Shock Nova

9.9 Testing in Legacy, lvl 70 witch in Chaos

I appreciate the small buff in cast speed, but the spell is still pretty meh.

Cast speed helps on the DPS front but exacerbates the crazy mana costs. The spell is incredibly hard to sustain now if you've linked it to do decent DPS.

I took the opportunity to try out no area increasers and conc effect, plus some shield block passives, for a close range shock nova build. Long story short, it sucks. You just can't hit enough enemies with the skill on -30% area, and the deadzone is still large enough to screw you over. Scrap that idea.

Tried Spark out in comparison, it performs as well as Shock Nova in chaos and takes far less thought and effort. Bleh.

Legacy testing though, so asterisked.

This skill makes me want to pull my hair out. Why?

It does good damage in theory compared to most of my other options, but it has a high cost, and for a newer player, the skill seems nearly impossible to use.

Half the time I'm using this I can't tell if it is just doing the lower end of its damage, or the monster is close enough / far enough way that the skill isn't hitting. The graphic combined with the hitboxes of random monsters makes it require a large amount of time figuring out where you need to stand to hit each monster.

Having a ring inside the aoe where it doesn't do damage isn't exciting gameplay, nor does it feel rewarding when you get it right, because even when you do hit it, you don't know if it is going to do 15 damage or 500. Quite simply it is frustrating, and not fun. I would much rather having a stupid ice nova effect at half the size if I had to choose between the two.

this skill has to many backdraws to be usefull. most annoyingly the area around where it doesnt do any damage.

i see no point (besides the damage "potential") to use this skill over ice nova.

I think this skill needs redesign.

How about something that is unique gives best AOE dps but soaks up TONS of mana.

I think skill should work with holding down button dealing damage every second while draining every second mana.
You would have to be stationary to use it. For example you could use it for lets say 5 seconds and anhilate anything around you but you would drain entire mana pool.

Think that would make it unique and powerful but not too powerful , because you have to be stationary to do that.

Does linking shock nova with a Concentrate Area of Effect support gem remove the dead zone?

I had been thinking over this skill as well the past couple nights. For reasons as many other posters have stated previously, the skill is "almost" useless right now. It definitely needs some tweaking or a complete redesign. The dead-zone in the middle of the nova is especially awkward and redundant when you have a high ping. As it stand right now I feel like this skill requires way too much concentration and focus to determine whether or not you are using it properly.

Perhaps lower the damage and get rid of the deadzone? Increase mana cost? Maybe increase the default blast radius but keep the deadzone? I don't know, and a lot of the reason I don't is because I don't know why the skill was designed the way it was in the first place.

I loved using this in combination with frost nova to kite monsters in 0.9.8 on a >30 witch. It was a fantastic fun way to play the game even though it was not so effective.
At 10-25 it is actually somewhat a good strategy and a good challenge. Afterwards it became too much of a mana-hog and it simply was too inefficient compared to Spark.

After the increased difficulty of 0.9.9 I haven't played that much witch and I highly doubt that it has improved much. I would say that the biggest problem is the manacost. It is just too hard on the mana compared to the extremely high variability in damage and the deadzone drawback.

I would maybe look at lowering the damage range slightly and the average damage at the same time.

I'd really like to hear Mark's thoughts on this skill, specifically whether or not he's happy with the deadzone :)

I get that this skill needs some drawbacks to compensate for it's high DPS (and I'd hate to see it lose it's high DPS). But it already has a high mana cost, doesn't chill like ice nova and requires close range.

I think a nice compromise would be if it did less damage in the deadzone. Even if it was a significant drop off, like 75% less damage, at least it would be doing something. Maybe that would help with the frustration that I (and it seems many others) have with this skill.

The deadzone is probably the single biggest thing that bugs me in PoE :P

I am trying to use this skill as AOE skill.
It is hard to use really.
I was asking myself, If I use AoE buffs in the Passive tree (near my already taken nodes) I have a 4+4+4+4+4+10% (30%) for 6 nodes increase. By using Wrath at its current level I have +18% so it gives +48% AOE.

Will this fu**ng remove the dead zone ? ='(

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grogor wrote:

Does linking shock nova with a Concentrate Area of Effect support gem remove the dead zone?

Not entirely. Large monsters get hit, small monsters still fit in the smaller deadzone.