Oracle's Moment of Vulnerability

This ability is pretty thematic and allows for some monstrous burst when the stars align, but getting those stars to align is often clunky and the effort expended is sometimes just pointless.

1) Requirement for hitting primed enemies means you spend more time looking at the boss's debuffs and buildup progress more than watching the action on screen. The icons on the enemy can sometimes get lost in the visual effects so the debuff bar is a more reliable source. Perhaps have the skill button visually light up when there's a nearby primed enemy for more clarity.

2) Losing the window to use the skill when the boss is fully frozen, electrocuted, or heavy stunned makes heavy investment into those statuses feel wasted. Skills like Lunar Assault with a big freeze modifier mean you can go from 60% buildup to full freeze, and then not be able to use this cool ability. Freezing Mark and Voltaic Mark are in a similar place, since although they augment your ability to buildup freeze or electrocution, they automatically apply the immobilization effect when the enemy is primed, making the setup feel wasted. Perhaps using a delayed debuff effect like the new Lightning Warp could help address this.

3) Electrocution is not supported on the Druid's side of the passive tree or in their innate skills. Lightning damage is either from Thunderstorm or empowered Wyvern attacks, making it difficult to specialize that damage type. Electrocution status buildup is mostly enabled by Dexterity skills in bows as well, which is the opposite side from the Str/Int hybrid of Druid. Additionally, this patch added many support effects that triggered from shock, so giving all that up to instead enable electrocution via support gem gives us no new toys to experiment with.

4) There is no control on where the visage shows up. Sometimes it's beside the boss, sometimes it's basically toppling to the edge of the screen from being stunned. When you're in melee, the visage can appear behind the boss, and to hit the visage you need to maneuver around the boss. By the time you can reach the visage target, the duration on it has run half its course giving you a very small window to damage it. I understand that this may be a technical limitation of needing space to spawn and collision getting in the way, but it would be cool to just the visage almost overlap the boss so to capture the "future sight" fantasy of the skill.

I've been playing around with Align Fate and I really like it. If you go full spell casting, it feels pretty rewarding to juggle your skills, prioritizing casting the spell the visage casts. Align Fate with Cast on Crit is pretty autonomous gameplay. The visage for both skills seems pretty erratic as you say. I definitely recommend GGG take a serious look refining this.

I do want to get around testing Moment of Vulnerability but I imagine using something like Thunderstorm for Shock, if you're using plants, with Enervating Nova on staff will let you benefit from both Shock and primed for electrocution? Or, flip it around and use the Electrocute support gem on Thunderstorm (for mobbing) and Lightning Bolt on staff (for Shock on bosses)? Don't forget, the Oracle tree lets you add 3-51 flat lightning damage to attacks and you could always throw on Wake of Destruction boots to generate Shocked Ground, which could then be picked up by Tornado. Another method is to use Shocking Leap on werewolf's Pounce and use Tornado after to prime for electrocution. Don't forget the spells you can put on Spell Totem. Druid skills are str/int based so I don't see a huge issue with grabbing a crossbow for electrocution buildup either (which scales with str/dex and can have reduced attribute requirements), especially when the visage has a cooldown. Spell Totem can be used for a plant spell if you still want to do that.

Does pinning count towards the immobilization condition on Moment of Vulnerability too? If so, there's some really easy ways to do that with plant skills, or even another physical spell like Bone Cage. Thoughts?

I actually forgot about Enervating Nova enabling electrocution buildup. They also fixed the bug that prevented it from working with Astral Projection so that's definitely an option for a spellcasting build.

I'm personally on a crossbow and grenades build, but found Voltaic Grenade to be mostly unnecessary after a freeze and heavy stun, and not worth juggling a third status into the mix. I think it's good they're trying to allow for multiple different status to trigger the effect, but the payoff for stickling Electrocution isn't there compared to Freeze and Stun.

Pin doesn't work with Moment of Vulnerability, but that's probably because it overlaps so much with Heavy Stun. It also doesn't prevent all enemy actions like Freeze or Electrocute do, so it'd be odd for the visage to just stand there like it was hit by a Tactician.

So, I've just tried out Moment of Vulnerability and to be abundantly honest, the skill is absolute dog water.

First and foremost, you have to hit the target with the skill during the primed window. This is often an absurdly small window for any build using any form of immobilisation buildup. I'm not building for that and just using a lot of physical damage. Even I find myself missing the window constantly. It doesn't help that the primed for stun glowing dot on the target is often not on the head of the target. I fought the Vaal Zicotal Warden and his primed marker was on one of the snake heads instead of his head or the main body. I didn't even notice it the first time around and heavy stunned the boss without getting to use Moment of Vulnerability.

The fix to this issue is obviously already written into the game. GGG wants us to use gems like Brink 1 and 2 to prevent the skill we are inflicting buildup with from actually inflicting heavy stun.

The problem with this idea is that no one is going to want to waste a socket on what is likely their main dps skill just to prevent it from ever stunning enemies. Brink 2, even with the increased stun buildup, is an absolutely trash tier gem. If it gave another effect on top of what it does, it might be worth something, but no one needs 50% more stun buildup in a build that uses stuns. They either do more than enough damage to make buildup and stun happen so fast it doesn't matter, or they have enough buildup that it occurs almost instantly. No one wants to gimp their skill with a thing that does what they already do and just adjusts how it works so they can make another skill good. This is especially true for an ascendancy skill. Ascendancies are supposed to be build enabling tools. I shouldn't need extra junk to make the skill work in the vein it was intended.

Beyond that problem is another issue. The duration of the visage. The duration of the visage is absolutely abysmal. It is literally the duration of the stun, freeze, or electrocute from what I can tell. For most builds, this means it pops out and then falls away from the player and behind the target mob. The problem with this is that the mob often blocks most skills from hitting the visage. Further, by the time most players can adjust their position to get to the visage, it has already "recovered" and disappeared. The only builds I can think of that would be able to effectively use this are builds with large amounts of aoe which will hit the visage the moment it spawns. Projectile builds that aren't piercing will be completely unable to use moment of vulnerability more often than not. This might not be a such a problem if you could socket prolonged duration support or literally anything to make the visage last longer, but you can't socket anything duration related as the skill isn't considered to have a duration effect since the visage is just getting stunned, electrocuted, or frozen and none of those things have gems which change the duration of the effects.

Again, this is an ascendncy skill. It should be build enabling or at least worth taking upon it's own merits. As it stands, to make moment of vulnerability work, you have to neuter other skills, and adjust to the clunky animation of the visage. The skill isn't worth taking more often than not.