[Question] PvP 2H Weapon Type

Davadin

Yes, I know, there are other threads but I can't find any recent ones....

My question is, for PvP, stamDK (or any stam build really), what's best? And yes, I have Nirnhoned for all 3 types.

Nirn sword with extra damage
Nirn maul with extra penetration
Nirn axe with bleed.

Thoughts?

technohic

Right now, I like axe, and probably more so in non-CP.

Next patch, I'd go with swords in CP probably. Bleed passive getting nerfed and sword damage being boosted.

And Edit is the gear at the top right corner of your post next to the time stamp.

SodanTok

TBois

Mauls are good if you don't run much penetration through other sources as the percentage is calculated after your other sources of penetration are applied.

Davadin

SodanTok wrote: »

HAHAHA dude its completely blank on my screen. it does show the option when i hover my mouse tho... bah... Chromium problem

Thanks!

Davadin

TBois wrote: »

Mauls are good if you don't run much penetration through other sources as the percentage is calculated after your other sources of penetration are applied.

im using maul and at 9.5k (14%-ish) penetration in Cyrodiil.... (PS: im wearing 7th legion and Spriggan)

SodanTok

Seems to be weird problem on your end since you are missing all the icons next to your name too :P (one of them even has the red indicator)

As for Maul and Penetration what @TBois says isnt totally correct. The percentage is calculated only after resistance debuffs on target. So your penetration other than Minor/Major Fracture (and well, crusher, alkosh if used for some reason) wont affect Maul penetration.

TBois

SodanTok wrote: »

Seems to be weird problem on your end since you are missing all the icons next to your name too :P (one of them even has the red indicator)

As for Maul and Penetration what @TBois says isnt totally correct. The percentage is calculated only after resistance debuffs on target. So your penetration other than Minor/Major Fracture (and well, crusher, alkosh if used for some reason) wont affect Maul penetration.

I would trust this response more than mine. It's something I havent looked at in a while

John_Falstaff

@TBois , it may not be quite correct. I think they someone ( @Masel , was it you? can't find the link ) was showing that own penetration bonuses aren't subtracted from the target's resistance for the purpose of mace/maul penetration bonus calculation - only debuffs on the target. So, for instance, Major Fracture would be subtracted before maul bonus is calculated, but Spriggan's or Lover wouldn't be. But that definitely needs clarification.

Davadin

SodanTok wrote: »

Seems to be weird problem on your end since you are missing all the icons next to your name too :P (one of them even has the red indicator)

As for Maul and Penetration what @TBois says isnt totally correct. The percentage is calculated only after resistance debuffs on target. So your penetration other than Minor/Major Fracture (and well, crusher, alkosh if used for some reason) wont affect Maul penetration.

so if im running around with Nirn golden maul wearing Spriggan heavy build with 14% penetration before minor/major fracture, u think its better to switch to Nirn greatsword? I'd still spew Noxious breath for fracture anyway and sprigg keeps my pen around 9-10% instead when i swapped it.

Masel

John_Falstaff wrote: »

@TBois , it may not be quite correct. I think they someone ( @Masel , was it you? can't find the link ) was showing that own penetration bonuses aren't subtracted from the target's resistance for the purpose of mace/maul penetration bonus calculation - only debuffs on the target. So, for instance, Major Fracture would be subtracted before maul bonus is calculated, but Spriggan's or Lover wouldn't be. But that definitely needs clarification.

That is correct. Only debuffs diminish the return you gain from mauls and maces.

Davadin

Masel wrote: »

John_Falstaff wrote: »

@TBois , it may not be quite correct. I think they someone ( @Masel , was it you? can't find the link ) was showing that own penetration bonuses aren't subtracted from the target's resistance for the purpose of mace/maul penetration bonus calculation - only debuffs on the target. So, for instance, Major Fracture would be subtracted before maul bonus is calculated, but Spriggan's or Lover wouldn't be. But that definitely needs clarification.

That is correct. Only debuffs diminish the return you gain from mauls and maces.

debuff to... who? the attacker or the victim?

Major Fracture is a debuff that player apply to target, so if player got Spriggan using a Maul and spray Noxious Breath, it'll be Spriggan pen + 20% maul pen applied to Fracture-deducted target? whats the different if i substract Fractore before or after? it's on the target side, not on player side....

My math sucks lol

How about if same config is using a sword instead? Spriggan + 5% extra damage on nox-breathed target? would that be less effective because 5% is applied to... Spriggan? But could be more or equally effective if the target has Major Fracture?

i'm confused....

Ragnarock41

As far as stamina meta goes, you want to stack as high weapon damage as possible and use axe bleeds. No penetration? No problem! bleeds ignore it anyways.

For a stamDK , 2h is more of a forced back bar weapon, and its a dot class with focus on dots and high TTK playstyle, so a sword or mace isn't really giving you much benefit over an axe. Yes , even with the coming nerf. Greataxe is still the best for Dk.

Edit: For dizzy swing builds you might prefer a nirn maul. I don't know how impactful the sword buffs are, but the last time I tested nirn mace did the most damage overall.

Davadin

Ragnarock41 wrote: »

As far as stamina meta goes, you want to stack as high weapon damage as possible and use axe bleeds. No penetration? No problem! bleeds ignore it anyways.

For a stamDK , 2h is more of a forced back bar weapon, and its a dot class with focus on dots and high TTK playstyle, so a sword or mace isn't really giving you much benefit over an axe. Yes , even with the coming nerf. Greataxe is still the best for Dk.

Edit: For dizzy swing builds you might prefer a nirn maul. I don't know how impactful the sword buffs are, but the last time I tested nirn mace did the most damage overall.

yes i got a Dizzy spam build maxing at 4.1k wep dmg self-buff and 14% penetration with a Nirn maul.

just got a cheap spriggan greatsword today, will be golding it with Nirn and test it on a dummy. If they're about the same, might pick the sword over the baseball bat for aesthetic reason i guess....

SodanTok

You can change style of any weapon, so you can use maul and make it look like sword ^^

Anyway, yes. If you have spriggan (lets say 3k penetration), Major Fracture (from breath) and maul and are fighting 30k resistance target this is what happens:

You reduce the target's resistance to around 25k (by applying Major Fracture). Then your own char gets 20% of that as penetration when having Maul (so 5000) against that specific target and 3k from the spriggan.

DoobZ69

Ragnarock41 wrote: »

As far as stamina meta goes, you want to stack as high weapon damage as possible and use axe bleeds. No penetration? No problem! bleeds ignore it anyways.

For a stamDK , 2h is more of a forced back bar weapon, and its a dot class with focus on dots and high TTK playstyle, so a sword or mace isn't really giving you much benefit over an axe. Yes , even with the coming nerf. Greataxe is still the best for Dk.

Edit: For dizzy swing builds you might prefer a nirn maul. I don't know how impactful the sword buffs are, but the last time I tested nirn mace did the most damage overall.

@Ragnarock41 Hey could you explain what you mean by that bold part please?

Vapirko

For Stam DK I think sword for sure, definitely next patch IF you’re running noxious breath in your rotation and I don’t think there is any reason not to. If you’re not then I really like Mauls these days especially in no CP. Yes to nirnhoned. They feel burstier but are best on classes that don’t have fracture and already output a lot of damage like Stamina templar imo.

Davadin

SodanTok wrote: »

You can change style of any weapon, so you can use maul and make it look like sword ^^

Anyway, yes. If you have spriggan (lets say 3k penetration), Major Fracture (from breath) and maul and are fighting 30k resistance target this is what happens:

You reduce the target's resistance to around 25k (by applying Major Fracture). Then your own char gets 20% of that as penetration when having Maul (so 5000) against that specific target and 3k from the spriggan.

what do you mean by "get 5k from maul and 3k from Spriggan"? specifically, the GET part.

So my Dizzying Swing with a tooltip of 15k damage gets 8k extra penetration? so it's hitting 15k + 8k pen (12%-ish) = 16.8 damage on somebody with 25k (30 - 5k), which is 40% resistance.So my total damage is 16.8k - 40% = 10.08k damage?

Btw, i dont think Sword is worth it. I golded it, Nirn, and it doesnt change my wep damage, it doesnt change the sword's damage, all it does is adding 5% on my skills, which is.... really minimal........

So on the same example you gave, with the same target, i DONT get the 5k bonus from mail, so my total damage is 15.75 (sword 5% bonus) +3k pen (5%) = 16.53k, still on that guy with 40% is 16.53k - 40% = 9.92k damage?

that not much different....

on target with smaller res then, say 8k physical = thanks to breath = 3k = 5% instead.
maul = 16.8 - 5% = 15.96
sword = 16.53 - 5% = 15.7

where am i wrong?

Ragnarock41

DoobZ69 wrote: »

Ragnarock41 wrote: »

As far as stamina meta goes, you want to stack as high weapon damage as possible and use axe bleeds. No penetration? No problem! bleeds ignore it anyways.

For a stamDK , 2h is more of a forced back bar weapon, and its a dot class with focus on dots and high TTK playstyle, so a sword or mace isn't really giving you much benefit over an axe. Yes , even with the coming nerf. Greataxe is still the best for Dk.

Edit: For dizzy swing builds you might prefer a nirn maul. I don't know how impactful the sword buffs are, but the last time I tested nirn mace did the most damage overall.

@Ragnarock41 Hey could you explain what you mean by that bold part please?

The class is basically designed with 2 handers in mind. stamDk doesn't have an execute, gapcloser, spammable, heal over time, burst heal. 2 hander makes up for all of these things. This is the case for many stam builds but even more so for stamDk.

Surely you can decide not to run a 2 hander , but the results will be lackluster, this is why I say 2h is a forced weapon. Many people run it as a backbar choice because it doesn't really make sense to run 2h on your front bar over dual wield or sword and shield. Both superior front bar options. Classes like stamsorc/stamden can sometimes drop 2h completely to go dual wield/SnB because their kit offers good utility to make up for the lack of a 2 hander. But you don't want to drop your 2h on a stamDk to run.... igneous weapons and green dragon blood(lol). There is no reason to do so.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO

@Davadin 660 armor equals 1% damage mitagation.

When attacking a player with base 30k resist, a 15k Tooltip will be brought down to 8.2k actual damage on target. Using major fracture, 5k debuff, that brings it down to 25k. This raises the damage you do with the 15k by 8%, or 8.2k to 9.4k. mauls 20% is calculated after debuffs, so 20% of 25k is 5k, raising the damage a further 7.6%, or 9.4k to 10.5k. then the 3k from spriggans is subtracted from the remaining resistance, or 30k-5000-5000-3000, bringing your damage back up to 11.3k. all these numbers are rounded off.

With the 5% from the sword, it just raised the starting number by 5%, or 15k to 15,750. Then this number is resisted. You end up with only 9.8k on target after major fracture and spriggans. 11.3k with a mural vs 9.8k with a sword.

Aznox

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

@Davadin 660 armor equals 1% damage mitagation.

When attacking a player with base 30k resist, a 15k Tooltip will be brought down to 8.2k actual damage on target. Using major fracture, 5k debuff, that brings it down to 25k. This raises the damage you do with the 15k by 8%, or 8.2k to 9.4k. mauls 20% is calculated after debuffs, so 20% of 25k is 5k, raising the damage a further 7.6%, or 9.4k to 10.5k. then the 3k from spriggans is subtracted from the remaining resistance, or 30k-5000-5000-3000, bringing your damage back up to 11.3k. all these numbers are rounded off.

With the 5% from the sword, it just raised the starting number by 5%, or 15k to 15,750. Then this number is resisted. You end up with only 9.8k on target after major fracture and spriggans. 11.3k with a mural vs 9.8k with a sword.

This is the most important part.

It doesn't even seem there is a realistic value of opponent resist where Sword outperforms Maul, let alone our current resist meta.

I think it boils down to :

- If your build is already bleed/oblivion heavy, go for Axe.

- If all of your damage benefits from penetration, go for Maul.

Davadin

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

@Davadin 660 armor equals 1% damage mitagation.

When attacking a player with base 30k resist, a 15k Tooltip will be brought down to 8.2k actual damage on target. Using major fracture, 5k debuff, that brings it down to 25k. This raises the damage you do with the 15k by 8%, or 8.2k to 9.4k. mauls 20% is calculated after debuffs, so 20% of 25k is 5k, raising the damage a further 7.6%, or 9.4k to 10.5k. then the 3k from spriggans is subtracted from the remaining resistance, or 30k-5000-5000-3000, bringing your damage back up to 11.3k. all these numbers are rounded off.

With the 5% from the sword, it just raised the starting number by 5%, or 15k to 15,750. Then this number is resisted. You end up with only 9.8k on target after major fracture and spriggans. 11.3k with a mural vs 9.8k with a sword.

Thank you! Back to maul for now.

But how about when new updates coming it? Are they increasing sword to 10%?

Ragnarock41 wrote: »

Surely you can decide not to run a 2 hander , but the results will be lackluster, this is why I say 2h is a forced weapon. Many people run it as a backbar choice because it doesn't really make sense to run 2h on your front bar over dual wield or sword and shield. Both superior front bar options.

how is 1HS superior over 2H for StamDK?

Czirne

I did some testing on target skeletons, with 0 cp.
For burst maul is the best. Nirnhoned maul + lover stone did the most damage even after major breach debuff.
Gear was bone pirate + spriggan, and automaton + spriggan, and automaton and bone pirate. In all cases nirnhoned maul and lover stone did more damage than greatswords.
Nonetheless in small scale and duels axe bleed is still superiour, especialy in no cp. It very often does about 5k dmg over 6 seconds, in no cp that is a lot. Maybe if your opponent is potato, and you can land 5 dyzzis in that 6 second window, you would be better with maul. Its imposible to do on PC EU tho, dyzz have 3-4 sec cast time in prime time. If you even use dyzz, chances are you are not.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO

But how about when new updates coming it? Are they increasing sword to 10%?

no. they are raising the damage from 5% to 6% for 2h and double sword dw, becuase the way the game works, when you use a sword one handed right now, it is suppose to give you 2.5% damage increase but a sword only gives 2%, because the game rounds down the percent increase. not really a 2h buff on purpose, more like the easiest way to fix that dw problem.

Davadin

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

But how about when new updates coming it? Are they increasing sword to 10%?

no. they are raising the damage from 5% to 6% for 2h and double sword dw, becuase the way the game works, when you use a sword one handed right now, it is suppose to give you 2.5% damage increase but a sword only gives 2%, because the game rounds down the percent increase. not really a 2h buff on purpose, more like the easiest way to fix that dw problem.

1% increase? LOL

ok back to maul.........

technohic

Im glad you started this thread because I was looking at this all wrong. Doing my bad math for my stamplar if I have POTL on the target (the only thing I personally am doing that gets counted before the maze 20%), 21k resist is the break even point it seems between mace and sword. The higher above that, mace begins to out pace the sword. But if I am with someone who is applying major fracture to the target (NB or a Warden) then it will be a break even at around 26K resist

Does that sound about right?

The harder thing for me to figure out then is is the damage increase better than the added bleed damage of an axe which will give you flat return regardless of target, but is not guaranteed up time. Im thinking even after the nerf, the bleed will be more still.

Ragnarock41

Davadin wrote: »

how is 1HS superior over 2H for StamDK?

I think if you look hard enough you might find that the answer is pretty obvious. Or if you're lazy or can't see reason, just go to Alikr, duel a random sDk.

SodanTok

technohic wrote: »

Im glad you started this thread because I was looking at this all wrong. Doing my bad math for my stamplar if I have POTL on the target (the only thing I personally am doing that gets counted before the maze 20%), 21k resist is the break even point it seems between mace and sword. The higher above that, mace begins to out pace the sword. But if I am with someone who is applying major fracture to the target (NB or a Warden) then it will be a break even at around 26K resist

Does that sound about right?

The harder thing for me to figure out then is is the damage increase better than the added bleed damage of an axe which will give you flat return regardless of target, but is not guaranteed up time. Im thinking even after the nerf, the bleed will be more still.

@technohic its actually far worse for sword that it seems. Yes at 21k resist with minor fracture, Mace will penetrate around 4k resistances which would be 6% mitigation. That is the important difference, it removes 6% of targets mitigation so your own damage essentially increases by more than that (if someone is mitigating 10% of your damage it means you deal 90%, if they stop your damage goes up to 100% so your current 90% has to increase by some 11.111111% ). The only time where 660 penetration equals just 1% damage gain is when you are literally missing that much to full penetration. The more you are missing the more you get from it. On the other hand sword gives the 6% only to the base unbuffed tooltip. So the more other % buffs you have the least overall you get.

If its CP you can just assume sword is giving you half of what it says while with Maul you can usually assume you get more than you think you are getting.

technohic

SodanTok wrote: »

technohic wrote: »

Im glad you started this thread because I was looking at this all wrong. Doing my bad math for my stamplar if I have POTL on the target (the only thing I personally am doing that gets counted before the maze 20%), 21k resist is the break even point it seems between mace and sword. The higher above that, mace begins to out pace the sword. But if I am with someone who is applying major fracture to the target (NB or a Warden) then it will be a break even at around 26K resist

Does that sound about right?

The harder thing for me to figure out then is is the damage increase better than the added bleed damage of an axe which will give you flat return regardless of target, but is not guaranteed up time. Im thinking even after the nerf, the bleed will be more still.

@technohic its actually far worse for sword that it seems. Yes at 21k resist with minor fracture, Mace will penetrate around 4k resistances which would be 6% mitigation. That is the important difference, it removes 6% of targets mitigation so your own damage essentially increases by more than that (if someone is mitigating 10% of your damage it means you deal 90%, if they stop your damage goes up to 100% so your current 90% has to increase by some 11.111111% ). The only time where 660 penetration equals just 1% damage gain is when you are literally missing that much to full penetration. The more you are missing the more you get from it. On the other hand sword gives the 6% only to the base unbuffed tooltip. So the more other % buffs you have the least overall you get.

If its CP you can just assume sword is giving you half of what it says while with Maul you can usually assume you get more than you think you are getting.

Yikes! That really puts the break even point lower and as is, I think 21k would have been below average. With shields having resist as a factor and generally nerfed to where you need it, I think most targets are going to be at least 20k with buffs and added defensive pieces. I have gone back and forth with Axes and Swords but think I will stick to my axes.

Iskiab

Ragnarock41 wrote: »

how is 1HS superior over 2H for StamDK?

Shield resists, good cc, good stats from the shield (double stats like chest, legs, helm).

Great thread, very informative.

Ragnarock41

Iskiab wrote: »

Ragnarock41 wrote: »

how is 1HS superior over 2H for StamDK?

Shield resists, good cc, good stats from the shield (double stats like chest, legs, helm).

Great thread, very informative.

Except, I didn't ask that. But other than the passive goodies, SnB offers a reliable CC with major defile, heroic slash offers minor heroism and a snare(and the damage model is almost as high as suprise attack). So basically an SnB stamDk is actually gonna have more pressure than one that spams uppercut all day.

I don't think the glorious days of uppercut+take flight will ever come back. People just aren't so squishy anymore.