I think that 32% of spirit resist reduction is a huge amount for this item. But the difficulty of applying resist reduction is hero dependent.
There are 8 finished items for bullet resist shred.
3 for shooting your gun
1 active auto target
1 active aoe
1 spirit damage
1 close range
1 for melee
There are 5 finished Items for spirit resist shred.
2 for shooting your gun
1 for melee
1 for spirit damage
1 active aoe
I wouldn't mention actives. Their main purpose is gun/ability disactivation.
My issue is that the only one for spirit damage is one that requires a long time to apply fully. This is a problem for characters that need to apply shred in a shorter amount of time, but don't have a good way of applying it. The options just feeling lacking. The options for healing also feel lacking, but that's another topic.
That issue is understandable. It really requires some time to prepare enemy for attacking. Unlike gun does, you can't just instantly proc all needed debuffs. Maybe it's all because opposite differences between gun and abilities.
The gun, if we don't look at reload time, works all the time. So the countermeasures do the same (Plated Armor, Metal Skin). The abilities have cooldown and can be used once (that don't have charges). The countermeasures do the same (Counterspell/Spellbreaker and Debuff Remover).
The anticounter items have the same parallels, bullet resist decreasing instantly, while spirit resist reduction takes some time.
Paige for an example is bad with the gun ones, bad with the melee one, the spirit one takes too long because she doesn't have a way to stack it while still having spells to cast to capitalize off the stacks while also being inconsistent at stacking it well, and the active aoe one being her main way to apply shred at only 12%. This may not be a large problem now, but as the amount of heroes increases, so will the need for more options.
Yeah, her gun really makes to proc something with it.
Escalating Exposure also has the problem with spirit amp only applying to yourself and also being a less effective form of damage multiplication. I've tested that it would take many more stacks of amp to equal the same amount of resist especially when dealing with higher amounts of resist.
The underlying principles of resist reduction and that item are different. EE deals damage, not amplifies already dealt, it's depend on it. And that damage can be reduced too.
I think that EE's stacks are different for everyone in order to be more balanced. Without it, all team would have more damage with every single spirit damage dealt by anyone, who have this item.
I would just want an item that will apply spirit shred in a shorter amount of time with spirit damage that doesn't use up all of my spells in the process. If i cast all of my spells, then there's no point to shredding resist or even having it amped for myself only and for spells i don't have. This item i thought of isn't that well designed i know, but just something else would be nice involving spirit damage and faster shred that can be balanced for burst and damage over time and be a t2 or t3.
That issue doesn't solved by your item too. If it requires to deal spirit damage to reduce resist, then you have to use abilities. Yeah, we have some gun-related items, but we're talking about spirit ones. If abilities don't have really low cooldown or reduction's duration is low, then you either won't be able to use all your kit or won't have enemy's resist reduced.
For instant and over-time damage types, possible requirements should be different. Otherwise it would be harder to apply reduction with one of the types. For example, we have Lash and Infernus. With your item, Infernus is able to apply all stacks just by shooting or running through enemy via second skill. He's able to deal enough amount of damage enough times. For Lash, it would need to use three skills, because they do one single damage instance.
So for some heroes it can be done by one skill, for some others by all three.
There's two options, create two different items for each of the damage application types or create one universal solution. The latter is much harder, since it should be independent of guns, abilities and any other properties of heroes.
Your reasoning definitely makes sense. You're mostly right about difference of methods to decrease resists. There's really not enough options to reduce spirit resist via spirit. The hero which struggles to do it with a gun exist and perhaps there's will be the similar in the future. Escalating Exposure is damage booster, not resist shredder.
