Pretty much the title. Upheaval is a very weird skill that has 2 major issues that make it so odd:
It’s a non-WPS skill so it means you need to get rid of WPS to proc Upheaval better. This is super-annoying as we have strong 2h WPS like ZT, Feral Hunger etc.
The activation “on crit” is another moment that looks weird. The main issues are that if you crit by WPS or don’t crit by normal hit, Upheaval won’t proc.
What can be done? Actually, I dunno. Maybe turning the skill into WPS so it could at least proc consistently. Or maybe injecting some strong buffs in it.
Please write what do you think of this topic, do you agree or not etc.
I’ve been playing an Avenger warder lately and I had the same thought. Out of Soldier, Shaman, Oathkeeper, and even Necormancer, Shamans are the only class with one WPS skill instead of two, and making Upheaval into a true WPS would round it out nicely. I don’t see any balance issues either (it’s Upheaval; you’d have to try pretty hard to make it even worth maxing, let alone overpowered).
I highly doubt it’ll happen at this point in the game’s life cycle, but something I’ll probably mod in.
I’ve been experimenting with it on this bleed build, where only the bleeding part will be relevant (I do basically no lightning damage, and the %weapon damage part is lower than Feral Hunger’s thus will be overwritten).
I tested without the skill, one-pointing it (bringing it to 6/10), and hardcapping it (15/10), and smacked a dummy without Mogdrogen (for consistency) for a few minutes to see the highest bleed tick it could achieve. The results :
0/10 : 642k
6/10 : 645k
15/10 : 652k
The test isn’t very rigorous but considering the good %crit of the build, I expected the extra damage to be more spectacular, the skill may be worth one point in crucible for the very little aoe boost.
Beside a buff, the skill deserves more presence on gear, the only 2 mods it has are +75%wd on the Avenger and Blazerush weapons. It’s a skill dealing base lightning and bleed, but it has no gear support, no modifiers for those damage types.
From memory the “weapon” damage or the “entire skill” is not applied to the main target but rather the AoE portion of the skill. If this is the case, then yeah it could use a slight buff.
From my testing it procs consistently as long as you crit so not really sure what to make of this thread…
I feel turning it into a WPS skill would actually cause it to proc less not more.
It used to. It got changed quite a long time ago so the main target is also hit. I think there was a recent bug where Shattering Smash wasn’t hitting the main target either when it is supposed to.
And this. It just works in a particularly different way to the others.
It may be bugged, my observations show a very small tick difference which may be explained by measure uncertainty if the main target is indeed not affected.
This is true only if you don’t have any other WPS. As far as I’m aware, the way Upheaval works now (as there was some confusion/discussion/debate over it mid-AoM) is that Upheaval will always trigger if another WPS does not trigger and the attack is a crit.
Upheaval is a WPS but On-Crit WPS are added to a different pool from On-Attack WPS. In theory, if you had several On-Crit WPS, they’d weigh against each other in proc chances.
I think Upheaval activating as rarely as it does is mostly fine, because it’s quite powerful what with having an unlimited number of targets it can hit. It did get slightly nerfed by the recent buff to general WPS’s Ultimate-rank scaling, though, as now it will proc more infrequently. (less frequently? idk, weird grammar and shit)
E: Were it an on-attack WPS, I don’t think it’d be nearly as powerful as it is now. And I think that’d detract from the skill as a whole.
One of it’s other strengths as well is being the only WPS that can theoretically break the standard 10-30% proc chance every other one has with enough OA and DA shred stacked up.
I think it’s good as is, because it can proc often on builds that either don’t have WPSs on the second mastery, or they don’t find them useful (e.g. bleed warder).
A strong point for the skill is that it’s a non-inquisitor ranged AoE WPS.
Depends how you build it. The topic got me curious so I revisited Upheaval Elementalist with some new gear from the MI update and threw this together. Not perfect but looks ok.
Checking the OA vs a standard Campaign Nemesis with @tqFan’s PTH calculator, it gets 35% crit chance with Flashbang’s DA shred in effect.