I’ve played several characters with this skill and I like it a lot. It looks cool, the effect is very satisfying and the mechanics of a short cooldown magic nuke are appealing. But it seems to scale terribly. By the end of veteran it no longer obliterates enemies and by ultimate it changes from a major source of damage to a minor supplement with some CC. Part of the problem might be the builds I’m making (latest was a battlemage with about +1000% to cold/lightning and 1000 spirit, but widow and black star were my only sources of resist reduction), but the skill was woefully weak compared to cadence, devastation or even blitz. It’s hard to imagine that it would be very strong even with a dedicated build. Am I wrong about that?
It seems to me it needs to get a 4th shard at 16 and a 5th somewhere in the twenties. Or the frostburn damage on frozen core needs to be aggressively increased, up to focused gaze levels of DoT. Or both.
Most popular builds are druid or spellbreaker, i rolled a full trozan druid myself ofc you can faceroll ultimate but isn’t the strongest build around, not even in the first 5 0r ten i guess. Anyway is totally viable and fun to play.
I’ve tried it, but the skill scales at only slightly better than mediocre rate once we’re talking about Ultimate difficulty. Add in the fact that it can be easy to ‘miss’ enemies with one or more meteors because of player error / environmental obstacles (not as big a problem as it was, but still noticeable at times) and the skill just seems lacking - at levels of gear where something like Dreeg or any weapon-spam build is kicking ass and tacking names Trozan’s still feels a bit clumsy.
Although on the bright side it scales up fast in normal and stays strong through elite, these problems really only rear their head at the top end…
Also there is the frozen core issue where it is essentially worthless past 1 point…
You just need to aim well… (it takes some time to fall)…
Trozan (and the so-called lv75 legendary set) relies a lot on crits both on the skill transmuter which gives pretty high +% crit damage, and the procs on the set, as well as tempest devotion, so your OA must be high enough to take advantage of it. (2300+)
It really needs to be on right click as casting it from the keyboard is extremely clumsy and often leads to not getting all 3 shards hitting your target.
The damage is good enough to kill anything in ultimate (still not as high DPS as AAR but the good thing is you can cast it and run away during the CD, making kiting mad queen/sharzul pretty easy) since there are 3 shards as long as you pair it with plenty of -%res buffs; best is probably elemental storm devotion, paired with druid’s wind devil transmuter.
Trozan druid (TSS, wind devil and storm totem) will not be a single target boss-killer powerhouse, but it is by far the most kite-friendly build I’ve tried against stuff that cannot directly teleport to you (as opposed to Fabius, for instance).
Agreed. The fact that it never increases the # of meteors really irks me. At least it should get a fourth at level 16, then maybe a fifth at 20 and (maybe) a sixth at 26.
It’s all over the place when it hits and those additional meteors would help immensely!
The crits can get really big. I did a TSS druid and easily got over 100k max damage dealt. It still suffers from having no weapon damage, of course, but it’s one of the few spells where I almost don’t miss it.
And yes frozen core is terrible. But shattered star is amazing.
Its not rewarding enough for going through aiming and avoiding environment blocks especially after coming from lazily pointing DEE + tainted eruption in the general direction of the enemy and still be rewarded
TSS is a great skill, but it isn’t a Main Damage skill you build around. You need to pair it with another skill or 2 to make good use of it. I have 4 or 5 builds that I still play and use it in. Also as others have said it can hit like a truck when it crits so its best used in a crit build.
In other word if it doesn’t get caught up on terrain and you the % chance for Shattered Star to kick in passes… you can manage to hit as hard a decent spam attack build except you’ve locked yourself into a 3 sec cooldown.
And the argument for ‘it is good if you mix it with other skills’ is weak at best, there aren’t really any other cold/lightning skills to mix so you’d likely neglect one or the other damage types, resistance pierce is also problematic to get with this skill - as skills you’d mix it with and resistance pierce for cold/lighting tend to be in opposing trees. I’ve tried combining it with nightblade cold skills and also storm totem/wind devil but it never gets beyond mediocre in ultimate. Poison, summoner, anything weapon spam based, bleeders, they all are miles ahead of anything with sky shard in the build.