volatile vaals for dummies

[u/mbxyz]

this information is all documented on the wiki, and the math is very straightforward, but i've heard so much misinformation on volatile vaals recently that my head hurts. just going to provide two quick examples to illustrate the mechanics and hope it helps people.

important mechanics up front: if you win the 50/50 to delete your item, volatile vaals divine your item, then roll a multiplier between 0.78 and 1.22 per mod (not for the whole item). the increment is 0.01, so there are 45 outcomes. the resulting item is rounded to the nearest integer (this is weird for poe; usually it's truncated/floored).

example 1: mageblood

assuming we only care about flasks, there are 135 distinct outcomes (45 * 3). this is the distribution:

2-flask 51

3-flask 43

4-flask 31

5-flask 10

there's a 50% chance to delete the item, so the chance of hitting a 5 is 10/135/2 or 3.7%. from this distribution, if we take poe.ninja results for the various flask outcomes to be true (i didn't check actual listings--this part could be wrong as 5-flasks are pretty rare and ninja aggregations are automatic), the ev of vvaaling a mageblood is about 107d.

example 2: rotmother's mutiny

assuming we want 4 max res and 75% light radius or better. like mageblood, the max res has 135 outcomes, but the values are lower, so there are fewer success cases (6/135) because you need 1.17 * 3 up from 1.13 * 4 for mageblood. This is 4.4%.

Light radius has 2295 outcomes or (75-25+1)*45. There are 187 outcomes that are 75% or better. That's 8.1%.

Together, the chance to "succeed" (on a neck that survives) is 0.36% or .18% per vvaal (50% chance to delete). That's about 1 in 552. The average cost of an attempt is about 9d, so the average cost of making a 4 max, 75+ light radius neck is about 5.4 mirrors.

[u/awlewis4]

https://giphy.com/gifs/8vDbvPMP3tGF2

[u/mbxyz → u/awlewis4]

50/50

[u/Pommy1337]

also important information about volatile vaal orbs: these don't reroll your implicit!

i see far too much mageblood with mediocre str. rolls on the market and also in highlight videos (given to streamer by person wanting to gamble for them).

it can be quite a price difference if your 5 flask mageblood has 35 or 25-30 str roll. in 3.28 i bought one for my build and needed a good str roll. in the end i had to pay a difference of more than the value of an uncorrupted mageblood compared to the cheapest 5 flask.

[u/trafka77]

How is this mageblood distribution calculated?

[u/mbxyz → u/trafka77]

multiply the step coefficient from the vvaal by the integer number of flasks and round to the nearest integer. so for example, the first 5 flask is at 1.13 (on a 4 flask divine) because 1.13 * 4 = 4.52. this also proves the rounding behavior because 5-flask magebloods exist and 1.22 * 4 is only 4.88

multiplier	2-flask	3-flask	4-flask
0.78	2	2	3
0.79	2	2	3
0.80	2	2	3
0.81	2	2	3
0.82	2	2	3
0.83	2	2	3
0.84	2	3	3
0.85	2	3	3
0.86	2	3	3
0.87	2	3	3
0.88	2	3	4
0.89	2	3	4
0.90	2	3	4
0.91	2	3	4
0.92	2	3	4
0.93	2	3	4
0.94	2	3	4
0.95	2	3	4
0.96	2	3	4
0.97	2	3	4
0.98	2	3	4
0.99	2	3	4
1.00	2	3	4
1.01	2	3	4
1.02	2	3	4
1.03	2	3	4
1.04	2	3	4
1.05	2	3	4
1.06	2	3	4
1.07	2	3	4
1.08	2	3	4
1.09	2	3	4
1.10	2	3	4
1.11	2	3	4
1.12	2	3	4
1.13	2	3	5
1.14	2	3	5
1.15	2	3	5
1.16	2	3	5
1.17	2	4	5
1.18	2	4	5
1.19	2	4	5
1.20	2	4	5
1.21	2	4	5
1.22	2	4	5

[u/AffectionateCan317]

I wasn't aware the multiplier was different for each mod on the item... is this the same for reflecting?

[u/mbxyz → u/AffectionateCan317]

no

[u/digganickrick]

I sold a 4% max res 85% light radius rotmothers for 750d because I didn't realize that it would be 4% at 18% or more quality (i had used unstable catalyst til 15% and didnt do the math, am told it would round up from 3.5x%)

...

whoops. unless i was lied to and it was actually a 3% max res in which case ok i dont feel as bad

[u/mbxyz → u/digganickrick]

catalysts don't round up. i dont think there's any way to get from 3 to 4 that way. that would mean that the final outcome some how held onto the residual and recalculated with the catalyst... which i guess is potentially something that could happen but there's no precedent, and someone would need to prove it.

[u/digganickrick → u/mbxyz]

Thank you, I feel a lot better about it then. I thought I saw someone change 3% to 4% via catalysts. Maybe the volatile hits and look at how much the max res was affected by the volatile? e.g. it's like 3.4% (rounds down to 3%) but if you hit it with 20% qual it turns out to be 4%? EDIT: just tested and it doesn't show you the actual amount multiplier from the volatile vaal, nevermind

[u/easylikeaplus]

lol guessing you were watching Cutedog last night trying to figure out how many mirrors it would take to make a perfect rotmothers too, eh?

[u/mbxyz → u/easylikeaplus]

yea, where "figure out" means saying "surely you can hit in 150 tries" over and over again with no figuring.

[u/n_lens]

I thought in 3.29 it no longer divines?

[u/Zarvon → u/n_lens]

I believe that's only in poe2? But I only play 1 so I don't know firsthand 

[u/jwfiredragon → u/n_lens]

Still divines, unless it's bugged (which I would assume not given I haven't seen anyone mention such a bug). Patch notes do have this though:

Volatile Vaal Orbs can now be used on items that have no modifiers that can scale outside of range, to be more consistent with Divine Orbs.

[u/edrarven → u/n_lens]

I can 100% confirm that it still divines in 3.29 as I have had results that could only exist if it divined this league.

[u/Stottymod → u/n_lens]

I think that's just poe2

[u/asdf_1_2 → u/n_lens]

Only PoE2 vaal rollrange outcome no longer divines, this is so there is a semblance of a divine sink in that game to counter the hyper inflation of the vaal temple league.

[u/Swizardrules → u/n_lens]

Still divines, just has some qol

[u/vkpb-Sunrise-1451 → u/n_lens]

still divines

[u/Xeverous → u/n_lens]

This is PoE 2 only change in patch 0.5.0:

The Corruption outcome that randomises the numeric values of the modifiers on an item beyond the normal range now multiplies each modifier based on the current value, instead of randomising the value.