"Primed to" is a terrible mechanic

All "primed to" mechanics in the game are horrible. They are all completely build defining and if you miss the window because you DO TOO MUCH DAMAGE or have TOO MUCH STUN your entire build literally just falls apart. Please completely rework this mechanic to at the very least keep enemies as "primed for stun" when they are actually stunned. You should always be able to boneshatter an enemy once if it is stunned. Same with anything that requires primed for freeze.

Killing palm is awful on the other hand and nobody is ever going to play this skill as a way to actually generate charges and enjoy it. Devour only works because you can spam it on corpses between packs but it still sucks.

These mechanics are designed for a game that we don't have here.

There definitely is some jank with primed, boneshatter and also crushing blows. I have a feeling it has to do with the stun categorization they did a while back iirc. Unfortunately I think ggg has bigger fish to fry atm so I don't think we'll see a change anytime soon :(

This game is nothing but horrible mechanics piled on top of other horrible mechanics.

Nothing is fun, engaging, or creative.

If you are doing leap slam + boneshatter there is a support gem you can put into leap slam which prevents it from stunning, so you can boneshatter after.

110%!

I'm playing an ice wolf druid build this league and howl debuff I have to cast on "PRIMED TO FREEZE" enemies in order to freeze them with that specific ability to get the buff feels bad to play.

I'm already juggling enough with the combo mechanics of this build, which I don't mind TBH, but adding in having watch the "Freeze Pct." icon under the health bar of the enemy in order to hit this ability in the perfect casting window so that it actually freezes the enemy sucks.

To make it worse, if you cast to early the ability goes on CD so you cant re-cast it once you get the window open.

Changes I would consider:

#1 - If committed to this, then make the "primed" status more obvious. Do a shimmer effect with an audio queue any time a mob gets primed for anything so I don't have to watch the PCT icon (which is way harder to even do on non-unique / boss type mobs). IF there is an effect to look for right now, I don't even know what it is so that could also be an issue... but to me the primed status is not communicated to the player clearly enough.

#2 - For abilities like lunar howl that have CD and rely on primed status, consider removing the CD and instead making the mana cost higher to prevent spamming the ability. This addresses the scenario where you casted the ability too early. NOTE: If you make #1 clear enough we could probably live without a change to this, but as it stands, it's way too punishing to be early with how obfuscated primed status on mobs is currently.

#3 - As the OP said, being frozen / stunned should still count as "primed". This is one I run into more than #2 as my Freeze status can climb so fast that stopping in the tiny PRIMED window is neigh impossible. There are so many times I'm trying to freeze with the howl but my attack freezes them before the primed window even opens and then I cannot get my debuff on the mob because they are frozen and not primed. This feels really bad.

Lot of support gems that build up stuff without triggering it, build is safe if you want to play primed...