Vaal Pact, necessary or even recommended?

I made a 211pdps wand courtesy of Elreon's metamod. For the first time since game start, wanding is actually within my reach. Seeing as I'm in an old-fashioned phase at the moment, CI wander it is.

Since the change to VP went through, I've seen a marked decrease in the number of CI builds using it. That said, I'm way out of touch with CI in general.

build link

Because, well, why not. The alternative is to head down to Ondar's, for a similar point count and some more dex, as one of the CI guides does. A quick poke at the CI wander guides available show that none (out of 3) go to VP; of the HP wanders, two (out of 5) do. It definitely looks like VP isn't as essential to CI as it used to be.

If not for VP, the build would probably do better from shadow start. Guess we'll find out eventually.

Wand marauder

Random thought as I'm picking through the build lists to find wanders. Can you make one (okay fine you probably can) and how playable is it?

Bringing back the good old days

Okay, not really. But Tiurakh is now running an LS build, and LS has pretty much dropped off the map otherwise (Mjolner notwithstanding, and man did my predictions for that item ever turn out badly.) I don't believe LS is all that bad.

I don't have a link to the thread any more, but if you were around in beta you probably know about Invalesco's CI crit dagger build.

updated passive tree

Everything else maybe as listed, maybe not. LS LMP AFD WED would be the 4L, since the latter two affect both melee and ranged sides of the skill. DS, Vaal DS. Maybe possibly. I'd run Hatred and Discipline. Incandescent Heart maybe? Looks pretty good for CI, only the light radius thing, it's like the CI equivalent of Lightning Coil. In any case it's possible to force offcolours now so a good Vaal Regalia will also do fine.

/salute