Playing my first build. I’m a ranger who deals physical and bleed damage with flurry, puncture, and Hail of Arrows (hail is utility mostly tho). I’m lv 78 atm.
What is the best method for reducing enemy defences? Or are none of them worth it and should just focus solely on damage? I noticed Armour shred is the most abundantly found (both on passives and items). It also has the most support, like with affixes giving increased effectiveness or length. Physical resistance penetration is very rare, with no support. Physical resistance shred is somewhere in the middle.
Also I have some mechanics questions. Players are capped at 75% res, but what about monsters? Are they even capped at all? So I know that shred takes from the uncapped res. Are there monsters with overcapped reses, which make shred much worse?
What about armour? How prevelant is it on enemies?
Not so relevant to the thread but if anyone could answer my questions about bleed, it would really help me decide to use it or not.
I’m unsure if it stacks or not. Looking through the in-game guide it lists all the ailments and says some of them stack, but doesn’t say bleed does. So if I hit an enemy 3 times in 1 second with 100% bleed chance will he end up with 3 stacks with differing durations left on them? Or just 1 stack with 4 seconds on it? If it can stack, how many times can it? How do the other damaging ailments stack?
How do modifiers work with bleed? +x physical, x% increased physical, do these apply to the bleed damage? If the bleed was applied with a bow would +x bow damage or x% increased bow damage apply?
Thanks for your help!
Armour only affects hits, so Armour Shred does not give you any benefit if you are a Damage Over Time build.
All of them are essentially more multipliers, but obviously you need reliably ways of applying them.
Armour Shred is the one, that has the least benefit when “just throwing it into a build”. But it has the highest ceiling, since Armour Shred is not capped.
But as mentioend above, it only benefits hit based builds.
Penetration is only available as a generic affix on the Amulet Prefix slot. Every other source of it is related to specific skills, passive trees or uniques.
Resistance Shreds are very strong, but are also hard capped at 20 stacks (which is -40% for bosses and players)
All enemies in LE have ZERO resistance or armour (or any other defensive stats), unless specifically mentioned as an affix on them (some abse type enemies do have base resitance for one specific damage type and then there are also some affixes mosnters can have, which gives them resistances.
To summarize I would categorize them as following:
Penetration: Only get it, when you already have at least a few hundred %inc. dmg from your main dmg type (like ~500-700%), at this point penetration should be better than getting another %inc. prefix on your amulet). For Passive I would take them last (like the last 10-20 passive points you allocate)
Resitance Shred: If you have a somewhat reliable way of applying it, take whatever you can, it’s usually worth it, unless you have a very slot hitting build, like Erasing Strike or Judgment (except when you apply it with some other skills BEFORE using those slow skills)
Armour Shred: Only usefull for hit based builds, does need some investment to really pay off, but the top end ceiling is worth the opportunity costs.
Unless otherwise stated, every ailment stacks indefinitely (if you press ALT on an Item with any ailment affix it usually states if that ailment has a cap)
There are some ailments, like chill, slow and frailty that stack, but only 3 times.
Some other ailments do not stack, but that’s also mentioned in the advanced desciption (like Spreading Flames or Plague)
So, to answer your question: Bleed does stack indefinitely, but each stack has it’s individualy duration, when you apply new stacks.
As mentioend above, each stack of an ailment has it’s individual duration.
So you would end up with 3 stack, each with their own duration.
Every ailment does follow this rule.
Also just in case you didn’t realize, you can have above 100% chance to apply an ailment to apply multiple stacks with one hit. (E.g. with 150% chance to bleed on hit, you apply 1 stack and 50% chance to apply a second stack)
Flat damag would not apply to ailments, each ailment has it’s own duration and damage.
Bleed does have 53 base damage and last 4 seconds for example.
%inc. modifiers that affect bleed would only be: “Physical Damage”, “Physical Damage Over Time” and “Damage Over Time”
Also %inc. Bow Damage would not apply to ailments
Also global damage modifiers do affect ailments and generic penetration, that is not specific for a skill (like most penetratiosn in skill spec trees) would apply to ailments.
Skill Spec Tree Nodes, that do increase a skills damage, that do not specifically mention “hits” also increase the damage of ailments applied by that skill.
Attribute scaling (most skills get 4%inc. damage per X attribute) would also apply to ailments applied by that skill.
If you have more questions, just ask.
I am also curious, what sectiosn of the Game-Guide did you read?
Most of the informations I gave here are included in the Game-Guide
Resist shred & resist pen are additive with each other though.
It is, it’s capped at 85% phys damage increase, but that’s an unachievable number of stacks. Even 80% would require 13k armour shred (1.3k stacks without any armour shred effectiveness).
Penetration from a skill tree will affect ailments applied by the skill as long as it doesn’t say “XXX hits penetrate”.
Wow, thank you so much for your very detailed response, Heavy. Really appreciate you going through the trouble. Also, thanks Llaama for clarifying some things. As for what I read in the game guide, I think I read all the relevant sections. I looked at every ailment, sections on damage and damage increase, resistance, shred. I don’t think I missed a relevant section.
