I look at a lot of published builds and it struck me that they very rarely recommend damage Penetration in any affix. I would have thought it was one of the more powerful affixes, and it is rather rare compared to other damage boosters, also suggesting it is strong. Any reason then that I hardly ever see it in builds? Should I be avoiding it?
Penetration is additive with shred and both are a multiplicative modifier to damage. Now that shred has been nerfed to 10 stacks that make pen relatively more effective.
One downside about pen is that if itâs from a skill tree it only affects that skill. While shred is a debuff to the target so will affect all damage from any source (inc allies) or skill.
I am talking about the Penetration affixes really, which are global, right? How come no âproâ build ever recommends damage penetration affix on any item slot? I mean almost every build will put points in the passive tree if there is a suitable penetration node (like 100% of the time they take it) but never on an affix slot. Very puzzling.
I think it has to do with the value of the penetrations. On the Amulet, for example, I will usually take Crit multi and Pen as my 2 prefixâs unless I need Crit chance. The Penetration rolls on gear seem low.
It may just be the lack of a proper damage calculation on which is best.
It really depends on the builds.
But I assume with âproâ builds you mean meta builds, those usually use a lot of mechanics and try to max out all mechanics.
As Llama already stated, penetration is additive with resistance shred and most builds tried to get 20 shred stacks and acheived that.
Now it âonlyâ stacks 10 times, but that is still 20% shred.
The numeric value of penetration for a lot of builds just doesnât compete with %inc or cirt multiplier.
Amuletâs has a 1,16 multiplier on affix strenghts, which makes all of these stats even mroe juicy than on regular gear pieces.
But for builds that have a hard time stacking shred, penetration is really useful.
Doesnât shred not go into negatives though? I thought that was the benefit of penetration.
No you mixed that up, its not âgoing into negativeâ, its that penetration does apply after capping resistance.
So the âadvantageâ of penetration is, that it would work very well against mobs, that already have overcapped resistances.
In practice this does not really apply to monsters, because they generally have no resistance, with the exception fo some base types and through monolith modifiers.
If you happen to stack a lot of those resistance modifiers penetration would have an advantage, but even with that you could still mix shred and penetration.
Shred (Armour and Resistance) can go infinitely into negatives (but respecting the formula)
1 Like
Good to know. The is even more evidence that the penetration value in affixes is very weak.
I was talking about the situation if the mob had 0 resist. I was under the impression that cold resist shred would do nothing at that point whereas 9 cold penetration would put the mob at basically -9 cold resist.
I really wouldnât call it weak, its still a 8-9%(T5) more multiplier without any other investment.
And with 10 stacks of shred already it is still a 6,67/7,5% more multiplier. For a single affix slot.
Crit Multi, depending on how much crit chance or crit multi you already have can provide similar amounts, depending. (With 100% Crit chance and 200% base crit multi, 29% crit multi would provide 14,5% more damage. If you already have 300% crit multi its âonlyâ 9,67% more damage)
But to make crit multi as good you need a lot more ivnestment (reaching good amount of crit chance first, which cost multiple affixes/passives/skill nodes.
Also penetration does apply to anything, hits, DoT, Ailments.
So I would say Penetration is a really good and save affix, but can be outscaled by the other options.
1 Like
You know resist canât go "infinitely negative HeavyâŚ
That is the vast majority of mobs unless you take a âmobs have all resistâ node in monos.
In principle penetration on amulets is good but itâs often the weaker option especially if your build has access to other sources of penetration (which a lot do), can keep shred stacks capped, etc.
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.