Sundered vs. Pierce Armor

Ksariyu

Quick question for the theorycrafters. Is there enough physical damage output in trials groups now to keep a reasonably high uptime on Minor Breach without Pierce Armor? In solo content it seems fairly consistent, but I've never been in a trials group without someone having PA so I've never been able to tell.

Necrotech_Master

i think it could depend on group comp

NB surprise attack always applies sundered, but that debuff only lasts like 4 seconds, which would require the NB to be spamming a melee skill every 4th GCD to maintain that (granted its usually part of the attack chain, but its practice it would be hard to maintain the uptime)

minor breach from pierce armor is the most sustainable way to keep it up as it lasts for a solid 15 seconds and can be reapplied as needed on skill use

every other physical dmg source has the normal status effect chance to apply sundered, which is subject to RNG and what gear your wearing (charged weapon for instance)

MudcrabAttack

It probably won’t matter much anyway since tanks generally use pierce armor, but if a few people use silver shards as a spammable minor breach is going to be there already for either one target or a cluster of mobs nearby. The problem with AOE skills that apply sundered is I think it removes the debuff from one and sticks it to another as you spam the AOE. A lot of people have a charged weapon, which results in a lot of status effects proccing.

My brittle dps warden is tossing minor breach on mobs because silver shards is the spammable, and the ice staff has the charged trait for 480% more status procs + elemental force for an extra 100% more status procs.

This same warden is also my tank for 4 player content, I throw caltrops for the major breach, silver shards for minor breach.

Ksariyu

Sounds like mostly what I was expecting, which is kind of good. I do believe that especially with the new hybrid patch, physical damage will make a small return. Perhaps not using Pierce Armor could be an option with the right build.

MudcrabAttack

I just checked some logs and it looks like sundered can be applied to multiple targets from one skill cast, and it allows overlapping timeframes of minor breach to multiple targets.

So it seems like one person can get minor breach applied to many things with a physical AOE skill and charged trait

Ksariyu

Wow, that's actually cool. Thanks.