Precise vs Sharpened

Xrucible

At what amount of spell penetration would precise weapons out DPS sharpened weapons? Does anyone know?

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO

There sure is and his name is the great Lord Asayre, read his analysis here-

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/262295/nirnhoned-precise-and-sharpened/p1


Particularly this part-


Precise provides 3.5% increase in ability tooltip, this value can be achieved if Sharpened removes at least 1750 resistance.


So if the mob has at least that much resist left, sharpened is better. Less then that precise is better.

Nifty2g

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

There sure is and his name is the great Lord Asayre, read his analysis here-

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/262295/nirnhoned-precise-and-sharpened/p1


Particularly this part-


Precise provides 3.5% increase in ability tooltip, this value can be achieved if Sharpened removes at least 1750 resistance.


So if the mob has at least that much resist left, sharpened is better. Less then that precise is better.

TL;DR – For PvE DPS: Sharpened > Precise > Nirnhoned

Xrucible

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

There sure is and his name is the great Lord Asayre, read his analysis here-

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/262295/nirnhoned-precise-and-sharpened/p1


Particularly this part-


Precise provides 3.5% increase in ability tooltip, this value can be achieved if Sharpened removes at least 1750 resistance.

OK this is awesome. Exactly what I wanted. I was having a discussion with a friend on how much penetration was too much penetration. Does this work even with a warhorn rotation in a trial environment, here the increased crit damage would change the tooltip comparison?

nordsavage

Mobs are nothing. Bosses and other larger armored enemies have resistances so go with sharpened for penetration.

Totalitarian

So, I tried to work it out, so please let me know if there's anything with it.

First, we'll model DPS as just a number, and as a function of Critical Damage, Critical Chance, Effective Weapon Damage, and Armor Mitigation. Basically, it's the product of all of these, with Effective Weapon Damage, being the base. I'll throw in Precise on one side, and Sharpened on the other, and we'll make an inequality.

We get:

CritDamage * (CritChance + Precise) * EffectiveWeaponDamage * (1/2)((Armor - Penetration)/Cap)
>
CritDamage * CritChance * EffectiveWeaponDamage * (1/2)((Armor - Penetration - Sharpened)/Cap)


Then we cancel out CritDamage and Effective Weapon Damage and the Resistance Cap, getting us:

(CritChance + Precise) * (Armor - Penetration) > CritChance * (Armor - Penetration - Sharpened)


Again, now, let's expand it all out. Make the substitution Armor - Penetration = U for simplicity:

(CritChance + Precise) * U > CritChance * (U - Sharpened)


Simplify for:

U*CritChance + U*Precise > U*CritChancet - CritChance*Sharpened
Which is just
U*Precise > -CritChance*Sharpened

Then Reexpand U:

(Armor - Penetration) * Precise > -CritChance*Sharpened


Solve for Penetration:

-Penetration > -((CritChance*Sharpened)/Precise) - Armor

Which is:

Penetration < ((CritChance/Precise) * Sharpened) + Armor



What you need:
Your Current Critical Strike Chance
Value of Precise you are going for, Gold Weapons have 7%
Value of Sharpened you are going for, Gold Weapons have 5160(input as a negative number)
Value of Armor/Spell Resist target posesses.

Penetration will get you a negative number, so you need a FLAT penetration higher than the absolute value of that number.



Again, we can also factor in percentage penetration too!

I'll skip a ton of steps, but basically, it's the same equation as the flat penetration only, but with extra constants! It does get down to a two variable inequality that spits out two different values, so you have to calculate one of them through other means.

The Percent + Flat Penetration equation is:

((1 + BasePercentPenetration + AddedPenetration) * FlatPenetration)
<
(((CritChance/Precise) * Sharpened) + Armor) * (1 + BasePercentPenetration)

In this case, in addition to CritChance, Precise, Sharpened, and Armor, you need to know:
Your base percentage penetration (mostly from CP)
The amount of percentage penetration you plan on adding

It's a bit more of a difficult equation to get a usable answer out of.


Regardless, I hope I helped to lead you through the steps of solving this problem, and that you can benefit from it!