Major Fracture and Major Breach

Lokey0024

Why are these debuffs not percentages of the total? As is now, it provides to much of a debuff to light armor users, upwards of 50%, and around 40% on medium armor. i thought this game mechanic was intended to effect more armored targets.

Kupoking

I'd say it hits any type of armor wearers equally from what I can say from experience. Even those heavy armor users have a harder time sustaining the received damage after being debuffed.

Although, its much much less effective of Shield Stackers like Sorcs for example as it seems like bubble still ignore armor mitigation.

DannyLV702

I think that's fair actually. I thought about it for a second, and realized it would be unfair that our 50% loss would be way less than say a heavy armor DKs 50%

Lokey0024

Yes it hits equally to everyone and thats my point. If i have light armor on and 10k physical resist, fracture takes away 5280 always. If im wearing heavy armor i have around 19k physical resist and fracture takes away 5280 always, a much lower percentage, screwing over the light armor users. And using sharpened mace 2 handed with 10% armor pen in champion tree really makes any melee class op. Stam DK if your wondering

Jitterbug

on the other hand, a flat 50% would make plate feel like cloth, and what's the point then?

DannyLV702

We take a risk for wearing light armor and for me it's well worth it. Any armor reduction against me does t even affect me tbh since my armor is already low to begin with so I've adapted to staying alive while squishy lol. And as a sorcerer I could have 0 armor and I wouldn't care as long as my Hardened Ward stays up

Lokey0024

@Jitterbug. But 25% would halve the armor loss to LA, while keeping it around the same for HA. @DannyLV702. Just because you have adapted doesnt make it right. What about, say a LA Templar or Magika dk. They dont have mobility so dmg mitigation is required, as small of a gain it might be in this particular instance.

Reeko

I remember back in old school WoW days Rogues had an ability called Expose Armor that lowered your targets armor by a set amount. People eventually said the same thing, it should be a percentage, not a set value. Eventually Blizzard changed it to i believe it was 20 or 25% and all where happy. My point is i agree and do not see why it cannot be changed to a percentage rather than a set amount.

Gilliamtherogue

If Major/Minor Breach and Fracture were a percentage then you'd start seeing a lot of issues with armor type efficiencies in PvP, as well as a large flux of TTK in PvE (4 mans would take longer to kill but trials would be faster, the opposite of what it is now)

The reduction of armor by these stats provides equal damage increase against the target, regardless of what armor they're wearing, as long as they don't reach 0 before the total 5280 is applied. Mitigation works by offering a flat % reduction based on how much of that stat you have. The baseline is 660 armor or spell resistance = 1% damage reduction from any of those damage types. That means that 5280 provides a total of 8% damage increase against targets effected by it, regardless of if they are in Heavy, Medium, or Light armor. This system has no favoritism built into it, the only consideration that goes on is in the caster's mind. "Is me casting this spell worth the 8% damage increase against the target for X seconds. Could I kill them without it and not have to waste a second+resources on doing this?" Obviously the penetration is more favored on heavy targets since you need more punch to get through their defenses compared to a light armor wearer, but regardless it'd offer the same amount of damage increase.

The second stance is that these debuffs are meant to be the counterpart to the buff versions; Major Resolve and Ward. These both offer 5280 armor or spell resistance when applied. If they were converted into a % base as the debuffs were, then you'd only want to use them on Heavy or Medium armored targets to get a notable increase. Again, instead they play no advantage/disadvantage to any type of build, the buffs offer an 8% damage reduction when used by any player. A rather simple yet balanced system.

Lokey0024

@Gilliamtherogue thank you for the raw statistics, Very informative as i am new to eso. Yet this flat reduction in dmg mitigation doesnt seem to favor heavy armor to your perspective? Going from 10% to 2% mitigation seems a bit much compaired to 30% to 22%. Just imo. And didnt think of pve at all.

Gilliamtherogue

Lokey0024 wrote: »

@Gilliamtherogue thank you for the raw statistics, Very informative as i am new to eso. Yet this flat reduction in dmg mitigation doesnt seem to favor heavy armor to your perspective? Going from 10% to 2% mitigation seems a bit much compaired to 30% to 22%. Just imo. And didnt think of pve at all.

Just looking at percentages it may seem like it doesn't really throw a dent in heavy armor, but in fact 8% damage is 8% anywhere its thrown. Let's put some numbers to this to make things clearer.

I'm a nightblade and I'll be using 3 perimeters, a constant, a heavily armored target, and a light armored target.
Constat: Let's say my Surprise Attack in Cyrodiil does 5000 damage to a target with 0 armor, no blocking, no mitigation whatso ever. This is our baseline, 5000 damage.

I then apply Major Fracture to my target, and deal 5000 damage. Why? Because he already has 0 armor, meaning any sources of pen are useless. Unlike many games, you actually cannot make that number go under 0 no matter what.

Then I walk up to a heavily armored character, who has 25000 armor. 25000 armor/660= 37.87(r)% mitigation. I smack him with Surprise Attack once and do 3106 damage. 5000 x (1-.37878787). Surprise Attack has now applied Major Fracture, so I will smack him again, but now he has 19720 armor. 19720/660= 29.87(r) My surprise attack would then deal 3506 damage. 5000 x (1-.29878787). Overall Major Fracture has added 400 additional damage to my surprise attack, which is exactly 8% of 5000.

Now let's move to a light armored character, who has 8000 armor. 8000/660 =12.12(r)% mitigation. Imma smack this fool too, and deal 4393 damage (ESO calculations always round down). 5000 x (1-.12121212). Now that Major Fracture has been applied, this target has 2720 armor. 2720/660=4.12(r)% mitigation. I'll hit them again and do 4793 damage (remember to round down!) 5000 x (1-.041212121). Here we've gained another 400 additional damage, despite this target having less than 1/3rd the armor of the other target! We gain the same amount of damage regardless who we place it on, however this is greatly changed when you add % based armor reduction like maces. Maces actually lose efficiency when a target has less armor, because it reduces the armor's target by 20%. Smaller numbers means less to work with, so that 20% is going to be much smaller on a silly cloth wearer compared to Mr. Meatwall. I hope this helped!

Lokey0024

No i understand perfectly what your saying, yet dont agree. I believe it to be imbalanced. To be honest the amount of armor penetration offered via champion points, weapon selection and inherent traits on weapons makes any armor almost laughable unless giving considerable buffs associated, so its kind of a moot point.

Gilliamtherogue

Lokey0024 wrote: »

No i understand perfectly what your saying, yet dont agree. I believe it to be imbalanced. To be honest the amount of armor penetration offered via champion points, weapon selection and inherent traits on weapons makes any armor almost laughable unless giving considerable buffs associated, so its kind of a moot point.

In PvP? You're already given an unmitigatable 50% damage reduction from Battle Spirit, anymore defense then we see on most builds and the game would slow down to the pace of slugs fighting each other. It's fine to have an opinion about tankiness and whatnot, but I have mathmatically shown that there is no imbalance of these buffs/debuffs. I actually went on to say that these debuffs actually hurt other sources of penetration, meaning they're doing less good than bad. Not to mention all the trade offs you sacrifice by devoting your build to pen. Running maces over daggers you lose 10% crit, that's a lot of crit. Running Piercing Strikes over Mighty/Precise Strikes? Losing scaling raw damage and critical hit damage for some lesser scaling damage. Not to mention with 501 CP cap coming it's going to be even more taxing to spec purely towards one stat.

Sharpened has been nerfed to high hell as of 1.7/2.1. Instead of offering scaling damage increases it's been changed to a flat bonus damage amount, making it utterly useless compared to precise. The only reason players still run it is because of clinging to a dead meta and lack of understanding of the power of crit.

Lokey0024

Care to test your theorys of sharpend being a dead meta? From reading tooltips and simple math i came up with this.

31points piercing/mage champion tree/ritual=increases the amount of Armor your physical attacks ignore by 11%

Legendary maul og agility with sharpend. Increase armor and spell penetration by 14%

Heavy weapons/2handed skill tree= Two handed maces ignore 20% of your targets armor.

So 44% armor ignore.

10000×.44=4400 ignore so minus 5280 from 5600.....

Or if its done with fracture first.

10000-5280= 4720×.44=2076.8. 4720-2076=2644÷660=4%dmg mid

Now heavy armor, when you crunch numbers, offers 11% mitigation with this current setup, only 7%less dmg taken then a LA setup. As i said, negligible.

OrphanHelgen

If you look at the buff as a damage mitigration debuf, its actually the same whatever armor type.

Gilliamtherogue

Lokey0024 wrote: »

Care to test your theorys of sharpend being a dead meta? From reading tooltips and simple math i came up with this.

31points piercing/mage champion tree/ritual=increases the amount of Armor your physical attacks ignore by 11%

Legendary maul og agility with sharpend. Increase armor and spell penetration by 14%

Heavy weapons/2handed skill tree= Two handed maces ignore 20% of your targets armor.

So 44% armor ignore.

10000×.44=4400 ignore so minus 5280 from 5600.....

Or if its done with fracture first.

10000-5280= 4720×.44=2076.8. 4720-2076=2644÷660=4%dmg mid

Now heavy armor, when you crunch numbers, offers 11% mitigation with this current setup, only 7%less dmg taken then a LA setup. As i said, negligible.

The math you did is highly incorrect as these stats don't operate in simple ways. The way they apply to armor is much different when you look at the overall calculation. Some forms are looked at before passives, some are looked at after. Other sources of mitigation like block also change this. Overall penetration is a highly complex stat. The Major Breach/Fracture are not penetration, they are Reduction. Reduction is quick and simple, it simply reduces the armor or spell resist by the listed amount. Penetration however I literally still can't make sense of despite spending countless hours working with it.

"Fixed an issue which was causing the Sharpened weapon trait, as well as the Champion passives Piercing and Spell Erosion, to act multiplicatively instead of additively when combined with other penetration effects." Patch notes for 2.1.4.

Piercing and Sharpened now combine to offer flat penetration values, while Maces are a different form of penetration. Tooltip reads "Each mace equipped allows your weapon attacks to ignore 10% of an enemy's Physical Resistance." That means 2 maces means you ignore 20% armor, as if it wasn't there. So right here we see we have 2 distinctly different stats. Reduction and Ignore. Maces ignore, penetration reduces. They do not stack, but instead act as two seperate sources that are applied at different parts of the calculation. In order to find true values of these numbers you'd need to take a completely naked, passiveless, 0 cp spent character and test damage vs tooltips on mobs that have identical armor/spell resistance values. Then you'd slowly add forms of reduction/etc and begin finding values. This is an extremely costly and painstaking process, and thus is why I haven't done it to the letter like I have most other stats.

All I know is the calculations I have done of Sharpened vs Precise, Precise wins in every single outcome with my characters. Could this be different for someone else? Of course, no two characters are identical unless they're the exact same CP/Race/Class/Gear. However, I only care about the end all be all in a min/maxed situation, so in my situation I want the most overall DPS and sharpened offers almost nothing in comparison. DPS values are dependent on many other stats in your kit so it's impossible to say one thing is always better in every situation. PvP and PvE are two different beasts but often splash over to one another.

Forestd16b14_ESO

What is every one talking about armor and all that ? Wouldn't be a problem cause LA shields have been proven the ultimate defense in the game MA dodge roll can just dodge the attacks and HA is already useless in PvP

Lokey0024

Overall dps in pve your more then likely right, not going to bother because i cant test said theorycrafting because im on console. But if you could hit me with known values to show me how im wrong id appreciate it. Or even a current link to any theorycrafting forum posts because i havent seen one. If its like you say then broken game is broken would probably be the best nonsensical response. And basically i was saying armor mitigation in this game falls under the category of moot point because of the laughable amount of penetration offered by passive abilities as well as active.

Yonkit

Gil, are people thanking you for your help? That's not supposed to happen. L2P you nub, math doesn't matter!

Lokey0024

Im sure he was trolling, but so was I. For actual responses.

jrkhan

Lokey0024 wrote: »

Why are these debuffs not percentages of the total? As is now, it provides to much of a debuff to light armor users, upwards of 50%, and around 40% on medium armor. i thought this game mechanic was intended to effect more armored targets.

Let's round up 5280 to a slightly larger value for even numbers.

If an attack that would have dealt a heavy armored target 500 damage, deals 600, that's a 20% damage increase.
If that same attack that would have dealt a light armored target 900 damage, instead deals it 1000, that's a 11% damage increase.

I think you are looking at it the wrong way.
It is a bigger % damage increase to a heavy armored target.

Gilliamtherogue

Yonkit wrote: »

Gil, are people thanking you for your help? That's not supposed to happen. L2P you nub, math doesn't matter!

The forums have made me a bitter man, yet I still try to spread my knowledge. </3

Angarato

making it % would *** over heavy armor users

Forestd16b14_ESO

Angarato wrote: »

making it % would *** over heavy armor users

Lots of players already have 50%+ penetration to res so HA users or what tiny tiny faction of HA users in PvP are already "screwed". So this honestly wouldn't make much of a difference.

Docmandu

Forestd16b14_ESO wrote: »

Angarato wrote: »

making it % would *** over heavy armor users

Lots of players already have 50%+ penetration to res so HA users or what tiny tiny faction of HA users in PvP are already "screwed". So this honestly wouldn't make much of a difference.

Are that the same people that are crying about the 501 CP cap?

Armitas

Armor avoidance in this game is ridiculous at all levels. You have to sacrifice damage and sustain to get defense but you sacrifice nothing to overcome that defense. It is absurd how trivial it is to penetrate 50% armor mitigation. They need to put a limit on armor pen/reduction or remove the limiting factors of wearing heavy armor.

Forestd16b14_ESO

Docmandu wrote: »

Forestd16b14_ESO wrote: »

Angarato wrote: »

making it % would *** over heavy armor users

Lots of players already have 50%+ penetration to res so HA users or what tiny tiny faction of HA users in PvP are already "screwed". So this honestly wouldn't make much of a difference.

Are that the same people that are crying about the 501 CP cap?

Maybe but you don't need 1000+ CP to get that massive boost to penetration. Like a gold level 2H hammer with sharpened gives 34% armor penetration right there and like 31 mage points can gives like 11% armor penetration from it's one passive. So now there armor penetration is 45% that pretty much half the armor gone. Could be a reason why WB is so OP cause not many players in pvp..... like 5% of pvp players use HA and the stander res rating is like guessing 20K now it's cut in half to 10K which is what medium armor res is (again guessing). So take med armor 10K res and cut it in half now your at 5K physical res getting spammed at by a broken skill that hits as hard and as fast as a moving truck.

Yea penetration is useful but clearly can be easily exploited but luckly every one uses greatsword cause hey extra 5% damage is appeantly all any one cares about.

zornyan

Forestd16b14_ESO wrote: »

Docmandu wrote: »

Forestd16b14_ESO wrote: »

Angarato wrote: »

making it % would *** over heavy armor users

Lots of players already have 50%+ penetration to res so HA users or what tiny tiny faction of HA users in PvP are already "screwed". So this honestly wouldn't make much of a difference.

Are that the same people that are crying about the 501 CP cap?

Maybe but you don't need 1000+ CP to get that massive boost to penetration. Like a gold level 2H hammer with sharpened gives 34% armor penetration right there and like 31 mage points can gives like 11% armor penetration from it's one passive. So now there armor penetration is 45% that pretty much half the armor gone. Could be a reason why WB is so OP cause not many players in pvp..... like 5% of pvp players use HA and the stander res rating is like guessing 20K now it's cut in half to 10K which is what medium armor res is (again guessing). So take med armor 10K res and cut it in half now your at 5K physical res getting spammed at by a broken skill that hits as hard and as fast as a moving truck.

Yea penetration is useful but clearly can be easily exploited but luckly every one uses greatsword cause hey extra 5% damage is appeantly all any one cares about.

You're doing the maths wrong, the cp passives arent given you an additional 11% bonus penetration. They are a percentage of your percentage of penetration, the same as how the crit damage champion points aren't a flat percentage increases.

20% into crit damage buff is 20% of your crit damage percntage, jus like divines 6.5% buff to mundus stones is a percentage of a percentage.

So in fact chucking 100 into piercing armor champion will only increases your penetration by another 3-4% .

Also the penetration doesn't take into account the bonus mitigation from blocking, any resistance passives or buffs.

Armitas

Are you sure about this?

It seems to be the case with spell erosion that it effects your current penetration because the tool tip says. "Increases spell penetration by X%". However in the case of Piercing it says "Increases the amount of armor your physical attacks ignore by X%"

In one case it refers to your penetration stat, and in the later case it refers to you physical attacks directly rather than your armor penetration stat. I have not tested piercing so it could be a bad tool tip, but I'd like to know for sure.

Resistant also has similar wordage. "Reduces the amount of damage you take from critical hits by X%". The wordage makes it seem like it reduces it flatly. Some of them like thick skinned "reduce the damage you take from dots" have to work flatly as there is no dot mitigation stat to effect. So we at least know in some cases the tool tip wordage of this kind can be correct. But is it a correct or incorrect tool tip for Piercing?

xylena

i tested with spreadsheets and everything to find that the piercing CP is indeed a flat damage increase, and only about 4% more dps with 100CP in it (no investments anywhere else in penetration though)

Gilliamtherogue

xylena wrote: »

i tested with spreadsheets and everything to find that the piercing CP is indeed a flat damage increase, and only about 4% more dps with 100CP in it (no investments anywhere else in penetration though)

Thanks for confirming what I stated, wish more people tested too!