vaal auras - is their effect worth it?

I mean, obviously, while they are active, their effects are very worth it. But as with all vaal gems, they have to be taking up a gem slot while they are not in use so they can gain souls to activate.


Vaal skills are one thing; as anyone whose ever mapped with a guy using vaal cyclone, or opened a horrible-mod strongbox with a teammate that throws out Vaal Skeletons first can attest to.



vaal auras though, don't seem to assist in a fight in such a way that they make-or-break it. Yes, "Vaal Dodge" is a great way to fight Shock and Horror, but odds are the vaal aura wears off long before she dies, whereas a team following a Vaal Cyclone guy can straight up explode any target, including most bosses, in the time the target(s) are "locked" in place to be focus fired by the whole team.






What if Vaal auras were less powerful, higher priority versions of the current auras, which could be "activated" to give their current Vaal benefits, but which are also persistently on, at a lower cost version?



An example of what I mean by lower cost, higher priority:

If you are running Vaal Grace, it costs 30% reserved, and has an effect 1/2 that of normal grace. When activated, it turns into it's vaal form for it's duration, which the whole team benefits from until it expires and goes back to being "normal".

However, if you are running Vaal Grace, you CANNOT benefit from yourself or any other groupmates running a normal Grace aura (don't want any funny stacking rules turning whole parties of players immortal ;p). Other groupmates that are NOT running vaal grace will benefit from whichever is the "more powerful" grace aura that they are currently within range of.




It feels to me like that would be less of a "dead" gem slot for the 95/99% of the time that you aren't firing the vaal aura, since (I wish to restate this), Vaal Skills are on-demand battlefield altering skills that tend to end fights immediately, but Vaal auras are skills that are more "supportish", in that they still require the player/group to end the fight using other methods that are just bolstered by these skills.


Or, put another way, the combination of "limited use" and "is support" is a combo that is so rare and specific to set up well that it works in MMORPG raids because people form their parties around them, but in an ARPG, where people join and leave groups with complete strangers constantly, the main effect of that combination is too specific to be of common enough use to be warranted a gem slot.



(before someone makes the, I think, obvious statement that there can be vaal aura skills that players can use to augment themselves in such a way as to be a powerhouse... I'm sure there are and will be, but as the whole concept of an Aura is "affects entire team", validating focusing on their abilities for solo play is missing the concept of them entirely; it's like saying that swimming pool of yours is a good investment because it raises your property value instead of, you know, actually swimming in it. IMO, anyway.)

Link with Increased Duration and they are useful as they are. I use Vaal Haste on boss fights (if I remember to cast it) and it greatly reduces the length of the fight.

Aura builds practically double their effectiveness, they're very much worth it. Using increased duration is mandatory for how strong it makes them. Don't forget that duration nodes and temporal greatly increase their effect.

- Vaal disc basically makes you immortal unless you play horribly.
- Vaal haste gives 40+ movement and 80 IAS with aura builds. You get 12 seconds or so of this effect which is a huge amount of time in PoE. Temporal maps are also a lot easier(it increases the duration of vaal haste!)
- Vaal grace allows you to cap dodge and spelldodge. I don't consider it as amazing as vaal disc but for any tanky character it can make you near immortal.

A great way of using these is using multiple gems. Saving three vaal discs for second form palace dominus allows even the most glass cannons characters to tank it. You don't need them all the time and they give far more effective defense/offense than any other gem combination. Aura builds not using any of them are hugely missing out.

I'm not going to mention just how amazing they are in groups, they excel even in solo play.

Vaal dis + Inc duration, this setup is my guardian angel

Also Vaal Haste on +2 Vaal gem unique gloves gives huge clear speed and boss speed

TBH I really like them. I'm looking for a vaal grace

They help me greatly vs bosses or if i get low. I run an aura summoner build

and to your suggestion making them weaker auras that take mana reserved, nty. They'd be useless to me then