Shock Nova

Absolutely love the new shock nova as shield templar. The donut design is brilliant and makes the skill so much more predictable in practice. Ice nova, move a couple steps shock nova is quite effective for anyone struggling with the dead zone directly surrounding your character.

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bennyr wrote:

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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bennyr wrote:

(damage is random everywhere it hits).

This was always the case. The old nova just scaled the damage range down based on distance, it never removed the damage roll.

Just to make sure I understand, the old nova even at max range could still roll the lowest damage amount shown on the skill? That surprises me if so, it definitely felt strong on the edges. But the range on this skill definitely was reduced also right?

Not really relevant since the skill got changed but I believe that it dealt x damage within it's damage range and then you got a damage penalty to that damage based on the distance the enemy was.

In case this was missed in my spam post.

Shock nova should go back to standard crit rates.

Also, ignore that crap in my previous post about being able to solo chaos in .96 comfortably, that went out the window in .96b

I am disappointed with this new look/effect. It is called nova but it isn't a nova, there is no explosion outward just the donut of sparks. A new skill should have been introduced for this effect and shock "nova" left alone.

can someone recap to me I've most of forgot reading it somewhere, why doesn't it hit things adjacent to the caster ?

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felinemagic wrote:

can someone recap to me I've most of forgot reading it somewhere, why doesn't it hit things adjacent to the caster ?

It used to do less damage to close enemies and more damage to far away enemies. They decided to instead make it a donut shaped AoE, probably to make the intended use more apparent. Now nearby enemies clearly don't take damage at all while before they might have appeared to have taken damage, but in actuality only taken a very small amount of it.

This skill needs to hit things adjacent to the caster. Ice nova does a lot more it terms of hitting Everything in its cast and freezing the enemies.
Making it more effective as a all around spell, what I don't get is that if shock nova is a pure dps skill that has a chance of shocking the target then why not make it hit all adjacent targets.

If I want to use lightning damage in the passive tree and use Tempest shield and Lightning strike then I should be able to use Shock nova more effectively. Like say when I have Tempest shield on I want things to hit me while using shock nova. Although the small radius adjacent to me when using shock nova doesn't hit a targets I figured I could still spam it and let things hit my tempest shield to fill the dps gap, witch it doesn't. Then one might say "use lightning strike it does some aoe" well sure but shock nova is more effective in larger groups (if in the sweet spot) making its output less effective.

I'm guessing increasing the area increases the deadzone's area too? Graphically it is.

I like the design, but I do miss old nova too. I suppose there's Ice Nova for that, or maybe Lightning Warp spam, but it doesn't have the interesting mechanic of varying damage. It's an improvement overall.

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Squidgyxombie wrote:

I'm guessing increasing the area increases the deadzone's area too? Graphically it is.

Seems so from testing between 44% increased AoE radius, and 21%.

o.|xx| -basic
o..|xxx| -Increased Area of Effect