Trying to get the concepts of these straight in my head, so correct me if I’m wrong.
Both lower resistances. (at first this would seem redundant.)
But, PENETRATION is only for the skill applying it where as RESISTANCE SHRED is ‘global’?
For example, if I have the Penetration node in the Paladin Tree (Conviction) my skills - of the type listed - will gain benefit from Penetration but my MINIONS, even if of those elements, would not.
Where as with resistance shred applied to an enemy - for example: Smelter’s Vengeance in the Vengeance tree - my minions would also be able to take advantage of shredded fire resistances on the enemy.
That is how it works, but there is some more nuance just for clarity sake.
Penetration happens at the end step of resistance deciding. Take an enemy who naturally has 150% fire resistance through modifiers or what have you. if you shred 40% fire resistance he has 110% resistance left over, which then caps at 75. if you have 40 fire pen, he has 150% fire res, which is then capped at 75, and then penetrated down to 35.
most enemies have 0 resistance by default, but some have quite a bit of resistance, in any situation where resistance is over capped, penetration of the same value is stronger generally.
Minions like other stats will only use their own penetration, but can use shred you have applied since its a debuff to the monster.
Many people tend to make the mistake that penetration and resistance shred are the same, and while in most situations thats true, its not always the case.
Correct, since shred is a debuff on the target any damage of the relevant element will be affected by it.
Yeah, if an entity (player or mob) has resists above the cap then shred is less effective (potentially completely ineffective if the resist is high enough) otherwise they are equivalent.
Another nuanced difference or application for these would be with ailments.
If your skill and/or your character has an damaging ailment the penetration would apply for entire duration of the ailment.
This penetration is slightly better for that if you don’t actively keep attacking stacking shred stacks.
Obviously you can will want to still apply both if possible.
But the fact that penetration works for ailments applied by skills is something a lot of people don’t know so I figured we are going to mention it here at least
This is not directly relevant to this particular topic but its very important for another topic:
This is the foundational pillar of why LE’s resistance system is so forgiving.
Monsters’s get 1% penetration per area level up to 75.
So regardless of what you do you will always have 0% resistance against monsters.
If you are below 75% resistance the downside of that is much less severe.
Here is some example tables that I made in the past:
For us players that does not mean a lot, because generally speaking monsters don’t have resistance. Only particular base types and MoF Echo modifiers can give them resistance.
