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

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

I agree with this the most.. or they should be able to exceed 1 charge in the same instance.

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nightblade157 a écrit :

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

Unless you somehow get to dominus without using a waypoint or portal, that won't be possible to abuse. Upper sceptre of god is already one instance, so really you can already do this, it just means you need to charge those gems from the monsters leading up to dominus.

Speaking as (apparently one of the few) poor players on these forums... I love my Vaal Fireball!
We dont have 6L or even 5L armor where the Vaal skill would use up some otherwise uber multi-linked skill slot. So to put it simply, my Vaal gems are taking the unliked slots that may or may not have been used by some other mediocre skill, however the Vaal Fireball so far is loads fun and useful as is.


However; I completely agree that the overall soul count needs to be reduced or overhauled, and some Vaal gems (like Vaal Ground Slam) needs reworking!

my 2c

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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.

It would actually make a lot more sense per the storyline then 1 soul considering (IIRC) that the gems are supposed to be extracted from people (soylent green!) and infused into other creatures to make them stronger... the gemlings, vaal entities we see and others around are creatures made by infusing people (or items) with the extracted souls of other people who were tortured and killed to have their soul extracted into a gem. It was the whole purpose of piety's lab after all, what she did during those experiments in that chair in crematorium, the whole black virtue gem, the reason why people are exiled to that that place, fidalitas and other events.



So blues would have been infused with the essence of 1.5 gems, rares with 5, and uniques with 10 if they used the flask setup and the story setup.

I feel like vaal gems are pretty good in normal, typically you encounter a boss mob around the time your vaal gem is available.
Once you get to merciless you may as well not have them on your equipment because often I finish the entire instance without having it ever get filled and become available.

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Legatus1982 a écrit :

I feel like vaal gems are pretty good in normal, typically you encounter a boss mob around the time your vaal gem is available.
Once you get to merciless you may as well not have them on your equipment because often I finish the entire instance without having it ever get filled and become available.

this is something i find hard to believe. sure - soul costs are crazy high for some skills (like ground slam or detonate dead) and some skills are pretty bad (ground slam again, detonate dead again..) but to say you use them once per map is.. as close to a lie as i dare to name it.

fortunately the skills that ARE cool and powerful and really fun are 'cheap' - power siphon, spectral throw, molten shell. ive also heard good things about double strike and think that cyclone might be more-than-ok

from what i saw there are just two things to do:

- buff underpowered skills (ground slam, burning arrow) or change their mechanic to something actually useful (detonate dead)
- reduce cost for some - detonate dead, ground slam, cold snap

i still havent tested them all but i think that these are really cool addition and their general design is sound

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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.

When you use Vaal gems, you have more than one soul. Wraeclast is clearly a world where you can extract souls from other being and use them to fuel your own abilities. Therefore, it is no stretch whatsoever to believe that the more difficult monsters have previously extracted souls from others and gained enhanced abilities in return.

I mean, when you get down to it, that's what XP is.

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Wooser69 a écrit :

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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.

What's really odd about this is you currently get more flask charges for killing blues, and even more for rares, and the most for unique kills. Thus this isn't something which GGG has never considered before, yet they — apparently deliberately — chose to go one-for-one on it.

I'm afraid this means they've already made a conscious choice on this issue, and would be reluctant to change their position. Although I'm really curious as to the reasoning behind it.

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ScrotieMcB a écrit :

What's really odd about this is you currently get more flask charges for killing blues, and even more for rares, and the most for unique kills. Thus this isn't something which GGG has never considered before, yet they — apparently deliberately — chose to go one-for-one on it.

I'm afraid this means they've already made a conscious choice on this issue, and would be reluctant to change their position. Although I'm really curious as to the reasoning behind it.

Waiting on a dev response.

I get the feeling vaal gems are a budding feature, open to feedback on the design. Unless a dev posts here saying they absolutely will not change it, I'll see it open as an improvement.

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Wooser69 a écrit :

I get the feeling vaal gems are a budding feature, open to feedback on the design. Unless a dev posts here saying they absolutely will not change it, I'll see it open as an improvement.

I anticipate this as well. It seems they were so keen on the idea they put it in as soon as they could. Good for them and good for us.