Shock Nova

This is an extremely frustrating and unreliable skill. I love the idea, and it's satisfying when it lands, but actually getting enemies in that "sweet spot" is very difficult to pull off. The graphic seems to be incorrect as well, as I very frequently will cast this spell and see the ring of lightning pass through someone, only for it not to register correctly. I think the damage is spot on, but more needs to be done to increase this skill's usability.

The deadzone is also much too large. I was hoping to use this in combination with lightning warp (which is a whole 'nother bag of gripes in itself) in order to create a class that could warp into groups of enemies and shock them all with a nova. However, the huge deadzone makes this skill clunky and awkward to manage. It's not even helped by passives or support gems, as the only to make that deadzone more manageable is the concentrated effect gem, which makes the "kill zone" much too small to be used reliably.

I think this skill needs to be reworked pretty substantially. The outer radius of the killzone is fine, but the dead zone needs to be decreased dramatically, if not removed altogether.

I think that simply adding a reverse fading effect, like the opposite of ice pulse, would be the best solution. Have it start at the center of the nova and increase in damage as it approaches the edges, with the full damage zone beginning about halfway between the center and the circumference.

When used with concentrated effect, this would created a smaller zone, and so the damage would increase at a faster rate and approach maximum lethality nearly right on top of you. With larger area of effects, you would have bigger reduced damage zones, but also be able to catch much larger groups within its effect, and having a substially larger "kill zone."

I have been using this skill a bit and I think that the "Wheel" area its not a bad idea, but it would be much better used as a targeted skill than as a nova. It could work by targeting a point that would mark the middle radius of the wheel. In reference to your position, half the area of effect would be above and half below this point. This would make the dead area bigger or smaller depending where you target, concentrated area would make the wheel thinner and increased larger.

This skill is horrible to use with the current state of desync occurance. I am currently lvl 33 and in act 3 and its impossible to tell if a mob is going to be hit or not. I am currently using decoy totem to stack the mobs up and then nova them 2-3 times so they should all die. Maybe two thirds of them will die if im lucky and im out of mana and have to move. All of them looks like they are hit, but apparantly not so. My totem dies and im screwed.

I would suggest remaking this skill entirely to still keep it interesting:

New name: Shock Pulse
New skill design: Make the skill send out a pulsewave(similar to freezing pulse) on max distance the pulse will reverse direction and go inwards towards the caster/casting point(whatever is easiest to make) monsters will be impacted/hit both on the way outwards and back inwards.
Damage: Half the current dmg(as it will impact/hit twice), make damage scale so it deals full dmg at the 100% distance mark of caster and 0 dmg at the 0% distance mark(on top of you)
Reasoning: You will still have the same incentives to have the mobs furthest away, while still hitting them. So aiming will still be necessary. Gab closers i.e.; fast, flicker, jumping, whirling mobs will still be a bitch and avoid most of the damage.

You can see how the skill would work here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYLJdCUAQ2Q

I think this form of skill would be very interesting and dynamic to work with in POE. Just dont make it reddish/purple :P

I hope you can make something like this possible.

I don't think the general concept of the skill need to be changed at all (nova spell with increased damage near the outside of the ring), but the mechanics of it are pretty borked. At the very least, we need a smaller null damage zone (or to make it a reduced damage zone instead), and more reliable hit detection to make those well positioned shocks actually count for something.

Wich support totem works great with Shock Nova ?

there is... only one totem support gem.

I played around with this a ton recently and... well... "meh".

My 2 main issues/ideas:

1: You often don't hit mobs that you seem to hit and it's somewhat hard to tell if you actually missed or a desync is going on
---> Make it more clear where it actually hits and give a clearer indication if you actually hit something, especially on big Bosses this is often hard to tell.

2: Increased area and concentrated effect are "weird" on this spell. The deadzone actually seems to grow when you get more range!? It for sure is shrinking with the conc-damage (which, if you don't have any other +ae skills/gems makes it basically a melee skill).
---> Make the deadzone a never changing area that can't be altered. Extra range should just make the ring spread further to the outside while keeping the same deadzone.

I am currently playing a level 49 Hardcore Shock Nova Witch. Since day one of playing this character it has been an uphill battle. The damage is good. don't get me wrong. but the desync kills this skill, since you need to know the exact zone where the monsters are going to be in order to hit them. any desync at all will make you miss entirely even though you think you are going to hit them. I really think and would like more than anything to see this skill have its dead zone removed entirely. I myself, have played Diablo 2 in the past and had a great fondness of playing a nova sorc, of course since PoE is way better than D3, and much like Diablo 2, which I loved, I find my rekindled passion so close at hand but just out of reach. I would switch to freeze nova since it dosnt have a dead zone but the damage sucks and its slow as hell. Please consider removing the dead zone and make this skill endgame viable.

you guys just need to learn to use this skill correctly ... this spell is really good endgame.

It's quite nice with a knock back gem but the deadzone is really finicky and hard to judge from the ingame graphic.