Question about resists and survivability - casual player

General
1

Hello,

I just reached empowered monoliths for the first time tonight.
I realized that survivability is quite a step and I deal a lot less damage.

I am playing a falconer.
I don’t specifically follow any guides and don’t plan too as I prefer to run through the game trying to achieve the best I can do by myself.

However, I have a questions regarding resistances and armor shredding, as I am not sure to understand the game guide description properly.

1 - How does resistance penetration really work? I took quick peaks at different guides and most don’t stack resists much higher than 75%. However, what about resistance penetration? I assume that area level 75+ reduce your resistances by 75%. Don’t you need 150% of resists to compensate for the -75% and still have 75% resists in 75+ area levels? I find that I am getting a lot of damages and I am not sure to really understand why and what is the mechanic that is happening here. Or maybe is it best to only stay approximately at 75% resists and stack life instead? I have about 1100 life while in the guides I peaked into, they appeared to have higher life than this.

2 - Damage question : Armor shredding. I play as a falconer. Does the armor shredding stacks I accumulate, do they help my falcon damages? I can’t find anything in the game guide confirming or infirming this information.

Thanks for your help guys!
Coco

2

Penetration just ignores resists so having above cap doesn’t help but having as close to cap as possible is important. Other things like armor, dodge, glancing blow help a lot too. Defense is layers.

Armor shred affects the target and therefore helps all hit damage from all sources.

3

At higher levels enemies pierce 75% resistance, raising your damage taken from 100% to 175%.

Maxed resistances do this
175% damage taken —> 100% damage taken

This is a ~43% damage reduction of damage taken, not 75%.
If you have any additional resistance, it will not reduce your damage taken below 100% damage taken. But if anything is reducing your resistances or shredding them, the additional resistances will work.