Vaal Gems should be secondaries, not ultimates. Make them more useable.

As it is, vaal gems are boring. They are so rarely able to be used and require support gems to pack the punch you'd expect of them. Meanwhile, they're hard to manage and are far from being efficient on any level. They're so rarely used that it's hard to justify wasting gem slots on them once you're at a high level.

The intention of vaal gems was to introduce active skills players would be using other than just their main attack, yes? They are a good addition to the game for this purpose, I'd love to have builds planning which vaal gem they want to use. But they don't achieve this.

I really want vaal gems to be more commonly used, to add more variety to the gameplay. To be secondary attacks. Right now, they fail at this and are a disappointment to a lot of players it would seem. Some skills are ok, some seem game-breaking, others seem to just suck. They're too hard to balance or get regular feedback on when they can so rarely be used.

If vaal gems are meant to be an ultimate skill, used roughly every 2 minutes or so like long-cooldown skills in Diablo 3, then they suck for that too. They're weak unsupported and you rarely come across enemies that require an "ultimate" skill. In comparison, they don't give nearly as much of a battle-changing advantage.
In D3 my witch doctor can make an entire party deal 50% more DPS for 20 seconds every 2 minutes. In PoE, my witch can freeze ~20 enemies for a few seconds every 2 minutes, at best. Vaal skills are not "ultimates" and I don't think they should be. They should be able to become "ultimates" when supported, but unsupported they should be regularly used secondary skills.


So here are my suggestions, after having read many threads on here and on reddit about vaal gems. In order of most to least important.

• Souls should not be lost on instance transition. Instead, remove them only on waypoint or portal use. In addition, remove them on death.
  The current system means killing all enemies in a zone then having nothing left to use them on, unless the zone is one with area transitions that don't require a new instance (like the ancient pyramid). Waypoint and portal restriction is all that's needed to keep players gaining souls in low level areas. Meanwhile, losing souls on death would add more weight to dying in softcore and make souls more like charges. A good thing in my opinion.
  
  
• Souls should not increase per difficulty, but should instead be increased by mana cost multipliers from support gems.
  If no increase is too powerful, then at least lower the increase per difficulty to 25%/50%. Currently vaal gems require supports to be strong, but the mana costs don't matter. The only cost to using supports on vaal gems is gem slots, which just adds to players thinking "why am I bothering with this?". By cruel and merciless, player builds are more complete, with more auras and triggers and filled up hotbars.
  If a player wants to use a vaal gem unsupported, such as on an unset ring, it should at least be useable often. If a player wants a rarely used ultimate skill that absolutely decimates, they can support it to do so. It's more dynamic for player preference.
  
  
• Souls gained should mirror flasks charges gained.
  In that whites grant 1 soul, blues grant 3.5, rares 6 and uniques 11. If this is already the case then disregard, though it doesn't seem like it is. This'd also allow for possible "souls gained" modifiers on future items, which would be interesting.
  
  
• Souls shouldn't be lost if the skill is interrupted.
  Reasoning being, that it's really lame. Feels like my dick just fell off. That's all.

If this all makes some vaal skills too powerful, they can be nerfed. If some vaal skills are already powerful enough as is, while unsupported, their soul cost can be adjusted. Just please, don't let such a good addition to the game go to waste and be forever considered a noob trap.

Any attention, discussion or feedback on my suggestions would be appreciated!

Agreed.

Vaal gems are useless. The time it takes to use them is feeble and then they are not even that powerful at all.

Don't get me started on Vaal Orbs.

Guess I should have posted this in general :\

i absolutely love current vaal skills. it is a hood concept. the only issue is soul cos of some (detonate dead!)

anyone who say spectral throw or power siphon or molten shell are bad is clueless

spectral throw is AMAZING. take that from someone who recentyl had not much praise for direction poe took recently

what is needed is simply soul cos balancing for some. concepts are briliant for most already.

i cannot link my gear on phone but try: vaal st + slow proj + gmp + fourth dmg. and you can use it easily several times per map.

Vaal gems should be ultimates, not secondaries. This doesn't mean they should be impossible to use; actually, it's important to allow players the opportunity to build for them, just as they'd build for any other skill.

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Wooser69 a écrit :

Souls should not be lost on instance transition. Instead, remove them only on waypoint or portal use. In addition, remove them on death.

What's funny is, if you pay attention, you actually don't currently lose souls on waypoint or portal use. Seriously. Fight in an instance, get some Vaal skills charged up, TP to town, then TP right back. Look at your soul count.

Souls are currently tied directly to the instance itself. It seems to be running off some game system very similar to the snapshotting mechanic, but twisted towards a different end.

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Wooser69 a écrit :

Souls should not increase per difficulty, but should instead be increased by mana cost multipliers from support gems.

I actually like this idea, because it allows players to control how many souls their abilities use up.

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Wooser69 a écrit :

Souls gained should mirror flasks charges gained.

I'm really not so confident on this one. In terms of the whole "getting more for a rare monster than for a white" then, yeah, I agree strongly. But when it comes to party play dynamics, I'm really skeptical. To be honest, I'd have to think about this one more.

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Wooser69 a écrit :

Vaal gems should be useable early, near or with no charge, at the cost of 3% life per soul, rounded up. This effect is able to kill players.

Abso-fucking-lutely not. Fuck this idea. No, if you want Vaal skills, you gotta get the kills first. Period.

I have mixed feelings about vaal gems. Many people demand huge ability with lots of explosion and cooldown since ages, and vaal gems answer to that. However, usability is pretty poor with the soul mechanism, it can't really be used on bosses, and not that often while levelling. Maybe it would be better to nerf a bit their power and reduce the amount of souls required, but ideally, I would have loved a hybrid system like, ability has a 30 sec cooldown reduced by 1 each time a monster is killed, something like that.

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ScrotieMcB a écrit :

But when it comes to party play dynamics, I'm really skeptical. To be honest, I'd have to think about this one more.

I may be misunderstanding but very recently Mark clarified that all players in a party do get souls when a monster is killed, if they're in proximity.

Otherwise, I agree with everything Scrotie and by extension OP said.

@Charan
I want to flex my theology knowledge from Catholic high school and university but I'll refrain. In the Abrahamic sense souls are fungible and do come in different sizes. God being a veritable ocean while angels are a pint and humans are a drop. Granted this is all subject to sectarianism.

But even if we use a game canon example, the Vaal scientist guy had to sacrifice young people to keep the queen youthful. So there's evidently a difference in quality of souls. I know you're being cheeky, but I do want that change to happen.

Was on phone til now, sorry for slow replies.

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sidtherat a écrit :

spectral throw is AMAZING. take that from someone who recentyl had not much praise for direction poe took recently

Spectral throw is pretty great because you can use it often due to the low soul cost and stored charges. It's a regularly useful skill that's still noticably stronger and more costly, which is what I want all vaal gems to be like really.

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ScrotieMcB a écrit :

Souls are currently tied directly to the instance itself. It seems to be running off some game system very similar to the snapshotting mechanic, but twisted towards a different end.

I knew about this. It's just an odd mechanic and design wise, it should be revised. The intention of the current mechanic is to not allow abuse but currently it's punishing players that just go through the game as normal. If there's a technical issue behind it then I'm ok waiting, but it shouldn't stay like this.

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ScrotieMcB a écrit :

I'm really not so confident on this one. In terms of the whole "getting more for a rare monster than for a white" then, yeah, I agree strongly. But when it comes to party play dynamics, I'm really skeptical. To be honest, I'd have to think about this one more.

Even if it wasn't party wide like flasks charges (I play solo, didn't even know that was the case these days) then it'd be good enough. Currently vaal skill useage is tied a lot to how many trash mobs infest the area, which is lame to me.

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ScrotieMcB a écrit :

Abso-fucking-lutely not. Fuck this idea. No, if you want Vaal skills, you gotta get the kills first. Period.

Hhehe. Well I see a common request for vaal gems to be useable as the base skill until charged, though it'd probably be impossible due to the skills being entirely different gems. I though of an idea that'd facilitate that with a cost. Maybe if it were technically possible for vaal skills to act as base skills if uncharged, but at the cost of all stored souls plus a chunk of life that'd be interesting.

However, it's at the bottom of the list and is just a throwaway idea. Least important to me and I won't rally for it nearly as much as the first three.

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CharanJaydemyr a écrit :

So rares and uniques have more than one soul?

The theology of Wraeclast just got very,very interesting.

This reminds me, soulless watchers shouldn't award souls :p

The whole soul thing, you could effectively say that magic/rare/unique monsters have virtue gems in them killing them would award more souls...

If souls did not reset between instances, I could keep 5 lvl 20 pre-charged vaal gems in stash and unload them on Dominus..