I was under the impression it's utterly useless, an entire gold set of Impen, with a shield, only negates like 10% of critical damage. I'm going to be running divines and infused on my PvP toon, no reason to wear Impen if I just want to negate damage, I'd rather wear stuff to buff my stats.

KBKB wrote: »

That's awesome I wasn't aware it was completely shot thanks for the post X

Nuuuuuuu don't quote me on that, that's just what I read from other posts on the forums, until someone actually cranks out the math I have no idea... But either way, my case is the same.

Impenetrable no longer negates critical hits, just reduces damage. So I'd rather buff my stats via Infused and Divines so I can do more things than crutch on a trait that no longer guarantees my protection against those slimey bow using turd burglars.

Yep, impen is pretty useless in 1.6. For survivability, reinforced seems to be the way to go. There were some calculations done on the PTS sub-forum a little while ago that outlined the new impen vs reinforced. Deltia also made a video demonstrating how impen changed. If interested, here is the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3KGDT9Dhb8#t=124

I think it is a good thing though. Now there is a trade-off when choosing your trait, instead of automatically defaulting to impen because it was too good.

I never wore impenetrable. Instead i had mundus on all my gear. I switched between the thief and the apprentice stone depending on my build. thief for my stamina/dw/bow and apprentice for my magicka/nb skills only. Will continue this in 1.6, but since i am Breton i will not go Stamina but fully magicka.

I went 5 Reinforced, 1 Divines, and 1 Infused (seems like a balanced mix) As a Light Armor user, i need the extra armor. I can take a little more damage before being killed, and i think that's worth it. Its nearly impossible to not have a 0.5 sec gap in keeping shields up, and those very small windows where their is an opening, Reinforced could make the difference.

Granted, i stopped running full impen months ago on live and didn't have any issues, and Infused and Divines are both very very good traits in 1.6 in their own right and will make sense in many builds, i just thought reinforced was best for my tastes, im sure others will do well with other traits as well.

It does seem Impen took a massive hit, but maybe this will get other less popular traits such as Nirnhoned, Reinforced, Divines, etc used more in PVP.

woodsro wrote: »

I went 5 Reinforced, 1 Divines, and 1 Infused (seems like a balanced mix) As a Light Armor user, i need the extra armor. I can take a little more damage before being killed, and i think that's worth it. Its nearly impossible to not have a 0.5 sec gap in keeping shields up, and those very small windows where their is an opening, Reinforced could make the difference.

Granted, i stopped running full impen months ago on live and didn't have any issues, and Infused and Divines are both very very good traits in 1.6 in their own right and will make sense in many builds, i just thought reinforced was best for my tastes, im sure others will do well with other traits as well.

It does seem Impen took a massive hit, but maybe this will get other less popular traits such as Nirnhoned, Reinforced, Divines, etc used more in PVP.

@woodsro
I just don't understand this desire to increase armor, or use the reinforced trait while wearing light armor.

This is where it all comes down to math for me.

As a sorc, sure your shields are going to get pierced and your health damaged but look at the overall picture. Infused for example on a large item VR14 with a legendary magicka enchant is going to give you @200 magicka. I don't have the exact coefficient at hand but 200 magicka should add something around 50 to your base Hardened Ward. Now multiply that by the 33% modifer, then the 25% modifer for the champion system(Once it is maxed) and again the -15% nerf to damage shields(each one is multiplicative of base). That 50 becomes ~71 added to your Hardened ward. It also increases your Anulement and Healing Ward by slightly less amounts if you're using those as well. Note, these benefits are given to damage done to both magickal and physical damage.

This occurs on every cast

Now compare that to the "protection" provided by reinforced. Right now with the way spell penetration works, adding a negligible amount of spell resistance to your armor has no noticeable effect to someone running sharpened/nirnhorned. On the Armor/physical side of things you're getting around 100 extra Armor added with legendary reinforced on a large piece. Armor benefits now scale linearly and 100 armor adds .1555% Mitigation. A hit for 10000 Damage would be reduced by 15.5 damage on a crit this would be 23-25 damage or so depending on their mundus/champion points etc.

Also the champion point benefits for light armor don't stack multiplicatively with reinforced and who wearing light armor would put 100 points into that trait anyways?

Now on top of all of this.....80-90% of the damage done to a Sorc is done to his *shields*....so why on earth would a sorc wearing light armor want to buff something that is rarely even used for a lesser amount than buffing something that is used the majority of the time by a much larger amount for *all* sources of damage?

Finally, there is the fact that increasing your magicka increases your damage as well as increasing your shields and obviously increases your overall mana pool. There is no additional benefit provided by increasing your armor.

It's a no brainer for me. That video posted about impenetrable and reinforced only proved that reinforced was better than impenetrable...not that reinforced was better than everything.

My 2 cents...

(Note: I just recalled that that 200 magicka is further increased by passives like Altmer racial, Necropotence set etc..)

Ezareth wrote: »

woodsro wrote: »

I went 5 Reinforced, 1 Divines, and 1 Infused (seems like a balanced mix) As a Light Armor user, i need the extra armor. I can take a little more damage before being killed, and i think that's worth it. Its nearly impossible to not have a 0.5 sec gap in keeping shields up, and those very small windows where their is an opening, Reinforced could make the difference.

Granted, i stopped running full impen months ago on live and didn't have any issues, and Infused and Divines are both very very good traits in 1.6 in their own right and will make sense in many builds, i just thought reinforced was best for my tastes, im sure others will do well with other traits as well.

It does seem Impen took a massive hit, but maybe this will get other less popular traits such as Nirnhoned, Reinforced, Divines, etc used more in PVP.

@woodsro
I just don't understand this desire to increase armor, or use the reinforced trait while wearing light armor.

This is where it all comes down to math for me.

As a sorc, sure your shields are going to get pierced and your health damaged but look at the overall picture. Infused for example on a large item VR14 with a legendary magicka enchant is going to give you @200 magicka. I don't have the exact coefficient at hand but 200 magicka should add something around 50 to your base Hardened Ward. Now multiply that by the 33% modifer, then the 25% modifer for the champion system(Once it is maxed) and again the -15% nerf to damage shields(each one is multiplicative of base). That 50 becomes ~71 added to your Hardened ward. It also increases your Anulement and Healing Ward by slightly less amounts if you're using those as well. Note, these benefits are given to damage done to both magickal and physical damage.

This occurs on every cast

Now compare that to the *protection* provided by reinforced. Right now with the way spell penetration works, adding a negligible amount of spell resistance to your armor has no noticeable effect to someone running sharpened/nirnhorned. On the Armor/physical side of things you're getting around 100 extra Armor added with legendary reinforced on a large piece. Armor benefits now scale linearly and 100 armor adds .1555% Mitigation. At hit for 5000 Damage would be reduced by 15.5 damage on a crit this would be 23-25 damage or so depending on their mundus/champion points etc.

Also the champion point benefits for light armor don't stack multiplicatively with reinforced and who wearing light armor would put 100 points into that trait anyways?

Now on top of all of this.....80-90% of the damage done to a Sorc is done to his *shields*....so why on earth would a sorc wearing light armor want to buff something that is rarely even used for a lesser amount than buffing something that is used the majority of the time by a much larger amount for *all* sources of damage?

Finally, there is the fact that increasing your magicka increases your damage as well as increasing your shields and obviously increases your overall mana pool. There is no additional benefit provided by increasing your armor.

It's a no brainer for me. That video posted about impenetrable and reinforced only proved that reinforced was better than impenetrable...not that reinforced was better than everything.

My 2 cents...

(Note: I just recalled that that 200 magicka is further increased by passives like Altmer racial, Necropotence set etc..)

I have to admit @Ezareth that's a very compelling argument. Its part of the reason i kept a 5 piece crafted set in reserve with infused and divines traits on them. As Reinforced was more of a try it and see thing. As i wasn't sure if just going for more flatout damage and sheild values would be better then a little less, but more armor. However, if that's true about Reinforced, i doubt i go that route.

My biggest dilemma is choosing between Atronach and Mages Stone since their isn't a cap on either Max Magic or Magic Regen both of those stones look very very appealing.

Regardless, Thanks for the tips and info, I appreciate it.

Ezareth is absolutely correct that infused/divines is the way to go for LA users. Impen is now the worst trait excepting training and exploration.

However, reinforced is quite nice on both medium and heavy armor since the values scaled so high. Nirnhoned is also interesting, but will require some more testing.

Huntler wrote: »

Ezareth wrote: »

Huntler wrote: »

Samadhi wrote: »

Huntler wrote: »

Samadhi wrote: »

Removed Overcharge from the game.

The only stats that now cap are Impenetrable, reducing the Critical Strike bonus damage to 0%, and Armor and Spell Resistance, which are capped at 50% mitigation.

So, instead of Nightblade's buff adding 100% chance to crit on target effectively negating Impenetrable in the old system, Nightblades will instead have a buff that gives 100% chance to do 0 extra damage on a full Impenetrable build.

Hope that Reinforced really is the new meta, or critting is going to be rather boring.

No.... he just clearly said there is a hard cap and even stacking full impenetrable doesn't negate all the extra crit damage. Read the patch notes and all will be understood.

The quoted text in my post was from the patch notes, and states that capping Impenetrable reduces Critical Strike bonus damage to 0%.

Can you grab me the quote from the portion of the notes you are referring to?

ctrl + F to search for Impenetrable returned no other results.

I am aware, do the math on the equation they gave in the same section you quoted which goes to 3200 impen needed to 100% mitigate all crit damage. 1 legendary piece of gear gives 200 impen... do the math.... impen gear alone doesn't get you anywhere close to 100% mitigating crit damage.

Are you sure it is 200 impen? I thought it was only 100.

The formula is in the patch notes and note that this is only talking about mitigating 100% of unmodified crit damage. After Shadow Stone and Champion points you'd need far more to completely mitigate crit bonus damage.


The amount of Critical Resistance required to completely eliminate the unmodified bonus damage from a Critical hit is 50 * (your Character Level + your Veteran Rank number).
For example, a VR14 would be 50 * (50 + 14)

Yes its 200, after 1.6.3 they boosted it from 100 to 200.

Yeah I caught that after a bit of research and adjusted my post.

Still it is a shame that they had to nerf it so hard. To be honest, if they change the formula to 50% reduction at 2400 it would be actually worth considering. I don't think Impen is terrible per se, but unfortunately it *is* worse than almost every other option.

Also, I think it is worth noting to anyone reading this thread that for a *Shield* Reinforced is a far more useful trait than impenetrable. This is the only reason all reinforced ended up being a better choice than Impenetrable for him.

If he went 7/7 Impen + Reinforced on his shield, he'd be taking less damage than if he went 8/8 Reinforced.

Ezareth wrote: »

Samadhi wrote: »

Huntler wrote: »

Samadhi wrote: »

Huntler wrote: »

Samadhi wrote: »

Removed Overcharge from the game.

The only stats that now cap are Impenetrable, reducing the Critical Strike bonus damage to 0%, and Armor and Spell Resistance, which are capped at 50% mitigation.

So, instead of Nightblade's buff adding 100% chance to crit on target effectively negating Impenetrable in the old system, Nightblades will instead have a buff that gives 100% chance to do 0 extra damage on a full Impenetrable build.

Hope that Reinforced really is the new meta, or critting is going to be rather boring.

No.... he just clearly said there is a hard cap and even stacking full impenetrable doesn't negate all the extra crit damage. Read the patch notes and all will be understood.

The quoted text in my post was from the patch notes, and states that capping Impenetrable reduces Critical Strike bonus damage to 0%.

Can you grab me the quote from the portion of the notes you are referring to?

ctrl + F to search for Impenetrable returned no other results.

I am aware, do the math on the equation they gave in the same section you quoted which goes to 3200 impen needed to 100% mitigate all crit damage. 1 legendary piece of gear gives 200 impen... do the math.... impen gear alone doesn't get you anywhere close to 100% mitigating crit damage.

So it's a matter of the grind on the Champion passive before Impenetrable builds are made standard again?

Or, has ZOS actually set it up so that the only way to reach the cap is Champion passive + Impenetrable + Construct?

@Samadhi

It doesn't matter. The reduction is linear and easily quantifiable. The Champion Passive is additive with the impen trait. Impenetrable will never be made more powerful. Stacking Impenetrable has no increasing or diminishing returns. It provides an easily calculable and static benefit.

Other traits are more variable and their benefits can be increased by other passives/champion points etc.

So people are going to just opt for other traits and let the Champion passive handle reduction of crit bonus and leave it at that, rather than building to fully eliminate crit bonus?

That is livable.
Less fun than it was before for my Nightblade, but livable.

Huntler wrote: »

Samadhi wrote: »

Huntler wrote: »

Samadhi wrote: »

Removed Overcharge from the game.

The only stats that now cap are Impenetrable, reducing the Critical Strike bonus damage to 0%, and Armor and Spell Resistance, which are capped at 50% mitigation.

So, instead of Nightblade's buff adding 100% chance to crit on target effectively negating Impenetrable in the old system, Nightblades will instead have a buff that gives 100% chance to do 0 extra damage on a full Impenetrable build.

Hope that Reinforced really is the new meta, or critting is going to be rather boring.

No.... he just clearly said there is a hard cap and even stacking full impenetrable doesn't negate all the extra crit damage. Read the patch notes and all will be understood.

The quoted text in my post was from the patch notes, and states that capping Impenetrable reduces Critical Strike bonus damage to 0%.

Can you grab me the quote from the portion of the notes you are referring to?

ctrl + F to search for Impenetrable returned no other results.

I am aware, do the math on the equation they gave in the same section you quoted which goes to 3200 impen needed to 100% mitigate all crit damage. 1 legendary piece of gear gives 200 impen... do the math.... impen gear alone doesn't get you anywhere close to 100% mitigating crit damage.

Doesn't the champion system account for some of this too? You cant just eliminate crit damage by gear alone. You have to devote CP into it as well. You have to work towards it, not just visit the crafting table.

Working as intended.