Spell damage vs spell penetration vs max magika

Centurionax

So 6600 spell penetration is 10% damage increase on a target right?

How much spell damage would i need to get a 10% damage increase on a target?
And how much max magika would i need for a 10% damage increse on a target?

WrathOfInnos

6600 Spell Pen can be anywhere from 11% to 20% damage increase, depending on your opponent’s resistance, and assuming you are not overpenetrating.

For the other 2, find your effective Spell Damage by dividing your Max Magicka by 10.5 and adding it to your Spell Damage. 10% of this effective Spell Damage is how much additional Spell Damage would give a 10% damage increase, or 10.5X that number for how much Max Magicka gives a 10% damage increase.

GDOFWR420

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

6600 Spell Pen can be anywhere from 11% to 20% damage increase, depending on your opponent’s resistance, and assuming you are not overpenetrating.

For the other 2, find your effective Spell Damage by dividing your Max Magicka by 10.5 and adding it to your Spell Damage. 10% of this effective Spell Damage is how much additional Spell Damage would give a 10% damage increase, or 10.5X that number for how much Max Magicka gives a 10% damage increase.

How do you know if you're over penetrating?

Royaji

GDOFWR420 wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

6600 Spell Pen can be anywhere from 11% to 20% damage increase, depending on your opponent’s resistance, and assuming you are not overpenetrating.

For the other 2, find your effective Spell Damage by dividing your Max Magicka by 10.5 and adding it to your Spell Damage. 10% of this effective Spell Damage is how much additional Spell Damage would give a 10% damage increase, or 10.5X that number for how much Max Magicka gives a 10% damage increase.

How do you know if you're over penetrating?

You take your target's resistance and subtract the sum of all your penetration sources from it. If the result is a negative number, you are overpenetrating

Iskiab

Someone said that you keep getting bonus damage if someone’s at negative resistances. No idea if that’s true or if it only applies to pvp.

As a rule of thumb in pvp:
Lover’s mundus is always better than stats for mag, sharpened is better than nirnhoned if you use a destro staff
SP > magicka in no-CP
Sp only a touch better than max mag in CP pvp when you’re above 300 CPs for classes that get mag boosts (Warden and NB)
WD > stamina for 5 medium and most stam builds because of the fighter’s guild passives
Crit is best on classes with an innate crit boost (Templars and NBs) but is always good, but never go Khajit

I say rule of thumb because you can make builds that break the rules of thumb; mechanical acuity plus shadow mundus or mag using 2h for onslaught and tanking pen, etc...

malistorr

In regards to over-penetrating. The real answer is you don't know if you are really, at least in group content. Because many buffs you can get will increase your pen. And that will vary group to group. Also, enemy resistance changes between about 9k and 18k depending what you're fighting. So even for Maelstrom arena, for example, each enemy has difference resistances and so your damage would not be consistent since you're probably using the same CP/mundus/gear for the whole thing. You have to ask yourself what content do you typically play? What resistance do those enemies found there typically have? If it's group content, what extra pen can you typically reply on getting from the group? If your groups are always optimized (very rare) you'll get maybe around 9K extra pen so you'd plan to get about 9K also from your own sources if you want to be at the break even point for bosses which are typically about 18K resist. Some people probably even try to get 12Kish on their own since they can't get 9K from many PUG groups/lower level players. It's a huge balancing game with no perfect answer. In general you probably don't want to go over about 9K on your own because then you're sacrificing other things like crit chance, spell damage, and max mag.
This whole topic is why test dummies exist because meta players are constantly tweaking things to squeeze out every last point of damage. There are a bunch of threads on this forum on this topic btw. I suggest checking those out because there have been very in-depth discussions on this already and no sense in repeating them really when you can just go read them.

InvictusApollo

GDOFWR420 wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

6600 Spell Pen can be anywhere from 11% to 20% damage increase, depending on your opponent’s resistance, and assuming you are not overpenetrating.

For the other 2, find your effective Spell Damage by dividing your Max Magicka by 10.5 and adding it to your Spell Damage. 10% of this effective Spell Damage is how much additional Spell Damage would give a 10% damage increase, or 10.5X that number for how much Max Magicka gives a 10% damage increase.

How do you know if you're over penetrating?

When she screams: "too deep".

WardenOfTheExalted

InvictusApollo wrote: »

GDOFWR420 wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

6600 Spell Pen can be anywhere from 11% to 20% damage increase, depending on your opponent’s resistance, and assuming you are not overpenetrating.

For the other 2, find your effective Spell Damage by dividing your Max Magicka by 10.5 and adding it to your Spell Damage. 10% of this effective Spell Damage is how much additional Spell Damage would give a 10% damage increase, or 10.5X that number for how much Max Magicka gives a 10% damage increase.

How do you know if you're over penetrating?

When she screams: "too deep".

You've made my day XD

GhostofDatthaw

I hear the term over penetrate alot not now and in reality I do t think it's possible I'm pvp anymore. So think about this right

My magnb magnb is 5l amd 2 offensive sets had buffed up 20k resistances, that's on the low side. Inorder to get 20k pen you need 5l passive, which is 5k (forgive my numbers not at comp) you get cp which pretty much caps out as like 3k effective, might be 4k you need breech skill which is another 5k, with spinner you add another 3k and sharp you're at another 3k. So even is you stack everything pen related into you build on cp PvP you can not over pen, that leaves you with like 20k pen which is dope, completely ignores my armor, but I'm a squishvlade with 20k res, alot of these guys running around 30_40k resistances.

GDOFWR420

Royaji wrote: »

GDOFWR420 wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

6600 Spell Pen can be anywhere from 11% to 20% damage increase, depending on your opponent’s resistance, and assuming you are not overpenetrating.

For the other 2, find your effective Spell Damage by dividing your Max Magicka by 10.5 and adding it to your Spell Damage. 10% of this effective Spell Damage is how much additional Spell Damage would give a 10% damage increase, or 10.5X that number for how much Max Magicka gives a 10% damage increase.

How do you know if you're over penetrating?

You take your target's resistance and subtract the sum of all your penetration sources from it. If the result is a negative number, you are overpenetrating

Thank you very much