its hard to tell at the moment as we dont have the base stats to show the actual numbers but shred does not feel like its having an impact on higher level monsters.for example:
this Vengeance skill shows i’m getting 100% chance to shred, assuming that its also giving me 100 points of armour shred this this is going to have a greater impact on trash monsters but any higher level monsters with significant protects is going to be largely unaffected.
the investment in 4 points does not seem to have a significant advantage over just taking a flat damage increase available from other nodes
there also appears to be no benefit (or maybe there is but its hidden) for going over 100% shred and since shred is available from idols it makes these nodes largely pointless
An example below (based on a single hit) and thanks to @Llama8 for his maths skills
If shred was changed so that if every 100 shred applied gave a X% armour reduction then it would feel a much more useful ability to invest in at higher levels.
I have over 200% shock chance and 800% shock effect on mage and evem with mutiple stacks bosses dont see an increase of damage even though every hit with a lighrning skill shpuld be reducing there elemental resist by 1600…
Would making shred percentage based not make it absolutely mandatory for late endgame? If you have a few builds with reliable shred for their damage type capable of stripping percentages of effective HP (regardless of actual amount) then they will outperform every build without good shred support after a point and after that continue to increase the gap. Especially against enemies tagged with resistance to certain damage types when comparing builds using that type.
While shred does feel like it needs to addressed, better explained or just better ways to test it/skills given to us I’m not sure letting it bypass enemy scaling is a good idea. Personally I feel like the protections system as a whole needs to be reviewed alongside things like shred and shock effects.
It probably would make it mandatory (like Glancing Blow?), or at least very important but I’m not entirely sure that’s a bad thing. Alternatively, it could have diminishing returns. Or the entire damage/hp/protections formula could be reviewed, though I do like it that EHG have gone with a slightly different take on the traditional resists.
Is it better or worse to have certain things (like protection shred) irrelevant at high level/end game?
If it’s a good thing (or acceptable) for shred to be irrelevant at end game, then why have it in the game at all?
Edit: Maybe if a mob is flagged as resistant to X damage type, they could/should be immune to shred?
I’d rather not see anything made mandatory for end game but right now shred spends on skill nodes just feels like a waste of points. On vengeance for example there are 3 nodes dedicated to it that are just never going to be touched when you can simply spend points getting straight damage buffs.
I’d like there to be a decision to be made about where to spend the points, not just ignoring the nodes with shred on them.
