Vaal Lightning Strike

nvm

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Sleepy831 wrote:

I'm using it on a new character, only partway through act 2, so I can't talk about its end-game potential, but so far it is hands down the best skill I have for killing rares/uniques.

In normal, people are generally able to one shot everything. I do agree that it is very powerful in the beginning, but that's because all of the vaal gems end up that way.

Edit : Retract what I said about it being bad late, I have no room to talk yet. I've been using it at level 70 now and I think it's fairly good.

I run a very squishy LVL 58 CI Crit Shadow (Haven't actually yet made the change to CI and GR) and currently don't have the greatest gear. This skill is extremely helpful for me. Just being able to flicker strike a rare/unique enemy then VLS it followed by whirling blades to get the hell out of there so I can start using normal LS to clean up the rest of the mobs is a great help. I'm currently in act 1 Merciless and I still love it. It's currently at level 14. Perhaps it does lose it's edge later on. I can't say yet. All i can say is that right now, it's great.

This skill is wonderfully designed and extremely powerful in the right hands. The build i use this on is a bino's dagger crit build, currently 80, and i use it with weapon elemental damage, added fire and multistrike. Multi actually causes it to stack multiple debuffs which is pretty powerful, i'd love to put increased duration but nothing lives long enough to warrant it, so thats okay with me.

My only complaint is that when you use it on the ground, it actually gets used, hits nothing, and is completely wasted. I've actually burned about half of my vaal lit strikes on nothing, because the mob i was targetting i didn't click properly, or i got stunned on the way there and whiffed, or it died from bino's poison proliferation and i hit air.

Please remove the ability to target ground with vaal lit strike, it gains no benefit from it and is very frustrating. Thanks.

This is a bad Vaal skill. Good Vaal skills do one of two things: either help deal with powerful threats by killing them quickly, or help deal with them by providing some form of defense or utility. This skill works in a very convoluted way, and like Vaal Arc is poor because it requires plenty of nearby monsters to do any decent single-target DPS.

I believe this skill should be redesigned to give the projectiles the properties of Spark — well, not the drunken can't-walk-in-a-straight-line part, but the ricochet-off-walls part. Combined with a 100% chance to pierce and the ability to hit one target multiple times off one projectile (a la Spectral Throw), this could lead to interesting situations where players predict ricochets to trap monsters in a pinball machine of death.

I'm using Vaal LS with my 72 Ambush Marauder that deals mostly physical damage, 2-hander with Resolute Technique. I'm used to support it with Increased Duration and Multistrike, but I'm not sure if Multistrike works well with my build or not. I'm not completely satisfied with this skill, but here is what I found so far:
PRO:good against bosses, rogue exiles and rares, especially if sorrounded by many little mobs. Good against energy shield users, life regeneration. Useful with strongboxes, especially with triple rares. Provides safe hit and run strategy. Perfect Vaal Skill for slow and powerful weapon (Marohi Erqi).
CONS:too many souls required. Little room for support (why not projectile???). Bad against reflect (any type, elemental, physical, lightning thorns). The description states "Can't be Evaded" and i have Resolute Technique, but if I don't precisely aim at the enemy the skill misses the target. This happens quite a lot of times.

In my opinion it requires some sort of buff (flat damage or projectile support or added chance to shock) or a general redesign.

If the strike attacks the ground instead of an enemy, it should place a marker from which the beams would emanate, basically making it a different kind of vaal storm call.

It's just way too easy to miss the attack (i.e. misclick, not have it evaded), especially on sneaky mobs like Perpetus. This way it would still do some good rather than be a waste of an enormous amount of souls.

I have an interesting idea but idk if it would work out, what if u could infuse yourself with the electrical energies so you would charge the enemies with the lightning bolts, that will solve the problem of mobs dying way too fast or aiming at the wrong mob and the skill not being very good at clearing packs, but i guess it would be kinda weird since ur hitting the enemy with the skill and ur the one actually gaining the buff? idk tbh.

how does vaal ls interact with dual wielding

so ... Vaal-LS has been reworked.
The 3 "uses" it can store and the reduced soul count are very nice and it's less annoying if you miss a hit. The damage seems to be way lower than before. Also stacking multiple uses on one enemey don't seem to work. It's no boss-killer but works decently against rares/boss with lots of "minions" as a support.
I have just started using it on my Static-Strike build and couldn't test all the stuff.
It works with "inc. duraton", "melee phys", "weapon ele".
If it perfoms good enough, to use it lvl 70+, i will update my feedback.

@ B_l_3_e_d
One hit with your main-hand-weapon. i don't know if it will alternate weapons if used more than once.(it's wasing souls, as "stacking" don't seem to work)