High Impact, the transmuter skill to Grenado gives +100% physical damage, +100% internal trauma damage, and some flat fire damage. Does the +% trauma damage do nothing until you get the next transmuter Shattering Blast? Grenado has no internal trauma damage as is. In a vacuum with just Grenado the internal trauma damage bonus to High Impact doesn’t do anything. Seems like it would make more sense if the [edit] +% internal trauma damage from High Impact was swapped with the flat internal trauma [/edit] from Shattering Blast.
In the grand scheme of things this I know this is a micro nitpick but it’s something that struck me as odd. Unless I’m misunderstanding something.
Doing this devalues the worth on Shattering Blast then. The % crit damage is great and would still necessitate maxing it but beyond that, the rest of Shattering Blast with the change you propose is either niche (Retaliation added to Attack) or incredibly underwhelming in skill point-for-damage impact (+% damage).
There would also be less of a reason to overcap it or push for Ultimate ranks whereas right now, it is a huge source of DoT damage that gets bigger when built on and decent chunk of Retaliation damage.
For a Grenado user? Sure, I mentioned that. The problem I’m highlighting is a mix of how Grenado’s damage is and should be moderately balanced across the skill line instead of weighted to one or two skill nodes and how this effects the progression for anyone levelling with it. Let me put it this way:
When you steadily put skill points in Grenado or High Impact, you should feel the skill getting stronger as you’d expect, because both are adding a nice chunk of damage to the skill. The same should hold for current Shattering Blast with the raw Trauma damage. If you swap that Trauma damage for % Trauma damage, you’re going to see less of a damage increase from investing into it as % damage in the amounts found on skills is easier to accumulate from equipment, skills and devotion and the worth of having more becomes smaller and smaller as time goes on whereas raw damage to a skill without weapon damage is scarcer and is always useful. The exception to Shattering Blast’s worth is critical hits, though these are rare to see while going through the early and mid levels when characters typically have very few or no points in their Offensive Ability skills or devotions yet.
Case in point, if someone invests in Shattering Blast and finds that it’s not increasing their damage by a lot, they are less likely to keep those points thinking it is not worth it/the points could be better spent elsewhere.
After doing some more research I’m seeing my original observation doesn’t really matter.
What I originally mentioned where having flat damage and +% damage to the same damage occurs several times throughout the classes i.e. deadly momentum, storm spirit, hellfire, etc.
I also noticed hellfire and infernal breath have the same thing going on with giving +% damage before actually giving the flat damage so albeit weird, it’s got the balance thing going on.