Weapon trait choice

poochie

If I get lover mundus stone I'll have 15817 physical pen if I put sharpened trait on a weapon @ legendary. Should I choose that or potent nirnhoned for the 15% damage increase @ legendary? I was using TBS and had both lover and warrior mundus stones but since my damage still isn't to where I want it to be I went with Hundings and Spriggans.

Nestor

Overall, there is a small difference, less than 1%, between Sharpened, Precise, Nirn and Infused.

Now, PvP will affect this, but I can't remember if more Penetration is good for that or not.

For PvE, you don't need to go over 18K Penetration, IIRC the number. So if your below that, you can put some more on and not be wasting it. If your near that, then choose another resource.

One thing you can do is make the different weapons in Purple, then test them to see what gives the best bang for how you play. Then Gold the winner out. Its' cheap to test if you leave Nirn off the test table.

davey1107

@nestor (just FYI since you asked)

As I understand it, in PvP nirnhoned can outperform sharpened, and here’s why. Penetration pushes through a player’s armor. If they use a damage shield, your attack hits the shield first, and then the remaining amount tries to push through the armor. So the portion blocked by the shield doesn’t benefit from the sharpened.

Nirnhoned affects the damage at the beginning of the calculation...so your attack will hit the shield harder, taking it down faster and then hitting the armor harder. Also, nirnhoned can affect the power of some abilities that sharp can’t...like heals. There might be some other non-damage abilities with scalable values, but I can’t think of any right now. But heals...even if you back bar vigor or mutagen and then swap over, the ticks should get benefit from nirnhoned that they won’t from sharp.

The meta has generally moved to nirn on the attack bar, Precise on the off hand if you’re dw, then infused on the back. For most play in the game I don’t think it makes much difference...like 1% different dps in pve. But in PvP where opponents are defended differently it can be noticeable.

Nestor

Thanks, @davey1107

Most PvE mobs don't have Shields, and most folks in PvP have them. Since I don't play PvP, I was not sure of the best answer there as I was not sure how Sharp dealt with Shields.

poochie

The problem with weapon damage is the fact that unless I enchant with weapon damage on jewelry, my damage will always be the same no matter how many points I put into master-at-arms/mighty/physical weapons expert. Meaning that my crit damage will never actually break past 30k.