Major protection vs Major Resolve

eMKa8

What seems to be better in pvp ?
10% flat reduction or 5K physical and magickal mitigation ?

Thanks for your insights

divnyi

Armors are generally better, protection is harder to obtain but it can push you even higher than armor cap.

Afaik 6600 armor is 10% damage ignored. The more armor you stack, the more actual damage mitigation it does:

difference between 40% and 50% is
100% - (100%-50%) / (100%-40%) = 17.6%
difference between 30% and 40% is
100% - (100%-40%) / (100%-30%) = 14.2%
and so on

Lazarus_Rising

Like divnyi said.

Basically 660 armor means 1% damage mitigation

Major Resolve gives 5948 armor which comes down to 9% damage mitigation

therefore Major Protection is better.

I would use both tho if possible.

fred4

Lazarus_Rising wrote: »

Major Resolve gives 5948 armor which comes down to 9% damage mitigation

therefore Major Protection is better.

It's more complicated than that, because Protection is multiplicative while armor is additive with itself. Let's say for the sake of the argument you have no mitigation whatsoever and your attacker has no penetration:

Remaining damage after protection = 0.9 = 90% = 10% mitigation
Remaining damage after armor = 0.91 = 91% = 9% mitigation

This is basically the only case where your assertion is correct. Now let's calculate when you already have 41% armor, e.g. with Major Resolve you land smack on the limit (50%):

Remaining damage after protection = (1 - 0.41) * 0.9 = 0.59 * 0.9 = 0.531 = 46.9% mitigation
Remaining damage after Major Resolve = 1 - (0.41 + 0.09) = 1 - 0.5 = 0.5 = 50% mitigation

Of course, in practice, PvPers tend to have a lot of pen. This offsets the advantage that stacking armor has. Nonetheless, as a rule of thumb, the more armor you already have, the more effective it becomes to stack even more.

Now let's calculate the break even point. This is how much effective armor (after penetration) you need, so that adding 9% extra yields 10% multiplicative mitigation:

(1 - x) * (1 - 0.1) = 1 - (x + 0.09)
(1 - x) * 0.9 = 1 - x - 0.09
0.9 - x * 0.9 = 0.91 - x
-x * 0.9 = -x + 0.01
0.1 * x = 0.01
x = 0.1

In other words, once you have 10% armor, aka 6600 armor (effective, after penetration), adding Major Resolve becomes more effective than adding Major Protection.

It then becomes a question of how much penetration your attacker has. If you want to protect against a nightblade with a full Balorgh proc, you would need a lot of armor. Given the choice between Major Resolve and Major Protection, the latter may be better. You would likely need 25K+ armor without Major Resolve for the added Major Resolve to win out over Major Protection.

On the other hand, if your attacker merely has 10K pen, then adding Major Resolve to just 16.6K armor starts to win out over Major Protection. Furthermore, if you're talking about NPC attacks, such as flag guards or IC bosses, Major Resolve wins from 6.6K armor upwards.

fred4

fred4 wrote: »

Now let's calculate when you already have 41% armor, e.g. with Major Resolve you land smack on the limit (50%):

Remaining damage after protection = (1 - 0.41) * 0.9 = 0.59 * 0.9 = 0.531 = 46.9% mitigation
Remaining damage after Major Resolve = 1 - (0.41 + 0.09) = 1 - 0.5 = 0.5 = 50% mitigation

While this is the best case, I want to elaborate on this point. Your frame of reference matters. The frame of reference that the calculation is based on is the full damage without any mitigation. However that is something you generally never experience, because you almost never run around naked. You're always wearing some armor. If you are a tanky fella with 27K unbuffed armor, then that becomes your frame of reference. This is, at least, true against NPCs who never have any penetration. You get a feel for how much damage they do, for what is dangerous and what is not. Once you put on Major Resolve with that frame of reference, the damage reduction you feel is actually:

0.5 / 0.59 = 0.8475 = 15.25%

Whereas the damage reduction from Major Protection is still only 10%. Multiplicative reduction always feels the same in any frame of reference.

This basically also accounts for any discrepancies between divnyi's and my answers. I'm finding it hard to reconcile his calculations without having another big think. However let's take my own last calculation. From the point of view of someone gaining Major Resolve, they will feel that as a 15.25% damage reduction, as indicated. However, from the point of view of someone losing Major Resolve, e.g. they were used to running around with 33K armor and now they don't have that buff, it will arguably feel like:

0.59 / 0.5 = 1.18 = +18% damage

Whereas losing Major Protection would feel like:

1 / 0.9 = 1.11 = + 11.1% damage

So don't be deceived by the small numerical difference in the original calculation. The math can be very deceptive as to how it feels to play. Which is correct? Which way of looking at this best captures the player experience? I couldn't say.

eMKa8

What for instance if i have 5K pen and a other enemy player has 30K armor buffs. Would it then matter to increase pen to 10K ?

Or is that useless because it will all be mitigated by the enemy defender?

In other words , if you have low pen , does it matter to invest a little bit into it or is it throwing away stats?




Question 2
Other question about my build. I have 56K magicka on my magsorc. And my pen is around 6800. My %increase on magicka is about 23% (thx to passives, innerlight, bound aegis…).

What would then be the better mundus stone to invest in for better dmg. The lover for extra pen to 10K ? Or still the mundus atronauch giving max mag 2000 , which gives 2000+23% of 2k

divnyi

eMKa8 wrote: »

What for instance if i have 5K pen and a other enemy player has 30K armor buffs. Would it then matter to increase pen to 10K ?

Or is that useless because it will all be mitigated by the enemy defender?

Well first of all, 33k is the cap. So -5k is gonna be useful in any scenario.

In multiplayer combat pen is never useless since someone will eventually apply breach (or you can), and even if he was above armor cap before, now he will be below.
Practically speaking, there is no cap for armors in PvP. If you can stack 38k without harming your offensive capabilities - do that, you'll be surprised how it improves survivability compared to just cap.

fred4

Inner Light gives you +7%, 5% from the skill and another 2% from a Mage's Guild passive. You should, therefore, have +25% magicka. +27% were you to also slot Meteor. +29% were you to use Degeneration instead of, say, Crit Surge. Damn. I hadn't even thought of that. Been working on magsorc myself this week.

The more armor the target has, the more valuable pen is. It works both ways. Stacking armor works, but when a high armor build loses, say, 10K of it, that will affect them more, relative to what they're used to, than if a squishy build loses 10K. The squishy build is just really squishy to begin with, e.g. basically at all times. I have (nightblade) builds that have less than 10K physical resistances and don't keep up Major Resolve well. Against those builds physical penetration is almost worthless. They're always very squishy. That said, you're going to kill gankblades pretty much regardless of your build. Penetration is worthwhile. It helps against tankier players who you struggle to kill. It's regarded as one of the best stats to spec into, in PvP, You can't really have enough of it. Even 20K+ penetration, which you will typically only reach with Balorgh or Corrosive Armor, is useful.

However, you're a magicka-stacking magsorc. Investing into anything but magicka will drop your magicka pool and, thereby, the size of your shield / heal, significantly. You're probably wearing some light armor with your 6.8K pen. You should IMO consider adding Elemental Susceptibility and leave it at that. In the case of my own magsorc I currently struggle to fit both Ele Sus and Crystal Frags on the bar, though, or something else will have to go.

I'm currently doing a "Malcolm" (YouTube), e.g. I'm wearing Wretched Vitality on the back bar and, for various other reasons, I only have 44K magicka right now. I find shielding playstyles magicka hungry. I like high regen, so I'm also using the Atronach mundus stone, which actually gives you regen. Quite happy with that, as I was able to 1vX and kill a nightblade + DK who ganged up on me in IC. Sorc feels very strong, but defending against constant Tarnished Nightmare ganks took a lot out of me all the same. I suspect a 56K magicka build would sacrifice too much sustain, but only you can answer that. For my playstyle, for better or for worse, I tend to sacrifice penetration.

With all that said, I have a friend who is a good dueller. He kills me easily and I've run into similar sorcs in open world. He doesn't like magsorc, so he's running a stamsorc and used a Shattered Fate front bar in our last duel (+8K pen). Those kind of builds don't stack magicka, but health to get a decent shield size. Regardless of what kind of sorc you are, DOT pressure seems to be part of a good duelling setup. He used Ele Drain and Arterial Burst. Add a poison enchant and you basically have Poisoned, Hemorhaging, Burning, Chilled and Concussed covered with two skills. It's devastating in 1v1, or at least against me.

divnyi

@fred4 consider giving a try to Aetherial Ascention + Gaze of Sithis on magsorc if you struggle with gank. Yes, you might have bit less manapool and less shield, but you will be at armor cap consistently, thus each point of shield you have will be used more effectively.

fred4

divnyi wrote: »

@fred4 consider giving a try to Aetherial Ascention + Gaze of Sithis on magsorc if you struggle with gank. Yes, you might have bit less manapool and less shield, but you will be at armor cap consistently, thus each point of shield you have will be used more effectively.

Hmm. That last point is actually very true. FWIW, my buffed resistances are 24K / 27K (Nord). That said, I wanted to make a high mag build, like eMKa8, like in the days of yore. Damage has got to come from somewhere. I got it up to 49K today, mainly by trading away some spell damage, e.g. same damage, better shield.

My post probably left the wrong impression. I'm merely a half-decent player. I don't normally win 1v2s, not against two players who were decent themselves, coordinated, aggressive, and playing as a duo it seemed like. These guys were doing damage to me, but I was able to turn and pressure them too. Sorc felt good, albeit I forgot I had Inner Light slotted. This meant I had to defend until my detection potion came off cooldown and I could go after the nightblade first.

Aetherial Ascension is my go to set for certain solo PvE situations. In PvP I'm doubtful. Same with Sithis. If it can work on any class, it's sorc. I actually tried it ages ago on that class. At the end of the day, though, I have a block reflex. Blocking is too important to give up, at least for me. Sithis might have been good before health regen got subjected to Battle Spirit.

You may be pushing your resistances beyond cap, where this works out for you. I don't think that's something I've tried. Something in me rebels against the high health / high resistance meta, I think. I tend to play builds that trade damage for sustain, not health and resistances. There is an IMO better gank protection mythic - for my purposes and for certain magicka builds only - namely the Esoteric Greaves. These also blunt burst in general. They are "my" go to item that few enough people seem to use. As a 1-piece I find them unbeatable, e.g. exceptionally strong when they work. They're good enough to face tank Gothmau as a DD in low arcs, for example. They also mean it's virtually impossible for a single nightblade to gank you. That said, the way I use these is to skimp on health, so I can go fully into magicka and sustain. Hence Wretched Vitality, but also Dark Deal on a magsorc. The problem with Dark Deal is you can't block. I always thought the Greaves would synergise, effectively fixing that issue, but never had quite the right build for that. Dark Deal, in my build, is a heal I can risk using. It also gives Minor Berserk and Force now. The final new ingredient is Shocking Soul, with 1K mag/stam back and Major Vitality from the spammable, increasing the shield size and heal. So that's what I was using, but three things happen with that build:

1. You are vulnerable to DOT pressure, which you can only mitigate with armor and healing / shielding. E.g. status effect builds.
2. You are vulnerable to being pelted with direct damage. The Esoteric Greaves may charge you every 0.3 seconds.
3. You have a big target on your back. Every nightblade will try to gank you, because of your low health.

All in all, I'm happy with this approach, though. The Greaves are finnicky. It's not entirely clear what they mitigate and what they don't (try using them in vBRP ). You have to watch your stamina, your dodge rolls. On the other hand you have all manner of options to get stamina back quickly in my build. It's powerful, but it keeps you on your toes.

divnyi

fred4 wrote: »

Something in me rebels against the high health / high resistance meta, I think. I tend to play builds that trade damage for sustain, not health and resistances.

I know what you mean. Most of my characters push for extra damage and sacrifice survivability.
I don't care if I die, but I like to see players dying.
This one is an exception. It still does pretty good damage but 1v1 it will very often stalemate vs other tougher build.

Lazarus_Rising

fred4 wrote: »

Lazarus_Rising wrote: »

Major Resolve gives 5948 armor which comes down to 9% damage mitigation

therefore Major Protection is better.

It's more complicated than that, because Protection is multiplicative while armor is additive with itself. Let's say for the sake of the argument you have no mitigation whatsoever and your attacker has no penetration:

Remaining damage after protection = 0.9 = 90% = 10% mitigation
Remaining damage after armor = 0.91 = 91% = 9% mitigation

This is basically the only case where your assertion is correct. Now let's calculate when you already have 41% armor, e.g. with Major Resolve you land smack on the limit (50%):

Remaining damage after protection = (1 - 0.41) * 0.9 = 0.59 * 0.9 = 0.531 = 46.9% mitigation
Remaining damage after Major Resolve = 1 - (0.41 + 0.09) = 1 - 0.5 = 0.5 = 50% mitigation

Of course, in practice, PvPers tend to have a lot of pen. This offsets the advantage that stacking armor has. Nonetheless, as a rule of thumb, the more armor you already have, the more effective it becomes to stack even more.

Now let's calculate the break even point. This is how much effective armor (after penetration) you need, so that adding 9% extra yields 10% multiplicative mitigation:

(1 - x) * (1 - 0.1) = 1 - (x + 0.09)
(1 - x) * 0.9 = 1 - x - 0.09
0.9 - x * 0.9 = 0.91 - x
-x * 0.9 = -x + 0.01
0.1 * x = 0.01
x = 0.1

In other words, once you have 10% armor, aka 6600 armor (effective, after penetration), adding Major Resolve becomes more effective than adding Major Protection.

It then becomes a question of how much penetration your attacker has. If you want to protect against a nightblade with a full Balorgh proc, you would need a lot of armor. Given the choice between Major Resolve and Major Protection, the latter may be better. You would likely need 25K+ armor without Major Resolve for the added Major Resolve to win out over Major Protection.

On the other hand, if your attacker merely has 10K pen, then adding Major Resolve to just 16.6K armor starts to win out over Major Protection. Furthermore, if you're talking about NPC attacks, such as flag guards or IC bosses, Major Resolve wins from 6.6K armor upwards.

Thanks for the math. Super interesting! What a deep dive

eMKa8

My build actually has gaze of sithis together with crafty alfiq and ancient grace and 2 items of trainee and one domihaus shoulder

This brings me up to 60K magicka , 32K health , 22k stamina … and unbuffed 24-27K resistances.

I use sugar skulls , 2 heavy reinforced and all enchantments are tripod.






But this build is not fast enough so i tend to play much more with a similar but different set up like the one below :


Sithis & domihaus are changed by mighty chudan (giving one free back bar slot for ability).

I use as mythic ring of wild hunt (+swift on that ring). And then ancient grace and alfiq

Magicka is about 52 K , and i am superfast.
Oh yes and i am a vampire. The good part is that i can get out of a fight using streak , elusive mist , dodge , streak , mist , dodge , streak ….

Very fast past build which i enjoy a lot

Spell dmg is only about 4200 buffed (2800 unbuffed) but i have 51K magicka and 9800 spell pen

Crit is only 24% though