nirnhoned or sharpened on 2h maul?

MrDenimChicken

What is more effective for increasing damage now? Ninrhoned or sharpened?

I think in the past people said sharpened was more damage but nirnhoned helps your other skills by increasing the tooltips, like on heals for example.

Is this still the case? or is nirnhoned also now superior in damage?

Stx

If you are talking pve, mauls are not very good because the % reduction is applied after debuffs like major fracture, crushing enchant etc. But to answer your trait questions sharpened is usually better unless you have penetration on an armor set like new moon or tzogvins.

If you're talking pvp, then mauls are great and it really depends on your class. If you rely on a stamina based heal like vigor, nirnhoned will be better overall. But strictly for damage, penetration is still better.

Dracane

For damage, always sharpened for pvp. It is always the best, no matter what weapon you are using.
The only reasons to use Nirnhoned instead is if you also want to gain some healing power on top or if you are a stat harlot and want to see a higher weapon damage number on your character sheet.

The damage difference between Sharpened and Nirnhoned is actually very significant.

MincVinyl

@MrDenimChicken

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weap dizzy crit

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nirn maul =8947 15209
sharp maul =9203 15645

nirn sword =8371 14231
sharp sword =8677 14750

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nirn vigor = 19495
sharp vigor= 18695
s&b vigor= 19410

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This was a recent test I conducted on a robust target dummy without any buffs/debuffs active. Generally what to take is that the sharp maul did more damage, but if you reduce the enemies armor it becomes less effective than this. Also sharp doesn't boost healing from rally/vigor so unless you find a way to match a 2h vigor heal with a backbar setup you will lose some healing. For pvp another thing to note is that the maul scales against how tanky someone is. The maul is worth more against tankier targets, and worth less against squishy targets. If someone is squishy it usually wont matter if you possibly lose a little bit of efficiency in the damage of your build.

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(((Target armor - debuffs)*maul 0.8)-penetration)/660 = remaining targets armor mitigation in % form (rounds down I believe)

((20k armor - 5280 maj fracture)*maul 0.2) ====> maul was worth 2944 phys pen

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So why use a Gsword, well some builds you may have forms of spell damage, like on stamsorc with streak. Or depending on the build and how % damage sources stack within your build, potentially a Gsword nets more or equivalent damage. Each patch on any build I make I go on pts and try it with a maul and Gsword. Use combat metrics to see how similar abilities compare on a build.

HankTwo

Dracane wrote: »

For damage, always sharpened for pvp. It is always the best, no matter what weapon you are using.

This is only true for weapons that use two slots (2h, bow, staffs). For snb and the first weapon of dw, nirnhoned is generally the better trait, since its the only one whose power isn't cut in half in the case of 1h weapons (200 weapon damage vs 1376 pen instead of 2752).

MudcrabAttack

If you're in a situation where there's less than 2752 armor left to penetrate, you'd want Nirn since sharpened goes to waste.

If you're playing PVE in a dungeon instance other than maelstrom arena, mobs would have 18200 armor that can be penetrated. For some reason Maelstrom has varying degrees of armor in different levels.

These armor debuffs are subtracted from the total before the mace penetration multiplier is taken into account:

Major Fracture - 5280 (Caltrops and Subterranean Assault and some sets have an AOE effect, or puncture from a tank affects one enemy)
Minor Fracture - 1320 (Some sets can place an AOE effect, POTL and focused aim effect one enemy)
Infused Crusher Glyph from Staff - 2109 (affects one enemy)
Alkosh - 3000 (affects AOE in cone, I guess?)

These forms of penetration don't change the value of penetration for a mace since they aren't a debuff placed on an enemy:

Sharpened - 2752
Piercing CP - up to 5280
Necromancer penetration - 1500
Spriggan set or Twice Fanged Serpent
Masters perfected maul- 1190
Item sets 1-4 - 1487

So let's say you're hitting a big groups of mobs with AOE skills, and the tank and healer are able to cover all debuffs. Nobody is throwing Caltrops or subterranean assault, there aren't any big AOE fracture debuffs, and somehow alkosh is hitting everything, I guess, since I heard it can effect an area. A couple mobs would be getting single target fracture and crusher enchant debuffs, but let's say most aren't.

For most mobs the mace bypasses this much resistance:
Mace multiplier x (18200- alkosh) = 3,040

That's like a 6.1% damage increase, and there's room for 12160 more penetration from other sources like sharpened, Champion Points, etc

For Bosses or other mobs singled out by the tank/healer:
Mace multiplier x (18200 - Major/Minor Fracture - Crusher - Alkosh) = 1,298

That's like a 2.6% damage increase, and only room for 5193 more penetration from other sources

If you play on PC and have time to swap items around with an add-on, you'd want to change to a 2H axe at bosses, the bleed usually gets pretty big and it only effects one target at a time. By contrast great sword adds closer to 4% damage to everything since the 6% is additive to master at arms, mighty, berserk, major and minor Slayer.