100% agreed that the the exponential nature of SD needed to be addressed but feel this should have been treated as a tuning fix instead of a functionality fix. Shadow daggers is currently propped up by huge damage effectiveness, 2 sources of flat damage, guaranteed crit and in part of the select group of idols that act as more modifiers instead of increased (numerical testing was showing 250% increase was doing 250% more).
The breakpoints were a really satisfying element that saw gear hunting turned into meaning changes in game play. It both increased clear speed as well as providing quicker, more frequent on demand damage. I was hoping the nerf would address what that damage is through all those sources instead of the gameplay component.
I’ll reserve my final judgement till patch but I don’t see SD being all that strong as a primary damage source or hybrid damage source due to its expensive affix budget to support it.
As a suggestion to the lead Dev if they wish to look at reintroducing that element could change ‘increased shadow daggers effect’ idols and affixes to ‘increased chance to apply an additional shadow dagger’.