Sharpened better than Nirnhoned now?

DarkJester1

Is sharpened better than nirnhoned now that shields have armor? I know infused is better than nirnhoned, but I use poisons, so that's not an option.

I also know that vigor is improved by nirnhoned, but my vigor isn't on my nirnhoned weapon bar.

Anyone have any statistics? Thanks!

Keep in mind I'm mostly talking about bow, and it has a lower overall dps than 2-hander.

AAbrigo

Even if your vigor is on the backbar, once you go to your front bar nirnhoned helps on that.

MaxJrFTW

Just use the uesp build editor and compare effective weapon damage. Sharpened beats nirnhoned on 2h maces, but i think that's it.

TheYKcid

AAbrigo wrote: »

Even if your vigor is on the backbar, once you go to your front bar nirnhoned helps on that.

It does not.

Vigor (like all sticky HoTs, and even DoTs) remembers the max resource + wep/spell dmg of the bar it was casted on, and subsequent ticks will continue to scale off these stats when you swap bars.

Only %-based healing modifiers will update upon barswap in this case (likewise with sticky DoTs).

For bows and staves, sharp generally adds more DPS at the moment. It also boosts the damage of static damage sources (procs, poisons, enchants, etc.) which is an additional advantage if you're utilising any of those.

Raudgrani

MaxJrFTW wrote: »

Just use the uesp build editor and compare effective weapon damage. Sharpened beats nirnhoned on 2h maces, but i think that's it.

Just checked that build editor. On my stamblade with 2H maul, it's reeeeally a minuscule difference between Nirnhoned and Sharpened, if I use the Lover mundus which I do - if the target has 22000 resistances and 3k crit resist (I tend to see that as "most common"), then Nirnhoned is better. If I switch to Warrior, Sharpened seems better. But the difference generally is like two figure (around 20 effective weapon power), so if you got either of those there's really no need to retrait or buy new gear.

DarkJester1

Thanks guys!

Apoxsee

Sharpened is more useful but (imo) against shield still less useful than precise, nirn or infused.

Before sharpen would offer nothing in a effort to eat through a shield. Now it does help provide more dmg to be applied but will never provide additional dmg where say precise would now. Before the shield changes shields had a zero armor value thus penetration equaled zero thus zero dmg bonus. Now it applies the ability to provide more dmg to the shield but you can’t over penetrate so you never get better than what we had before the change. Once you get the resistance down to zero we are back at the pre murkmire change.

The biggest change to affect shields (again imo) was the addition of the ability to crit on them. 1.5 dmg increase is greater than reducing the shields resistance to zero.

Lord-Otto

It depends on your build. The key difference is that Nirnhoned is a FLAT bonus. Sharpened affects all your damage sources.
If you are running low max stat and weapon/spellpower, the additional damage from Nirnhoned will be noticeable. Sharpened requires you to already have good damage and will make it so you keep that damage through armor.
In that regard, you best test it yourself. I guess most damage-oriented builds will see more use from Sharpened. I excluded healing strength, exotic set and mundus combinations, and so on here to keep it short.

CyrusArya

Sharpened has almost always been more damage, but doesn’t buff healing which gives the edge to nirn imo.

NuarBlack

Lord-Otto wrote: »

It depends on your build. The key difference is that Nirnhoned is a FLAT bonus. Sharpened affects all your damage sources.
If you are running low max stat and weapon/spellpower, the additional damage from Nirnhoned will be noticeable. Sharpened requires you to already have good damage and will make it so you keep that damage through armor.
In that regard, you best test it yourself. I guess most damage-oriented builds will see more use from Sharpened. I excluded healing strength, exotic set and mundus combinations, and so on here to keep it short.

Good points.

It helps me to think of sharpened or spell/weapon penetration as a percentage damage increase because of the way resistance and penetration work. It's not exactly but it works for quick assessment. So you need spell or weapon power to multiply by that percentage in order to get the most out of sharpened. In other words will a percentage increase of your damage be greater than the flat increase of nirnhoned? Is what you have to ask about your build.

TheYKcid

@NuarBlack @Lord-Otto

Shameless self-plug here, but the calculator linked in my sig is designed to calculate exactly how much of a net % DPS increase you'll gain from any added amount of penetration (taking into account your baseline penetration as well as your targets armour).

To figure out the opportunity cost vs. nirn, you would then compare it to the % DPS gained from the WD/SD of nirn, which you can calculate over at the UESP skill browser:
https://esoitem.uesp.net/viewSkills.php

Two very helpful tools that I utilise heavily when theorycrafting

thedude33

TheYKcid wrote: »

@NuarBlack @Lord-Otto

Shameless self-plug here, but the calculator linked in my sig is designed to calculate exactly how much of a net % DPS increase you'll gain from any added amount of penetration (taking into account your baseline penetration as well as your targets armour).

To figure out the opportunity cost vs. nirn, you would then compare it to the % DPS gained from the WD/SD of nirn, which you can calculate over at the UESP skill browser:
https://esoitem.uesp.net/viewSkills.php

Two very helpful tools that I utilise heavily when theorycrafting

Will check it out

Lord-Otto

Interesting.