Shock Nova

Don't really understand the intent with this skill. I love novas, but the mechanics of this one make it useless. Ice Nova is better in every way :/

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gtkingsley1 wrote:

Don't really understand the intent with this skill. I love novas, but the mechanics of this one make it useless. Ice Nova is better in every way :/

I imagine the intent was something like GGG not wanting one lightning spell that did a ton of damage that could be used in almost every situation. But then I look at Ice Spear, and I'm not sure about that one.

Pointless drawbacks that only lessen something's viability have to go, especially when things like Ice Spear exist and perform better in almost every way.

I would suggest just remaking the spell entirely, without the deadzone it's frost nova but electricity, with the dead zone it's frost nova but bad.

Rework it into an AOE kind of Arc, jumps to multiple targets from the caster as center point, bounces off each target, can bounce between targets more than once. Limit possible targets to 5 initial, let the bounces take care of the rest.

Just make it cast 5 Arcs randomly from the caster at lessened damage, or fire out a ring of sparks moving outward in a perfect circle. I would love a ring of 10 or 15 sparks.

I got a little suggestion for this skill. As now as people say it's not nice with the close zone where you can't deal damage to enemies. they are sometimes really far out in the circle and still take no damage..


I suggest and would love to see this spell being a kind of "pulse" that shoots out from the caster as it does now but it starts in the middle and goes out until the AoE reach the player has. So it would act kind of like a pulsating electicity field of some kind. Would be cool, different from frostnova and also good :)

One reason the dead zone is created might be because without it it will be way too easy to shock stack moving targets while kiting. Imagine if you linked it with faster casting, increased area of effect and lightning penetration, you can literally shock stack the entire screen almost as fast as spark/fork (I'd even argue faster). The dead zone is created to force you to "aim" the skill instead of just mindlessly pressing a single button while everything around you die.

The idea in creating the dead zone is great, but the execution is HORRIBLE. There are TONS of problems with having a dead zone:

1) Even the TINIEST amount of lag will make the skill ENTIRELY unusable. If anyone has used shock nova exclusively for even 20 minutes can attest to the fact that a slight d-sync around a sizable mob leads almost surely to death. Because the ring of the nova is quite thin, I get around half the mobs that I CLEARLY see touching the ring not being hit by it due to half or so seconds of delay.

2) Hasted and naturally fast mobs are nigh unkillable. When you stop your character to cast shock nova, you will inevitably let a portion of the mob into the dead zone which prompts you to move again. Players (like me) who love to use strong aoe abilities to clear large mobs would end up pulling portions of mobs they'll likely hit only once per 2-3 casts of shock nova, and this is a huge problem toward late game.

3) Compared to literally ANY other offensive intelligence spell, shock nova is by far the most difficult to use. For the average int spell, the most you have to consider while positioning your character is 1) the position of the enemy and 2) the direction of the enemy toward you. That's it. For Shock Nova, you have to consider the 1) and 2) of above on top of 3) the distance between you and your enemies (yes, multiple enemies at once) which can't be too far NOR too near, 4) how far you should run until you can stop and cast a successful shock nova (also multiple enemies at once, and if they have different movement speed then it's even more complicated).

4) It's the only int spell in the entire game that has NO WAY of dealing with gap-closers whatsoever.

Because it is so exponentially frustrating to use in comparison to other skills, I personally believe that no skill in the ENTIRE offensive arsenal of PoE is practically worse than Shock Nova at doing what it's designed to do. I have some suggestions here that might make it slightly better (or overpowered? Admittedly I'm not very good at proposing balance changes):

If Shock Nova is to be kept in its current state, make it so that when I hover my mouse over an enemy and activate the spell, I actually walk toward it and cast the spell once I'm in range.

If it's to be entirely reworked:

1) Get rid of the dead zone. Make it exponentially less likely to shock an enemy the closer they are to you.

2) Set an small interval on how frequently enemies can get shocked (and/or how often they can get damaged) by shock nova.

3) Make the pulse travel or form slower than frost nova.

4) Change the quality effects to lessen 2) and accelerate 3).

Again, these are just suggestions.

interestingly, your suggestion #1 is what nova used to be, but people aimed exclusively for the edge, and it acted as if it had a deadzone anyways due to how dramatic the damage difference was.

Yeah I'm pretty new to PoE in general. I'm not sure how the skills came to be or whether they've been balanced or reworked. Note that what I meant by the numbered suggestions is that they should be implemented together.

If I use shock nova with elemental equilibrium and a monster is hit while in the "No damage zone" part of shock nova. Will they still be debuffed by elemental equilibrium?

Anyone know if concentrated effect support makes the deadzone smaller?