Why Fortified Nirncrux isn't broken

Rook_Master

@pppontus summed it up extremely well.

Nirnhoned Armor is broken. Zenimax has admitted it is broken.

If you want to have 50% constant spell mitigation, it needs to be from a weirdly-specific tank build that stacks spell resistance, not because you slapped on a couple of nirnhoned hundings, and can still do crazy burst with that kind of mitigation.

If you don't think that is borked there really is nothing else to say.

Etaniel

blabafat wrote: »

Every time people bring up nirnhoned, they always say it is not overpowered because they got one shot by a sorc

What about magicka templars or magic nightblade?

With nirn honed on magicka NB or temp will it for crap. I usually hit for 1000 to 1200 each magicka jab. If someone is wearing nirn that number is decreased by 40%. And it is just an armor trait!

I won't disagree with templar, nirn is a plague to them, until they can cast Jesus Beam in execute range and then it's gg because even with 40k resist and in mist form it still ticks for 4-5k.
But nightblades? areyou kidding? magicka nightblades pack a huge punch even on nirn players !

AhPook_Is_Here

maryriv wrote: »

danno8 wrote: »

maryriv wrote: »

Sacadon wrote: »

yet another thread on this...

My post is unique.

Another one I thought of is, if you put on 50% worth of Nirncrux you are very vulnerable to physical attacks.

It's not broken.

And exactly what crafted trait would you use instead of Nirn in order to get similar results with physical resistance? People are just ignoring the fact that Nirn is so far and away the best trait for armour that it makes all other traits terrible by comparison.

Personally I use infused but use whatever you like, it's all about trade-offs. Nirns trade-off is 17k more gold PER PIECE. Plus you are forced to use crafter armor.

I think his question was, how does he double his physical resistance with an armor trait?

psufan5

With all the people spamming Jesus beam, I think the cap should be removed, and let us put more of it on

Gorthax

Samuel_Bantien wrote: »

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

bloodenragedb14_ESO wrote: »

regardless whether it is broken or not, leets want it nerfed so they can kill more people, or they get killed less.

Honestly? I'm not sure there's much more to this than what you just said, not the last line (omitted from this quote) but the first. I see a whole lot of complaints begging for it to be nerfed heavily, but the truth is it currently is basically balanced, with a small percentage drop being about the only reasonable change you could argue to have made. Removing or significantly nerfing to uselessness (as these people advocating it be changed to a tiny bonus for the specific equipment piece it's traited on) one of the few realistic ways to help gain a moderate level of spell resistance vs. enemies who are built for damage benefits no one except a handful of people using FOTM pony-trick builds wanting to farm some extra AP more easily. Everyone else, including 99% of the people in the top 50 spots on the leaderboards on each campaign? No one of us wants to see it butchered.

The reason magicka pvpers are built for damage is because of you nirnhoned scalawags mitigating all of our damage. Nirnhoned deserves the nerf hammer. Those who build completely around damage have 0 sustain and 0 resources L2P issue there. The top 50 of every campaign is probably running 3-5 pieces of nirnhoned because of how OP it is and how much more survivability they have against magicka users. Try overstacking Nirnhoned to negate all spell penetration, sounds fair for magicka users I suppose amirite? Those who do not want Nirnhoned nerfed are those that are stuck in PvE land or those who haven't grasped or seen any kind of PvP in this game or they're stamina builds that feel the need to pigeonhole magicka builds to stack spell max damage with 0 resources so they can permadodge until they can't fight back.

far from true. I am usually in the top ten and come in the top 5 from time to time (for AD) and over all between three factions I am sitting at top 20 on bad weeks. I dont have a single piece of nirn on ANY of my gear except my weapon. Thats for the spell pen. So dont say the top 50 stack nirn lol I dont want to be associated with those people who need to max stack something just to be good lol

Granted my drive to want to log in to play ESO is near zero lately. The last two campaigns I have barely pvp'd. It is the same gear with people, same traits, same builds, ZZzzZZzzz boring. PVP is the most fun part of this game and it is so damn stale now that I am borderline thinking about bailing on this game lol I cringe thinking about the zergs defending the different zones of imperial city.........nope sure dont sound like fun to me.

ToRelax

People actually think stacking nirn over 2 pieces has diminishing returns... ?
I mean... I can understand why someone would think that way if he would stack flat resistance. But not percentages stacking on themselves. That's some fine maths right there .

r.jan_emailb16_ESO

ToRelax wrote: »

People actually think stacking nirn over 2 pieces has diminishing returns... ?
I mean... I can understand why someone would think that way if he would stack flat resistance. But not percentages stacking on themselves. That's some fine maths right there .

They probably confuse the fact that (at some point) you reach the spell resist hardcap with diminishing return, when it's actually pretty much the opposite of that.

Derra

pppontus wrote: »

Ezareth wrote: »

pppontus wrote: »

It's not bugged, I'll give you that - what likely happened is that one person at zos said "nirn sux, how do we make it effective?" another said "let's make it x % better than reinforced" and the person who implemented it didn't have a god damn clue that reinforced works differently from nirnhoned. I feel pretty confident that's exactly what happened, from having spent a lot of time working with dev people - this is how *** like nirnhoned happens.

EDIT: It's really easy to see based on this comment from the 1.6.5 notes:

"Increased the value of the Nirnhoned Trait so it is 50% stronger than the Reinforced Trait for armor."

Anyone with knowledge of maths can see that it is not currently 50% stronger than Reinforced.

Nirnhoned is OP and it has been confirmed that it WILL BE NERFED.

/thread

And this is exactly why I continue to believe it is bugged because the end result was not the intended result of the designer of the change. There was obviously a very large disconnect between the designer and the programmer who implemented the change.

I agree with you on that, however some people fail to see anything that's not "in contradiction with the tooltip" to not be a bug.. I can let them have that one if it helps understand why it's still unintended ^^

If ppl are arguing about tooltips anyway i´m switching to german client and will begin to rage why things are working differently than the tooltip states

Kloud

I wear 2 peices of nirnhoned and have 24k spell resistance sorcs still 2 shot me guess I'm using the op trait wrong

Attorneyatlawl

dantator wrote: »

maryriv wrote: »

1. It is cost restrictive.
2. It is capped at 50% anyway.
3. You are forced to use crafter armor which is vastly inferior to most PvP sets.
4. You sacrifice other traits you could be using on the armor.

Please stop nerfing things that aren't broken just because a few mages get mad that they can't 2 shot people anymore.

Edit: Added other reasons the community brought forward.

I invite you to play as a magicka DK or Templar right now in cyrodiil without using nirn or broken skills/mechanics. Go up against a nirn user and tell me how it goes. I'm like 99.99% sure you're a stamina build because if you were a magicka you would of not defend nirn.

If you have at least 3 nirn it halves my magicka DK's damage (I have numerous recordings of me fighting nirn users). I can show you a 2v2 Cross and I had in the 2v2 Legend tournaments.

I was a magicka DK since pre release and when magicka DKs were OP, I didn't deny it and I didn't go on forums trying to defend it.

Ugh, wish I can go off in the forums at people like you but hey at least the moderating on the forums helps keep my cool.

Laughable. I have been a Magicka DK since July 2013 and I don't think nirnhoned needs any adjustment, perhaps a percentage drop but that's it. If anything, we need reinforced to behave in the same way nirn does to help lower overall speed of TTK again. Also the suggestion that PVP'ers caused PVE nerfs is equally ridiculous, they were brought about by demands for a barebones barely functional game UI that Skyrim fans begged for, and then complained it was too hard because they didn't know what was happening while fighting until that also got it nerfed.

Sensesfail13

Lolz people assume that nirnhoned cap actually works *facepalm* *facedesk* *facegrinder*

Attorneyatlawl

r.jan_emailb16_ESO wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

People actually think stacking nirn over 2 pieces has diminishing returns... ?
I mean... I can understand why someone would think that way if he would stack flat resistance. But not percentages stacking on themselves. That's some fine maths right there .

They probably confuse the fact that (at some point) you reach the spell resist hardcap with diminishing return, when it's actually pretty much the opposite of that.

Yawn. Last reset in Azura's, I played for only around 12 nights out of the 30 days and still was rank 40. Guess what? I use a nirnhoned staff for the spell pen, and one lonely piece of nirnhoned armor. I could add more, but I'd gimp my offense to do so, and magic attacks aren't as hard to deal with as physical ones which are far more prevalent in the first place, so dumping something like Valkyn Skoria so I could use nirn more would be laughably silly. I just plain don't struggle to survive against casters with my paltry 25k resist, and I hit people stacking 50 to 60k like a truck still between my spell pen on gear, passives, Mundus stone, and a bit extra from champ. Like they say on tech forums, it isn't the game or computer... it's a PEBKAC error.

Attorneyatlawl

Sensesfail13 wrote: »

Lolz people assume that nirnhoned cap actually works *facepalm* *facedesk* *facegrinder*

Hm? Works in what way? It won't ever give more than 50% damage reduction, but it can help against an enemy's spell penetration. That's why I stack extra pen so people who gimp their attacks to look at a shiny number on their character sheet still get hit by me like a Mack truck.

Sensesfail13

Id like to see the numbers because I seriously doubt it doesnt go over 50% mitigation whether they claim it has that cap or not.
But by all means be your dream with the spell pen... that has major diminishing returns so youre wasting your points.

But either way arguing about it is all semantics until you post numbers.

ToRelax

Sensesfail13 wrote: »

Id like to see the numbers because I seriously doubt it doesnt go over 50% mitigation whether they claim it has that cap or not.
But by all means be your dream with the spell pen... that has major diminishing returns so youre wasting your points.

But either way arguing about it is all semantics until you post numbers.

Care to explain how spell penetration has diminishing returns?
If anything I see how it becomes more efficient the more you stack, especially vs over charged spell resistance.

Sensesfail13

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/160389/spell-pen-from-champion-points-bugged

Still not fixed.

timidobserver

I agree with the idea that it isn't broken. Reinforced should be changed to work like Nirnhoned instead of vice versa.

noobfury

Please just stop , they made a decision about this a long time ago.

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/165491/zos-two-questions-on-nirnhorned-and-vigor

April 16

ZOS_JessicaFolsom
admin
Thanks for your patience, folks. We have some answers to both questions below. It's worth mentioning that these answers are straight from the combat team, headed up by Eric Wrobel.

Erock25 wrote: »
I have two questions that I would really appreciate an answer to.

1. Is Nirnhorned armor working as intended? As it is on live, a few pieces of Nirnhorned easily brings you up to the hard cap on spell resist even in Light Armor. Each piece of Nirnhorned is increasing total spell resist by the listed percentage. It is working as the Nirnhorned tooltip states, but I was wondering if you could provide a bit of clarity if this is indeed the intended mechanic.


Currently, Nirnhoned is more effective than intended. We’ll be adjusting how this works so it's not quite as powerful. This change is currently slated to go into the next major update.

Joy_Division

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

r.jan_emailb16_ESO wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

People actually think stacking nirn over 2 pieces has diminishing returns... ?
I mean... I can understand why someone would think that way if he would stack flat resistance. But not percentages stacking on themselves. That's some fine maths right there .

They probably confuse the fact that (at some point) you reach the spell resist hardcap with diminishing return, when it's actually pretty much the opposite of that.

Yawn. Last reset in Azura's, I played for only around 12 nights out of the 30 days and still was rank 40. Guess what? I use a nirnhoned staff for the spell pen, and one lonely piece of nirnhoned armor. I could add more, but I'd gimp my offense to do so, and magic attacks aren't as hard to deal with as physical ones which are far more prevalent in the first place, so dumping something like Valkyn Skoria so I could use nirn more would be laughably silly. I just plain don't struggle to survive against casters with my paltry 25k resist, and I hit people stacking 50 to 60k like a truck still between my spell pen on gear, passives, Mundus stone, and a bit extra from champ. Like they say on tech forums, it isn't the game or computer... it's a PEBKAC error.

Be careful not to strain your arm patting yourself on the back.

My Magicka DK: gold nirn staff + 5 pieces light armor + apprentice mundas = hitting nirn stackers for a fraction tooltip damage on my force pulse. nirn sucks and it sucks hard.

Domander

Anyone who thinks it's not broken is deluded.

Can you get 50k physical resistance? no?

Yes magicka damage can get more penetration, but stamina gets more weapon damage.

light armor = spell pen
medium armor = more weapon damage

mundus stones

apprentice = penetration
warrior = more damage

This is all assuming you don't want to use different armor or a different mundus stone.

Nirnhoned weapon? this is what nirnhoned armor should be balanced against.

bowmanz607

here is the way i look at it. you have stacked into a defense against one play style now you are vulnerable to other playstyles. o thats great you have 50k spell resist. here eat by bow and DW then. The players who realize this wont stack everything into nirn b/c it may leave you more vulnerable in other places then you want it to. especially with some skills now scaling off stamina and the subsequent influx of stam players nirn still remains on a lvl playing feild imo. it seems pointless to stack 50k spell resist imo.

ToRelax

bowmanz607 wrote: »

here is the way i look at it. you have stacked into a defense against one play style now you are vulnerable to other playstyles. o thats great you have 50k spell resist. here eat by bow and DW then. The players who realize this wont stack everything into nirn b/c it may leave you more vulnerable in other places then you want it to. especially with some skills now scaling off stamina and the subsequent influx of stam players nirn still remains on a lvl playing feild imo. it seems pointless to stack 50k spell resist imo.

You missed the point.
There is no option that comes anywhere close, there is no realy tradeoff involved, so you would die to physical damage just as easily without nirnhoned armor.

bowmanz607

but it is also easier to stack spell pen. between nirn, light armor passive, and therealso being a mundus stone for it makes spell pen easier to stack whereas it is harder to stack armor pen.

ToRelax

bowmanz607 wrote: »

but it is also easier to stack spell pen. between nirn, light armor passive, and therealso being a mundus stone for it makes spell pen easier to stack whereas it is harder to stack armor pen.

And it's easier to stack weapon damage than spell damage such a coincidence. Not that it would actually balance things out, but the basic intention is pretty obvious I think.

Attorneyatlawl

Joy_Division wrote: »

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

r.jan_emailb16_ESO wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

People actually think stacking nirn over 2 pieces has diminishing returns... ?
I mean... I can understand why someone would think that way if he would stack flat resistance. But not percentages stacking on themselves. That's some fine maths right there .

They probably confuse the fact that (at some point) you reach the spell resist hardcap with diminishing return, when it's actually pretty much the opposite of that.

Yawn. Last reset in Azura's, I played for only around 12 nights out of the 30 days and still was rank 40. Guess what? I use a nirnhoned staff for the spell pen, and one lonely piece of nirnhoned armor. I could add more, but I'd gimp my offense to do so, and magic attacks aren't as hard to deal with as physical ones which are far more prevalent in the first place, so dumping something like Valkyn Skoria so I could use nirn more would be laughably silly. I just plain don't struggle to survive against casters with my paltry 25k resist, and I hit people stacking 50 to 60k like a truck still between my spell pen on gear, passives, Mundus stone, and a bit extra from champ. Like they say on tech forums, it isn't the game or computer... it's a PEBKAC error.

Be careful not to strain your arm patting yourself on the back.

My Magicka DK: gold nirn staff + 5 pieces light armor + apprentice mundas = hitting nirn stackers for a fraction tooltip damage on my force pulse. nirn sucks and it sucks hard.

Tooltips are not an accurate way to determine the damage you "should" be dealing, as they don't take into account the majority of other damage modifiers in the game. Do what I did which was to log in two characters and actually test, or ask a friend to help you do it that you can give nirnhoned gear to on live or PTS. I still hit for a "fraction", but it is a large one , and not that much smaller than the "fraction" I hit someone for who isn't wearing excessive spell resistance. You give up a lot of gear choices if you stack your spell resistance to the level it actually can halve a well built enemy's damage output. Like I've said before in other threads, we need to slow down time to kill, not speed it up by nerfing nirnhoned in a vacuum. Frankly, it's one of the things in this game that is close to perfect on balance, and could possibly stand a reduction of its percentage by a small amount (18 to 20% at legendary instead of 24% on an armor item as it is now). In tandem with that, as I've said many times over the past few months, balancing out nirnhoned with an equivalent physical resistance trait available such as retuning Reinforced to work in the same way and percentages, would go a long way towards fixing the incredibly bursty gameplay that has come to become a large amount of the encounters you fight in now in Cyrodiil. Some people are saying that the TTK is too slow, but I'd actually posit that for magicka users, it's just right.

Now we need to balance it for physical builds to match, along with (also mentioned many times before) bringing more parity to the amounts of weapon damage you can stack in feasible/good gear combinations versus how much you can stack spell damage in a similar fashion. The best usable builds in PVE and PVP for spell damage, excluding using dual wield weapons which sacrifices your magicka-based medium-weave attack and is normally a substantial part of your damage (it accounts for around 15-20% of my damage output for example on my Dragon Knight) while cutting yourself off from weapon-based magicka skills, is around the 2900-3100 range. In a good physical-based build, it is very practical to carry around 3500+ weapon damage and in high-damage builds along the lines of the magicka comparison, over 4,100-4,300. You can also opt to drop a few hundred or so of that weapon damage and slot in sets like Hawk Eye or Morag Tong which fit well in a variety of builds, for 5% reduced bow skill cost and increased damage, or 15% extra (bow skill essentially) damage with poisons (which the bow skills morph into). The only comparable item set for magicka builds is the Sun set, which is a 5% bonus to fire damage, and there is no comparable set like Ravaging for physical builds. This is by and large more of the same that I've already posted, but I've noticed a handful of others are beginning to comment along the same lines such as Xsorus more recently.

Attorneyatlawl

Turelus wrote: »

Too bad ZOS have said it is broken...

Actually, they have not. They have said they intend to tweak it.

bowmanz607 wrote: »

but it is also easier to stack spell pen. between nirn, light armor passive, and therealso being a mundus stone for it makes spell pen easier to stack whereas it is harder to stack armor pen.

No, that's not really the case. Maces in dual wield provide 10% penetration each, or a two-handed mace provides 20% penetration. Sharpened tops at 14% penetration whereas Nirnhoned tops at 18%. From weapons alone with sharpened maces, you'll get 34% armor penetration whereas a magicka build will get 18%, while light armor provides a ~4800 spell resistance penetration (~10-14% against many enemies) but medium armor additionally gets 12% weapon damage rating. So generally, you'll land at around 34% armor penetration factoring in just the armor passives and weapon passives/traits, versus around 30% spell penetration, while the physical builds will also gain 12% weapon damage rating. Destruction staff users gain an extra 10% ignore but it's only for destruction skills, whereas the mace passives apply to everything including class skills, etc.

Spell resistance is also easier by far to get to the 35,000-40,000+ range with little sacrifice made in medium/heavy armor builds (and around 25,000 in magicka builds based on light armor 5/1/1 light/medium/heavy armor combinations), while for physical resistance it is extremely difficult to get that above 25,000-27,000 in builds fully decked out for it in heavy armor (impractical for a magicka build). Major Armor debuffs are on a variety of skills commonly used by physical builds, while the only magicka ability that does a major Spell Resistance debuff other than the nightblade's reaper's mark (which actually does armor, too) class skill, is the Destruction Staff's "Elemental Drain". Otherwise, you're out of luck. Meanwhile a variety of class and weapon skills apply major armor debuffs while dealing large amounts of damage.

Add in the huge disparity in practically reachable weapon damage and spell damage amounts, and that they scale very similarly on a like-ability to like-ability basis for your skills, and physical is far ahead at this point in time. That is why you see the majority of players running around with physical builds at this point in time .

Wreuntzylla

monkeymystic wrote: »

Not everyone is using your spell pen build

And not everyone is running around with 4k weapon damage.

Wreuntzylla

monkeymystic wrote: »

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

Teargrants wrote: »

Awesome, you have 25 percent damage reduction against my sorc after pen! Seems fair to me given all that gear slotted to get the spell resist. Especially seems a lot since you don't get anything from it on the shields anyway as they don't use mitigation but whatever floats your boat .

Not everyone is using your spell pen build

The problem is that it's way too easy right now to get insane amounts of spell resist, compared to the effort it takes to make a spell pen build.
Not everyone uses destro staff + light armor + the right traits + spell pen abilities slotted + spell pen starstone.

To get high spell resist, the ONLY effort needed is slapping on 2-3 traits and you are done, and that's the problem.
Nirnhorn trait should be nerfed from 24% (gold quality) down to 12% (gold quality), and it will still be the best trait out there.

Right now anything else than spell pen builds are pretty much *useless* thanks to the nirnhorn traits.
It should be hard to reach the hardcap of any armor/spell resist, not so freaking easy to go way beyond hard cap even in light armor. If you fail to see this then it's too obvious you are stacking nirnhorn yourself for the LOLs in PvP and don't want the fun to go away..

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

Too bad ZOS have said it is broken...

Actually, they have not. They have said they intend to tweak it.

bowmanz607 wrote: »

but it is also easier to stack spell pen. between nirn, light armor passive, and therealso being a mundus stone for it makes spell pen easier to stack whereas it is harder to stack armor pen.

No, that's not really the case. Maces in dual wield provide 10% penetration each, or a two-handed mace provides 20% penetration. Sharpened tops at 14% penetration whereas Nirnhoned tops at 18%. From weapons alone with sharpened maces, you'll get 34% armor penetration whereas a magicka build will get 18%, while light armor provides a ~4800 spell resistance penetration (~10-14% against many enemies) but medium armor additionally gets 12% weapon damage rating. So generally, you'll land at around 34% armor penetration factoring in just the armor passives and weapon passives/traits, versus around 30% spell penetration, while the physical builds will also gain 12% weapon damage rating. Destruction staff users gain an extra 10% ignore but it's only for destruction skills, whereas the mace passives apply to everything including class skills, etc.

Spell resistance is also easier by far to get to the 35,000-40,000+ range with little sacrifice made in medium/heavy armor builds (and around 25,000 in magicka builds based on light armor 5/1/1 light/medium/heavy armor combinations), while for physical resistance it is extremely difficult to get that above 25,000-27,000 in builds fully decked out for it in heavy armor (impractical for a magicka build). Major Armor debuffs are on a variety of skills commonly used by physical builds, while the only magicka ability that does a major Spell Resistance debuff other than the nightblade's reaper's mark (which actually does armor, too) class skill, is the Destruction Staff's "Elemental Drain". Otherwise, you're out of luck. Meanwhile a variety of class and weapon skills apply major armor debuffs while dealing large amounts of damage.

Add in the huge disparity in practically reachable weapon damage and spell damage amounts, and that they scale very similarly on a like-ability to like-ability basis for your skills, and physical is far ahead at this point in time. That is why you see the majority of players running around with physical builds at this point in time .

If I remember correctly, you don't really get much benefit out of using a mace until your opponent has 25k+ armor. It's in the maths.

Wreuntzylla

Domander wrote: »

Anyone who thinks it's not broken is deluded.

Can you get 50k physical resistance? no?

Yes magicka damage can get more penetration, but stamina gets more weapon damage.

light armor = spell pen
medium armor = more weapon damage

mundus stones

apprentice = penetration
warrior = more damage

This is all assuming you don't want to use different armor or a different mundus stone.

Nirnhoned weapon? this is what nirnhoned armor should be balanced against.

Except that physical resistance is largely irrelevant to a high magicka (e.g., 30-40k) shield stacker. The shield sees the full damage minus crit and the shield stacker sees the full overflow damage minus crit.

Granted, this is more relevant to sorcs than it is to DK's or Templars, and even less relevant to NBs.

You also don't really need 50k physical resistance due to the lower physical penetration available and the math used to apply the physical penetration (e.g., maces).

bowmanz607

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

Too bad ZOS have said it is broken...

Actually, they have not. They have said they intend to tweak it.

bowmanz607 wrote: »

but it is also easier to stack spell pen. between nirn, light armor passive, and therealso being a mundus stone for it makes spell pen easier to stack whereas it is harder to stack armor pen.

No, that's not really the case. Maces in dual wield provide 10% penetration each, or a two-handed mace provides 20% penetration. Sharpened tops at 14% penetration whereas Nirnhoned tops at 18%. From weapons alone with sharpened maces, you'll get 34% armor penetration whereas a magicka build will get 18%, while light armor provides a ~4800 spell resistance penetration (~10-14% against many enemies) but medium armor additionally gets 12% weapon damage rating. So generally, you'll land at around 34% armor penetration factoring in just the armor passives and weapon passives/traits, versus around 30% spell penetration, while the physical builds will also gain 12% weapon damage rating. Destruction staff users gain an extra 10% ignore but it's only for destruction skills, whereas the mace passives apply to everything including class skills, etc.

Spell resistance is also easier by far to get to the 35,000-40,000+ range with little sacrifice made in medium/heavy armor builds (and around 25,000 in magicka builds based on light armor 5/1/1 light/medium/heavy armor combinations), while for physical resistance it is extremely difficult to get that above 25,000-27,000 in builds fully decked out for it in heavy armor (impractical for a magicka build). Major Armor debuffs are on a variety of skills commonly used by physical builds, while the only magicka ability that does a major Spell Resistance debuff other than the nightblade's reaper's mark (which actually does armor, too) class skill, is the Destruction Staff's "Elemental Drain". Otherwise, you're out of luck. Meanwhile a variety of class and weapon skills apply major armor debuffs while dealing large amounts of damage.

Add in the huge disparity in practically reachable weapon damage and spell damage amounts, and that they scale very similarly on a like-ability to like-ability basis for your skills, and physical is far ahead at this point in time. That is why you see the majority of players running around with physical builds at this point in time .

I do agree with your analysis of the maces. I did forget about that. That said, you have to use maces whereas nirn can be applied to any weapon. Moreover, i do not think it is fair to equate weapon damage gained by medium to ignoring armor pen. whereas, light goes straight to spell pen. although i do concede the maces argument. In fact i will probably run dual maces tonight when i get on