Vaal Pact - How does this keystone work?

Life Leech as described in the tooltip: "Life leech applies instantly. Life recovery from Flasks and Regeneration has no effect."

So I chose the Vaal Pact keystone on my 2Hand Mace Marauder, and after playing a few times on my Marauder I'm wondering just how exactly does Vaal Pact work?

Do I instantly leech life from surrounding enemies? (which I did not notice happening.)

Or do I leech life upon hitting an enemy? And if so, at what rate?

Does this keystone work with any weapons or is it weapon-specific like claws with their inherent life leech on hit implicit mod?

Or is something else that I'm completely unaware of?

If a dev or anyone can help explain the mechanics behind Vaal Pact, I'd highly appreciate it. I've rebuilt my Marauder around that Keystone by skipping all life regen nodes, but I'm not sure if that was correct.
For Ranger build tips, tactics, and critiques, visit this thread:
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/69224
When you do life leech without Vaal Pact, you get the life back over time. (At a rate of 20% of your maximum life per second)

With Vaal Pact, this is instant. You will want to have life leech if you choose this keystone, as it does not grant you any additional leech.

As well, you no longer gain life from life flasks, nor does any life regen apply.

It can be combined with Ghost Reaver, in which case the ES you gain from leech will apply instantly, rather than over time.

Any effect that is "life leech", either from claws inherent, amulet/glove/weapon mods, passives, the support gem, etc. is normally applied as a regeneration effect. That is, if you hit for 1000 damage with 5% life leech, you're gaining 50 health over a short amount of time, like 1 second. Vaal Pact changes the regen from life leech to instant life leech, so instead of regaining your 50 health over time, when you hit the enemy you instantly gain the 50 health, otherwise working the same way as normal life leech. The drawback to the keystone is that other sources of "Life Regeneration" and life flasks won't have any effect.

EDIT: awww, Qarl beat me to the response! =)
Last edited by Aplier on Sep 10, 2012, 2:20:30 AM
Ah, so in my build, I have selected 1 passive, 1 notable (Blood Drinker) and 1 amulet where it leeches 1%, 2%, and 2% of physical attack damage leeched back as life respectively.

So with Vaal Pact, I'm basically leeching life instantly and supposedly NOT over time, correct?

Then my next question would be, for Marauders, it would be wise to stack as much life leech as possible on armor/gear/weapon for maximum benefit?
For Ranger build tips, tactics, and critiques, visit this thread:
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/69224
If I'm using a witch build that uses spells only (no physical/melee damage) with Chaos Inoculation are there any life leech abilities that work with spell damage? I'd like to be able to take advantage of the Ghost Reaver keystone but am not sure if any life leech abilities are viable for a magic/spell damage only build.
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Islidox wrote:
Ah, so in my build, I have selected 1 passive, 1 notable (Blood Drinker) and 1 amulet where it leeches 1%, 2%, and 2% of physical attack damage leeched back as life respectively.

So with Vaal Pact, I'm basically leeching life instantly and supposedly NOT over time, correct?

Then my next question would be, for Marauders, it would be wise to stack as much life leech as possible on armor/gear/weapon for maximum benefit?


That is correct.

Vaal Pact doesn't make life leech significantly stronger than it is without the keystone, it just makes leech more important to you because you are sacrificing life regen and life flasks, life leech becomes your only way to regain health. If you find that you are taking too much damage for your health to keep up, then you should try to go for more life leech (or more damage, doubling your damage means doubling your health gained). If you feel you're able to survive now with your current amount of leech, then invest in other stats, the balance will always be changing as your gear and the content you face changes.

It's of my opinion that Vaal Pact isn't worth it, because it doesn't make you leech any more health, it just makes it happen faster. The drawback of not being able to use flasks for emergency healing is huge, and not being able to run around kiting for like 10 seconds while you wait on health regen will also be hard to live with. But using it is your choice, if you can get enough life leech that this isn't an issue, then by all means stick to Vaal Pact, =)

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xGryfter wrote:
If I'm using a witch build that uses spells only (no physical/melee damage) with Chaos Inoculation are there any life leech abilities that work with spell damage? I'd like to be able to take advantage of the Ghost Reaver keystone but am not sure if any life leech abilities are viable for a magic/spell damage only build.


The only way to leech life with spell damage is from the gem, which goes up to 4% leech. It's not a lot, but still a decent survival boost to help your ES out during combat.
I can see this passive being useful to those that have a costant 20% of max life regen a second as pervided by life leech, however the tradeoff is pretty high, as there's not really a way to "run, hide, and recover" if things go south.

I do have a question about flasks, do instant recovery life flasks still work? or should one forgo all life flasks in favor of mana/diamond/granite/resists flasks?
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I can see this passive being useful to those that have a costant 20% of max life regen a second as pervided by life leech, however the tradeoff is pretty high, as there's not really a way to "run, hide, and recover" if things go south.

I do have a question about flasks, do instant recovery life flasks still work? or should one forgo all life flasks in favor of mana/diamond/granite/resists flasks?


Based on the wording being that "life recovery from flasks " as opposed to "life regeneration from flasks", I would assume that this means that no life flasks at all work, instant or otherwise. This can be easily tested in game for anyone who can get this passive though, so if someone tests that and finds it does work then please do correct me.
This keystone seems too weak for anyone but CI users.

In my opinion they should make life regeneration work at 50% efficiency, not kill in completely.

Because now people will be town portaling to town all the time.

If it stays like this its position is pointless, it should go into Shadow part of tree.

Last edited by Torin on Sep 10, 2012, 5:07:04 AM
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Torin wrote:
This keystone seems too weak for anyone but CI users.

In my opinion they should make life regeneration work at 50% efficiency, not kill in completely.

Because now people will be town portaling to town all the time.

If it stays like this its position is pointless, it should go into Shadow part of tree.


TBH if it gets into the shadow part it'll get to easy to achieve for CI users - everone would get CI+Vaal Pact+Ghost Reaver every time

Now it is a tradeoff for CI users as well: you have to ask yourself - am i prepared to make the way to the middle and in the Shadow tree to get all 3 keystones together
Proud 5th duelist in the Jul 1 2012 Ladder Race and in the Nov 3 2012 Solo Turbo Race :D
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