Need help with Vaal Storm Call Pathfinder build

I need some help better understanding the Vaal Storm Skill. I've been playing with it for a little while but still I fail to understand it completely.

I'm copying the youtuber cute dog's vaal storm build for pathfinder. His "how to downscale and budget a build" video opened the doors for me.

He teachs that at the start of a run you should kill 1 mob with the regular version of Storm Call to get some souls and then you can start chaining Vaal Storm Calls and so forth... but when I start chaining vaal storm calls I often see myself running out of charges, almost like the vaal storm couldn't generate souls by itself.

I'm trying to respect the soul prevention time that atm is 0,96 seconds with Soul Catcher Flask but I still run out of charges very often.

I noticed that if I throw some storm calls in the middle of the vaal storm I'm able to generate more souls, but this is often very hard to do given I run around with less than 10% available mana

Are there range to absorb the souls I should be respecting? Should I wait the final blow of the skill to hit the ground?

I still lack 2 ascendancy points to invest in "Flask Effect, Attack damage" and "Veteran Bowyer". Would the extra 5% Flask Effect be enough to smooten the soul prevention issue?

edit: pob link: https://pastebin.com/z13ZrN5i

I'm kinda lost, please help me exiles

looking at your POB
if you want 0 soul gain prevention you're gonna need

20/20 reduced duration
30% reduced duration Helm enchant
last 2 ascendancy points (i would honestly take veteran bower first but not too important if you notice that you always have flasks up)

if you want a cheaper alternative you can get a belt with "increased effect of flasks and reduced flask charges gained craft mod" if you can't afford 20/20 reduced or the last 2 ascendancy points. It can replace 1 of the things you need above but not both.

Don't quote me on it but I think the 30% helm enchant is necessary to get 0 soul gain prevention even if you have 20/20 and the last 2 ascendancy points with the belt enchant I said above. Not 100% sure about that though.

Hope something here helped!

PS. When I start a map I just hit all my flasks and do 3 Storm Call casts which usually gives me the max 5 stacks that I currently have when I kill the whole pack.

Thank you very much for your reply Efeyth!

The 5% from the pathfinder's tree have smoothen the flow a bit but the key factor for my was another thing: Monster pack size.

Now with 0,87sec of soul prevention, 20% helm enchant and 19/0 reduced duration gem I'm able to run a full map with vaal storm IF I have a high enough monster pack % increase to sustain the souls. I was running maps with a low modifier hence the difficulty to recharge souls fast enough.

I'm also running with a storm brand gem just in case when I feel i'm losing the flow.

Thanks for the help

Ps.: Taking a step back and paying more attention to my map runs (which are around the tier 11) I'm relying way more on Storm Brand now than I thought...

Ps2.: Took the adivice and upgraded my reduced duration gem, that got me from 0,85 soul prevention to 0,44 and already changed ABSURDLY the flow (every gem level at 20% is taking away 0,02 seconds). Next step will be get the extra 10% from the helm enchant and then drop storm brand alltogether.
Also dropped the Grace aura momentarily in favor of Wrath to enhance my damage.

you can do t11 comfortably with your damage though?
i'm doing t10 UGS with like 83k VSC damage and i only need 1 charge to kill 1 whole pack. The pack size shouldn't matter at all though but i'm assuming it's cuz you use more than 1 charge per pack?
You're also missing a chunk of damage w/o using "Added Cold Damage" to your VSC.
If you're having mana problems you could take off "Inc AOE" on your HoI to gain some mana back since it's not too much of a difference.

Should also get a "Dying Sun" asap cuz you're using "Conc Effect" and the AOE range on VSC is gonna be pretty small which is probably another reason why you don't get enough charges back.

PS. oh yea once you get extremely close to 0 soul prevention sustaining charges shouldn't be a problem cuz it instantly replenishes from the kills so thts super important too.

30% reduced SC duration will help some, Your last ascendancy node too. I'm guessing you're having a problem with Izaro currently, just get a carry from /global 820.

The biggest problem you have though..you NEED to get a better Soul Catcher flask. Maxing out 'Vaal Skills have X% reduced Soul Cost during effect' is critically important. It needs to be at 40%. Get that at least, and then if you have the currency swap it for one that's both 40% reduced soul cost and also as much damage during effect as you can afford. But reduced soul cost is priority. I'm guessing you might have misinterpreted it to mean the opposite so you went for the lower value. It's kind of confusing how it is written, but higher is better. Higher value = less soul cost of vaal skill.

So looking at your PoB, it's really just the flask and maybe the enchant (I'm not 100% on that) that's stopping your build from working. If you're not blowing up packs because you don't have the damage that could also be a problem.

Other tips

The staff you're rocking isn't very good for the build but it should be fine. Like.. the build should 'work'. Despair isn't a great curse. Long term goal to craft some daggers.

The whole thing at the beginning when you first get your souls rolling is just a small balancing act. The build has a tiny mana pool, and a flask you need active in combination with kills to start stacking your vaal skill. But the flask prevents mana gain. So how do we deal with this. Pop your damage flasks, spam your normal SC on a group of trash you know will die, then once that group dies you pop your soul catcher... and you should roll through the map using Vaal SC no problem.

"

babyskins wrote:

So looking at your PoB, it's really just the flask and maybe the enchant (I'm not 100% on that) that's stopping your build from working. If you're not blowing up packs because you don't have the damage that could also be a problem.

He already has the 40% on his POB unless i'm blind?
He also needs to level his REduced Duration higher cuz he said just bought it after i suggested it. Along with helm enchant and ascendency hes good to go but he'll be weak

"

The staff you're rocking isn't very good for the build but it should be fine. Like.. the build should 'work'. Despair isn't a great curse. Long term goal to craft some daggers.

Yes I just got it really cheap to enable the build and just start playing it already. I will definetely take your advice and start crafting some daggers!

"

He already has the 40% on his POB unless i'm blind?

You are right, my flask is at 40% and 86% inc vaal damage

"

He also needs to level his REduced Duration higher cuz he said just bought it after i suggested it.

This was a golden suggestion. The change was huge

"

you can do t11 comfortably with your damage though?

Yes and I'm even clearing some t13 really fast and even could swap "inc critical damage" with "inc aoe" at maps without huge elemental reduction mods. With my damage not all maps are easy tho... At bosses with phases or ones without adds I struggle a lot if I lack the damage to kill it with 5 storms.

"

The whole thing at the beginning when you first get your souls rolling is just a small balancing act. The build has a tiny mana pool, and a flask you need active in combination with kills to start stacking your vaal skill. But the flask prevents mana gain. So how do we deal with this. Pop your damage flasks, spam your normal SC on a group of trash you know will die, then once that group dies you pop your soul catcher... and you should roll through the map using Vaal SC no problem.

One thing I did to get around the small mana pool was linking a Blood Magic Support to Storm Brand (along concentrated effect and controlled destruction) and its working pretty fine for now