Primed for Stun triggers need to work at least once on targets already stunned through other means

Did you know there's a cheeky little combo you can do with maces as soon as you get both Rolling Slam and Boneshatter (aka VERY early on)? Use Rolling Slam, but during a small window around when the first slam lands (juuust before it lands in my experience), you can hold Boneshatter to cancel Rolling Slam after the first slam to immediately follow that slam up with Boneshatter. In the right conditions, the slam will put at least one monster in the stun window, and the Boneshatter follow-up will trigger that stun, exploding the unfortunate mob pack in early Act 1 with a relatively quick one-two.

But is this a good combo? NO!!!!! This combo heavily hinges on the 'in the right conditions' operative to a fault because if the first slam isn't sufficient enough to put enemies in Boneshatter's stun window, you end up using Boneshatter wastefully as you slap enemies with a wet noodle of a melee attack that doesn't build stun, and because the combo window is small and preemptive, you can't react if the stun doesn't quite connect, aside from attempting to fix things with a retreating roll of shame.

'But if the first hit isn't enough, why not build more stun buildup?' Good idea- whoops I built too much stun buildup and now my first slam fully stuns the mob pack in one hit. Because Boneshatter only triggers its shockwave if the skill itself triggers the stun, that means I can't use Boneshatter to kaboom the pack anymore. It's even worse because an insufficient stun just requires more buildup, but an overkill stun has a long window before you can even attempt to build stun again, and in the context of mob packs, you practically don't have a second chance and should be killing them before your second attempt anyway.

'So just build less stun buildup.' That would then be following the same philosophy that reflect, one of the most despised features in ARPGs, follows: punishing stat surplus. Sure, building a stat so much that you neglect everything else should a bad idea and is a skill issue when it inevitably blows up in someone's face. However, players should be incentivized to improve their builds with bigger numbers where reasonably possible without fretting over accidental stat surpluses. What's the consequence of needlessly overcapping a resistance by accident, aside from probably having bad resistances or stats elsewhere? Whoops, but hey it's not like a surplus of cold resistance would amplify the amount of cold damage you take. But a sweet-spot stun window means you need to build the perfect amount of stun buildup, and considering all the different factors that can adjust the window (ex. the monsters you fight, the damage you output, other people in the party also contributing to stun buildup, etc.), who in the world wants to be meticulous with stun buildup of all stats!?

Now let me clear one thing up: I don't want it to be a case where a mace build spams Boneshatter over and over against a stunned boss (that's Perfect Strike's job), I just want Boneshatter to be able to fulfill its one-and-done trigger effect even if the target is stunned by other means. It would make this skill (and Staggering Palm) feel much better to use without having too many points of accidental sabotage, and it would make my funny little combo I based this entire post off of far less janky to use.

Maybe a support gem that says "Cannot stun, 20% more stun buildup" or something like that. Allowing a skill to build up stun but never past 99% or something.

Maybe have it be able to trigger of stunned enemies but will go on a short cooldown if used on a stunned enemy instead of a primed enemy.

Something like 4-6 seconds which you can reduce if you invest in increased cdr. That way it can become a spammer on stunned boss for big investment but not without it.

so i have maybe kind of a dumb question about all of this. but i am glad you posted.

i had been trying out the rolling slam followed by bone shatter combo you are talking about. it is kind of the closest thing to actual 'melee' play that i could come up with. ok, forget my comment about melee let's not argue about that part.

i was using the combo and it seemed to work ok. but at a certain point i upgraded my weapon and had upgraded some skills and it seems not to work so well anymore? is the message in this post that if you take stun too far then you cannot use bone shatter?

if it is . . . all i can say is . . . ugh. what the heck. i do try to pay attention to the shiny ball on top of mob's head as to when i should bone shatter. but if my stun is going to far so that i might not get that shiny ball anymore . . . just wtf is this design.

thanks for any info. i have tried reading the tooltip etc but have not been able to figure it out.

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fouquet#0993 wrote:

Maybe have it be able to trigger of stunned enemies but will go on a short cooldown if used on a stunned enemy instead of a primed enemy.

Something like 4-6 seconds which you can reduce if you invest in increased cdr. That way it can become a spammer on stunned boss for big investment but not without it.

Problem with that is it would only "fix" it for one skill, and at the cost of a gem slot, when the problem is with the core functionality.

Plus it would do nothing for situations where you use skill A, that primes them, then skill B which is already on the way, and then you notice that A primed, but B just wiped it.

The priming should just last a little bit, regardless of if the mob is subsequently or instantly stunned or not. Just let us upgrade the stun to a heavy one.

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vincent_vfx#4010 wrote:

i have tried reading the tooltip etc but have not been able to figure it out.

Aside from maybe going over the basics of heavy stun again, you probably aren't missing anything. There are way too many variables which can skew things too much for the combo to be relied upon, which is honestly a shame because it does work on occasions, and when it does, it's a really fun technique for something so simple. It makes me wonder if other similar cancel combos exist.

Good thread. This is something I haven't really seen anyone talk about, mostly because people aren't playing stun builds. Monk Daze/Stun builds (Wind Blast, Staggering Palm, etc.) have the same issue because it's very easy to accidentally trigger the "stun ready" status on enemies and then overwrite it with one more hit that stuns the enemy. It makes priming enemies for Staggering Palm particularly annoying, especially against bosses. Allowing the Primed for Stun status (the yellowish-brown orb that hovers above enemies' heads) to linger even after the target has been stunned would help a lot.

My guess is that the Monk's third ascendancy will allows us to scale physical damage and give us some fun stun/daze synergies. Hopefully, anyway. There are so few ways to scale physical damage in this game as it is.

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Ss7SsN#5677 wrote:

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vincent_vfx#4010 wrote:

i have tried reading the tooltip etc but have not been able to figure it out.

Aside from maybe going over the basics of heavy stun again, you probably aren't missing anything. There are way too many variables which can skew things too much for the combo to be relied upon, which is honestly a shame because it does work on occasions, and when it does, it's a really fun technique for something so simple. It makes me wonder if other similar cancel combos exist.

The cancel combo I use most is Vaulting Leap > roll cancel just when I hit the ground. It lets me reach targets primed for stun in big packs, or safely escape corners (provided I don't get stunned mid-leap).

The problem is that, while these combos are cool, they're far from optimal because the 'proper' way to play is to hold down Spark, roll forward, shoot the Sparks in a straight line, repeat.