How effective is Innervate Support?

Hi, hopefully someone knowledgeable can help me out, I've tried my best but haven't been able to find an answer to my problem. TL;DR will innervate give me better shock chance over a damage support?

Here is my situation: I would like to use a lightning spell to shock an enemy (preferably bosses) before hitting them with my main fire spell. I am using traps, and my current links for lightning are [shock nova+trap and mine damage+concentrated effect+innervate] but they are linked inside the Deerstalkers unique boots to receive free Trap Support. My question is simple. What is the most reliable way to get a shock from this skill? Should I use something like Lightning Penetration Support to increase the damage further? As I understand it, I will only shock if I crit or proc my "chance to shock" and then do enough lightning damage to shock for some duration. I am focusing on crit chance in my build but would prefer the most reliable shock chance off a single trap.

Sorry if that was long-winded, it's been bugging me all night!

Use Vaal Lightning Trap. Neither approach is going to do enough damage to shock a boss for a significant duration.

You are absolutely correct. I was planning on using it but forgot to mention it. You are probably right that neither approach will shock enough, so Vaal Lightning Trap will be perfect most of the time. For things like Izaro, I'll probably stick with more damage over Innervate, since I could crit him for enough to shock if I'm lucky. Thanks for the quick feedback!

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Royksu wrote:

You are absolutely correct. I was planning on using it but forgot to mention it. You are probably right that neither approach will shock enough, so Vaal Lightning Trap will be perfect most of the time. For things like Izaro, I'll probably stick with more damage over Innervate, since I could crit him for enough to shock if I'm lucky. Thanks for the quick feedback!

Vaal skills do not work vs izaro at all. Just so you know.

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kompaniet wrote:

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Royksu wrote:

You are absolutely correct. I was planning on using it but forgot to mention it. You are probably right that neither approach will shock enough, so Vaal Lightning Trap will be perfect most of the time. For things like Izaro, I'll probably stick with more damage over Innervate, since I could crit him for enough to shock if I'm lucky. Thanks for the quick feedback!

Vaal skills do not work vs izaro at all. Just so you know.

Thanks for the friendly reminder, but I was aware. In fact I decided to use Shock Nova+Concentrated Effect+Trap and Mine Damage+Lightning Penetration for now, but I'm still unsure if Increased Critical Strike Chance Support instead of Lightning Penetration would be more efficient for Izaro or times when I no longer have souls for Vaal Lightning Trap. I might just try swapping and see if I notice more shocks with one over the other.

Innervate is great for mapping and dealing with trash mobs, and greatly increases clear speed.
At bosses it's a slot wasted, most of the time. Shocking them with sufficient duration is an illusion, onslaught effect dissipates soon after you clear boss adds at the beginning. If boss spawns adds during fight gem could be somehow useful.

Innervate Support is being changed in 3.0 to be an added lightning damage buff of some kind afaik.

Vaal Lightning Trap - or being a lightning damage build with unusually high single-hit damage - are the only ways to reliably shock bosses. The second method is not actually reliable against really vicious bosses.

Bosses being largely immune to status ailments outside of Ignite is a big reason why Elemental Focus is as powerful/valued as it is - nobody feels the loss of status ailments is a problem at all, let alone one worth not using a gigantic 'More' modifier.

I'm actually hopeful that one day we'll get better mechanics for inflicting/making use of elemental status ailments, to make them a more viable part of builds. I like ailments and disapprove of the system being basically superfluous because large, hardened targets are all but immune to anything but "[X]'d Ground" ailment modifiers. Or Vessel of Muhfuggin' Vinktar.

For now, though? I'd focus on getting as much damage as possible on your Shock Nova traps. The somewhat higher proc chance from Innervate won't make up for losing a bunch of damage that reduces your Shock durations even if they do proc. Lightning Pen or Inc. Critstrikes (I'd go for Inc. Critstrikes myself) will either help make the Shocks you do land more significant or significantly increase the chances of landing a critical-based Shock, which lasts longer and does more for you than a non-crit Innervate Shock.

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1453R wrote:

Vaal Lightning Trap - or being a lightning damage build with unusually high single-hit damage - are the only ways to reliably shock bosses. The second method is not actually reliable against really vicious bosses.

Bosses being largely immune to status ailments outside of Ignite is a big reason why Elemental Focus is as powerful/valued as it is - nobody feels the loss of status ailments is a problem at all, let alone one worth not using a gigantic 'More' modifier.

I'm actually hopeful that one day we'll get better mechanics for inflicting/making use of elemental status ailments, to make them a more viable part of builds. I like ailments and disapprove of the system being basically superfluous because large, hardened targets are all but immune to anything but "[X]'d Ground" ailment modifiers. Or Vessel of Muhfuggin' Vinktar.

For now, though? I'd focus on getting as much damage as possible on your Shock Nova traps. The somewhat higher proc chance from Innervate won't make up for losing a bunch of damage that reduces your Shock durations even if they do proc. Lightning Pen or Inc. Critstrikes (I'd go for Inc. Critstrikes myself) will either help make the Shocks you do land more significant or significantly increase the chances of landing a critical-based Shock, which lasts longer and does more for you than a non-crit Innervate Shock.

I've been waiting for this kind of answer and after trying things out myself I feel your first statement is true. At this point I'm considering not even using shock nova, or maybe not using my ice trap. I'm only level 76 and one shot trash in shaped strands with 4 link ice trap, and don't have much trouble with rare mobs. Even with 2 week turmoil mods like invasion, breach, and beyond bosses, I feel like I don't shock enemies enough for it to matter, and when it does I can usually use vaal lightning trap. I'll likely have to decide what skill to use for my trash clear, either way I need to use something for EE to boost my 5 link fire trap. I chose to get tons of AOE despite the nerfs, and with conc effect on a single fire trap I could likely clear around the same speed. Somehow using cluster trap on ice trap is almost the same size. I would simply ignore most trash that doesn't get hit by fire trap, but they tend to wander into the burning ground anyway. I'll probably try a bunch of different things, because I'm still unsure what's best.

For now, I plan to use 5L fire trap with conc effect+trap and mine damage+controlled destruction+fire penetration for both clear speed and boss kills. I'll vaal lightning trap bosses or when I can just spend the souls easily, and just not worry about shocking anyone else. I might not even use a trap to proc EE, I might use a CoH setup with Ele Weakness, not sure what to use, maybe vortex? Something that will get through trash and the slow is nice. From what you said though I'm wondering if ele focus would be better for fire trap, despite obviously losing my ignite. If the burning ground scales with ele focus I imagine it would be better. I appreciate all the feedback from everyone, I'm starting to get a better idea of what to do. Hope that wasn't too long-winded...

Elemental ailments probably need a rework. Shock and Freeze are useless against bosses if you don't invest heavily into them, and even then, some of the bosses are simply immune against them. Add to that the fact that with the exception of Chill and Freeze, they don't really offer anything against trash mobs besides increased damage, which is unnecessary and can be achieved better with other means.
Ignite no longer scaling off hit damage and the nerf of Emberwake + Taming combo will probably kill it, too.

One thing they could do with ailments is add more ways to use them as triggers, e.g. as with items like Razor of the Seventh Sun and Cameria's Maul. Maybe an item that lets you leech life with your lightning damage from shocked enemies, one that has a chance to revive shattered frozen enemies as spectres or one that makes your fire based projectiles chain between ignited monsters, stuff like that.