Mighty is by far the best and most important CP Star.
Mobs do have very different physical resistances. Dwemer for example have there Armor nearly caped while caster most of the time have way less than 10k.

I personally went for the route to go for 1 Sharpened Mace and 1 Precise Dagger. But going 2 sharpened daggers or 2 precise Maces also works and it highly depends on your actual target what's best.

Piercing on the other hand can be compared to Precise Strikes in terms of effectiveness. Also highly dependand on your crit chance and the mob you are fighting against, on an average target with ~25% mitigation and ~50% crit chance, they are pretty even.

Never go sword. ZOS messed swords up in Update 7, they only give an extra 2.5% weapon damage on the value that is on the weapon instead of increasing the damage of your attacks by 2.5%. So there is really only Daggers and Maces to choose from atm.

I will go for Mighty and dual dagger then. Shadow or thief boon ?

I dont think we have access to crit multiplier info on console

H3Li0S wrote: »

Shadow or thief boon ?

Tell me what class you're playing and how much CP you have in total.

Asayre wrote: »

Go with mighty. Every 1% increase in piercing increases your dps by roughly 0.14%

@ Asayre Can you better clarify your math here...with penetration now being additive instead of multiplicative, wouldn't every 1% increase your dps in relation to the targets resistance?

Asayre wrote: »

Hey @hardcore_gmr , from my previous testing in Cyrodiil, I found that the following equation is reasonably accurate in calculating the base damage done

Base damage = Tooltip * Attacker Bonus * Defender Bonus * (1-MItigation)
where Attacker Bonus is usually champion point related like Mighty, Thaumathurge or Elemental Expert and Defender Bonus is champion points like Hardy and Elemental Defender.
The mitigation formula I use is
Mitigation = Defender_Resist * (1-Penetration) / 66000 - Attacker_Focus/66000 - 0.12*Piercing

Here is an example in Cyrodiil for spell damage but I found that a similar calculation can be done for physical damage. I am using a V16 Altmer sorcerer and casting force pulse on a target with 21511 spell resistance and 40 points in Elemental Defender(13.2%). The tooltip value of force pulse is 2058. I have 75 points in Elemental Expert (20.4%) and 25 points in Spell Erosion (9.5%). I also have 3 points in Elemental Talent and 2 points in penetrating magic. My focus is 4984

Damage=2058/2[Battle Spirit] *1.204[Elemental Expert]*1.04[Elemental Talent]*(1-Mitigation)*(1-0.132[Elemental Defender])=887

Where

%Mitigation=21511/66000*0.9[Penetrating Magic]-4984/66000-0.12*0.095

The actual damage is 890.

Side note: For Attacker_Focus, I do not use the Focus value provided by Harven's Extended Stats. I use a base focus of 100 and then add things that specifically add a flat amount of penetration. For example the Light Armour Concentration passive increases focus by 4884.

Back on topic, if we assume that Attacker Bonus and Defender Bonus are 1, we can then seperate the influence of mitigation from Piercing like so

Base damage = Tooltip * (1- Mit" + 0.12*Spell Erosion) = Tooltip * (1-Mit") + 0.12*Tooltip*Piercing
Mit" = Defender_Resist * (1-Penetration) / 66000 - Attacker_Focus/66000

So every 1% increase in the Piercing tooltip results in Tooltip*0.0012 increase in Base Damage. If we then take a low'ish crit rating of 40% and a crit multiplier of 1.5 then the average damage increase for every 1% in Piercing is 0.0012*(1+0.4*0.5) = 0.00144 which leads to my comment that a 1% increase in Piercing leads to a dps increase of ~0.14%

Thanks for this....but wouldn't you add CP "Piercing" modifier to the weapon "Sharpen" modifier along with all other abilities that contribute to penetration instead of multiplying them. The change to penetration in update 1.7 (both spell and armor) makes these values additive to each other...so 12% from weapon + 9.5% for CP = 21.5% penetration. This value changes your equation results drastically. The way damage reduction is calculated (at least to my knowledge) it should reduce tooltip damage by the amount of resistance appropriate to the type of damage. i.e. Tool tip damage says it does "x" damage, this number is then reduced by the percentage of resistance. therefore penetration should reduce the amount of damage mitigated by bypassing a percentage of the resistance.

real numbers: (simplified for easy understanding)

tooltip damage says 4200 for lava whip
enemy resistance is 35%

4200*.35% = 1470 damage mitigated
4200-1470 = 2730 damage received

Now with penetration factored in:

12% from weapon
5% from CP

.12%+.05% = .17% penetration

Same spell and enemy resistance:

4200* (.35%-.17%) = 4200*.18% = 756 damage mitigated
4200-756 = 3444 damage received

3444-2730 = 714 actual damage increase, which is closer to a 26% increase in damage from 2730.

penetration does have a limit though, as soon as it negates the damage mitigation, it no longer increases damage received. Therefore the cap for penetration should equal the cap for resistance. This seems consistent with the 50% damage reduction in Cyrodill as the tool tip value is first reduced, then mitigation is factored in (along with penetration).

In PvP, same damage, enemy resistance and penetration

(4200*.50%)*(.35%-.17%) = 2100*.18 = 378 damage mitigated
2100-378 = 1722 damage received

I am aware that this is a simplification of the actual equation but I believe the idea is sill sound. my testing seems to fall in line with this calculation. However I am aware that as with all testing, the experiment can sometimes be made to support false results. I am not trying to bust your balls but just trying to see where I might have gone wrong (if I am wrong).

Note: I am testing in both cyrodill and pve, using a sharpened and non sharpened weapon and with/and without CP points into penetration to achieve these results.

Asayre wrote: »

Hey @hardcore_gmr , thanks for your sharing your perspective on the mechanics of Piercing! I really appreciate your explanation and understand that sometimes my equations may be wrong due to conclusions drawn from limited data and always value other people's thoughts on what equation should be used to calculate the base damage.

From my understanding of your post, you would use the following equation to calculate the base damage.
Base Damage = Tooltip * Attacker_Bonus * Defender_Bonus * (1-Mitigation+Penetration)
where
Mitigation = Resistance/66000 - Focus/66000
and Penetration is the sum of Penetration from weapon and Penetration from Piercing

This is in contrast to the equation I previously used which was
Base Damage = Tooltip * Attacker_Bonus * Defender_Bonus * (1-Mitigation)
where
Mitigation = Resistance*(1-Penetration)/66000 - Focus/66000 - 0.0012*Piercing
where Penetration does not include Piercing

We'll ignore Attacker_Bonus and Defender_Bonus for now.

I redid my testing in Cyrodiil in the PTS 2.1.3 today. I don't have two accounts with a V16 in Live and didn't want to bother anyone with testing in Live and also I just want to save virtual money. I've included a picture of my results as well as a link for anyone to view the data. Please let me know if the spreadsheet link isn't working as I don't often use that feature of Google Drive.

A bit of explanation of what I did for the test and what the columns mean. I had a V16 character equipped with various bits of armour to obtain a physical resistance of 21088. I then used another V16 character equipped with 4 pieces of medium armour and either a V16 axe or a V14 sharpened greatsword (6% penetration, white). I then use Uppercut on the target while increasing the value of Piercing. There are two columns under Piercing, one is labelled 'Point' which means how many points is in it and 'Value' is the tooltip value of Piercing. Damage is the actual recorded damage by Foundry Tactical Combat. 'Calc damage 1' uses the formula that I proposed while 'Calc Damage 2' uses the formula you proposed. So from my testing it seems Calc damage 1 conforms more closely to the recorded damage. I would appreciate your thoughts on this matter and I apologise in advance if I misunderstood your interpretation of Piercing.



https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/127gviz07DCTQj_T56s7NnKqHGQ-UgfPDiZv-42JZVpo/edit?usp=sharing

Thank you so much for this information...I guess I'll have to go back to the drawing board on my testing. I do however have more questions....like in the why you use a value of 66000 in your resistance equation when if this number is to represent character level wouldn't the number be 64000 (as there is no progression to level 1 and there is no actual level 50). i am using the equation:

mitigation % = (resistance - 100)/64000

The trouble I am having now is that I cannot come up with the damage numbers you listed using either equation, using your math or mine. Perhaps can you substitute the numerical values for you equation to show your work, perhaps I can see where I am going wrong. if you don't mind, I will hold on to your chart and I will document my own from now on. maybe we can pool information. Thanks again