Does Vaal Pact need a change?

It needs to die. I don't care of we get a league where content is too hard while GGG figures out how to rebalance the game, we'll never get a good balance of defensive strategies while vaal pact lives.

My thought is that instant leech is indeed broken, but not necessarily because "IT LETS YOU FACETANK SHAPER!" Facetanking the Shaper is a side issue next to the fact that the controls and rules Grinding Gear put in to rein Leech back and make it less overpowering don't apply whatsoever to instant leech.

VP/Acuity leech have no drawbacks or limitations. Max leech/leech rate modifiers are meaningless to it - you get the entire full value of any leech you generate, while every other method of leeching in the game is limited by your leech rate. Every other form of leech in the game has a cap on how much your DPS gets to add to your defenses, and as such every other form of leech in the game requires you to also, y'know...have defenses. You can increase that cap, but it takes investment. Vaal Pact doesn't require any investment whatsoever - one keystone and boom, you're golden.

That's messed up, and it contributes more than it otherwise should to the Evil Cheating Baby-eating Nasty Clearspeed Meta. VP builds don't need any other form of mitigation because 100% of their offense turns around into defense. Regular leech can only contribute X% to your defense, where X is some value significantly less than 100.

In my eyes, Vaal Pact should be reworked to something like double leech cap and rate, so that it significantly improves your leech and is still quite worth getting if that's the way you like to play, but A.) it doesn't actually negate the effects of any other leech nodes you get (taking any other leech cap/leech rate nodes with Vaal Pact is actively wasteful, which is the opposite of what you'd figure should be the case for a 'leech-centric' build), and B.) it means Vaal Pact has to respect the same leeching rules as everyone/thing else. I don't know how to rework Acuity to get the same result, but that's my main concern with VP.

All leech should be bound by the same rules. Instant leech shouldn't also be unlimited leech simply because the system isn't built to be able to apply the rules to non-LoT lifesteal effects. Either that or Vaal Pact/Acuity should be reworked into actual Life Steal effects, independent of and not connected to the leeching mechanic, which operate by their own rules and do not impact leech.

Inconsistency sucks. I don't care that people can facetank the Shaper with Vaal Pact - people will find a way to facetank the Shaper no matter what GGG does to the game. That's what people do. I do care that instant leech is allowed to break the rules set on all other forms of leech for no real reason.

As the previous people have mentioned, there definitely needs to be more of a downside to Vaal Pact. Look at other keystones like CI.

CI = No life pool. Acrobatics = Half Armour/ES. EE = Enemy Elemental Resistance. EB = ES covers mana.

Not having life regen is definitely not enough of a downside, especially in a part of the tree that doesn't focus on life regen so much. I do like the idea of cutting your defenses like Acrobatics does. 8-10k ES isn't OP either when you have life builds that have Evasion or Armour defenses. I think that's a solid ES nerf as well.

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UglyStru a écrit :

Not having life regen is definitely not enough of a downside, especially in a part of the tree that doesn't focus on life regen so much.

I was thinking about saying, maybe VP should apply a slight degen for a portion of each life gain that actually heals the player. Like the other OMG healmenow thing:


This kind of change would actually substantially reduce a VP build's healing effectiveness. It would also seem pretty much in-theme, a "pact" with the vaal like a deal with the devil

But this isn't the right idea. It would become quite difficult for shadows and rangers to deal with that degen - it'd just amplify their biggest weakness.

'No regen' can be a bigger downside than people think - running Labyrinth trap gauntlets with life-based VP is utterly awful, for example, if you have no chance to leech between trap stages. That and regen is a sorely underrated defense mechanism it can suck to lose.

I don't mind VP having no regen as its drawback - that fits intuitively and thematically and doesn't get you into "my own build kills me" situations like inflicting a degeneration effect would. I do believe VP needs to respect the same rules as every other source of leech, however. As explained above.

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1453R a écrit :

'No regen' can be a bigger downside than people think - running Labyrinth trap gauntlets with life-based VP is utterly awful, for example, if you have no chance to leech between trap stages. That and regen is a sorely underrated defense mechanism it can suck to lose.

A drawback that really only matters in Labyrinths is not a big enough drawback. I've completed Uber labs without much trouble on VP characters. As long as you aren't WBing through sawblades, then you should be fine. Even then, by the time you get low on HP you've encountered another pack.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong (I've never played a CI/VP/GR build) but your ES still regens with VP.

Not enough downside with vaal pact. Life regen isn't strong enough to compete with instant leech. You have to stack life regen and focus on it for to be a good defense which sacrifices lots of dmg. With vaal pact you just stack more dmg. It's absurdly powerful for 1 skill point. The berserker will travel all the way to other side of the tree just for vaal pact.

There needs to be a stronger downside. Since VP will no longer effect ES I would say make vaal pact increase the amount of damage you take by making you take extra chaos dmg base on the original hit. That way you would have to get ample amounts of chaos res to stay alive. No more -60% chaos res if you intend to vaal pact.

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UglyStru a écrit :

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1453R a écrit :

'No regen' can be a bigger downside than people think - running Labyrinth trap gauntlets with life-based VP is utterly awful, for example, if you have no chance to leech between trap stages. That and regen is a sorely underrated defense mechanism it can suck to lose.

A drawback that really only matters in Labyrinths is not a big enough drawback. I've completed Uber labs without much trouble on VP characters. As long as you aren't WBing through sawblades, then you should be fine. Even then, by the time you get low on HP you've encountered another pack.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong (I've never played a CI/VP/GR build) but your ES still regens with VP.

Emphasis mine.

Labyrinth drawbacks on their own may not be sufficient balancing, I agree, but with all the brouhaha about "Labyrinth = Cancer", and the apparent garment rending anguish of forgoing Ascendency classes as unfair gimping of those who avoid the Labyrinth it's not an insignificant trade-off.

But when the poster specifies a life build, and you counter with energy shield continuing to regen for VP/GR builds (it does, by the way), that seems to be missing the point.

Leech is mandatory because GGG tuned mob damage too high and actual defenses don't work.

Instead of slowly cutting off the players' limbs one by one, why not address the root of the problem. It will only be a matter of time until VP won't work with even life when GGG realizes all they've done is move the imbalance to a different archetype.

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UglyStru a écrit :

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1453R a écrit :

'No regen' can be a bigger downside than people think - running Labyrinth trap gauntlets with life-based VP is utterly awful, for example, if you have no chance to leech between trap stages. That and regen is a sorely underrated defense mechanism it can suck to lose.

A drawback that really only matters in Labyrinths is not a big enough drawback. I've completed Uber labs without much trouble on VP characters. As long as you aren't WBing through sawblades, then you should be fine. Even then, by the time you get low on HP you've encountered another pack.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong (I've never played a CI/VP/GR build) but your ES still regens with VP.

Why would you have VP on an ES build in 3.0?

Imo:
Melee needs to facetank. Simple as that. Basic game design. Any Dot, any basic attacks, everything. That's how melee works inherently.
To force melee to not facetank all the time, we have telegraphed attacks that players are supposed to dodge manually from time to time (Minotaur Burrow, Hydra Fork/Doom arrow, Chimera circle, Shaper slam, Atziri double FB, you get the idea).
Make those telegraphed attacks deal 3 times as much damage, so they one shot EVERYTHING, everytime, but slow down their wind up a bit (some of them don't give you enough reaction time, most of them are fine, but some are just bullshit).
This way, melee works as it is supposed to work (facetanking, only dodging massive hits now and again). Keep VP as it is, it allows melee to facetank. In fact, make all melee leech instant from the get go.
Then, make VP come with "50% less spell damage, 50% less projectile damage, less totem damage, less trap damage" or something similar, so it's only ever useful for melee.
Voila, you got yourself ranged/melee balance after 5 or whatever years of PoE - ranged being kings of clear, melee being kings of facetanking.

Thank me later