Shock Nova

Although I would like to know if it's possible to pair Shock Nova with Knockback

The damage is fine. The deadzone has to go. It's simply too buggy, too unreliable to use as a regular attack. Even if it did twice as much damage the deadzone would make it far too frustrating to be worth using.

I like the idea of having the damage scale in the way Freezing Pulse does (higher damage at melee range, lower further out). Creates a risk/reward factor without all the bloody frustration of the deadzone.

Not a bad idea to have a freezing pulse-like effect. But what about the totem miniboss on the ledge? if it had no deadzone, it would be really freaking painful for melee characters to fight him, since it likes casting shock nova (or at the least a very similar move) constantly if you get in range of it instead of sparking.

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Aklyon wrote:

Not a bad idea to have a freezing pulse-like effect. But what about the totem miniboss on the ledge? if it had no deadzone, it would be really freaking painful for melee characters to fight him, since it likes casting shock nova (or at the least a very similar move) constantly if you get in range of it instead of sparking.

Why does it need to cast Shock Nova? And if it does need to cast Shock Nova, there's no reason to not have a player version of it, and a monster version of it.

I'm starting to think that the deadzone was created specifically to make it so melee characters could fight things or players that cast Shock NOva.

Using Concentrated Effect with Shock Nova makes it so the dead zone is so small that you hit stuff with it even in melee range. But this also means that you can't have AoE support, or AoE passives, and the range is tiny as hell.

It's the only method I've found for circumventing the deadzone so far.

I didn't mean to say it needed to cast Shock Nova, I was just mentioning that it did. I don't have a problem with it having its own version.

Like many posted before, my greatest probelems with this skill is the "deadzone" and the fact that i wont hit 30-40% of the mobs inside the damage-zone(probably because they are moving?).

I like the idea posted in this threat:
No dead-zone, damage gets "reduced" with range from center.
You would need to tank for higher damage but you have insane shock-effect possibiltys with just aoe-radius-buffs and shock-chance(that could be OP).

My Suggestion:
Make it a lot smaller. Like the original deadzone as damage-area or even smaller.
This would make this spell a nice melee-defense-spell(i case some mobs get too close) and you would need a very "tanky" build to use it as attack-skill or insane aoe-radius-increase to use it as "real-aoe-skill".

OR

Make 2 Skills !!

1. Shock-Donut
Bigger aoe-radius and bigger deadzone. Less damage and faster castspeed.

2. Shock-Nova
Small radius, high damage, slower castspeed.(or very very small radius and fast castspeed)


I just love play lighnting-based builds and i am lazy. So i love lightning-aoe without the need to aim to much. But with the current shocknova skill, spark+fork+chain(+totem) is the way for lightning-aoe(to apply shock).

greetings Wolfilein

P.S. excuse my english, i am no native speaker :-P

Shock Donut is a silly name. Why not leave the current name on the aoe deadzone one and name the melee-defense one something like 'Ball Lightning'? (since if you shrunk the skill radius it would be a bit like a ball around you, and its a type of lightning anyway :) )

I build a tanky Templer around this skill, that would charge into a group of enemies and kill them with Shock Nova. But with the current deadzone it's nearly impossible to do this in a fluent way. You're always running aroung, hoping to hit 2-3 enemies with one of the rings.

The skill definitely needs to be reworked somehow.

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Peppi wrote:

I build a tanky Templer around this skill, that would charge into a group of enemies and kill them with Shock Nova. But with the current deadzone it's nearly impossible to do this in a fluent way. You're always running aroung, hoping to hit 2-3 enemies with one of the rings.

The skill definitely needs to be reworked somehow.

You'd be better off with Ice Nova on a Templar. Quality Ice Nova gets AoE increase, and it's likely the biggest AoE in the game right now.

Quality Ice Nova, Quality Cold Pen, Quality Faster Cast, Quality Increased AoE, Quality Concentrated Effect. If you want you can drop Conc Effect and AoE for Health Leech and Health on HIt and run the Blood Magic Keystone.

Yes I understand that's a difficult to come by setup, but it's likely the most effective in regards to the single spell AoE spam we're all trying to figure out how to do to.