Shock Nova

Thanks for the confirmation Mark.

Feedback lvls 15-50: Shock nova got easier to use once I started attaching supports to it, namely Added Cold Damage, this made it less likely that monsters would simply run up to me before taking significant damage. More zombies also helped a lot.

Increased radius made the spell a lot better for me at least, the distance enemies have to walk to get through the killzone is farther, and you can hit most ranged enemies without having to run at them.

The mana cost was a big issue early on but now with Clarity and Mana Leech that is taken care of.

At 51 it clears pretty well with 62% increased radius, but without minions it would be a royal pain to play. The issue of enemies simply running right up to you happens whenever you get a low damage roll, otherwise the stun (with a +46% stun duration belt) helps keep them in the killzone.

On to chaos.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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rlpowell wrote:

A dev at http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/28339/page/2 implied that using the AoE size increase passives with shock nova would affect both the outer size *and* the inner "no damage" size, which means that it gets *harder* to use as you put points in that passive. That seems not cool, so I wanted to point it out here.

-Robin

I see no dev post in that thread <snip>

Oh. There was a large, authoritative-sounding post by someone named "Programmer", so....

Also, thanks for the info.

-Robin

Feedback for running Chaos at lvl 60 with shock nova witch.

This character runs chaos at 60 more smoothly than the DW ranger or the lightning arrow/AoF elemental ranger. The bow ranger had better potential cleartimes but died a lot more. This witch seems fairly safe (albeit because of a zombie wall the rangers did not utilize). Shock nova is doing pretty good DPS for lvl 60 at about 5k, and things die at a respectable rate.

However, this good performance comes with one huge asterisk: I have a 6link armor now, and I didn't for my two rangers. And frankly, with only a lowly 4link, Shock Nova feels pretty bad.

Linked to it I have: Increased AoE, Concentrated Effect, Added Cold, Faster Casts and Mana Leech.

Dispensing with even one of these seriously diminishes performance. Removing Concentrated Effect tanks the DPS to abysmal levels. Removing Increased AoE only gives me a +10% to radius, which makes it harder to apply DPS and easier to get killed. Removing Added Cold makes it easier for enemies to run straight through your killzone and beat on you. The spell is so expensive that removing mana leech removes your ability to cast it for longer than a couple seconds. Faster casts is the easiest to throw out, but it's a serious DPS hit and lets enemies leak through to you more easily.

Anyways point being, without a 5link minimum this skill does not perform well. For my rangers, the upgrade to 6link went from "pretty decent" to "OMG amazing". For this witch, the 6l takes her from "horrible" to "pretty decent".

There are 3 factors at play here: DPS, mana consumption and ease of use. The gems I've linked work on shoring those up, but remove any of them and you've got a problem. It feels like for the difficulty in using this spell either DPS or mana consumption could use a bit of a buff.

Though a possible route that does intrigue me is a in-your-face tanky nova build that runs Conc. Effect and no area increasers. With Tempest Shield, Lightning Warp and Spark, lightning is well suited for close in work. I doubt I'll lvl a whole 2nd nova char, but maybe someone else can try this.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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rlpowell wrote:

Oh. There was a large, authoritative-sounding post by someone named "Programmer", so....

Ah, I see. A name is just a name. Us devs post in gold, so you can tell who we are that way.

It's actually Progammer, without the extra r

The deadzone and the huge damage variance of all lightning attacks make this spell broken.

not an enjoyable gameplay experience.

Some final thoughts on this skill after lvling to 70.

-I like that it isn't the faceroll-friendly spell I remember from 9.2. It takes thought and feel for the ability to properly use it.

-It's great fun to round up a big group of enemies, pop diamond, and let them walk into your impenetrable ring of death.

-When things don't break your way, the spell is very annoying to use. Some specific examples:

Desync/lag: And I thought cleave had it bad! Watching the circle of lightning animate right on top of a guy for no damage is infuriating.

Line of sight vagaries: With doors or rubble or rocks or whatever, often you can't quite tell what is in line of sight to get hit by nova and what isn't. Nova unhelpfully animates the same regardless of LoS.

Melee/Ranged unit mixes: Especially noticeable with skeletons or humans. You come up to a group of enemies. The melee enemies advance towards you while the ranged guys sit in the back shooting you. Without a whole load of area increasers, you have a few unpalatable choices. You can sit back and try to hit the melee guys while the ranged stunlock you. Or you can advance to hit the ranged, putting the melee in your deadzone so they can stunlock you. Or you can waste a bunch of time running around seperating them so you can run/warp in between them, or pick them off piecemeal, which is tedious and annoying.

Minion Reliance: If minions didn't exist, I might have quit on this witch. Frost wall is decent (and very handy when you just enter a zone), but not something you want to spam every fight. I've been able to function decently without minions...but only after outlvling the content (and abusing diamond flasks).

Need for tankiness: Relates a bit to minion reliance. Shock nova puts you in harm's way much more than your typical spell like fireball or icespear. I was originally going to run Pain Attunement with Blood Magic supported auras...then realized that I was essentially required to get Chaos Innoculation instead, unless I wanted to painstakingly let my minions grab aggro on every fight.

-As I said before, you're not well rewarded for putting up with all this. At lvl 70 I'm doing 6k DPS, which is not good for a 6link geared character (the rest of my gear is not amazing, but it isn't significantly worse than my rangers). And I spend a mind-boggling 350 mana per second to do so (and no, I have not stupidly overinvested in faster cast or something).

This skill is just broken to me now. Lining up enemies takes time which takes away from dps and prevents the spell from being cast in quick succession. Something as quirky as the "misses almost everything" halo effect needs to have some kind of a bonus. Real low mana cost, very high dps, faster cast rate, anything. Trying to make a nova build ended in frustration, the skill just isn't fun at all to use.

Everyone complained about the old shock nova being too OP but most people had fun using it. This is just a gem that takes space in the stash. Good luck trying to trade it either. No one wants to use this skill.

Its a bummer really because you guys have spent an awful lot of time tweaking and changing this skill. It just doesn't work in its current form. Maybe try making it function like its old form, but in a cone or a one direction wave?

I'm nearly lvl 60 in my shock nova zombie witch.

I don't mind the high damage variance. That's a typical implementation for lightning damage in games. I don't mind it, and it comes in exchange for relatively fast casting spells compared to cold.

What I don't like is the doughnut. It might be a good idea, but it would require significant upgrades to the engine not to be a constant, irritating problem. The angle of view, line of site bugginess, lag, and screen representation that does not match spell affect area all taken together suggest that a disk would be better than a doughnut.

I agree with what has been said above about need for many sockets to try to cure the defects. It's not really playable without 3 linked sockts minimum.

Also, while greater area of effect can help, the band where damage is done appears to get thinner. So larger area of effect means you don't have to get as close to the action, but you do have to move around a lot trying to hit anything. Wasted time and mana.

Lose the doughnut and make it a disk imo. If not that, fatten up the damage area substantially so that only things right on top of the caster are safe.