DEFINITIVE spell resist/penetration/sharpened trait results thread - bugs, stam imbalance and why!

Attorneyatlawl · September 2014

Main take-aways are:

-Elemental resistances function as expected in addition to plain spell resistance.
-Sharpened trait is completely broken and unfortunately is probably part of the cause for the huge outcry of magical abilities being overpowered compared to stamina/physical attacks.
-The urban legend of "spell penetration is additive against resistances" is completely false. They operate as a percentage of your enemy target's resists in a linear fashion as expected.

Below is my testing table, and apologies for anyone at work who can't load the large image but it is far too much testing to post in text form.

CLICK FOR LARGE PICTURE FULL-SIZE: http://i.imgur.com/XSs1Lue.jpg

Additional testing was completed but not included as it was done to spot-check conclusions made.

Update... 2:25am 9/12/2014

Cyrodiil decided to spin-up for me as I was about to log over to live, so I did a couple of the further tests that could be done readily. This table was done to check unmitigated damage values and to prove/disprove shielding abilities not factoring in mitigation was working correctly. Additionally I tested the Aether 5pc bonus (10% debuff on spell/armor resistances on enemy) to ensure they worked.

Take-aways from this data:

-Shields/absorb bubbles providing unmitigated protection works as the common working knowledge is told, aka properly.
-Aether light armor 5pc debuff works as intended and actually even applies a 10% resistance debuff to the target when checked on the character sheet of the debuffed enemy (listed values are lowered).

Below is the extended part of the testing table (ignore the bottom, it is for upcoming flame lash testing and other results

+ sorting out criteria):

CLICK FOR LARGE PICTURE FULL-SIZE: http://i.imgur.com/RArdw2s.jpg

Testing remaining on current short-list:

-Sharpened on 1h (against magical resists)
-Sharpened against phys/armor (1h, bow)
-Sharpened trait only with no passives (isolate sharpened 100% exclusively) (reddit request)
-Flame lash or nb skills against flame or spell resist/armor and seeing dmg scaling (potentially checks both?)

david271749 · September 2014

Awesome

Smiteye · September 2014

Yea, no kidding.

stewie_801 · September 2014

Great job and thanks for all the testing!

forthewinn2 · September 2014

@Attorneyatlawl Nice spreadsheet!
What level characters were you testing against?
It looks like the tooltip value of your Elemental Ring is around 263 damage, is that correct?

Sharee · September 2014

Nice work.

So (bugged trait aside) increasing resistance by 55% (from 1610 to 2496) only decreases incoming damage by 10% (from 216 to 194).

That seems a bit... on the low end, to put it mildly.

Attorneyatlawl · September 2014

Heya... first off thanks for the kind remarks all

. I had seen people throwing around information as to how these did/didn't work and decided to re-do a lot of my testing to make sure it was still correct in the newest version of the game.

forthewinn2 wrote: »

@Attorneyatlawl Nice spreadsheet!
What level characters were you testing against?
It looks like the tooltip value of your Elemental Ring is around 263 damage, is that correct?

Great questions

. Some quick notes to address them for you:

Characters used were a breton sorc vr14 and a dk vr14, base resist values were tested with no passives, and I then added the 250 spell resist passive from dk's to get to the 1610 number. The 2074 # was obtained using a spell resist ring, and then immovable to add more (the 2496 number). Both clients were side-by-side in windowed mode and numbers were double-checked particularly for ones relying on immovable to make sure the buff hadn't worn off timing-wise etc.

.

Tooltip value on elemental ring was 251, while crystal fragments was 688 and crushing shock was 126 of each element. Energized passive was trained (5%) during the mages' wrath testing, as well as concentration (light armor pen), and penetrating magic (destro affecting passive). DK test subject had zero passives other than the plain spell resist one from the class tree.

Attorneyatlawl · September 2014

Sharee wrote: »

Nice work.

So (bugged trait aside) increasing resistance by 55% (from 1610 to 2496) only decreases incoming damage by 10% (from 216 to 194).

That seems a bit... on the low end, to put it mildly.

Ah, that's where some math comes in... and relative vs. absolute numbers

.

While 1610 to 2496 is indeed a 55% difference relatively, the actual resistance values when converted to a resistance percentage inside the game isn't done that way. At softcapped resistance levels (~1960) you have approximately 35% damage mitigation. The hardcap is at 50% mitigation which numerically is around 3150+. So in actuality, going from 1610 (21.7% rating below softcap relatively, but actually about 27.4% mitigation) to 2496 resistance rating (an increase relatively of 50 plus percent as you note) really results in the internal mitigation going from, thanks to how it is scaled against the numbers, there to around 37-38% mitigation. This falls roughly in line with the numbers in the spreadsheet as well.

I know that's a bit of a longwinded explanation but basically to put it more directly, softcap is 35% and then scales non-linearly to 50% mitigation, from approximately 1960 softcap to 3150+ hardcap numerically. So the actual spell resistance rating required to push that last bunch of mitigation is much larger (particularly when taking into account overcharge loss!) than achieving a "baseline" mitigation of the softcap that they made more easily obtainable.

demonlkojipub19_ESO · September 2014

So the light armor passive alone doesn't make for completely ignoring all spell resist, but adding the sharpened trait on top of it all spell resistance gets ignored.... Did you do any testing with just the sharpened trait, nothing else?

Hope ZoS has seen this.

Oh, another thing I have notices with that trait. In cyrodiil, you are given 300 armor penetration. With harvens extended stats, this comes out to be 300 armor penetration in the char sheet. With a 2h sword with 14% armor/spell pen trait, it gives another 1500 to armor penetration, making it 1800 Armor penetration, and also making focus rating, which is the spell pen version, 1500. That is without any light armor equipped. Maybe its just harvens that's bugged but it looks like the trait is the culprit.

Attorneyatlawl · September 2014

demonlkojipub19_ESO wrote: »

So the light armor passive alone doesn't make for completely ignoring all spell resist, but adding the sharpened trait on top of it all spell resistance gets ignored.... Did you do any testing with just the sharpened trait, nothing else?

Hope ZoS has seen this.

I will do that tomorrow, but from the fact that adding resist or lowering spell pen from light armor, or adding spell pen from destro staff, changes the values appropriately and once sharpened is thrown into the mix all damage seems unmitigated, it's a pretty much certainty the bug is with sharpened itself

.

forthewinn2 · September 2014

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

At softcapped resistance levels (~1960) you have approximately 35% damage mitigation.

That sound's a little high for a VR14.
Wouldn't it be closer to 30% mitigation?

Sharee · September 2014

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

Sharee wrote: »

Nice work.

So (bugged trait aside) increasing resistance by 55% (from 1610 to 2496) only decreases incoming damage by 10% (from 216 to 194).

That seems a bit... on the low end, to put it mildly.

Ah, that's where some math comes in... and relative vs. absolute numbers .

While 1610 to 2496 is indeed a 55% difference relatively, the actual resistance values when converted to a resistance percentage inside the game isn't done that way. At softcapped resistance levels (~1960) you have approximately 35% damage mitigation. The hardcap is at 50% mitigation which numerically is around 3150+. So in actuality, going from 1610 (21.7% rating below softcap relatively, but actually about 27.4% mitigation) to 2496 resistance rating (an increase relatively of 50 plus percent as you note) really results in the internal mitigation going from, thanks to how it is scaled against the numbers, there to around 37-38% mitigation. This falls roughly in line with the numbers in the spreadsheet as well.

I know that's a bit of a longwinded explanation but basically to put it more directly, softcap is 35% and then scales non-linearly to 50% mitigation, from approximately 1960 softcap to 3150+ hardcap numerically. So the actual spell resistance rating required to push that last bunch of mitigation is much larger (particularly when taking into account overcharge loss!) than achieving a "baseline" mitigation of the softcap that they made more easily obtainable.

I understand what you mean. My post was meant more as an observation that there seems to be a disproportion between the effort to increase your magical resistance and the benefit gained from doing so.

I didn't do the math, but it seems to me that when the attacker wears a ring with a legendary spell damage enchant and the defender wears a ring with a legendary spell resist enchant, these two effects do not cancel each other out as they should. Am i wrong? (might check this out when i get into the game)

Jelark · September 2014

I create my account on the forum just to thank you and increase the popularity of this subject so that ZOS take an early initiative. I am sick and tired that everyone is playing light / stick, it becomes ridiculous.

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

the bug is with sharpened itself .

Can you also test the sharpened trait on 1-handed weapon ?

Maulkin · September 2014

@Attorneyatlawl thanks for this. This confirms what a few of us have known for a while through this thread:
http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/123531/spell-resistance-bhahaha

Can you please add one more test to the mix? Use a precise one-handed sword and perform the crystal fragments test.

Also, can you please post your tool-tip damage so we can compare the actual damage against the tooltip to deduct the final % of mitigation applied?

Thanks very much for the work you put in

EDIT: I saw you posted a response with the tool-tip numbers. So ignore the second part.

okraus · September 2014

Wait, so i just have to use a staff with sharpened on it and i will do always max damage. No matter what my other spell penetration or the resistance of my opponent is like?
Is that only in 1.4.2 like that or can i actually do that on live? If so, i am off to craft a new staff

r.jan_emailb16_ESO · September 2014

Very good work, I experienced this back in May as the guy who posted here: http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/123531/spell-resistance-bhahaha

I did the same testing back then but thought that it was too ridiculous to be true, so I didn't bother posting it.

WTF

How is this even possible?

I mean, they don't give much information to the players, but apparently even the devs don't have them. Who wrote the code on that? Because I learned in 2nd semester that you have to check even for stupid errors like this one.

Edit: let's get some dev/mod statement: @ZOS_BrianWheeler‌ @ZOS_JessicaFolsom‌ @ZOS_GinaBruno‌

Aenra · September 2014

one could say this is beta material..or that, well, considering mundus stones needed 4 patches to function, almost 2 months of 'testing' prior to those, and a full beta even before that time period..the fix for the above should not arrive..anytime soon;

but in all honesty, i do not mind. Call me a cynic, but certain API changes during the CB, a lack of tagret dolls, a lack of detailed skill tooltips, and most certainly other combat related problems pretty much hinted at such types of issues, don't think anyone is shocked reading this.

what i still find perplexing is their thinking. All this time in beta..just honestly cannot grasp how they set up their priorities. I mean ok, say we're fine with this. And i am. Played worse. Others however were not, have already left. You cannot go about advertising competitive trials or large scale PvP when you have such issues..retention is a *** for a reason.

Anyway, great work @Attorneyatlawl !

Attorneyatlawl · September 2014

@Jelark and @mike.gaziotisb16_ESO I will get a sharpened 1h'er test done today as well as a couple of other tests asked including one from reddit

.

@forthewinn2‌ yea, it should be, but I was half asleep and wanting to err on the side of caution

.

@r.jan_emailb16_ESO yeah, I think I might have even posted in that thread and was surprised the bug had remained on sharpened. However I was skeptical at the time of whether it affected all spell resist pierces or just sharpened. (I'll go look at that thread again in a few

).

@ Everyone else who posted, thanks for the comments again. I debated simply quietly forwarding the info along but I think it's a topic of interest to a lot of players.

r.jan_emailb16_ESO · September 2014

If it sounds like that, the post I linked is not from me ;-). Just wanted to say that I had the same impression on this whole stuff.

SoulScream · September 2014

Thank you for testing!

Attorneyatlawl · September 2014

r.jan_emailb16_ESO wrote: »

If it sounds like that, the post I linked is not from me ;-). Just wanted to say that I had the same impression on this whole stuff.

Gotcha.

Quick note regarding further testing: It will be this afternoon at earliest for the extra bits people have asked me to check, because cyrodiil is not spinning up (i.e. letting me zone in), and I need to either farm or obtain the traits for some of the additional tests as they are not provided by the templates. A guildmate of mine had done a bunch of farming when 1.4 pts first went up so I have a message out to him to see if he has the ones I'd need. EDIT: I have obtained a sharpened ice staff and have it researching so I can create a vr14 blue out of it with the trait. I will aim to conduct the following tests tonight sometime pending research and farming luck

but as soon as I can otherwise:

-Sharpened on 1h (spell and armor)
-Sharpened against phys/armor
-Damage with crystal fragments, 28% light armor pen, aether set bonus debuff on target
-Sharpened trait only with no passives (isolate sharpened exclusively)

Smiteye · September 2014

@ZOS needs to see this, no question

SoulScream · September 2014

Quick question, is it worth having the apprentice mundus for increased spell pen with using a sharpened weapon?

TheBull · September 2014

I wish ZoS would hire people like you to test. The crew they have now seems to be among the worst in the industry.

r.jan_emailb16_ESO · September 2014

If we could actually see what's going on in the game without the need for addons with a lot of restrictions, things like that would be much more easier to spot.

TheBull · September 2014

r.jan_emailb16_ESO wrote: »

If we could actually see what's going on in the game without the need for addons with a lot of restrictions, things like that would be much more easier to spot.

Although I like the minimalist approach to other character information, I'm begining to believe that the decision had as much to do with not exposing a bug riddled skill system as it did actual game play.

Smiteye · September 2014

TheBull wrote: »

r.jan_emailb16_ESO wrote: »

If we could actually see what's going on in the game without the need for addons with a lot of restrictions, things like that would be much more easier to spot.

Although I like the minimalist approach to other character information, I'm begining to believe that the decision had as much to do with not exposing a bug riddled skill system as it did actual game play.

Gotta agree. A simple tab with a combat log can't exactly add THAT much ui "clutter" anyway.

franklinkimub17_ESO · September 2014

Does "20% light" from the embedded chart mean "20% spell penetration from wearing 5 pieces of light armor?"

I thought each piece of light armor ignores 6% spell resistance from the Concentration passive? How are you getting 20%?

stewie_801 · September 2014

franklinkimub17_ESO wrote: »

Does "20% light" from the embedded chart mean "20% spell penetration from wearing 5 pieces of light armor?"

I thought each piece of light armor ignores 6% spell resistance from the Concentration passive? How are you getting 20%?

In update 1.4 it goes down to 4% per light armor pieces for a max of 28% spell penetration with 7 light. He was doing this test on the PTS.

Attorneyatlawl · September 2014

franklinkimub17_ESO wrote: »

Does "20% light" from the embedded chart mean "20% spell penetration from wearing 5 pieces of light armor?"

I thought each piece of light armor ignores 6% spell resistance from the Concentration passive? How are you getting 20%?

stewie_801 wrote: »

franklinkimub17_ESO wrote: »

Does "20% light" from the embedded chart mean "20% spell penetration from wearing 5 pieces of light armor?"

I thought each piece of light armor ignores 6% spell resistance from the Concentration passive? How are you getting 20%?

In update 1.4 it goes down to 4% per light for a max of 28% spell penetration with 7 light. He was doing this test on the PTS.

That's correct

.

franklinkimub17_ESO · September 2014

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

franklinkimub17_ESO wrote: »

Does "20% light" from the embedded chart mean "20% spell penetration from wearing 5 pieces of light armor?"

I thought each piece of light armor ignores 6% spell resistance from the Concentration passive? How are you getting 20%?

stewie_801 wrote: »

franklinkimub17_ESO wrote: »

Does "20% light" from the embedded chart mean "20% spell penetration from wearing 5 pieces of light armor?"

I thought each piece of light armor ignores 6% spell resistance from the Concentration passive? How are you getting 20%?

In update 1.4 it goes down to 4% per light for a max of 28% spell penetration with 7 light. He was doing this test on the PTS.

That's correct .

I see now, thank you.

*DEFINITIVE* spell resist/penetration/sharpened trait results thread - bugs, stam imbalance and why!

DEFINITIVE spell resist/penetration/sharpened trait results thread - bugs, stam imbalance and why!