Vaal Pact - How does this keystone work?

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Sony_Black wrote:

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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

You don't have a choice really. These keystone allow claw shadows (and probably others) to fight in melee without escaping all the time to recharge ES, as in have fun doing it.

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Torin wrote:

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Sony_Black wrote:

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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

You don't have a choice really. These keystone allow claw shadows (and probably others) to fight in melee without escaping all the time to recharge ES, as in have fun doing it.

So IMHO a claw shadow has the choise either go the additional way, or take a slower ES recharge without vaal pact (you still leech ES, its just not instantaneous).

I think the point here is that it should not be to easy to get both effects - and maybe you'll find some other builds which could try Vaal pact (dual claw duelist maybe) even for the instant life. With beeing in the middle it is still achievable for the shadow and other have the choise to take it as well (of course you have to adjust the whole build for it)

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Sony_Black wrote:

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Torin wrote:

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Sony_Black wrote:

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

You don't have a choice really. These keystone allow claw shadows (and probably others) to fight in melee without escaping all the time to recharge ES, as in have fun doing it.

So IMHO a claw shadow has the choise either go the additional way, or take a slower ES recharge without vaal pact (you still leech ES, its just not instantaneous).

I think the point here is that it should not be to easy to get both effects - and maybe you'll find some other builds which could try Vaal pact (dual claw duelist maybe) even for the instant life. With beeing in the middle it is still achievable for the shadow and other have the choise to take it as well (of course you have to adjust the whole build for it)

Only ES leech build that I see not taking it is the ES/life combination where instant regeneration of ES is not important as you can still use potions to heal yourself until ES comes back.

It also mentions that "...Regeneration has no effect"

So Vaal Pact also negates all life regeneration effects?

If I read that correctly, the ONLY way to heal is by attacking? (or porting out/back)

Troll and Golem would both be negated, correct?

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GrimJahk wrote:

It also mentions that "...Regeneration has no effect"

So Vaal Pact also negates all life regeneration effects?

If I read that correctly, the ONLY way to heal is by attacking? (or porting out/back)

Troll and Golem would both be negated, correct?

This is correct. I tested it out in my lvl 46 Marauder build yesterday. I have 133 life regen on my armor piece (took out all life regen nodes in my build) and even after coming close to 0 life and running away, none of my life regenerated. Also, life flasks and Rejuvenation Totem do not work.

So the only way to regen HP is to attack and portal in/out. It's an interesting concept that really suits the Marauder well as "offense is the best defense", but I wish there were more life leech passives in the Marauder tree to compensate for this keystone. Having lots of life with Keystone is just as important for Vaal Pact as it is for Blood Magic in case it hits the fan.

@Aplier: yup, I agree with your statements, and thanks for the response. I've never really played with life leech, so this is an interesting mechanic to me to liven up what I think is dull Marauder play.

Also, Blood Magic and Vaal Pact do not really synergize well. If you're spamming attacks and draining HP on top of being damaged yourself, not being able to heal yourself in that situation can be downright deadly as I would imagine. It's interesting as these two keystones work in different capacity as with BM, all you need are life and granite flasks, and with VP, all you need are mana and granite flasks. It gives a lot more variety to the Marauder build than before.

It's not that hard to calculate if it's good for you or not.

Lets say at level 60 you have 2000 life. For Vaal Pact to have any effect, you must leech more than 400 life per second.

Your heavy strike will hit for around 2000 dps physical damage and is linked with lvl 15 Life Leech (4%).

So you took the passive 2% and have 2x 5% rings and various other items give you another 5% and you add 4% from the support gem, giving you a total of 21% life leech. Cast a lvl 15 Warlords Mark for another 6% and you got 27% life leech. All but the 4% from gem only applies to physical damage, hence the use of Heavy Strike.

You hit a mob for 2k per second and leech back 27% of that, which is 540 health, which is 27% of your life. Without Vaal Pact, you would gain 400 health now and 140 health the next second. With Vaal Pact you will gain 540 health now.

So to make use of Vaal Pact, you need to:
* stack leech
* hit hard, for physical damage
* not have too much life
* and better get Resolute Technique
* have balls of steel

It can work, but requires a specific build and playstyle to make it really good.

Or you can just AE everything with Ground Slam or Ethereal Knives and every hit will fill you up, given some leech and some targets.

@Winenose: And yes, this keystone does require balls of steel as the ONLY way to regain HP is to attack, attack, and attack. And attack.

Alternatively, you could spend more time on attack speed, and be able to leech life faster due to speed than outright DPH. I think it can go either way, but I think in the early stages of the build, DPH might be the better choice to leech more life back, then DPS to leech life back faster.

And this build really puts Warlord's Mark to good use and worth attaching supports like Increased Duration and Increased Area of Effect to it for maximum benefit. Or slap Warlord's Mark onto a Totem and let it curse everything in sight AND act as a decoy.

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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 Life Leech support gem will work with your spells. Everything else specifically states it only works with attacks (and usually only physical damage from those attacks).

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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.

Getting the life leech support gem would work for spells. The item mods are pretty much all phy dmg only.

-edit-
One build that I could see working really well is a combo of Chaos Inoculation, Ghost Reaver and Vaal Pact with a dual wield claw user. Thinking witch gives you the best start point for this.

Sadly I can't play PoE for a few months, but I would really like to try a build with:

-Vaal Pact
-Righteous Fire
-Ethereal Knives (to leech from items and benefit from RF)
-not too much HP (so RF doesn't damage you too much. The spell damage is the main effect, the AoE is pretty whatever)
-lots of leech
-good damage mitigation (since you can't use healing potions, you can run say 3x granite 2x diamond)