Boneshatter needs help.

Indeed. It's a good skill, perhaps too good, but it's annoying to use it. If you're going the stun buildup way, it quickly becomes unusable on basic mobs - you can easily prime elites/bosses, but you'll overshoot basic mobs.

I wouldn't mind seeing Boneshatter generally nerfed in power, but becoming reliable to use instead of being powerful but extra quirky.

Isn't that the payoff though? You set things up properly, now since they're in range of Boneshatter, you can boneshatter.

There's this weird mindset thing going on here of "I should be able to do it anyhow, even if i didn't meet the requirements". No, that's not how this works.

Is the problem that you're investing TOO much into stun and things are getting heavy stunned before you can boneshatter? If that's the case...then why not take the nodes that allow you to benefit from heavy stunning something?

Titan's ascendancy, Surprising Strength. +40% more damage against heavy stunned enemies.

Heavy Contact: Hits that heavy stun have culling strike

Skullcrusher: 20% more damage against heavy stunned enemies while using maces

Overheating blow: Heavy stunning hits apply fire exposure

Shattering Blow: Break 50% of armor on heavy stun


Congratulations, that leap slam onto the group of white enemies applied fire exposure to everyone in there and broke 50% of all their armor. Now, if you do a second leap slap onto that same group, you'll be doing potentially 60% more damage with the second leap slam baseline, plus it'll be hitting enemies that have 50% less armor, and if you have fire damage infusion on your leap slam, they're also exposed to fire. All from two jumps.

You're so incredibly obsessed with the idea of "I need boneshatter to work in order to stun things or i have no damage" that you're forgetting there's an entire rest of the game aside from it.

If you don't over-invest in stun, you get the option of using Boneshatter as your AOE tool to finish off packs. If you do invest in stun, you have the option of making the heavy stun be the payoff, not the hit that caused it, allowing you the freedom to use larger, easier to hit abilities to proc the initial heavy stun and start your damage window.

Stop thinking so linearly.

"

just_dont#6539 wrote:

Indeed. It's a good skill, perhaps too good, but it's annoying to use it. If you're going the stun buildup way, it quickly becomes unusable on basic mobs - you can easily prime elites/bosses, but you'll overshoot basic mobs.

I wouldn't mind seeing Boneshatter generally nerfed in power, but becoming reliable to use instead of being powerful but extra quirky.

Yeah, that's a good compromise I'd be willing to see made. Mechanical use is the king of feels-good. And I'd like the skill to feel better.

"

xenigmatica#6388 wrote:

snipped

Who are you ranting at exactly? If it's me for my suggestion, I'll step up to the plate.

You're arguing about how players should meet the current requirements for Boneshatter and be satisfied with how the current game plays around those requirements. I am arguing that in practice, these requirements feel like crap and have nothing to do with the insinuated mindset nor the linear thinking you mentioned. I will explain why.

For characters who spec into stun even a little bit (Titans being the prime case here) it is very easy to heavy stun an enemy accidentally. By doing so, this removes the opportunity to use Boneshatter on them as an option for damage or clear. For a skill about stunning enemies it feels strangely awful to use with characters who stun enemies. See the irony? In the end, the optimal gameplay for a character with minor stun investment involves walking an awkward tightrope around not doing too much stun. God forbid you do the thing you built for and waste your precious Boneshatter! This feels awful. The optimal Boneshatter use for these characters feels god awful.

And that's where my suggestion comes in (which you didn't even address, I might add). Having Boneshatter proc occur either when an enemy is primed by stun or shortly after a Heavy Stun would eliminate this feels-bad, allowing the satisfying payoff of using this skill. If damage buffs from Heavy Stun are a concern, simply add "This skill does not benefit from damage bonuses during Heavy Stun" to Boneshatter, problem solved. It's current design isn't for using after heavy stunning an enemy anyways, so it doesn't change anything.

"

For characters who spec into stun even a little bit (Titans being the prime case here) it is very easy to heavy stun an enemy accidentally.

This right here is important: Why do you specifically single out Titans when you mention 'heavy stunning accidentally"? Because of Crushing Impacts? Because if you're trying to say "It's hard to use boneshatter with crushing impacts", then...yes? Every ability that hits will heavy stun past the threshold. That's the point of it for titans; faster and automatic heavy stuns. Then, you take the Surprising Strength nodes further in the ascendancy to, when you've already heavy stunned something automatically, have a window of increased damage.

The fact that you specify "accidentally stunning" on titan leads me to believe this has to do with that, so it's kinda important to bring up. If you're trying to still use Boneshatter with Crushing Impacts, you are making your life difficult by choice, instead of playing into the benefit of the ascendancy. That's not the game's fault.

As for "things other than titans", let's consider white mobs, the easiest thing to build up stun on. If you use 1 ability on them, and it FULLY fills their stun bar...great, you likely have more than enough damage to kill them without even worrying about Boneshatter, to land that much stun on them with a single ability. Otherwise, you're in the realm of "Almost filling the gauge/almost accidentally stunning them". That means your gauge is near full, but now full.

White mobs are primed for stun whenever the gauge is over 40%, so if you're not outright stunning them with one hit, by your examples, you are then priming them for stun with that one hit, and can boneshatter, so what's the issue?

I hope it's the Titan thing.

"

And that's where my suggestion comes in (which you didn't even address, I might add).

If you'd like me to, I can i guess.

"

Having Boneshatter proc occur either when an enemy is primed by stun or shortly after a Heavy Stun would eliminate this feels-bad, allowing the satisfying payoff of using this skill. If damage buffs from Heavy Stun are a concern, simply add "This skill does not benefit from damage bonuses during Heavy Stun" to Boneshatter, problem solved. It's current design isn't for using after heavy stunning an enemy anyways, so it doesn't change anything.

so "make another window on top of the heavy stun window in which i can use boneshatter if i didn't use it on the primed mob"?

You are asking for the game to bend around your unwillingness to learn a mechanic basically.

If you miss the window for perfect strike, should you still get the full damage as well? Because fundamentally, that's what you're asking: If i don't act when i'm supposed to, but do it after, can i still get the full benefit?

Why should you? Because it 'feels bad' to miss?

Then don't miss.

"

xenigmatica#6388 wrote:

so "make another window on top of the heavy stun window in which i can use boneshatter if i didn't use it on the primed mob"?

You are asking for the game to bend around your unwillingness to learn a mechanic basically.

Here we go again, you're trying to make it about someone's unwillingness to learn something, lol. No. I'm asking for the design to change because in my opinion it is currently bad design. Perhaps it sounds strange at first, but players can have an opinion on design without it being because they can't learn how to best optimize it.

"

xenigmatica#6388 wrote:

If you miss the window for perfect strike, should you still get the full damage as well? Because fundamentally, that's what you're asking: If i don't act when i'm supposed to, but do it after, can i still get the full benefit?

No, this implication is incorrect. But now I think I now know why your posts keep going in circles. For whatever reason I believe you think the current Boneshatter implementation is the "correct" way it should be designed, and that should be the end of story. Am I correct? This is shown when you talk about "acting when I'm supposed to" as if the design is set in stone. If so, why do you feel so strongly about it? Seriously, I'm curious! Because you haven't yet posted any reasons for its current design. Instead, you've just shot down people's ideas in each thread I've seen.

This is an early access game - some things need to change. And, most definitely, some things will change.

"

Nicksiren#6476 wrote:

Boneshatter feels awesome to use... sometimes. The idea of using an ability to heavy stun and dealing great burst damage is super satisfying. Yet it feels terrible when ANOTHER ability heavy stuns an enemy and thus you can't use Boneshatter. The gameplay devolves into an awkward case of... not trying to fully stun enemies? What the heck?

Boneshatter mechanics need help.

Solution: make the trigger for Boneshatter be unique, occurring when an enemy is primed for stun OR shortly after being heavy stunned by another skill (e.g., 2-3 seconds).

Also, please make the trigger icon appear instantly over enemy heads. Right now there is a delay of about 1 second and it feels really bad. I almost always end up triggering Boneshatter out of mechanical habit without seeing the icon.

"

halaska4#4710 wrote:

Boneshatter is awesome, but it feels so annoying to have to manage the sweetspot between too little break and too much break

^

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3607508

This would fix some of the issues with Crushing Blows hindering Titans more than it helps.

+1. Boneshatter would be much more usable to play with if it also worked directly after a heavy stun (during the stun cooldown). Crushing Blows literally turns off the skill entirely, and needing to fiddle with your stun buildup level by level to just have the skill work feels needlessly punishing.

"

xenigmatica#6388 wrote:

This right here is important: Why do you specifically single out Titans when you mention 'heavy stunning accidentally"? Because of Crushing Impacts?

Titans are associated with slams. Slams are associated with maces. Maces and slams are both associated with stuns. Titans are Warriors. Warriors are have a bunch of passive tree nodes which incentivize building into stun. So no, not just Crushing Impacts.

"

xenigmatica#6388 wrote:

The fact that you specify "accidentally stunning" on titan leads me to believe this has to do with that, so it's kinda important to bring up. If you're trying to still use Boneshatter with Crushing Impacts, you are making your life difficult by choice, instead of playing into the benefit of the ascendancy. That's not the game's fault.

I agree that with its current implementation, Crushing Impacts is a bad choice to take with Boneshatter, but that is not the issue here, as I described above. I do think there is something to be said about redesigning Crushing Impacts (or it's ordering, at least), but that's a bit different of a discussion.

"

xenigmatica#6388 wrote:

As for "things other than titans", let's consider white mobs(...)

White mobs aren't an issue because, as you say, they don't have enough life to matter. The issue is more apparent with difficult magic mobs, but especially so with rare mobs. Accidentally putting them over the threshold for Boneshatter (which happens quite frequently) is a lot of damage lost. Like, a lot. Thus feeling bad when a juicy opportunity is lost for something that is mostly out of player control (with aforementioned characters). The two styles of mechanic and build are antithetical.

+1

It's one of the more frustrating things i've run into. Boneshatter is a really good skill, but it feels really bad when you could have cleared a whole pack with it but unfortunately you have just a little too much stun build up, so now you're forced to use another probably less-optimal skill with less range (because you can't use multiple of the same skill gems).

Edit: While we're on the topic of stun, I really would like to see it changed anyways. It could just be because a lot of skill gems are missing from the game right now, but I don't really have an answer for when I can't use boneshatter and a pack has been spread out wildly from stun knockback. It's a good mechanic for bosses/tougher mobs, but there have been a few times where I wish it didn't spread a pack out.

"

Nicksiren#6476 wrote:

"

xenigmatica#6388 wrote:

The issue is more apparent with difficult magic mobs, but especially so with rare mobs. Accidentally putting them over the threshold for Boneshatter (which happens quite frequently) is a lot of damage lost. Like, a lot. Thus feeling bad when a juicy opportunity is lost for something that is mostly out of player control (with aforementioned characters). The two styles of mechanic and build are antithetical.

So we're talking about the 60/70% windows for priming. And considering you are speaking about how "titans run into this", but it's not about crushing, that would mean...you're running into over-gauge issues from an aftershock repeat of a slam?

Consider this for me, let's go back to something previously:

"

Also, please make the trigger icon appear instantly over enemy heads. Right now there is a delay of about 1 second and it feels really bad. I almost always end up triggering Boneshatter out of mechanical habit without seeing the icon.

Consider for a moment if this updates in the proper time, instead of having the weird delays it's having right now. You now know the moment something is in Boneshatter window. How many more slams do you think you'll accidentally hit before you react, if this gets fixed?