I think Vaal Temple is underappreciated

For context, I'm still pretty early in endgame. I have 5 atlas points so far, and I'm playing in SSF.

That being said, I think the Vaal Temple for 0.4 is kinda fun. It's interesting for me to see how the rooms interact. I also try to find a balance between what content I can handle, and what new rooms I can make.

It makes me think, and I like that. Like, maybe I won't put a commander down, because I don't like that boss. You don't have to put every tile down. Maybe I won't fight the architect yet, because I want to get more out of a rare room.

I think the mechanic is not fun for juicing, but if you like to wander around and see novel things, then it's a pretty fun league mechanic.

The moment it really clicked for me is when I realized you don't have to do 6 maps to do a temple run. You can do 6 quick campaign areas to do the next temple run. The temple level is always based on your character level, not the area level of where you got the charges. That means, if you can't sustain T15 maps, you can always just to lots of lvl80 temple runs, instead. It's actually a total replacement to mapping, which is kinda cool.

So, I think for me, it's about a 7/10 mechanic. I think it would be closer to 9/10 if I didn't need to make 6 charges to run it. With PoE1, you could do multiple delve runs from a single map's worth of sulphite. Here, it seems to be the opposite. But otherwise, not bad.

What are your thoughts?

Im really enjoying it to be honest. I think the mechanic itself is pretty cool. I do believe with some fine tuning and working out some of the bugs that it would be stellar. Im lucky enough to have made it to the architect the day they buffed it so it was decent loot.

From your experience what campaign areas allow you to hit 6 charges the fastest?

Have also been enjoying the temple a lot, like the vibe and with the latest patch the value has gotten better.
Hope they take care to fine tune and flesh it out more. Also wonder what Atlas tree they’re gonna do for it in the next patch, hope something that allows you to run it more often.

Well, I love the temple's idea. The implementation is not there, but the mechanic itself is good.
But there are huge issues with it. I'm not really talking about the drops here, droprates could be changed at any moment. I'm talking about specific features of the temple.

1. Let's start with UI and UX. There are many issues here. And the main 5 are:
1.1. It's difficult to track which rooms you completed. Mark it on a minimap and on the temple map somehow.
1.2. You can't find any info about the rooms. I'm fine with not knowing it the first time; it could be a discovery thing. But the first time I see a room in my temple, place all info about it somewhere, so I can hover with Alt pressed any time and don't need to go to a browser.
1.3. When you are in the temple, pressing M should open the temple's map, not the map of Act 3.
1.4. The room's collapse should be indicated as soon as you press "run". I hate that it's random when the temple removes the rooms. I want to know what will be removed while I'm running it, unless it's 2-3 rooms per run. And it's not even close, but I'll talk later about that.
1.5. Remove the damn portal notification. I can run in and out of the temple as many times as I want to. The only exceptions are the Architect and Atziri fights. Keep the notifications there, remove them from everywhere else. I know what I'm doing when I'm pressing B and going into the portal.

2. Progression. This is the most important/frustrating type, IMO. It's all about how you progress the mechanic.
2.1. There are not enough Incursion encounters on maps. Running a temple every 6 maps is insane. I would prefer a run every 2-3 maps. But I think it will be fixed in 0.5 when Incursion goes core, and you could upgrade it via tree/tablets and so on. The thing is, if I were to specialize in the Incursion farm, I can't at the moment. It needs to be more frequent.
2.2. Room collapse. I'm sorry, but the number is just not there. Like, does anyone not hate removing your entire setup after an Atziri run? All the room collapse situations are too punishing. Fewer rooms removed per run, even less with an architect and Atziri, and by A LOT. Not 50%, like 75% more. And make it predictable. Like, the discrepancy here is crazy. It can remove 5 rooms, or, like 12 per normal run. WTH? WHY? With such severe punishment, I'm just gonna say "nah, thanks, I'm done" after a couple of runs. And having 1 attempt per run on the Architect/Atziri feels bad. If the game was perfectly balanced and didn't have any one-shots except for specific mechanics, then sure. But it is not the case. I'd like the temple to reset after you BEAT the boss, not after you attempt it, unless it's the T3 (uber) version. We already have this QoL feature for new players in every other pinnacle content. Why is it not in the temple again?
2.3. There are too few rooms to choose from per building session. There should be 10 rooms, and you can only pick 6 of those. New medalion is just bad. It will be used only once, and you can swap 6 rooms. Are you kidding me? If a medalion would drop with a hundred percent chance in every run by default - ok, it will do. But I'm not satisfied with this bandage solution, and I will never be. It's not reliable nor consistent. Therefore, no one will farm the temple because of being too much gamba with the current balance.
2.4. I hate the fact that I have so little control over the temple. I can't rotate or remove the tiles as I wish. This is a huge issue. If I find a better room to replace one of the old ones, I need to roll the dice until I either get a lucky removal or find a sacrificial room. Yeah, screw that.
2.5. I'm sorry, but upgrading the number of available runs via non-tradable randomly-dropped medalion is awful. Make progress seamless/natural, like by completing certain milestones. You finished your first temple? Great, now you will have up to 2 runs. Completed the 3rd act, and Doryani opened a portal? Good boy/girl, have your +6 crystals. Killed a T1/2/3 Architect? Up to +3 runs. And so on.

3. Scaling and difficulty. It's a complicated topic, and that's why I kept it until the end. It's highly interconnected with the changes listed above.
3.1. Rewards of the rooms must be there and must be predictable and scalable. It is difficult to create T3 rooms consistently, considering the removal of the rooms between the runs. And the issue is, I don't want exalt in my lvl 3 room. Are you kidding me? I want T3 exalt in Lvl 3, T2 in Lvl 2, and a normal ex in Lvl 1. In ALL the other outcomes, I'll just skip the rooms, slapping them somewhere far away, so they will (hopefully) be destroyed instead of something useful. It devalues the entire mechanic, making only 4 room types viable (Atziri's Key, T3 Corruption, T3 Foulborn/Modify Uniques, and T3 Surgeon). Considering how easy it is to lose T3, it's just unrealistic that you will be farming them.
3.2. Medalions are just ain't it. The only medalion I consider good is Zantipi (the one that adds map mods for 10 runs). I would be fine with the following ones staying and being remade into basically the temple's Tablets: Increase Tier of the room, up to 10 times (once per run), Prevent a room from being removed (up to 10 times, once per run), Reroll the available pool of the maps (up to 10 times). All the others don't seem impactful and shouldn't be there in the first place, IMO. I'm not a fan of fillers/junk loot just to create a chance of having it, basically reaping me of the good ones. Then you could want to use them and juice for the medallions in your temple.
3.3. Bosses. Man, I'm sorry, but this is literally insanity. I don't know who thought that adding to a boss yellow modifiers was anything but a terrific idea. Bosses were not designed with modifiers in mind. It feels so awful sometimes. Imagine not having a one-shot setup and fighting a stone lizard with an axe or a molten guy with a temporal bubble, molten shell, and life regeneration. Remove it as soon as possible, make bosses bosses, just with less HP/damage. And not only are they extremely dangerous, but they also break certain mechanics, like Glory generation. In addition to it, Bosses do not reward a player with any loot. Juicing bosses is useless in PoE 2, unless you're hunting some specific drops. And because of that, I would prefer not to have a boss at all, rather than fighting one for 2 minutes for a bunch of yellow junk and a T2 transmute. It's a general problem for the entire game, but because checkpoints are so rare and bosses are so frequent in the dense temple, it's just painfully obvious here. Atziri's specific drops are good; everything else is garbage, sadly. I did get, like, 4 ex for lvl 79 tample XDD; my brother did get 6 ex and 1 chaos, btw. The drops for Atziri and the Architect should be either significantly increased, or they should not break the temple to the same extent as they do now.
3.4. I'm not really a fan of the current temple's scaling. Not because it's bad per se, but because of the room destruction, you can't consistently get it to be juiced. The rooms are breaking, removing multiple layers of it. Imagine I had a T3 commander with 2 soldiers' rooms adjacent to it. If the commander is removed, not only will I lose its juicing bonuses, but I also lose 2 levels (and juicing power) to the 2 rooms that were connected to it. It's triple the punishment for something that IS NOT UNDER ANY DEGREE OF MY CONTROL. I like building the temple, but I don't like losing it randomly every N runs. TBH, I don't like losing it at all. I would prefer that after killing Atziri for the first time, your temple would no longer break until you kill her or the Architect. And if you want to break it - kill the bosses or farm it over and over and over again, slowly replacing the rooms you don't like. Because I was so hyped about building my temple over time, but it turned out that the medalion defending the room works only ONCE! ONCE! O MY GOD! Saying that I was disappointed is saying nothing.
3.5. The final thing about scaling is... well, the temple, if not built properly, seems pretty underwhelming in terms of monsters. I would place some mobs in the tunnels, because those are especially empty. Additionally, maybe I'd make each room about 20% bigger and add an extra yellow monster in every major room, especially on higher tiers.

I think that if it becomes common knowledge you can do level 1-10 zones for a quick 6 zones to get your temple up, they'll patch it. That isn't their intention so it isn't allowed, so they'll force you to play how they want you to.

It's too over complicated and under explained. UI/UX is a major issue. Why is there no undo button for placing a room? Why is there no reset button to just wipe the whole temple and start from scratch? Why are all of the medallions explained so poorly? Why are there so many weird and not obvious restrictions about how rooms can connect?

Also, it's just buggy. Atziri currently has a bug where she will get locked at 5-15% health and become invulnerable. She will no longer take damage for the rest of the fight, and you can't do anything about it. Shit like that should not exist in the pinnacle content for a league. It's way too much time and effort to get to a boss to have it bug out like that. It's just wasting the player's time. It's disrespectful.

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golanov#0674 wrote:

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Good read, thanks! I largely agree. I hope it goes core, but I hope it does so in a sustainable, profitable way, that can be mained. Like, it doesn't have to be the best, but at least okay.

I was thinking about it a bit more. Some people really like breach. Some people really like expedition (like me). Not everyone likes everything. I think Temple will be fun for certain types of people, maybe those who like Heist, Delve, or Expedition. Others will not like it, but that's okay. No league is for everyone, but it's fun for someone, so I hope Fate of the Vaal does go core.

good idea, trash implementation. literally zero rewards. killed the architect twice now and its just...bad. waste of time

Man a lot of people angry all the time in this forum.

The Vaal isn't a waste. Its good and is only gonna get better.

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ky_anka#5072 wrote:

From your experience what campaign areas allow you to hit 6 charges the fastest?

Have also been enjoying the temple a lot, like the vibe and with the latest patch the value has gotten better.
Hope they take care to fine tune and flesh it out more. Also wonder what Atlas tree they’re gonna do for it in the next patch, hope something that allows you to run it more often.

Sorry, I don't think it's possible, anymore. :( I agree with you, though.

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Hyperspacing#5593 wrote:

Man a lot of people angry all the time in this forum.

The Vaal isn't a waste. Its good and is only gonna get better.

Yep!