r.jan_emailb16_ESO wrote: »

Ezareth wrote: »

Aunatar wrote: »

What is broken, imho, is that a full 7 heavy reinforced armor set is countered by 2 pieces of weapons. And please remind there is still the surprise attack ability. (Somebody said nightblade?)

Plenty of abilities provide Major Fracture.

I haven't seen anyone verify that someone using a single or dual maces is penetrating 32K Armor. This is the testing that needs done. Testing on mobs is pointless.

I can guarantee you I only hit my highest crits with wrecking blow on Sorcs wearing light armor not DKs in plate. I'm still seeing a significant reduction in the damage to players wearing plate.

This is because the armor reduction on a 2h mace does NOT work the same way as with one or two 1h mace equipped.

That's the main point I've been trying to make to people who've been trying to accuse me of being some kind of exploiter for using a 2handed mace in PvP. I've not seen anything to suggest that I gained some amazing damage potential since I made the switch to a Mace when I hit Vet 14. I did it because I ran the math and it made sense.

Now Dual maces may have bugged penetration but I don't use those in PVP, just PvE mob grinding and frankly I think you may fully penetrate V12 mobs regardless.

Thanks for doing all this @Xael

Leandor wrote: »

Thanks for doing all this @Xael

Sure no problem.
I want to test the 2h too.
I do however think players are going to look for something to blame no matter if it's bugged or not. Let's be honest, the themes of a lot of these threads is "x ability/class/player did this, it's unfair." Now when it comes to alleged exploits and bugs I certainly don't mind testing them and getting them fixed. I think things should work as they are intended and I am glad to bring them to light.

I will try and get those tests of yours ran tonight if I can find a non Nord. I won't bother with Precise trait, that won't change the numbers at all, it will just add more crits. I will do dual wield and 2h both. I will also test the CP Piercing and Mighty. Also guys, let the record show ZOS did not test any of this. They use bots for most of their "testing" and it's clearly not getting the job done. This is sad.

danno8 wrote: »

Xael wrote: »

Leandor wrote: »

How many points did you have in piercing during these tests, @Xael ?

@Leandor @Ezareth @TheBull @Alcast @Jeckll @Cuddler @danno8

Ok, with 0 points in Piercing (I had 1 before) dw mace with sharpened is 1620mh/1326oh

According to this test 1 point in Piercing does nothing at all. My damage is unchanged with it's removal. So according to the Champ system that should be 1% armor pen.
I will add 6 points to Piercing now which allegedly gives 3.5% Armor Penetration.
Damage did not change.
So let me relog and see if that might make the points apply. Logged back into game, nothing changed.

Changed to non trait axes 1041/852 6 points into piercing which supposedly gives 3.5% pen. Old axe dmg was 1036/848 offhand gained 4 points of dmg and mh gained 5.
Going to try non traited maces now.
1159mh/948oh with 6 points in piercing. Old damage was 1154/944.

So going by this, the CP Piercing does not work if you have Sharpened on your dual wield maces.

Probably the points in Piercing do nothing to the DW maces with sharpened because you have already completely bypassed all the armor.

edit: All the different results in this thread make me think that the calculations for penetration / resistance are just messed up in many ways and need to be overhauled.

Pretty much this. Every time I try to test this I end up with different numbers.

Cuddler wrote: »

Xael wrote: »

Leandor wrote: »

How many points did you have in piercing during these tests, @Xael ?

@Leandor @Ezareth @TheBull @Alcast @Jeckll @Cuddler @danno8

Ok, with 0 points in Piercing (I had 1 before) dw mace with sharpened is 1620mh/1326oh

According to this test 1 point in Piercing does nothing at all. My damage is unchanged with it's removal. So according to the Champ system that should be 1% armor pen.
I will add 6 points to Piercing now which allegedly gives 3.5% Armor Penetration.
Damage did not change.
So let me relog and see if that might make the points apply. Logged back into game, nothing changed.

Changed to non trait axes 1041/852 6 points into piercing which supposedly gives 3.5% pen. Old axe dmg was 1036/848 offhand gained 4 points of dmg and mh gained 5.
Going to try non traited maces now.
1159mh/948oh with 6 points in piercing. Old damage was 1154/944.

So going by this, the CP Piercing does not work if you have Sharpened on your dual wield maces.

I think the issue is not so much with Piercing, but that you already have full penetration with Twin Blade + Sharpened, so adding or removing points from Piercing does not change the results.

Also, Piercing seems to give less penetration than I expected. With your test bear's 36% armour mitigation, 6 points in Piercing should have reduced the mitigation value by 0.36 * 3.5% = 1.26%. That should have translated into 1620 * 0.0126 = 20 more main hand damage, and 1326 * 0.0126 = 17 more offhand damage. There may be a seperate bug with Piercing, which makes it give less penetration than it should.

Yeah I've always understood that the Champion penetration passives have never worked correctly which is why I think I only have 5 piercing on my NB.

Even if they are working as expected consider the following math.

Normalize Armor Piercing, Crit Damage and Damage since all 3 passive have the same cap and scaling (25%).

5% Damage would require 12.5% at 50% crit + 50% Crit crit damage (and that isn't counting shields + block removing crits) and 5% Piercing at 32,500 armor, 20% Piercing at 16,250 armor and is practically useless at anything below that by virtue of how weak it is and the fact you're already fully penetrating it plus can't penetrate shields.

What this means is that until you're at 100 in the Mighty tree, its not worth putting more than a few points into Crit Damage and piercing.

...and that's all figuring it is working as intended.

Warraxx wrote: »

just to make this even more complicated...

penetration also scales in-part with the attackers own armor rating. the higher armor the attacker has, the higher his/her penetration. you'll need to mix that into your math soup too.

Cuddler wrote: »

Xael wrote: »

Leandor wrote: »

How many points did you have in piercing during these tests, @Xael ?

@Leandor @Ezareth @TheBull @Alcast @Jeckll @Cuddler @danno8

Ok, with 0 points in Piercing (I had 1 before) dw mace with sharpened is 1620mh/1326oh

According to this test 1 point in Piercing does nothing at all. My damage is unchanged with it's removal. So according to the Champ system that should be 1% armor pen.
I will add 6 points to Piercing now which allegedly gives 3.5% Armor Penetration.
Damage did not change.
So let me relog and see if that might make the points apply. Logged back into game, nothing changed.

Changed to non trait axes 1041/852 6 points into piercing which supposedly gives 3.5% pen. Old axe dmg was 1036/848 offhand gained 4 points of dmg and mh gained 5.
Going to try non traited maces now.
1159mh/948oh with 6 points in piercing. Old damage was 1154/944.

So going by this, the CP Piercing does not work if you have Sharpened on your dual wield maces.

I think the issue is not so much with Piercing, but that you already have full penetration with Twin Blade + Sharpened, so adding or removing points from Piercing does not change the results.

Also, Piercing seems to give less penetration than I expected. With your test bear's 36% armour mitigation, 6 points in Piercing should have reduced the mitigation value by 0.36 * 3.5% = 1.26%. That should have translated into 1620 * 0.0126 = 20 more main hand damage, and 1326 * 0.0126 = 17 more offhand damage. There may be a separate bug with Piercing, which makes it give less penetration than it should.

It first needs to be established that my maces were doing full pen already. This was never established only hypothesized. After doing my tests with 1 point into Pierce and then 27 bring the extra CP pen to 10%, 2h maces don't budge but swords/axes do with the sharpened trait. In fact at 27 points into Piercing, the damage from a Greatsword is almost the same as a Mace. I wonder if there is a magic number you can reach through Piercing that will stop yielding the increase for a Greatsword. If it does not, it's possible to do more damage with a sharpened GS than a Maul. As a Maul gains 0 from Piercing.


I did a test with all 1h and 2h weapons, the same applies to both. Sharpened Maces/Mauls with 2 points into Twin Blade or Heavy Weapons . Also when you have Maces and Mauls with Sharpened and those skills, Piercing will not work. Though it does for everything else.

There is a rumor that only 1 point works, this is false.

I'm gonna do a test against others players once the EU chars are copied.

kkampaseb17_ESO wrote: »

3 pages and 1.5k view on a very important and matter and still no post from dev.

What do you expect? Penetration (armor and/or spell) has been bugged since this game was released.

This thread needs more dev attention. Might be a reason why we see some obscene damages from certain abilities.

KeplerMG wrote: »

Did the IC patch fix this? I haven't bothered playing because of this. It's stupid that stamina builds who are clued in to this bug do the same exact ridiculous amount of damage to me whether I'm in light armor, or full reinforced heavy armor.

it's fixed.