Path of Exile details the overhaul coming to Vaal skills

The purpose behind the Vaal skills in Path of Exile was to offer players big, show-stopping skills that could have a large impact on the battlefield. That, unfortunately, is not quite how they’ve worked out in practice. So the game’s next major patch is overhauling them in a major way, starting by making sure that each Vaal skill gem contains both the normal and the Vaal version of a skill to avoid forcing players to choose between them. Soul acquisition is also being altered to ensure that you can expect to use them during boss fights more than once, while also making them less relevant while chewing through hordes.

Meanwhile, individual skills have received balance tweaks. Vaal Arc can no longer bounce as much, but should deal more initial damage to make up for it; meanwhile, Vaal Detonate Dead now creates a pulsing field on the ground bursting corpses in quick succession. You can check out the full rundown of changes on the official site, although the exact numbers haven’t been tweaked just yet. It’s all about giving you new ways to really show off your power, so hopefully the improved skills will provide that rush of explosions.