Armor trait: Divines vs. Infused in HotR (PvE-focused)

TheYKcid

In the current patch, most PvE DPS builds are using the Apprentice/Warrior Mundus stones, typically the best option since the nerfs to Shadow and Thief.

Divines, the traditional go-to choice on armor pieces, adds 7.5% of the Mundus' value per piece, at gold quality. When using the Apprentice/Warrior, this grants 18 spell/weapon damage per piece equipped (238 * 0.075, rounded-up).

However, it seems to me that infused is a very strong alternative—possibly even better—when concerning the "large" armor pieces (head, chest, and legs). Infused grants an additional 20% of the armor pieces enchantment, at gold quality. On big pieces—enchanted with a gold quality, single-stat glyph—we receive an additional 174 magicka/stamina (868 * 0.2, rounded-up).

For damage calculations, this extra magicka/stamina is functionally equivalent to 17 spell/weapon damage (174 ÷ 10.49, rounded-up), a negligible loss in comparison to divines. However, we enjoy the added benefit of a larger primary resource pool.

Note:
Some builds may scale better with damage than max stats. A stamina build, for instance, might have the following bonuses: major+minor Brutality, Agility (med armor passive), Flawless Dawnbreaker + Expert Hunter (with Fighters guild passives) for a total modifier of +48% weapon damage. In such a case, it would probably be better to go with divines to get a higher base weapon damage.

So, which trait do you prefer to use on large armor pieces?

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO

I use whichever drops first with a preference for Divines.

Vaoh

Divines

Whichever you pick, the difference will be tiny.

On big enchant pieces of armor the difference is negligible.
On small enchant pieces of armor Divines has an edge.

I prefer 7/7 Divines as it allows more strength to mundus stones if you want to switch them out for some reason into something not strictly damage-based. Mainly I like having the same trait on all of my gear.

Damage-wise Divines is likely better but the differences are so small on big pieces you can pick whichever trait with practically zero difference. Divines is better on small pieces though for sure.

Berenhir

Divines

TheYKcid wrote: »

For damage calculations, this extra magicka/stamina is functionally equivalent to 17 spell/weapon damage (174 ÷ 10.49, rounded-up), a negligible loss in comparison to divines.

While skill damage scales of max magicka and spell damage equally, light and heavy attacks do not.

LAFlameStaff = ( round(0.0161002*Magicka + 0.643855*SpellDamage - 0.692667) ) * (1 + CP.LAStaffDamage + Set.LADamage + Buff.Empower + Skill.FlameDamageDone + Skill.DamageDone + Skill.SingleTargetDamageDone + CP.DirectDamageDone)

Izaki

Divines

Vaoh wrote: »

Whichever you pick, the difference will be tiny.

On big enchant pieces of armor the difference is negligible.
On small enchant pieces of armor Divines has an edge.

I prefer 7/7 Divines as it allows more strength to mundus stones if you want to switch them out for some reason into something not strictly damage-based. Mainly I like having the same trait on all of my gear.

Damage-wise Divines is likely better but the differences are so small on big pieces you can pick whichever trait with practically zero difference. Divines is better on small pieces though for sure.

^ This.

I do use 1 Infused piece (Velidreth head) cause I don't have anything better lol.

eso_nya

Infused

Using Loverstone + 2 cp into penetration star for every nondivine piece.

Gnortranermara

Divines

Divines is absolutely best for pure DPS.

However, in some circumstances I like to run infused with tristat enchantments on the large pieces for survivability.

Azurya

It's situational

my tank runs all infused
most of dmg-builds use divine, though I am not using warrior/apprentice on every build
and then I have some going mixed, because they perform really good that way

ah, and don´t round up, the ingamecalculator rounds down!

TheYKcid

Berenhir wrote: »

TheYKcid wrote: »

For damage calculations, this extra magicka/stamina is functionally equivalent to 17 spell/weapon damage (174 ÷ 10.49, rounded-up), a negligible loss in comparison to divines.

While skill damage scales of max magicka and spell damage equally, light and heavy attacks do not.

LAFlameStaff = ( round(0.0161002*Magicka + 0.643855*SpellDamage - 0.692667) ) * (1 + CP.LAStaffDamage + Set.LADamage + Buff.Empower + Skill.FlameDamageDone + Skill.DamageDone + Skill.SingleTargetDamageDone + CP.DirectDamageDone)

Ah this is a good point that i missed. Weaves do benefit more from damage than max resources.

If I interpreted that equation correctly, does 1 damage = 40 max resource in this context? And does the same ratio apply for light vs. heavy attacks?

Azurya wrote: »

my tank runs all infused
most of dmg-builds use divine, though I am not using warrior/apprentice on every build
and then I have some going mixed, because they perform really good that way

ah, and don´t round up, the ingamecalculator rounds down!

Cool, I actually didn't know that. I kinda assumed it would round in the direction of the closest integer, and handled my calculations accordingly. Thanks for the heads-up.

idk

The poll would only give the correct answer by luck. Those that do the math can provide the best answer.

Asardes

Divines

Full divines is the best, especially after the HotR patch since multiple mundus stones became viable. Before that everyone used Thief. For example I change between 2 or 3 Mundus stones depending on what content I do on my characters.
- apprentice or warrior when doing group content where complete resistance debuffs are available
- lover when doing content where such debuffs are not available and the combined penetration is significantly lower than mob resistance
- atronach or serpent when doing content where recovery is important, for example when playing healer or tank in PvE or doing no-CP PvP where you don't have the % recovery enabled

Concerning maximum resource vs. weapon/spell damage, the latter is always stronger due to the fact:
- maximum stat is divided by roughly 10.24 when added to the damage formula and when taking this into account it becomes clear that 129 weapon/spell damage is better than 1096 maximum stamina/magicka
- on any DD build your light and heavy attacks comprise more than 15% of your DPS and those scale differently, with the maximum stat divided by about 40, so mostly on weapon/spell damage.

TheYKcid

Yeah, a couple of people have mentioned how divines allows flexibility between different types of content. That's a very practical benefit that I overlooked. The issue of weave damage too. Good points.

P.S. starting to really wish I hadn't golded-out that infused BSW robe yesterday evening...

Izaki

Divines

TheYKcid wrote: »

Yeah, a couple of people have mentioned how divines allows flexibility between different types of content. That's a very practical benefit that I overlooked. The issue of weave damage too. Good points.

P.S. starting to really wish I hadn't golded-out that infused BSW robe yesterday evening...

Don't worry about it. The damage difference for 1 piece is less than 0.02% if you're running Apprentice. And either way, in 2 weeks you'll be able to change that Infused robe to Divines.

Cybercore_Death

I asked this question a while back trying to determine the best way to get the most damage and i was told the following:

The overall damage difference (full gold) is around 0.2% weaker if you go infused over divine.



Again, this is what i was told by a guy who did calculations to back up the number.

FakeFox

Divines

Magicka/Stamina generally scale very poorly. On builds that have extra modifiers it can work out well, but apart from that I see no benefit. Since Morrowind your regen from passives and synergies only scales with the base value, so even less reason to stack Magicka/Stamina there.

TheYKcid

FakeFox wrote: »

Magicka/Stamina generally scale very poorly. On builds that have extra modifiers it can work out well, but apart from that I see no benefit. Since Morrowind your regen from passives and synergies only scales with the base value, so even less reason to stack Magicka/Stamina there.

On my build (Breton passive, magelight, meteor and 5/1/1), I actually get a +25% magicka modifier, higher than my +20% spell dmg from major Sorcery, which is one of the reason I considered this issue in the first place.

The other points raised still apply though, yeah.

Asardes

Divines

Spell/weapon damage modifier is a maximum of 25% (20% from major sorcery/brutality and 5% form minor) but on top of that you can also slot flawless dawnbreaker for another 8% (5% from skill, another 3% from class passive) as well as 3% for any other Fighters Guild skill slotted. Templars also get 6% extra weapon damage from Balanced Warrior passive. So you can go up to 42% on a Templar slotting Rearming Trap and Flawless Dawnbreaker on his front bar, chugging weapon power pots and having a DK in the group casting an earhten heart skill - he will probably be casting Moltern Armaments every 20s for himself anyway.

Maximum stat modifier stacks in a similar fashion: undaunted mettle adds up to 6%, racial passives up to 10% and warhorn another 10%. But beyond that there are various class and guild skills: for example sorcerers have either 8% maximum stamina from bound armaments or 8% maximum magicka from bound aegis, all classes can access a 7% bonus by slotting Inner Light (5% from skill, 2% from skill line passive) and another 2% magicka for further Mages Guild skills slotted. There's also an ultimate that gives Wardens 8% maximum magicka. For example an Altmer Sorcerer slotting Bound Aegis, Inner Light and Ice Comet while wearing 5p light 1 medium 1 heavy will have a total maximum stat modifier of 33% and 43% with warhorn up, which is quite easy to get since that bonus lasts 30s and you will have 100% uptime on it even in a group running just 2 warhorns.

Runefang

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

I use whichever drops first with a preference for Divines.

Narvuntien

Divines

Divines unless your chosen sets lack resources and/or you personally struggle with resource management.

HotR buffed the base amount of stam, mag and health sets gave out which made the need to use infused be reduced and it also buffed most mundus stones, most noticably the apprentice and warrior.

mocap

Me conservative player. Still use TBS Obvious choice for me.