Vaal Flicker Strike

It's a nice idea for the ultimate but it feels like the jump range is longer than the regular flicker? Is this true, or is it just psychological because ordinary flicker can't flicker to something already dead?

The large jump range makes the skill feel very bad to use. Regular flicker strike already has great clear, so the main reason to use vaal flicker strike is for single target. But even when there's only one enemy on-screen, vaal flicker will frequently manage to find another target and take you on a journey far away from the rare/unique you actually wanted to kill.

This renders the skill pretty useless except against bosses where there is literally only one target in the arena. It'd be great if the range could be tightened up so that you can more easily focus on an intended target.

Lvl 88 Slayer Oro flickerstrike on a six link , currently breaking into red maps.
Used Vaal flicker for leveling as well. In concept vaal flicker strike is very cool , however functionally it has a number of problems that hold it back from being anywhere near good.

Problem 1.Targeting A : Flicker strike targeting is always a gamble and can lead you off into nowhere which is normal however the solution is just to let go of the button and then walk a few step with your bonus movement speed to get back on track , this is impossible with vaal flickerstrike as your locked in to those full 25 attacks. meaning if you start going the wrong way or get stuck it feels really bad

B.Targeting very frequently gets locked up where their is a group of enemies or a boss your trying to hit and you jump to two monsters at the edge of the screen and bounce between them even if your in range to jump back to the main group or boss

Problem 2 Usefulness A. Playing as a standard flicker strike character vaal flicker strike is very awkward. Your already trying to in my case , keep your totem buff up , use berserk at the correct time and manage flasks , with the speed at which you attack regularly, finding a good window to use it is pretty hard , For it to be worth doing I'm gonna want all my buffs up , and be able to accept leaving enemies alive while i hit them at melee range with no way to dodge. Which make it feel like just using any other buff like stopping to cast a Manuel curse (which is not something i want to do ick) is better then pressing this button and doesn't have any timing restrictions

B. Speaking of timing restrictions , On single target boss fights which is the only place this skill seems to have any real merit, frequently you start with no charges on the skill which means you can't use it at the start of the fight where it would be easiest to manage and justify using. And mid fight once you've build up enough souls to use it the boss is low enough health just continuing to attack will cull anyway or this boss has soo much hp your barely making a dent in which case what is your "flickerstrike" character doing there in the first place , trying to do a pinnacle boss without overwhelming DPS is a fools errant on flicker you should optimally just buy a carry or if you want to farm that content build something else or overgear so hard regular flicker melts them down anyway , all of which leads to when exactly is this supposed to be useful? For like a day where you might be just able to do a boss make it slightly easier assuming it doesn't have adds until you overgear the problem and make it pointless ....

C.Even with all that said it has move problems finding a good use case as ADDS in you bossfight could cut the damage in half if your bouncing between them at which point what was the advantage of this vaal skill again?


Some Things that would help immensely
1. Decide if this should be a single target nuke or a mapping speed multiplier an change the targeting to make more sense in that context . It should ether hit a single target so you can click on a boss and Know your getting all your hits off on it and let +1 strikes and splash handle the adds arround it or give it some type of smart targeting so if im clearing with it, it hits each mob it can reach once or something so i'm flickering into the distance but at least im clearing everything in a huge area and not getting stuck on a few targets.

2. Delay is nice and cinematic but if this is a clearing tool it makes the skill extremely clunky as the exploding wave that it generates is slower then my character so I have to wait for it to loot (on top of having to walk back ALOT due to how far away you can get sent already) this needs to be sped up if your expected to use this for clear

3.Give it some type of defense buff while you are using it so you can feel more confidence that your not just killing yourself on bosses or high dps targets (PSA flicker builds are typically not very tanky getting locked into a slam attack isn't a great plan)





Problem 3 Glitches A. Randomly seemingly without reason when you start vaal flicker it just ends, tried with freeze and stun immunity seems to still happen and really unclear on why it happens

B. Flicker strike seems to randomly crash your instance if you hit too many enemies at once , hasn't happened for me the last day so may already be fixed

vaal flicker strike is a trap!

During boss fight that spawn adds, the skill goes all over the place rendering the fight super dangerous, I target the boss and it will just hit him 5-10 time before going on the adds, then the boss just 1 shot slam you.

Skill should just priorotize the target designed and not jump all over the place. Make it a great boss killer that way or else regular flicker will always be better than the meme this skill is right now.

Seriously just make the skill prioritize the designed target!

I quickly stopped using it when I realized the Vaal 25 hits did not have an i-frame or something similar. Normal flicker is a hit and leech on every strike. VFS does neither, so you're exposing yourself to a boss / tanky mob for those 25 hits without any recovery or extra avoidance.

Flicker itself is generally the textbook glass cannon, if the cannon is delayed then the glass will break.

With base Flicker having exception clear already, the thought for VFS is the single target 25 hits to compensate which if you can live through it somehow, you're good, but odds are w/ how PoE is balanced; being pixeled on top of any mob for that long with essentially zero defense is a portal.

After every death, I just used regular flicker only and killed the boss normally with little issues. Something is missing for sure unless it's only intended to be a clear button....