Why maces are not as bad in PvE as most consider them to be - Analysis

Masel

Hey folks, it's me again with a small abstract about some Min-/Maxing. Many people spend lots of time farming for BoP weapons, and in most cases it is "dagger or decon". I spend days in CoA1 farming for a second Sunderflame Weapon to use alongside my Infused Axe, and best i got was a sharpened Mace. Maces are considered useless by most of the PvE-community due to the fact that most deem them to be weak due to the fact that they are not based on the Basic Resistance Values of enemies on Veteran Content. I'm going to provide some Math based on actual ingame testing that shows that maces are never useless and will always give you a value of penetration and until a certain debuffing scneario is achieved, will give you more than a dagger will.

Here's the mitigation formula:

Physical Mitigation =(((Target Physical Resist + Flat Physical Debuffs)*(1 - %-Penetration) - Physical Penetration)*(-1/(50000)) + 1)

So where does the mace come in?

Firstly, The Target Physical Resist value is 18200 in all Veteran Content excpet for Veteran Maelstrom Arena. Flat debuffs can be a lot of different things, such as:

Major Fracture - 5280
Minor Fracture - 1320
Alkosh - 3000
Crusher Enchantment - 1644 (Infused 2137, Torug's Pact + Infused 2778)
Sunderflame - 3440
Night Mother's Gaze - 2580

Adding all that up, we have 17757. Now of course, having all of this active 100% of the time is impossible, even more on movement and mechanically heavy fights (such as nearly all fights in vHoF).

As the % gets factored in before your own Physical penetration, the highest value you*d get out of one of them is 1820 penetration and the lowest is 0 if you ahve 100% ideal debuffing scenarios.

What does this mean? Any Physical Penetration that is not a debuff does NOT affect the return you get from a mace. If you use TFS or Spriggan, it wont reduce the amount of pen the mace gives you. Same holds for the lover & sharpened weapons. So with TFS, you'll still get the full 1820 pen from the mace if you dotn have any debuffs on the target.

Assuming a critical chance of 60% with a dagger (55% with a mace) and a critical damage mutliplier of 70%, the break-even point in debuffing in average damage between a mace and a dagger is 8100. So only if you ahve debuffs amounting to a total of 8100 physical penetration, a mace is goign to be weaker than a dagger. That is not that hard to achieve, but even with lets say Major Fracture, Sunderflame and NMG, you still only lose around 1% damage compared to a dagger. Also, if you're the only stamina dd in the group, a mace is just as good as a dagger.

This is based on actual ingame testing, i verified all the calculations by testing every step of the formula.

So the point is, if you get a BoP set mace in an acceptable trait instead of a dagger, use it. It wont be BiS in all scenarios, but it will net you more than the additional time you'd need to invest to drop the 0.037% precise dagger you want.

What this also means is that in PvP, maces are really strong. As any other penetration that's not a debuff does not reduce your return from them, especially heavy armored enemies will net you up to 3300 penetration from the mace, based on the resistance of the target.

Daggers vs. Maces in a graph:





This is a table based on hundreds of ingame damage observations and replicated via Excel. It shows the amount of armor debuffing you need in order to get the same damage increase from a dagger and a mace, based on your critical damage multiplier. As daggers give you critical chance, the bonus damage they give is obviously relying on the amount of critical damage you have available to you.

What this shows is that even with a 90% critical damage multiplier, a mace is going to give you more damage than a dagger if you have less than 6600 of debuffs on your target that has Veteran Content resistance values. So in trash mobs, a mace is certainly giving you more additional damage than a dagger will as you cant debuff all enemies at once reliably. Even if you can put Major Fracture on all targets, it is still not enpugh to make a mace worse than a dagger.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO

This is great, the kind of content I love and is really useful. Have an awesome.

Pijng

Praise the mace! \[T]/

Royaji

Any semi-solid group will have good uptime on Major Fracture, Infused Crusher and Alkosh. In this setting maces are always behind daggers. If we are talking about min/maxing every 0,1% more DPS matters.

And btw, you can theoretically get even more than 3300 penetration from a mace in PvP setting. Resistances are not capped at 33000 but armor mitigation is capped at 50%. But I'm pretty sure even the tankiest of troll-tanks don't have that much resistances under the hood.

Masel

Royaji wrote: »

Any semi-solid group will have good uptime on Major Fracture, Infused Crusher and Alkosh. In this setting maces are always behind daggers. If we are talking about min/maxing every 0,1% more DPS matters.

And btw, you can theoretically get even more than 3300 penetration from a mace in PvP setting. Resistances are not capped at 33000 but armor mitigation is capped at 50%. But I'm pretty sure even the tankiest of troll-tanks don't have that much resistances under the hood.

That's what i said. It's basically just about BoP sets and people saying "dagger or decon", which is not at all the case. A mace is only useless if you have literally all debuffs active on a target. It starts get weaker than a dagger fairly fast, but it still has advantageous scenarios where it outperforms them.

Also, there are at Max 10 guilds on this planet that have the minmaxing requirements that you describe. And everyone wants to be like them and wastes 3747584 hours in mindless grinding for a 1% damage increase, for whatever reason..

Bladerunner1

One hand weapons have scenarios where one is better than the other depending on a set of criteria.

It's an even starker contrast for 2H weapons when CPs are factored in. Greatswords suck. There's only a 3.7% damage buff from a greatsword when you have all 660 CP maxed towards dealing damage. Battle axes are OK-ish, but barely bleed more on average than a single one-hand axe. Mauls are the best as long as there's at least 8500 resistance still on the target. And the maul buffs every hit that affects AOE- forceful, reverse slice, brawler, every AOE class skill.

AOE damage usually gets a bigger buff by maces and mauls since few people cover all mobs with major fracture.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

I always love your math. I myself have a Sharp VO Mace that I have considered using. I disagree that maces are viable in a high end raid environment. In less optimized raids or when solo, then yes, they have their place. If it where up to me, I would give them a flat penetration value.

In my Raid, we assign armor sets to certain players. For example, tonight I am running NM/Sunderflame. I can keep both of them up north of 90% of the time. Our goal is to have consistent pen, as close to the cap as possible, and we use CP to make up the difference. The way maces function, it simply takes them outside of the calculation. Your group debuffs are irrelevant to the mace proc chance. I am not saying they dont add damage, but the dont fit well with the group buffs we are trying to optimize.

SirAndy

Masel92 wrote: »

A mace is only useless if you have literally all debuffs active on a target.

Your definition of "useless" is far different from mine.

The mace does not become "useless" in that scenario but rather it becomes slight less useful, which still isn't bad at all.

Masel

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

I always love your math. I myself have a Sharp VO Mace that I have considered using. I disagree that maces are viable in a high end raid environment. In less optimized raids or when solo, then yes, they have their place. If it where up to me, I would give them a flat penetration value.

In my Raid, we assign armor sets to certain players. For example, tonight I am running NM/Sunderflame. I can keep both of them up north of 90% of the time. Our goal is to have consistent pen, as close to the cap as possible, and we use CP to make up the difference. The way maces function, it simply takes them outside of the calculation. Your group debuffs are irrelevant to the mace proc chance. I am not saying they dont add damage, but the dont fit well with the group buffs we are trying to optimize.

Yes, I never said they are viable in a optimised raid scenario, if viable means a BiS-competitive scenario. I'm saying that you do not lose a lot of damage by using a mace as opposed to a dagger after all, under a lot of circumstances.in vma, maces are stronger than daggers against high resistance targets for example and they offer upfront burst that is not relying on critical chance.

The main argument was that many people told me that maces are trash, never use them, the 10% takes all penetration into account etc., which is plain false.

All of this Also holds for destruction staff skills and light and heavy attacks BTW.

Masel

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

I always love your math. I myself have a Sharp VO Mace that I have considered using. I disagree that maces are viable in a high end raid environment. In less optimized raids or when solo, then yes, they have their place. If it where up to me, I would give them a flat penetration value.

In my Raid, we assign armor sets to certain players. For example, tonight I am running NM/Sunderflame. I can keep both of them up north of 90% of the time. Our goal is to have consistent pen, as close to the cap as possible, and we use CP to make up the difference. The way maces function, it simply takes them outside of the calculation. Your group debuffs are irrelevant to the mace proc chance. I am not saying they dont add damage, but the dont fit well with the group buffs we are trying to optimize.

Yes, I never said they are viable in a optimised raid scenario, if viable means a BiS-competitive scenario. I'm saying that you do not lose a lot of damage by using a mace as opposed to a dagger after all, under a lot of circumstances.in vma, maces are stronger than daggers against high resistance targets for example and they offer upfront burst that is not relying on critical chance.

The main argument was that many people told me that maces are trash, never use them, the 10% takes all penetration into account etc., which is plain false.

All of this also holds for destruction staff skills and light and heavy attacks by the way..

Vaoh

Awesome work!

However, bringing a Mace is something that would have been much more feasible back when Magicka DPS was superior to Stamina DPS and Sharpened wasn't cut in half. Groups should be running as many Stam DPS as possible now.

Nowadays, targets are being debuffed almost completely, and multiple Stam DPS are being used (the best group comps have 4 Stam when possible) which allows Sunderflame/NMG to be active with amazing uptimes. Against single targets/bosses, the enemy will be debuffed with all of these leading to just about no gain from a Mace. Even in trash add fights, a single Stam DK will debuff all enemies with Major Fracture and NMG debuff with easy 100% uptime, right before an Alkosh proc debuffs them further. It's not worth it. Dagger is far superior and benefits you much more when Critical Damage buffs such as from Rearming Trap and Aggressive Warhorn activate which should have great uptimes. Critical chance is highher than 60% and Critical Damage multiplier increased to far more that 70% with so many Critical Damage multiplier buffs active.

A mace is definitely not useless, but in endgame content such as Vet trials, an optimized group would definitely lose out on DPS quite a lot using Maces if they are playing smart at all. Not even to mention that what little Penetration you gain can be very easily mimicked with minimal CP investment.

In something like a Vet dungeon PUG, where people aren't coordinated, a Mace is likely to be better. Even in this situation, Stamina builds should have high uptimes on Minor Force from Rearming trap, so wouldn't this balance out? Also the tank should provide Major Fracture and you should provide NMG, or if you're a DK you should provide both. Wouldn't this alone outweigh any penetration gain from Maces?

It strikes me as a situation where maces are meant to be used in PvP against tanky builds - no use anywhere else. In the case you can't debuff an enemy enough to make a Dagger > Mace, the player probably doesn't care one bit about min-maxing gear anyway.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Masel92 wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

I always love your math. I myself have a Sharp VO Mace that I have considered using. I disagree that maces are viable in a high end raid environment. In less optimized raids or when solo, then yes, they have their place. If it where up to me, I would give them a flat penetration value.

In my Raid, we assign armor sets to certain players. For example, tonight I am running NM/Sunderflame. I can keep both of them up north of 90% of the time. Our goal is to have consistent pen, as close to the cap as possible, and we use CP to make up the difference. The way maces function, it simply takes them outside of the calculation. Your group debuffs are irrelevant to the mace proc chance. I am not saying they dont add damage, but the dont fit well with the group buffs we are trying to optimize.

Yes, I never said they are viable in a optimised raid scenario, if viable means a BiS-competitive scenario. I'm saying that you do not lose a lot of damage by using a mace as opposed to a dagger after all, under a lot of circumstances.in vma, maces are stronger than daggers against high resistance targets for example and they offer upfront burst that is not relying on critical chance.

The main argument was that many people told me that maces are trash, never use them, the 10% takes all penetration into account etc., which is plain false.

All of this also holds for destruction staff skills and light and heavy attacks by the way..

Agreed. Also, the definition of "a lot of damage" is very subjective. I have been doing tests with various DW stam weapons. They are all much closer in damage than people care to admit. I have gone back and forth between Infused Axe and Infused Dagger on my main hand. I would be lying if I said I could see a noticeable difference.

If you can craft weapons for your build, then I am never going to suggest you make a mace. If you need dropped weapons, mace in a good trait is not the end of the world.

Bobby_V_Rockit

This please me as the only tds dw weapons I have ever gotten are two maces. Time to transmute!