Penetration VS weapon dmg

LittlePinkDot

From a PvP perspective, which is more important and under which circumstances? Penetration or weapon dmg?

Ive noticed my stam sorc has low pen so I've chosen The Lover mundus over the warrior mundus.
I've also noticed that sharpened weapons don't seem to add to the penetration stat on the character sheet. (console.) who knows what other sources aren't displayed.

How much pen should I have?

Dirt_Rooster

Pen is a personal choice. Some use it more than others. I like to limit it to around 20k at the most, as to avoid over-penetrating people.
In general, when comparing it to spell/weapon damage, pen is going to give a higher end result in damage when comparing similar sources. For instance, lover will give you higher damage than warrior/apprentice. Spell/weapon damage will affect your heals, however, so those stats are still very important. I enjoy finding a certain amount of spell damage which makes my heals comfortable, and then dump everything else into pen.

OBJnoob

I'd say weapon damage is more important than penetration because it effects your heals and is therefore (almost,) twice as useful. You gotta play defense as well as offense.

Penetration has a higher effect on your damage, it's true, but most people just source penetration through abilities and balorghs monster set I think. Well, and CP when able.

That being said... Stam sorc (as you mentioned,) doesn't have a source of major breach. Also it has unconventional healing... Crit surge for example doesn't scale with damage it's just a flat heal. On a stamsorc I might put crit rating above both.

Rallying cry, I think, is a good set for stamsorc. And using a Destro Staff for elemental susceptibility is one way to get penetration.

LittlePinkDot

Dirt_Rooster wrote: »

Pen is a personal choice. Some use it more than others. I like to limit it to around 20k at the most, as to avoid over-penetrating people.
In general, when comparing it to spell/weapon damage, pen is going to give a higher end result in damage when comparing similar sources. For instance, lover will give you higher damage than warrior/apprentice. Spell/weapon damage will affect your heals, however, so those stats are still very important. I enjoy finding a certain amount of spell damage which makes my heals comfortable, and then dump everything else into pen.

How do you even get 20k pen? From what?
The Lover gives 3000ish.
The CP star isn't that much
A monster helm with pen is 1300ish?
Dual sharpened weapons I like 1500ish? Each.
Still nowhere near 20k.
I can get some characters to 9k at most according to the character stat screen.
And no I don't have add ons. I'm on a PS5.

LittlePinkDot

OBJnoob wrote: »

I'd say weapon damage is more important than penetration because it effects your heals and is therefore (almost,) twice as useful. You gotta play defense as well as offense.

Penetration has a higher effect on your damage, it's true, but most people just source penetration through abilities and balorghs monster set I think. Well, and CP when able.

That being said... Stam sorc (as you mentioned,) doesn't have a source of major breach. Also it has unconventional healing... Crit surge for example doesn't scale with damage it's just a flat heal. On a stamsorc I might put crit rating above both.

Rallying cry, I think, is a good set for stamsorc. And using a Destro Staff for elemental susceptibility is one way to get penetration.

I noticed the lack of pen problem and chose the Lover. Yes I've prioritized crit.
I chose Briarheart set for the heal on crit.
The skill crit surge gives major brutality, so I dumped 2H and went with DW/ Sword and board.

OBJnoob

Briarheart is a decent choice. The good thing is you can have rallying cry 5 piece active on your back bar and when it procs it carries over to your front bar (until it needs renewing of course,) and similarly you can use briarheart only on your front bar but the bonus will also continue.

So now you've got a lot of weapon damage and a lot of crit. Good start. Switch your sword and shield to an ice staff and slot elemental susceptibility. IF you go that route, you can also find a CP node that gives you something like 650 penetration per negative effect on a target.

So that might be around 2400 pen at any given time (ele sus auto applies 3 status effects every 6 seconds,) a sharpened weapon is about another 1500... Use a mace if you want another 1500. Major breach from the skill is close to 6000. Do physical damage and you'll have decent uptime in sundered for another 3000.

So you're what, just shy of 15k pen and still able to use balorghs if you want.

Be aware that when people tell you their builds, whether it be here or on YouTube or whatever, they normally are discussing their "buffed" battle stats. Not all of it shows up on the stat sheet.

Dirt_Rooster

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

How do you even get 20k pen? From what?
The Lover gives 3000ish.
The CP star isn't that much
A monster helm with pen is 1300ish?
Dual sharpened weapons I like 1500ish? Each.
Still nowhere near 20k.
I can get some characters to 9k at most according to the character stat screen.
And no I don't have add ons. I'm on a PS5.

I don't always have 20k, I just do not go over that amount. Usually I'm around 15k-18k. That includes the breach I apply to the target. I use a sharpened 2h mace and 6 light armor. Sometimes in no-cp I will use spinners. I also use all divines except for my chest piece, to buff lover.

CameraBeardThePirate

It's much more straightforward than a lot of people make it out to be.

Pen is the best way to increase your damage. People talk about overpenning but to be honest with minor resolve on Vigor and the amount of tanks that exist you'll very rarely overpen. The downside of investing in penetration is that it will not increase your healing. The only time penetration can increase healing is on specific cases where your healing is tied to damage done.

Weapon damage won't increase your damage as much as pen, but will also increase your healing.

CameraBeardThePirate

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

Dirt_Rooster wrote: »

Pen is a personal choice. Some use it more than others. I like to limit it to around 20k at the most, as to avoid over-penetrating people.
In general, when comparing it to spell/weapon damage, pen is going to give a higher end result in damage when comparing similar sources. For instance, lover will give you higher damage than warrior/apprentice. Spell/weapon damage will affect your heals, however, so those stats are still very important. I enjoy finding a certain amount of spell damage which makes my heals comfortable, and then dump everything else into pen.

How do you even get 20k pen? From what?
The Lover gives 3000ish.
The CP star isn't that much
A monster helm with pen is 1300ish?
Dual sharpened weapons I like 1500ish? Each.
Still nowhere near 20k.
I can get some characters to 9k at most according to the character stat screen.
And no I don't have add ons. I'm on a PS5.

Lover for 3k.
Maces or Maul for another 3k ish (alternatively, destro staves give 10% of the enemy's resistance as pen for destro staff abilities - although that value will usually be around 3k we'll say 1.5k since it only applies to destro staff abilities).
Sharpened for another 2.5k ish.
Balorgh for a ton of pen (but variable depending on how much ultimate you spend) we'll say around 4k on average.
Major and minor fracture for about 6.5k (not hard at all nowadays to get both of these)
This is already about 18k pen, and we haven't included any other set bonuses besides Balorgh, haven't included any light armor passive pen, class passive pen, or CP pen. When ult dumping with Balorgh and all of these other things included, it isn't very difficult to get over 20k at all - I don't always run all of these and Combat Metrics will often cite ~22k as my max pen value over the course of a BG

xDeusEJRx

I think overpenning is definitely a problem. You won't get a net gain by just going more and more pen, especially if you have access to balorgh.

For one, the pen you should have depends on the pen you can potentially push or debuffs you can get. I'd say the sweet spot for pen is about 10k penetration. However you can go lower on pen if your class has access to an armor debuff, like Nightblades having minor breach via surprise attack or sorcerers having a unique armor debuff via crystal weapon. That being considered, if you also have access to balorgh that will push your pen considerably high depending on how much ult you saved.

So I think having 10k penetration with no balorgh and no armor debuffs is the ideal amount

OBJnoob

I use 0 pen, except for some light armor pieces, on my magden. But magdens have easy access to major+minor breach and I am wearing balorghs. So when it matters I'm probably penetrating 15k or so.

Or if you're using Corrosive armor or Onslaught then maybe you need even less.

How much pen you need is build dependant but unless you're good at ganking or kiting I've always had a preference for weapon damage instead. Can't kill much if you can't stay alive. Whether you have 15k or 25k pen isn't going to make a huge difference against people with low armor who you could probably kill anyway. Won't make much of a difference against the true tanks either.

Best to focus on a well rounded build and be able to wade through some bull crap on the way to your target. Cuz there will be bull crap.

Billium813

Dirt_Rooster wrote: »

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

How do you even get 20k pen? From what?
The Lover gives 3000ish.
The CP star isn't that much
A monster helm with pen is 1300ish?
Dual sharpened weapons I like 1500ish? Each.
Still nowhere near 20k.
I can get some characters to 9k at most according to the character stat screen.
And no I don't have add ons. I'm on a PS5.

I don't always have 20k, I just do not go over that amount. Usually I'm around 15k-18k. That includes the breach I apply to the target. I use a sharpened 2h mace and 6 light armor. Sometimes in no-cp I will use spinners. I also use all divines except for my chest piece, to buff lover.

woah woah woah. Just to be clear, when someone is asking for Penetration numbers, you shouldn't be factoring in theoretical reductions in resistance as if those are also Penetration. If you have a Penetration of 10k AND expect to do Major Breach (Caltrops), you can't say that you have 16k Penetration...

LittlePinkDot

xDeusEJRx wrote: »

I think overpenning is definitely a problem. You won't get a net gain by just going more and more pen, especially if you have access to balorgh.

For one, the pen you should have depends on the pen you can potentially push or debuffs you can get. I'd say the sweet spot for pen is about 10k penetration. However you can go lower on pen if your class has access to an armor debuff, like Nightblades having minor breach via surprise attack or sorcerers having a unique armor debuff via crystal weapon. That being considered, if you also have access to balorgh that will push your pen considerably high depending on how much ult you saved.

So I think having 10k penetration with no balorgh and no armor debuffs is the ideal amount

My stam sorc character sheet now says 5k pen. I have Kragh helm for pen, dual sharpened daggers and the lover mundus. I also put a poison on that reduces the enemy's armour.
Don't know how else I can get up to 9k on a sorc.

Kartalin

I usually aim for 8-10k penetration in addition to major breach, then put the rest into stats/damage from there. Dual wield really helps customize your choices here so it’s a decent option depending on class. Nightblades and DKS for example.

CameraBeardThePirate

Billium813 wrote: »

Dirt_Rooster wrote: »

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

How do you even get 20k pen? From what?
The Lover gives 3000ish.
The CP star isn't that much
A monster helm with pen is 1300ish?
Dual sharpened weapons I like 1500ish? Each.
Still nowhere near 20k.
I can get some characters to 9k at most according to the character stat screen.
And no I don't have add ons. I'm on a PS5.

I don't always have 20k, I just do not go over that amount. Usually I'm around 15k-18k. That includes the breach I apply to the target. I use a sharpened 2h mace and 6 light armor. Sometimes in no-cp I will use spinners. I also use all divines except for my chest piece, to buff lover.

woah woah woah. Just to be clear, when someone is asking for Penetration numbers, you shouldn't be factoring in theoretical reductions in resistance as if those are also Penetration. If you have a Penetration of 10k AND expect to do Major Breach (Caltrops), you can't say that you have 16k Penetration...

No, you should be factoring in Breach numbers. Just because they aren't on your character sheet doesn't mean they aren't there. Just be clear to state that you're also factoring in breach. If you have 10k character sheet pen, and are applying both major and minor breach, guess what? You have 16k pen against the target.

LittlePinkDot

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Billium813 wrote: »

Dirt_Rooster wrote: »

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

How do you even get 20k pen? From what?
The Lover gives 3000ish.
The CP star isn't that much
A monster helm with pen is 1300ish?
Dual sharpened weapons I like 1500ish? Each.
Still nowhere near 20k.
I can get some characters to 9k at most according to the character stat screen.
And no I don't have add ons. I'm on a PS5.

I don't always have 20k, I just do not go over that amount. Usually I'm around 15k-18k. That includes the breach I apply to the target. I use a sharpened 2h mace and 6 light armor. Sometimes in no-cp I will use spinners. I also use all divines except for my chest piece, to buff lover.

woah woah woah. Just to be clear, when someone is asking for Penetration numbers, you shouldn't be factoring in theoretical reductions in resistance as if those are also Penetration. If you have a Penetration of 10k AND expect to do Major Breach (Caltrops), you can't say that you have 16k Penetration...

No, you should be factoring in Breach numbers. Just because they aren't on your character sheet doesn't mean they aren't there. Just be clear to state that you're also factoring in breach. If you have 10k character sheet pen, and are applying both major and minor breach, guess what? You have 16k pen against the target.

Sorc doesn't have breach

taugrim

I value weapon damage as @OBJnoob mentioned because it helps with healing as well as damage.

For builds without Major Breach, I prefer to have at least 9k penetration based for the paper doll stat, preferably 10k+. Basically I trait Sharpened on the weapon, use at least 1 light armor piece to maximize the Undaunted Mettle passive, and intentionally pick a set or two that has Offensive Penetration. If I'm running a Stamina melee build, I use Maul or Maces. If it's a Magicka build, I'll use more than 1 light armor piece.

For builds that have access to Major Breach, you have the flexibility of running sets without Offensive Penetration (e.g. Order's Wrath, Rallying Cry, Wretched Vitality, etc).

xDeusEJRx

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

xDeusEJRx wrote: »

I think overpenning is definitely a problem. You won't get a net gain by just going more and more pen, especially if you have access to balorgh.

For one, the pen you should have depends on the pen you can potentially push or debuffs you can get. I'd say the sweet spot for pen is about 10k penetration. However you can go lower on pen if your class has access to an armor debuff, like Nightblades having minor breach via surprise attack or sorcerers having a unique armor debuff via crystal weapon. That being considered, if you also have access to balorgh that will push your pen considerably high depending on how much ult you saved.

So I think having 10k penetration with no balorgh and no armor debuffs is the ideal amount

My stam sorc character sheet now says 5k pen. I have Kragh helm for pen, dual sharpened daggers and the lover mundus. I also put a poison on that reduces the enemy's armour.
Don't know how else I can get up to 9k on a sorc.

Going dual mace helps a lot considering maces give flat out penetration. Wearing a couple light works too. Maximum light i wear is 3 pieces of light armor since you can counter light armor debuffs with 3 pieces of heavy. You can also use a "crushing enchantment" on your weapon that applies an armor debuff onto target. Or you can use a set that uses penetration like Stuhn's favor, Hew and Sunder, Spriggans/Spinners(if you wanna go old school).

You have plenty of options to spec into to push penetration more

LittlePinkDot

xDeusEJRx wrote: »

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

xDeusEJRx wrote: »

I think overpenning is definitely a problem. You won't get a net gain by just going more and more pen, especially if you have access to balorgh.

For one, the pen you should have depends on the pen you can potentially push or debuffs you can get. I'd say the sweet spot for pen is about 10k penetration. However you can go lower on pen if your class has access to an armor debuff, like Nightblades having minor breach via surprise attack or sorcerers having a unique armor debuff via crystal weapon. That being considered, if you also have access to balorgh that will push your pen considerably high depending on how much ult you saved.

So I think having 10k penetration with no balorgh and no armor debuffs is the ideal amount

My stam sorc character sheet now says 5k pen. I have Kragh helm for pen, dual sharpened daggers and the lover mundus. I also put a poison on that reduces the enemy's armour.
Don't know how else I can get up to 9k on a sorc.

Going dual mace helps a lot considering maces give flat out penetration. Wearing a couple light works too. Maximum light i wear is 3 pieces of light armor since you can counter light armor debuffs with 3 pieces of heavy. You can also use a "crushing enchantment" on your weapon that applies an armor debuff onto target. Or you can use a set that uses penetration like Stuhn's favor, Hew and Sunder, Spriggans/Spinners(if you wanna go old school).

You have plenty of options to spec into to push penetration more

Argh! Finding Briarheart maces is going to be a crappy chore.
I already had the daggers and they increase the crit chance I need to proc crit surge for healing.

OBJnoob

Briarheart can be found in guild traders I think? It isn't that popular these days... I'm sure finding some maces won't be that expensive.

If you're really going all-in on the "my crits heal me while I'm on offense" thing you could keep your daggers and just slot razor caltrops instead. It's not really that weird a thing for stamsorcs to do.

LittlePinkDot

OBJnoob wrote: »

Briarheart can be found in guild traders I think? It isn't that popular these days... I'm sure finding some maces won't be that expensive.

If you're really going all-in on the "my crits heal me while I'm on offense" thing you could keep your daggers and just slot razor caltrops instead. It's not really that weird a thing for stamsorcs to do.

I've seen other builds using razor caltrops. But to me it seems like just another thing I would have to do before my combo. It would have to be on the back bar too. But I don't think I have the bar space. Getting the mace would be easier.

My build I haven't seen before.
Shes DW and Sword and board.
Snb has major breach, but again it would have to be on the back bar. The only weapon skill I'm using on the back bar is the ultimate, spell wall.
Front bar I'm planning on using Haunting curse, shrouded daggers, Whirling blades as my burst combo.
If they're still alive I can switch to back bar and use endless fury.

My other 5 piece set is Diamond's victory which I can keep up all the time because of Haunting curse and shrouded daggers.

MEBengalsFan2001

Pen only works against high resistance players. Having more pen doesn't mean you will get more damage out to kill a player.

I like having around 10K pen on my character and than I go for as much damage as possible. Usually around 5-6K damage. All of these are before Balorgh. Once Balorgh proc than your damage and pen both go up to help boost damage output.

Billium813

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Billium813 wrote: »

Dirt_Rooster wrote: »

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

How do you even get 20k pen? From what?
The Lover gives 3000ish.
The CP star isn't that much
A monster helm with pen is 1300ish?
Dual sharpened weapons I like 1500ish? Each.
Still nowhere near 20k.
I can get some characters to 9k at most according to the character stat screen.
And no I don't have add ons. I'm on a PS5.

I don't always have 20k, I just do not go over that amount. Usually I'm around 15k-18k. That includes the breach I apply to the target. I use a sharpened 2h mace and 6 light armor. Sometimes in no-cp I will use spinners. I also use all divines except for my chest piece, to buff lover.

woah woah woah. Just to be clear, when someone is asking for Penetration numbers, you shouldn't be factoring in theoretical reductions in resistance as if those are also Penetration. If you have a Penetration of 10k AND expect to do Major Breach (Caltrops), you can't say that you have 16k Penetration...

No, you should be factoring in Breach numbers. Just because they aren't on your character sheet doesn't mean they aren't there. Just be clear to state that you're also factoring in breach. If you have 10k character sheet pen, and are applying both major and minor breach, guess what? You have 16k pen against the target.

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Billium813 wrote: »

Dirt_Rooster wrote: »

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

How do you even get 20k pen? From what?
The Lover gives 3000ish.
The CP star isn't that much
A monster helm with pen is 1300ish?
Dual sharpened weapons I like 1500ish? Each.
Still nowhere near 20k.
I can get some characters to 9k at most according to the character stat screen.
And no I don't have add ons. I'm on a PS5.

I don't always have 20k, I just do not go over that amount. Usually I'm around 15k-18k. That includes the breach I apply to the target. I use a sharpened 2h mace and 6 light armor. Sometimes in no-cp I will use spinners. I also use all divines except for my chest piece, to buff lover.

woah woah woah. Just to be clear, when someone is asking for Penetration numbers, you shouldn't be factoring in theoretical reductions in resistance as if those are also Penetration. If you have a Penetration of 10k AND expect to do Major Breach (Caltrops), you can't say that you have 16k Penetration...

No, you should be factoring in Breach numbers. Just because they aren't on your character sheet doesn't mean they aren't there. Just be clear to state that you're also factoring in breach. If you have 10k character sheet pen, and are applying both major and minor breach, guess what? You have 16k pen against the target.

OPs question:

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

From a PvP perspective, which is more important and under which circumstances? Penetration or weapon dmg? How much pen should I have?

Who I was replying to:

Dirt_Rooster wrote: »

Pen is a personal choice. Some use it more than others. I like to limit it to around 20k at the most, as to avoid over-penetrating people.
In general, when comparing it to spell/weapon damage, pen is going to give a higher end result in damage when comparing similar sources. For instance, lover will give you higher damage than warrior/apprentice. Spell/weapon damage will affect your heals, however, so those stats are still very important. I enjoy finding a certain amount of spell damage which makes my heals comfortable, and then dump everything else into pen.

I don't disagree that you should factor in resistance armor reductions, and the answer to OP should most certainly say that. But the post I was replying to said none of that. They quoted "20k penetration" like that's the number on their character sheet; which is ridiculous, but players coming here for answers may not understand.

The correct answer to How much pen should I have? is highly nuanced and, although this answer is terribly vague, it is a personal choice. There are many follow up questions: What class? Are you solo or group? Stam/Mag? Maul 2H? major/minor Breach? You can't just quote a number, and most certainly shouldn't quote a number that includes non-penetration values without providing context

Billium813

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Billium813 wrote: »

Dirt_Rooster wrote: »

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

How do you even get 20k pen? From what?
The Lover gives 3000ish.
The CP star isn't that much
A monster helm with pen is 1300ish?
Dual sharpened weapons I like 1500ish? Each.
Still nowhere near 20k.
I can get some characters to 9k at most according to the character stat screen.
And no I don't have add ons. I'm on a PS5.

I don't always have 20k, I just do not go over that amount. Usually I'm around 15k-18k. That includes the breach I apply to the target. I use a sharpened 2h mace and 6 light armor. Sometimes in no-cp I will use spinners. I also use all divines except for my chest piece, to buff lover.

woah woah woah. Just to be clear, when someone is asking for Penetration numbers, you shouldn't be factoring in theoretical reductions in resistance as if those are also Penetration. If you have a Penetration of 10k AND expect to do Major Breach (Caltrops), you can't say that you have 16k Penetration...

No, you should be factoring in Breach numbers. Just because they aren't on your character sheet doesn't mean they aren't there. Just be clear to state that you're also factoring in breach. If you have 10k character sheet pen, and are applying both major and minor breach, guess what? You have 16k pen against the target.

Sorc doesn't have breach

Weapon > Destruction Staff > Weakness to Elements
Alliance War > Assault > Razor Caltrops

Dirt_Rooster

Billium813 wrote: »

The correct answer to How much pen should I have? is highly nuanced and, although this answer is terribly vague, it is a personal choice. There are many follow up questions: What class? Are you solo or group? Stam/Mag? Maul 2H? major/minor Breach? You can't just quote a number, and most certainly shouldn't quote a number that includes non-penetration values without providing context

You actually can quote a number, it's pretty easy. At what point do you feel like you are starting to risk overpenetration? As I said, that number for me is 20k. Very simple. Breach is the same thing as pen, therefore it makes sense to lump that into an overall penetration number for simplicity. What you think should be the correct way to explain things to people is irrelevant. Armor reduction is armor reduction, that's it. It's not complicated. Just stack spell/wep damage until you are comfortable with your heals, then put everything else into pen. That's all I said, it's very easy to understand. Maybe not easy for you, apparently.

LittlePinkDot

Billium813 wrote: »

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Billium813 wrote: »

Dirt_Rooster wrote: »

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

How do you even get 20k pen? From what?
The Lover gives 3000ish.
The CP star isn't that much
A monster helm with pen is 1300ish?
Dual sharpened weapons I like 1500ish? Each.
Still nowhere near 20k.
I can get some characters to 9k at most according to the character stat screen.
And no I don't have add ons. I'm on a PS5.

I don't always have 20k, I just do not go over that amount. Usually I'm around 15k-18k. That includes the breach I apply to the target. I use a sharpened 2h mace and 6 light armor. Sometimes in no-cp I will use spinners. I also use all divines except for my chest piece, to buff lover.

woah woah woah. Just to be clear, when someone is asking for Penetration numbers, you shouldn't be factoring in theoretical reductions in resistance as if those are also Penetration. If you have a Penetration of 10k AND expect to do Major Breach (Caltrops), you can't say that you have 16k Penetration...

No, you should be factoring in Breach numbers. Just because they aren't on your character sheet doesn't mean they aren't there. Just be clear to state that you're also factoring in breach. If you have 10k character sheet pen, and are applying both major and minor breach, guess what? You have 16k pen against the target.

Sorc doesn't have breach

Weapon > Destruction Staff > Weakness to Elements
Alliance War > Assault > Razor Caltrops

I don't really want to use a bar slot on either of those.
I want something passive that just happens when attacking with my main attack skills. Best I can do is lover mundus and dual sharpened maces and a poison that reduces their armour.

CameraBeardThePirate

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

Billium813 wrote: »

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Billium813 wrote: »

Dirt_Rooster wrote: »

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

How do you even get 20k pen? From what?
The Lover gives 3000ish.
The CP star isn't that much
A monster helm with pen is 1300ish?
Dual sharpened weapons I like 1500ish? Each.
Still nowhere near 20k.
I can get some characters to 9k at most according to the character stat screen.
And no I don't have add ons. I'm on a PS5.

I don't always have 20k, I just do not go over that amount. Usually I'm around 15k-18k. That includes the breach I apply to the target. I use a sharpened 2h mace and 6 light armor. Sometimes in no-cp I will use spinners. I also use all divines except for my chest piece, to buff lover.

woah woah woah. Just to be clear, when someone is asking for Penetration numbers, you shouldn't be factoring in theoretical reductions in resistance as if those are also Penetration. If you have a Penetration of 10k AND expect to do Major Breach (Caltrops), you can't say that you have 16k Penetration...

No, you should be factoring in Breach numbers. Just because they aren't on your character sheet doesn't mean they aren't there. Just be clear to state that you're also factoring in breach. If you have 10k character sheet pen, and are applying both major and minor breach, guess what? You have 16k pen against the target.

Sorc doesn't have breach

Weapon > Destruction Staff > Weakness to Elements
Alliance War > Assault > Razor Caltrops

I don't really want to use a bar slot on either of those.
I want something passive that just happens when attacking with my main attack skills. Best I can do is lover mundus and dual sharpened maces and a poison that reduces their armour.

If you're not willing to spend bar space on those abilities (I'd really reconsider Elemental Susceptibility as it's an absolutely busted skill), I would definitely go a Stamina Weapon glyph over a poison. Poisons will only give Physical Breach OR Spell Breach, while a stamina glyph will give both with a better uptime (especially if you run charged offhand), as well as giving you better stamina sustain.

Dojohoda

It is hard to say because players will not have the same amount of resistance. You'd need to make far too many mathematical observations in Cyrodiil while attacking players and attempt to make a good guess at how much pen you need.

One thing that you can lean on is the players, of which there are many, who use Resolving Vigor received a buff to resistance (assuming they did not previously have access to Minor Resolve, see list below).
"After casting resolving vigor you gain Minor Resolve, increasing your Physical and Spell Resistance by 2974, for 20 seconds."

Sources of minor resolve prior to 2022 update:
Blessing of Protection +morphs, restoration staff
Bound Aegis, sorcerer
Mirage, nightblade
Magma Incarnate, monster set (this was kind of popular for, mostly, minor courage)

Basically, if you are thinking you need more pen, raising your pen by approximately 3k is probably okay for starters.

You'd also need to consider the popularly used new sets. Mara's Balm is both popular and new and it adds armor:
(2 items) Adds 1487 Armor
(3 items) Adds 424 Critical Resistance
(4 items) Adds 4% Healing Taken
(5 items) When a negative effect is removed from you, restore 1675 Health. This effect can occur once every 1 second. When you take damage and have 6 or more negative effects, restore 1675 Health per negative effect and then cleanse all. This effect can occur once every 15 seconds.

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The question next is if mara's balm replaced a previously used set with armor. (I don't remember.)

Anyway, it's onerous to figure it all out. I would increase pen, at least, to account for minor resolve and see how that works out.