Splintering Strike (combo) effect never changes

1. Title: Splintering Strike (combo) effect never changes
2. Reproduction Rate: 100%
3. Blocker? No
4. Details: The effect of Splintering Strike is "+5 Armor Debuff", for 30+ seconds. As the components of the combo increase, the duration increases.
   
   So, a few problems here. First one is, what does "+5 Armor Debuff" do? It doesn't affect the damage output on the target in any obvious way. There's no explanation on the tooltip as to what it does.
   It appears to reduce Damage Resistance on the target by 5. So if a target has 14 Damage Resist, with this debuff on them, they have 9 Damage Resist. If they have 5 Damage Resist, this combo effect will reduce their Damage Resist to zero. But what does that mean, in practice? Will they take +5 more damage from every hit? That doesn't appear to be the case, today. As damage and protection values increase, static value debuffs like this often become meaningless.
   
   Second problem is, it's the same debuff at skill level 1 as it is at skill level 50 or 100. Either it's wildly overpowering at skill 1 and pointless at 100, or the debuff effect should scale with combo component skill level. It appears the design intent appears to be reducing Damage Resistance on heavily armored opponents, but if that's the goal, it doesn't parse out that way, currently.
   The only thing that seems to increase is crit chance against the target (about 8%?), if the target is green or blue? Accuracy is lower with Splintering Strike (I hit the target 6% less frequently) and auto attack/free attack damage distribution curves are very similar (~20 dmg mean average). Test Target is Kobold Fighter with 408 HP vs L47 Player.
   I guess if the only thing that's supposed to increase is crit chance, it's working as intended? But it would again be nice to have that confirmed if that's supposed to be the only noticeable effect.
   
   If this armor debuff effect was a percentage, starting at 33% (5/15 that's what it is currently against full plate), and rising up to 75%+ at 100+ skill, so as to produce a noticeable scaling effect, that may be more appropriate. Otherwise, as far as a combo goes, the additional effect might benefit from a complete re-work, perhaps:
   
   Slowing attack speed on the target (de-haste), or temporarily increasing the Player's crit rate without a target dependency or something else that would be tangible against all targets.
   OR
   If additional damage were seen on the target due to having -1 or less Armor, then allowing this to reduce the target armor below zero would be of some value.
   OR
   If a daze, interrupt, brief stun, knockdown with duration, bleed or similar DoT had a chance to proc on the target when this effect was in place, that would be of value. (not all of those effects, just one)
   
   
5. Steps to Reproduce: Examine or use Splintering Strike, note the effect is the same at level 1 as 100, only the duration changes.
   
6. User Specs: No relevant.

As always, if there is no bug and everything is working as intended with this combo, by all means, move this post to feedback.

 

Thank you for reporting! Submitting for review!

 

I was curious about this too.

 

When you say "it should now scale" do you mean as in game right now, or in R29?

 

Just judging by his other replies recently, I think he means r29.