Boneshatter

83 champion impale/crit, with 100% taunt/hit ascendancy - noticed Im missing attacks on monsters quite often. Swapped to blood stance and seems the issue is fixed. Using flesh and stone

does this skill "hit" me so i can proc tempest shield with it?

I just learned about this skill and my character (Aegis SST) seems accidentally built for it:



5136 is the amount of physical damage you take from 24 Trauma Stacks, I reduce that to 406.

So there is some serious investment involved here, one would assume that much required investment would come with a huge advantage, but it doesn't.

Despite slotting in a 500 pdps onehander, I end up with worse power than just using SST and a cheap, unique shield.

PoB for quick and dirty boneshatter:

https://pastebin.com/zkSFwXEN

PoB for just going SST:

https://pastebin.com/kx1akUBw

Based on having played Boneshatter exclusively on a Juggernaut into high-80ies (87 currently):

The skill is quite satisfying to play (when it works) and mechanically interesting, being able to scale via stun duration and extra strike targets for overlapping pulses knocking out large packs including tough rares in a single attack.

HOWEVER, the skill is mechanically broken for two reasons.

First off, it's a strike skill and like every other non-movement strike skill it is atrocious to use against any target that's moving the slightest. While increased melee strike range and additional strike targets to some extent alleviate this there's a constant struggle to actually hit some enemies, forcing you to reposition repeatedly to hit the enemy. Even making sure to not name-lock the target and using the additional strike targets to auto-aim strike skills will often fail to hit, primarily due to even the smallest enemy movement but sometimes for apparently no reason whatsoever, even with Resolute Technique. Non-strike aoe attacks never have this issue and until this is sorted out strike skills will remain frustrating to dejecting to play.

Secondly as pointed out by GGG "There are some mechanical shortfalls of the way Stun currently works." the pulse supposed to be released on stun sometimes simply does not occur. This is not restricted to enemies with unwavering or on maps with the same modifier, but happens frequently on any targets. Running around in high-density situations such as an expedition area and hitting without any resulting pulse on an attack typically means the player is at high risk of taking alot of damage. While merely annoying in low-risk situations, this makes the skill nigh unplayable in high-risk scenarios.

Can the damage dealt to yourself with boneshatter critically strike? I was thinking of converting the damage to cold, using both The Brass Dome and Winterheart to permanently freeze a Juggernaut with cold crits.

Playing BS with a Juggy and sometimes I deal no damage to enemies even though I have that unique axe with culling strike and hits can't be evaded with hit chance to evasive monsters as 100% I even have some accuracy from tree as well. It becomes fine once I move my character a little but usually it stops dealing damage when I stand in one place for more than a sec. Its kind of hard to tell if I take damage because of trauma stacks since I'm usually surrounded by mobs (have cannot be stunned ascendancy and not frozen) so I'm taking some small hits as well but definitely not dealing damage even to stunned enemies.

When using boneshatter with general's cry the character doesn't get the trauma stacks, is this intended or a bug?

No complains, just wanted to understand the skill interaction.

Level 96 Slayer, just picked up Boneshatter this league and loving it.

When I'm fighting rare/unique mobs that tank a lot of hits and I start taking too much damage, I then start to look for how many stacks I'm at and try to monitor it. However I have about 20 different buffs and they're always in different places, so it can take a while to find my stacks.

Is there any way to move the buff so we can easily track it? Perhaps put a counter on the actual skill icon itself, kind of like vaal skill charges & warcry exerts?

Boneshatter of Complex Trauma

I don't know if this skill is overpowered at all but it compares to other melee skills way to favorably. This skill requires you to build some defense/recovery to deal with its downside. This is something pretty much every melee build has to do in the current game, except the other skills are not getting rewarded for it.

If you play at an optimal attack speed to maintain 9 stacks of trauma it has a whopping 700% damage effectiveness at 85% attack speed.

Groundslam has about 317% damage effectiveness to targets that are close at 90% attack speed.

It's clear that bone shatter of complex trauma slam dunks on ground slam, like it does on pretty much every other melee skill.

I think the payout for overcoming the trauma stacks is too high and that other melee skills should be closer in power.

Increasing the baseline power level of melee will make all melee skills more playable and enjoyable but build diversity will still be hurt by having clear outliers.