Anti-Synergy between Stun abilities & Boneshatter

I've been using Boneshatter as part of my build and it's really good for clearing out mobs, however there is occasionally anti synergy as if my Stun causing abilities are too powerful they will push the enemy into Heavy Stun immediately and losing the chance to use Boneshatter.

I don't think that's too bad on its own as it can be managed and played around, however I think the Titan ascendancy and Crushing Impacts in particular is some egregiously bad anti-synergy as it becomes basically impossible to proc heavy stun with the ability, despite the ability being heavy-stun synergistic inherently and pushing you towards builds that cause Stun buildup. What makes this truly awful is that Surprising Strength is locked behind Crushing Impacts, something highly desirable for a stun build. Titan ascendancy seems like the obvious choice for this ability however it ends up not working out that way.

Maybe Boneshatter could proc on both Primed for Stun enemies OR on an already Heavy Stunned enemy (once per instance of Heavy Stun)?

You're misunderstanding Crushing Impact and not realizing the potential benefit of it.

Crushing Impact will make any hit on a target that is primed for stun, immediately heavy stun that target. That includes bows, quarterstaff hits, other mace abilities, spells, etc. Anything that hits a target in their threshold, will not proc the entire rest of the stun and put them in heavy stun status.

As you can see with the talent directly after Crushing Impacts, Surprising Strength will give a damage bonus for heavy stunning a target, as will a number of nodes on the tree that are related to stun buildup. There is a benefit to heavy stunning a target, and before taking Crushing Impacts, you either needed to fill the entire gauge to reach that point, or you had to get them in range and use Boneshatter to bridge the gap to it.

With Crushing Impacts, you now are not locked into using a mace, you are not locked into using Boneshatter to proc Heavy Stun faster, and you have the potential to, with 2 more ascendancy points or tree pathing for what you favor, make use of your easily procced heavy stun status to get things 'down' quicker, and unload whatever method of violence you prefer to unload onto them.

The talent is not 'broken', it's people being incredibly closed minded and not realizing that "I lose boneshatter, but i gain other things".

This. EXACTLY this. I tried to post about this on Reddit but it was removed by the moderators for some strange reason. The issue is the mechanics of stun are wonky. Through the campaign and early maps, you can easily just Leap Slam into a group of mobs "priming" them for stun, then whack away with Boneshatter to clear the packs. That works fine...until you get into higher tier maps. Then, you need a stronger weapon. This also works fine. The issue is BACKWARD compatibility. If you use your UBER whacking stick in LOWER tier maps, ANY melee hit instantly stuns EVERYTHING and makes everything impossible to "prime" for stun. This effectively makes LOWER tier maps harder than HIGHER tier maps because you can't prime your stuns and so you wind up having to run away from 200 angry mobs you pissed off and can't "finish" with your Boneshatter. This needs to get fixed.

GGG: Simple fix -- either make a new support gem that allows attacks to contribute to Stun buildup but not actually COMPLETE the stun, or just fix Pin to change the effect from "does not contribute to Stun buildup" to actually fall in line with the tooltip description that says "unable to Stun enemies" that way we can add it to our "priming" skill like Leap Slam

I'm leveling a warbringer warrior with leapslap and boneshatter.

I've been using leapslam to "prime" the heavy stuns for my boneshatter to clear, then when i hit act 1 cruel i switched out to a wep with a ton of increased stun rate on it, this made it feel really odd and led me to do some testing,

and as the guys above mentioned, i was stunning enemies too hard, ie my leap slam would make my enemies fall over instead of getting primed for heavy stun resulting in boneshatter being entirely useless.

No idea if this is intended, but enemies that tumble over should defi still have the heavy stun priming on em imo.

"

Deyja#0598 wrote:

No idea if this is intended, but enemies that tumble over should defi still have the heavy stun priming on em imo.

'falling over' = stunned.

If you're suggesting "stunned enemies should be primed for heavy stun" you're suggesting that you should be able to basically spam boneshatter on a heavy stunned enemy, as well as being able to use it on an already primed enemy, creating a situation where all you do is spec into stun, hit a leap into a group and spam boneshatter on a priority target that is either primed from the leap, or stunned from the leap, hitting it constantly for full boneshatter damage.

That's a situation where every other skill can no longer exist, or one where you significantly nerf the damage output of boneshatter to compensate for this.

Both options sound really bad.

"

xenigmatica#6388 wrote:

"

Deyja#0598 wrote:

No idea if this is intended, but enemies that tumble over should defi still have the heavy stun priming on em imo.

'falling over' = stunned.

If you're suggesting "stunned enemies should be primed for heavy stun" you're suggesting that you should be able to basically spam boneshatter on a heavy stunned enemy, as well as being able to use it on an already primed enemy, creating a situation where all you do is spec into stun, hit a leap into a group and spam boneshatter on a priority target that is either primed from the leap, or stunned from the leap, hitting it constantly for full boneshatter damage.

That's a situation where every other skill can no longer exist, or one where you significantly nerf the damage output of boneshatter to compensate for this.

Both options sound really bad.

Well, i defi won't claim to know the solution, but it defi felt bad to go from consistently being able to leapslam -> boneshatter a pack to not being able to clear at all due to everyone falling over when i upgraded my weapon.

"

Deyja#0598 wrote:

"

xenigmatica#6388 wrote:

"

Deyja#0598 wrote:

No idea if this is intended, but enemies that tumble over should defi still have the heavy stun priming on em imo.

'falling over' = stunned.

If you're suggesting "stunned enemies should be primed for heavy stun" you're suggesting that you should be able to basically spam boneshatter on a heavy stunned enemy, as well as being able to use it on an already primed enemy, creating a situation where all you do is spec into stun, hit a leap into a group and spam boneshatter on a priority target that is either primed from the leap, or stunned from the leap, hitting it constantly for full boneshatter damage.

That's a situation where every other skill can no longer exist, or one where you significantly nerf the damage output of boneshatter to compensate for this.

Both options sound really bad.

Well, i defi won't claim to know the solution, but it defi felt bad to go from consistently being able to leapslam -> boneshatter a pack to not being able to clear at all due to everyone falling over when i upgraded my weapon.

I get where you're coming from, done 3 warriors now. What's your second weapon slot, if i may ask?

You consider the idea of having the heavy stun weapon for bosses, and a different mace with more +dmg or aoe for trash pulls? Because by the sound of it, you just have so much stun investment that whites are going from 0 right to 100%, so you're having to wait through the initial heavy stun you just inflicted, letting their bar recover, and trying to refill it a second time if they survive long enough.

If that's occuring, there's two options: Get a different mace with less +stun for clearing, or just fucking all-in on stun. Heavy Contact node, Smash, Skullcrusher, Breaking Blows...

That's would actually solve my problems, I completely forgot about being able to use my offhand for the leapslam, super smart way to deal with it!

It's going to take awhile to get used to this dual weapon slot system.

There are certainly some anti synergies that probably shouldn't be. Things that ought to work together but don't.
Overinvesting in stun to the point that you don't have a chance to use a stun trigger can be one of those, but the solution is to alter your setup so that you aren't overinvested in stun anymore.

There are also some anti synergies and are entirely allowable and presumably on purpose, because you are not meant to use both of those things together.
A prime example of the latter, already mentioned in this thread but from the wrong angle, is Crushing Impacts and Boneshatter.

I hate to be the kind of guy outright saying a build choice is wrong, but if you're using both Crushing Impacts and Boneshatter, you're just wrong. Plain and simple.
They aren't just an anti-synergy, they're separate build elements that are not meant to be used together. They should never both be equipped.
Would you pick the Mercenary ascendency that makes all attacks culling, then use Killing Palm?

You use Bone Shatter as your way to heavy stun in a build that doesn't have a better way to do it. A build that has less investment in stun. Less.
You use Crushing Impacts in a build where you want to freely stun without relying on a specific ability. A build that has more investment in stun.
And in that 2nd build, you obviously do not utilize any skill that's meant to be a heavy stun trigger. You made every ability a stun trigger, don't add to the redundancy.

"

It's going to take awhile to get used to this dual weapon slot system.

Oh i'm aware. For a while, I was screwing around with the idea of breaking armor via resonant shield in an aoe, then switching to a high damage crossbow to high velocity round tag them for the 600% damage it gave to fully broken targets.

There's some derpy ass stuff you can think up when weapon sets auto swap like this.