Vaal Pact should be changed again!

Hello fellow PoE players and welcome to my very first QQ thread :D

Well as the title betrays,the reason behind my qqing is the nerf to Vaal Pact.I have played the game just above casually for over a year,i ve traded only as far as i needed,never flipped,but i did have some very lucky moments during my PoE lifetime.On this and my other acount(astraph),i have 3 characters over level 90,and 3 more over level 80.
Now back on topic,i ve had various characters that used VP,both CI and life based,some more succesful than others,yet all viable compared to the gear they used.Now i ve decided that my very favourite character,is the vrey first i ve ever made which is a flicker strike shadow,for whom i had made a guide(very outdated now-yet has over 130 pages),which was abit overpowered-not more than many other builds-but he had a fair share of risk involved.Lately i have found that neither this character is really viable,not any other of my vaal pact builds.At this point i should be clear,that when i say "viable",i mean to consistently deal with hard rolled 74-78 maps.
The problem is that 1)Even though i can deal with reflect mobs in general,if i am shocked or have vulnerability on i am screwd.That leads to the obvious -> lower your damage/get more defenses.Well ATM my energy shield is abit over 9K,i have also 40% block and as about lowering my damage.....well even with well over 100K AoE DPS,there are situation that i CANNOT leech efficiently,especially on enfeeble maps.Now if my guy with 9K ES and 150+K DPS guy cannot leech efficiently,imagine what happens to the less powerfull ones...The 2 main pieces of gear he uses as a point of referce are


Now,since my only leech source is blood rage,and i have none on my jewllery,certainly there is room for improvement.However,even with 10% blood rage+10% from perfect jewllery+ 8.8% from a life leech gem(for reflet maps),i would still end up with 11.5% leech,which in my opinion is BEYOND rediculous.

As i laid down my opinion on the matter,i will move on to what most ppl beleive that lead to the VP nerf.It was the amazing OPness of lowlife Spectral Throw/Power Siphon players.Thats great and everything,but these people were affected THE LEAST from the nerf,and they can still faceroll without problems,while the rest,still suffer.

And here comes the quetion -> Why don't you play a lowlife spectral throw and get done with it???Well i can since i have


So it is not a matter of being able to afford it.THe answer is simply that I DO NOT WANT to play such a build.I am not a competitive person at all,this is a video game and the absolutely only reason i play it is to have fun.Thats why i really have to enjoy the build i play,and i do not care about if other builds are more powerfull.I only play melee cause i like close and personal,and i prefer flicker due to the high adrenaline that it's gameplay provides.

Now what could be done??Well since all VP builds tended to be somewhat overpowered(not as much as a good Aegis Aurora build,but this is another topic),i do not beleive that VP should be as it was before 1.1,BUT i beleive 75% leech effectiveness is much more fair,and still makes viable builds like mine,and more importantly,other people's that have inferior gear.At the same time,since everyone is complaining about the OPness of low life builds(which were hurt the least),VP could grant 25% leech effectiveness when on low life.That being said,I DO NOT PERSONALLY WISH for LOW LIFE-CROWN OF EYES BUILDS TO GET NERFED.I do not give EVEN a flying fuck if they are overpowered.ON THE CONTRARY i like to play with powerfull team mates.I just find it abit unfair for all VP users to be punished so harshly.

Another issue is,that i feel like i get wayyyy more desync and lag lately than i used to,but since this is a free game,and i have not spend money on it,i do not feel i am entitled at all to bitch about technicall issues.

Well that's all,thanks for your time.Excuse my spelling etc,english is not my native language.

Have you actually attempted to increase your leech?

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SL4Y3R wrote:

Have you actually attempted to increase your leech?

Yes :( . I have tried enhance + bloodrage,and using jewllery with leech(but obviously overall worse jewllery than i was using normally,just to test it)and i did not have any better results.I beleive that it would work with claws...

As someone liking the reworked vaal pact, i agree in its current state it could deserve a little buff, so not70%, imho 60% leech effeciency should be enough, taht would still be a buff of a third...

"

LadyAlekto wrote:

As someone liking the reworked vaal pact, i agree in its current state it could deserve a little buff, so not70%, imho 60% leech effeciency should be enough, taht would still be a buff of a third...

Yeah even 60%,that should propably make it.Gimme something people! :P

"

Poutsos wrote:

Hello fellow PoE players and welcome to my very first QQ thread :D

My own opinion about VP are somewhat different. You know, that i played CI FlickerStrike shadow for a long time, probably, no less than you did. I also achieved mirror-worthy gear with my own efforts (trade, farm, a bit of healthy flip, etc).
So, i think that instant leech is just plain wrong. Wrong, because it provides HP recovery, that scales with DPS. If you make it balanced for players with decent gear, then top-tier players will care only about oneshot mechanics. And if you make it balanced for top-tier players (with perfect gear), then it will be useful ONLY for them, while being total junk for all others. And the most popular way to deal with instant reflect is instant leech - Vaal Pack
And reflect, being actually negative instant life leech, is a pain in the ass of almost every character, who deals damage himself. Lots of builds turn useless just because of it.
So, i think, that instant leech should be REMOVED FROM THE GAME. Not just nerfed, but totally removed, and whole game should be balanced around that. Obviously, instant reflect should be removed from the game, too. And life leech should stack duration from different hits, as it did before. Reflect can be turned into "negative" life leech, so it will deal damage over time to you, instead of healing. Life leech scaling with HP pool is a balanced mechanics, as it doesnt allow you to recover too fast (and to recover faster, you should increase HP, not just offence).

But look, what GGG did. They nerfed VP drastically (to 40%), but leaved reflect untouched. Furthermore, they implemented new unique gloves, which provide instant leech (both HP and MANA) on critical strike (for crit builds = always, and those deal best DPS anyway).
What do we have after patch, then?
- VP nerfed. Ok, this alone was justified, but:
- There is no way to counter reflect well anymore, except for using broken invinciblity mechanics.
- Claws became too powerful for leech comparing to other weapons.
- Elemental leech got screwed even more, as you CANT get more of it
- New uber-OP gloves cancel all above, and allow you to leech both health and mana instantly and without any drawback. That's just beyond ridiculous.

Forgot to mention, there are lot of other stupid and imbalanced mechanics in PoE, which are left untouched for years.

It seems, that GGG's way of balancing became absolutely unacceptable for a fair player like me. So, i decided to stop playing, too. Until PoE becames better, which i hardly believe.

"

MortalKombat3 wrote:

"

Poutsos wrote:

Hello fellow PoE players and welcome to my very first QQ thread :D

My own opinion about VP are somewhat different. You know, that i played CI FlickerStrike shadow for a long time, probably, no less than you did. I also achieved mirror-worthy gear with my own efforts (trade, farm, a bit of healthy flip, etc).
So, i think that instant leech is just plain wrong. Wrong, because it provides HP recovery, that scales with DPS. If you make it balanced for players with decent gear, then top-tier players will care only about oneshot mechanics. And if you make it balanced for top-tier players (with perfect gear), then it will be useful ONLY for them, while being total junk for all others. And the most popular way to deal with instant reflect is instant leech - Vaal Pack
And reflect, being actually negative instant life leech, is a pain in the ass of almost every character, who deals damage himself. Lots of builds turn useless just because of it.
So, i think, that instant leech should be REMOVED FROM THE GAME. Not just nerfed, but totally removed, and whole game should be balanced around that. Obviously, instant reflect should be removed from the game, too. And life leech should stack duration from different hits, as it did before. Reflect can be turned into "negative" life leech, so it will deal damage over time to you, instead of healing. Life leech scaling with HP pool is a balanced mechanics, as it doesnt allow you to recover too fast (and to recover faster, you should increase HP, not just offence).

But look, what GGG did. They nerfed VP drastically (to 40%), but leaved reflect untouched. Furthermore, they implemented new unique gloves, which provide instant leech (both HP and MANA) on critical strike (for crit builds = always, and those deal best DPS anyway).
What do we have after patch, then?
- VP nerfed. Ok, this alone was justified, but:
- There is no way to counter reflect well anymore, except for using broken invinciblity mechanics.
- Claws became too powerful for leech comparing to other weapons.
- Elemental leech got screwed even more, as you CANT get more of it
- New uber-OP gloves cancel all above, and allow you to leech both health and mana instantly and without any drawback. That's just beyond ridiculous.

Forgot to mention, there are lot of other stupid and imbalanced mechanics in PoE, which are left untouched for years.

It seems, that GGG's way of balancing became absolutely unacceptable for a fair player like me. So, i decided to stop playing, too. Until PoE becames better, which i hardly believe.

That wa a nice MK,tty for that.Your proposal is not bad,as long as there wasnt instant reflect therer shouldnt be a need for istant life leech.However that again benefits alot CI players since they tend to have much bigger pool.Anyway,true fact is that even with my DPS,it is not even a matter of only reflect anymore.It is a matter of not being able to leech efficiently sometimes.At the current state of the game,if there wasnt for reflect i would remove vaal pact,since i can be healed for almost 2K/sec with normal leech.

"

Poutsos wrote:

That wa a nice MK,tty for that.Your proposal is not bad,as long as there wasnt instant reflect therer shouldnt be a need for istant life leech.However that again benefits alot CI players since they tend to have much bigger pool.Anyway,true fact is that even with my DPS,it is not even a matter of only reflect anymore.It is a matter of not being able to leech efficiently sometimes.At the current state of the game,if there wasnt for reflect i would remove vaal pact,since i can be healed for almost 2K/sec with normal leech.

CI big pool matters so much just because other defences (armour and evasion) are too weak. If they were implemented properly, then higher HP pool of CI could be met properly with high mitigation from armour or evasion. ATM, ES clearly beats both armour and evasion, but i dont think it should be. Armour does nothing against elemental damage, and is very weak against big hits (oneshots). Evasion does nothing against spells, scales very poorly after some point (which is reached with Grace+Jade flask), and does nothing against oneshots.

Like i said, dumb mechanics are deteriorating game from within, and until GGG cares about all of them, PoE future will be grim.
Few other examples of sick and imbalanced mechanics:
Maximum resistances
Phys immunity without CD (Immortal Call)
Block (Spell block included)

Well all these move the discussion towards other topics.I would like to read some feedback from other CI melee(or otherwise) players.If they can consistently deal with 74-78 maps etc.

"

Poutsos wrote:

Well all these move the discussion towards other topics.I would like to read some feedback from other CI melee(or otherwise) players.If they can consistently deal with 74-78 maps etc.

Sorry to dissapoint you, but no one can consistently deal with 74-78 maps, as their droprates suck :). At least, without massive currency investments.
Of course, i know, that you meant players, capable to clear those maps.

I would like to see more feedback about current state of Life leech in PoE ATM, too.
I, personally, think, that your build would be viable still, if you chance dagger for claw (with similar rolls). You'll suffer a bit of DPS loss, probably, tree will require some revision, but claw can provide 25% leech (10% after VP), which is pretty enough.
Better solution is new OP gloves. In my opinion, it's the most OP unique ever existed in PoE. So, just get those, and you're the king again :). Oh, wait, they cost more, than mirror... So, you have to farm a few months to get those. Or flip hardly (still with huge time investments).... Gratz, one of the most gear-dependant builds turned into UBER-gear-dependant one :).