My current primalist build makes use of the idol “aftershock under a nearby enemy” and against big bosses, e.g. Aberroth or Abomination you have to somehow glitch yourself into the hitbox in order for the idol to work.
I think what is happening that the distance is calculated as the distance between the two center points of the hitboxes, but for large hitboxes with large collision this can get really tricky. It would be better if the “nearby” was actually calculated as the distance to the hitbox edge, e.g. by subtracting the radius from the distance.
Example https://imgur.com/a/4hGIpsw
Somehow this is not “nearby” but it’s impossible to move closer from that angle.