pls, someone help me

You need to explain this better or show a video/screenshot. This is too vague to figure it out and also pretty unlikely.

the player only had 18000 of health or something like that

a better image

to a mob without armor i deal the damage of the ability

that's the strange thing

or something like that

MiguelRivasOtero wrote: »

to a mob without armor i deal the damage of the ability

Which mob(s) specifically have no armor that you have tested?

The majority of mob types in this game have armor. This includes overland aggressive mobs (typically 9.1k armor), dungeon/trial mobs (18.2k armor on either difficulty), and arena mobs (can vary from 9.1k to 18.2k).

Your amount of pen will bypass all that for these enemies. But players can get much more armor, well above your 20k pen. Many build to counter Major and Minor Breach as well. Someone running 35k armor will still get 15k after your pen is applied.

Testing damage on a player will of course result in significantly reduced damage compared to the tooltip, and this is not just due to armor/penetration. Battle Spirit halves your opponent’s incoming damage, and it applies to players in all PvP situations (including duels). The damage is further reduced not only by armor but also by other forms of mitigation specific to players. A tooltip of 5000 doing 1500 damage does not at all prove something is wrong when that damage is done to a player. This is intentional to lengthen time to kill and make PvP engagements more meaningful than 1-2 second affairs.

If you are specifically worried about penetration, try differing amounts on mobs as a test. Otherwise in PvP you need to account for Battle Spirit, players’ base 10% mitigation, CP, etc. That’s a lot of variables to account for when you want to test only pen.

Virtus has already described it pretty well.
Your damage against players will be mitigated by any % mitigation they have, their armor rating vs your penetration, and in every case by a 50 % reduction through Battle Spirit.
Also, the ability you showed (Radiant Oppression) has an execute modifier. You have to keep in mind that, unlike an NPC, a player will heal and it will be much harder to capitalize on the execute bonus.
So if you haven't built specifically into penetration it is quite realistic that you might deal less than 25 % of your tooltip to players.

and the player in the image was pretty weak, and even when he attacked me he almost didn't damage me (he only dealth me 7000 while i was trying to make the video, that later on i converted into the image), but even so, (having in account that his armor was probably weak) i couldn't almost deal any damage

but even if the problem wasn't penetration, i would still need help because i couldn't even damage a player of level 15 :'(

MiguelRivasOtero wrote: »

when i put PVP as an example, it's because the players have more armor than any other entity

This is not necessarily true, and there appear to be some related assumptions here leading to erroneous conclusions.

Players have more mitigation than any other entity (outside of specific mechanics), but that does not mean they have more armor. And since pen is only effective against armor, it doesn’t help against the other forms of mitigation that apply to players only.

Mobs can indeed have more armor than players, depending on a player’s build, but a player will always have greater overall damage mitigation against you. Even if I had no armor in a duel against you, and a mob had 18.2k armor, you would still do substantially less damage to me than you would do to that mob with the same setup. That’s not my (nonexistent) armor lowering your damage done to me—that’s all the other mitigation I get. Penetration does nothing to counter Battle Spirit, whose 50% damage reduction alone is greater than the maximum 36.4% a mob gets at 18.2k effective armor. Nor will pen counter my CP or Protection or Evasion or blocking; it only counters armor. Even 100k pen won’t make you hit me for anywhere close to your tooltip damage. But you can very realistically get unmitigated damage on that mob by ensuring you lower and/or bypass its armor.

Since you also mentioned bosses in PvE, note that they don’t have more armor than non-bosses. Armor in PvE is based on content type, not difficulty of the encounter. A world boss has the same armor as any overland enemy (9.1k). A dungeon or trial boss has the same armor as any dungeon or trial mob (18.2k), regardless of norm or vet or vet HM difficulty. (Mobs in arenas historically varied and may still.)

If you struggle to do damage against one mob as opposed to another, the boss/elite status is not relevant. Compare the content type for armor. But also compare the (de)buffs you are getting and the (de)buffs the target is getting during your tests. The same skill does more damage when you get buffed and/or your enemy gets debuffed (by yourself or allies).

The much lower damage against players is again normal and by design. It can be due in part to armor/pen, but that is one small part of the full story, as zeroing out an opponent’s armor will show (and probably has shown) you. No amount of penetration is going to bring your damage to a player in PvP anywhere close to the level of damage you do in PvE.

Player level does not change the fact of these additional sources of mitigation. So when you struggle to damage a player of level 15, you are running into those same mitigation factors in addition to any armor: Battle Spirit, base mit, any defensive CP (level 15 still has access to any CP gained on the account, even though you will not see it), any Major or Minor Protection, any Major or Minor Evasion (for AoE skills), blocking (mobs don’t block), etc.

What you are describing so far seems to be expected. If you believe there to be a bug with penetration specifically, that is best tested against mobs in PvE. Happy to take a look at any specific figures you provide. But if it’s in PvP, you will also need to provide all of your opponent’s personal mitigation stats (effective armor, CP, Protection, Evasion, etc.) so the math is accurate. Without more specifics, we can really only reiterate that low damage in PvP is normal and expected and not comparable to damage done in PvE without all the extra mitigation properly accounted for.