If you don't struggle with a fight, then well, ulti will be there in case you need


TLDR:

Vaal skills are cool but available when you need them the least, if your build struggle to begin with, you won't have it during bosses

Solution: "You gain souls when you hit a Unique enemy, not more than 1 soul per second"


This now acts as a builtin long cooldown, now the cost: is you need to risk it by keep engaging with a boss fight, instead of just sitting in a corner waiting for your ulti (like in other games, that's bad)

Still maintain a pro-active gameplay with satisfying ultis every once in a while

How to balance:

With the number of souls a Vaal skill need, easy! on a skill basis!

Vaal skills already work this way.

https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Vaal_skill

"

Recette wrote:

Vaal skills already work this way.

https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Vaal_skill

It doesn't:

"

(1 or 6 souls, respectively, per 2% life lost with a 1 second cooldown)

you need 2% life lost, if your build need to ulti, there is no way you'll do that much damage..

if your build do well already, you'll generate them easy, wich is the same problem i highlighted in my post above

Maybe stop calling it an "ulti" and your association with other games and there "ulti"s may stop. It's not supposed to be the same. It's the same issue with people seeing "unique"s as "legendary"s. There are also Vaal Auras, if you give to much soul generation to easy they end up permanent.

"

SuperMotte wrote:

Maybe stop calling it an "ulti" and your association with other games and there "ulti"s may stop. It's not supposed to be the same. It's the same issue with people seeing "unique"s as "legendary"s. There are also Vaal Auras, if you give to much soul generation to easy they end up permanent.

"ultimate" is a generic RPG term, meaning a special and strong abilty that one use after a long cooldown

PoE's choose to use vaal as the ultimate term

"

There are also Vaal Auras, if you give to much soul generation to easy they end up permanent.

Again, see the Balance section, they could just increase the souls required for certain skills to accommodate for this change, at this point you are just bikeshedding