Are crits and crit resistance essential in PvP? Impenetrable VS Reinforced.

Autolycus · May 2016

Reinforced is currently a predominantly pve trait, and even then it is, in most cases, incredibly lackluster relative to the numerous other options. I have a habit of long posts, so I'll try not to ramble on too much.

In a nutshell, the increased physical resistance afforded by reinforced traits amounts to an almost negligible increase in survivability. From a tanking perspective, the most important mitigation stats are not physical and spell resistances, but actually block mitigation and dodge. There are a few reasons for this, but the most important one which applies to non-tank builds is that you can't penetrate, or in some way reduce, your ability to dodge. This helps to explain why Evasion and Blur are such powerful skills (note here the difference between dodge and dodge rolling).

Edit: The addition of poisons will impact the ability to utilize skills like Evasion and Blur, but it will not diminish their mitigation value, rather it will make them more costly to use.

In PvP, impen is the clear choice if your only other option is reinforced. But as someone mentioned earlier in the thread, it really depends on the content, and I urge you to consider other traits besides just these two, because any combination of other traits could be right for your build. Duels (or any form of small pvp content for that matter) perhaps cry the loudest for the need for crit resistance, but depending on how you build your character, you don't have to run any impen at all. I have a full light armor pvp setup that utilizes zero impen (a full damage build) and I don't find myself wishing I had more crit resistance. I've done quite well all forms of pvp content in this setup, including duels and large-scale seige warfare.

The bottom line here is that you can afford to run whichever traits suit your playstyle the best. PvP is the closest to "play how you want" as it gets in ESO. I've seen dozens of odd, non-meta builds that work perfectly fine and are thoroughly enjoyable to play. Some of them use traits that very few people even give a chance (like well fitted). If you can justify using a specific set of traits on your gear with your build, and it works and you enjoy it, then it doesn't really matter.

RedFireDisco · May 2016

For my respec, I'll be using 5 impen and 2 well fitted for the rolldodge, may even rock 4/3.

Lexxypwns · May 2016

Wreuntzylla wrote: »

If you are serious about PvP, run full impenetrable, the only caveat being that you should use reinforced on your shield due to the CP passive that doubles your shield's armor.

Also, sword and shield is great in PvP. Defensive stance!

Impen is still better on shield than reinforced, even with the shield expert CP passive.

Autolycus · May 2016

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Wreuntzylla wrote: »

If you are serious about PvP, run full impenetrable, the only caveat being that you should use reinforced on your shield due to the CP passive that doubles your shield's armor.

Also, sword and shield is great in PvP. Defensive stance!

Impen is still better on shield than reinforced, even with the shield expert CP passive.

@Lexxypwns Do you have the maths to support that? I am interested in seeing those results.

Lexxypwns · May 2016

Autolycus wrote: »

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Wreuntzylla wrote: »

If you are serious about PvP, run full impenetrable, the only caveat being that you should use reinforced on your shield due to the CP passive that doubles your shield's armor.

Also, sword and shield is great in PvP. Defensive stance!

Impen is still better on shield than reinforced, even with the shield expert CP passive.

@Lexxypwns Do you have the maths to support that? I am interested in seeing those results.

This is rough paraphrashing, but 1k armor is like 1.5% mitigation, I believe you get about 400 extra armor on a reinforced shield with shield expert CP trait, or about .7% mitigation, wheras 250 impen gives you 7.5% crit mitigation, imo this is clearly in favor of impen.

NikaTheCat · May 2016

MrTarkanian48 wrote: »

NikaTheCat wrote: »

MrTarkanian48 wrote: »

Impen on the other hand is a hard counter to crit damage that is not affected by penetration.

Hmm, a good point, haven't thought about it this way. But still the initial base damage will be affected by my mitigation, and my mitigation in turn will be affected by the enemy's penetration.

I don't really know how the math works in this game, somebody correct me if I'm wrong.
But for example, somebody hits me with a spell doing 10000 damage. And I have 30% damage mitigation which lowers my damage taken to 7000. And let's say that he also can penetrate 10% of my armor, which lowers my damage mitigation to 27%, so in the end I take 7300 damage. So the crit without the penetration would be 7000*1.5=10500, and with penetration 7300*1.5=10950. So now the impen will decrease 10500-7000= 3500 crit damage by some % or the 10950-7300=3650 by the same %. Basically, it seems that even if impen is not directly affected by penetration, the penetration still does affect the base damage and in turn the crit bonus, that is then mitigated by the impen.
I might be totally wrong though.

I still think that you and the others are correct, that impen will provide better results than reinforced, if reinforced really provides only such a small increase in mitigation.

Yes, mitigation lowers base damage which results in lower crit damage. However, IMO due to the crazy amount of penetration in the game (I outlined all the different sources players can get penetration in my first post), focusing on increasing your armor value is most likely not the best investment. It takes a lot of sacrifices in damage/resource management to buff up your armor rating, and a huge amount of it is ignored by enemy players rather easily. After DB for example, a NB with a sharpened mace will give you Major Fracture with Surprise Attack ignoring 5280 armor, the mace itself will ignore 5100 armor, and the mace passive ignores 20%. I am unsure at which point the 20% is applied, but you can see that they effortlessly ignore almost 10,500 armor without the 20%. Light Armor enemies get 4884 penetration from LA passives, 5280 from Major Breach, 5,100 from Sharpened weapons, 10% penetration from Destro Staff Passives etc. Basically Penetration is very unbalanced with armor values in PVP, and investing heavily in reinforced is not very efficient.

For my stam build going 60 points in Hardy and 60 in Ele Defender give me 17.5% resistance to all sources of damage (magic, elemental, physical, poison). This is a hard counter that is not affected by penetration. Then by putting the rest in resistant and investing in Impen gear, you can really close the gap between the damage taken from crits and non-crits. It can help you manage incoming burst damage, and give you time to react (dodge roll, heal, pop shields etc.)

MrTarkanian48 wrote: »

663 armor is equivalent to 1% mitigation.

...

One piece of gold Impen provides around 3.5% crit resistance (7pcs=24.5%).

How do you know all these numbers? Can you point me to some link or something? It would be really helpful to know this stuff.

@Asayre has a lot of posts here and on Tamriel Foundry. He has a post on TF which he updates regularly and has a ton of useful equations. It can be found here.

MrTarkanian48 wrote: »

Do not go reinforced in PVP, especially in light armor.

The tricky part is balancing your CP. I am unsure what the preferred balance is because Hardy and Elemental Defender are extremely valuable options as well and competitive with Resistant. They also provide direct % mitigation as well without being affected by penetration.

On my stam NB I run 7 pc Impen with 60 Hardy, 60 Elemental Defender, and 47 Resistant. I do this to get the Unchained passive which is valuable for resource management on a stam character.

Unfortunately if you have low CP, it will be hard for you to compete with players at the cap as they will have higher resistance and damage. You may want to run in non CP campaigns for awhile until your CP gets around 350-400.

I have about 360 CP right now, although I didn't put points in Resistant until now, because obviously it is useless for PvE. It seems that to do my best in PvP and PvE I will have to actually redistribute my points each time that I go in and out of Cyrodiil.

Yes, unfortunately the way the game is set up, it is hard to move between PVP and PVE without making adjustments to gear, CP etc and still be competitive at a high level. You can do it, and I had been doing it for some time, but when you run into more hardcore PVPers, you usually just end up being an easy target.

I have leveled several different characters now, and basically have designated players specced for PVP or PVE, but don't really do both on any. Currently leveling alts can be a lengthy process, but with the upcoming DB patch it will be much less of a grind and I'd recommend it if you have the time. It also allows you to try different play-styles and keeps the game from getting boring.

I was actually planning on leveling 8 toons - one magicka build and one stamina build for each class. I currently have two in vet ranks and another one coming along. It will take me some time to level the others, but that's the plan. Designating some of them to PvE or PvP is actually a pretty good idea, thanks. And I can always switch them up if I want to.

NikaTheCat · May 2016

Autolycus wrote: »

Reinforced is currently a predominantly pve trait, and even then it is, in most cases, incredibly lackluster relative to the numerous other options. I have a habit of long posts, so I'll try not to ramble on too much.

In a nutshell, the increased physical resistance afforded by reinforced traits amounts to an almost negligible increase in survivability. From a tanking perspective, the most important mitigation stats are not physical and spell resistances, but actually block mitigation and dodge. There are a few reasons for this, but the most important one which applies to non-tank builds is that you can't penetrate, or in some way reduce, your ability to dodge. This helps to explain why Evasion and Blur are such powerful skills (note here the difference between dodge and dodge rolling).

Edit: The addition of poisons will impact the ability to utilize skills like Evasion and Blur, but it will not diminish their mitigation value, rather it will make them more costly to use.

In PvP, impen is the clear choice if your only other option is reinforced. But as someone mentioned earlier in the thread, it really depends on the content, and I urge you to consider other traits besides just these two, because any combination of other traits could be right for your build. Duels (or any form of small pvp content for that matter) perhaps cry the loudest for the need for crit resistance, but depending on how you build your character, you don't have to run any impen at all. I have a full light armor pvp setup that utilizes zero impen (a full damage build) and I don't find myself wishing I had more crit resistance. I've done quite well all forms of pvp content in this setup, including duels and large-scale seige warfare.

The bottom line here is that you can afford to run whichever traits suit your playstyle the best. PvP is the closest to "play how you want" as it gets in ESO. I've seen dozens of odd, non-meta builds that work perfectly fine and are thoroughly enjoyable to play. Some of them use traits that very few people even give a chance (like well fitted). If you can justify using a specific set of traits on your gear with your build, and it works and you enjoy it, then it doesn't really matter.

I have that habit too, no worries.

Not that impen and reinforced are my only options, it's just that they are both defensive traits, and I wanted to know why impen is considered better for PvP. Maybe should have asked about nirnhoned too, but always though it to be better for weapons than armor. Edit: Just realized that they are changing the Nirnhoned trait in DB. Not sure about the actual math, but it will probably be better for light armor, and reinforced will be better for heavy armor, with medium somewhere in-between.
Ideally, I would adjust the traits to my playstyle, and I will do it in time. It's just that at this point, while learning PvP, I think a little survivability would do me good - sometimes I die if somebody just looks at me funny.

Odd, non-meta builds are probably most fun to play (and come up with).

Autolycus · May 2016

NikaTheCat wrote: »

I have that habit too, no worries.
Not that impen and reinforced are my only options, it's just that they are both defensive traits, and I wanted to know why impen is considered better for PvP. Maybe should have asked about nirnhoned too, but always though it to be better for weapons than armor.
Ideally, I would adjust the traits to my playstyle, and I will do it in time. It's just that at this point, while learning PvP, I think a little survivability would do me good - sometimes I die if somebody just looks at me funny.
Odd, non-meta builds are probably most fun to play (and come up with).

Yeah, definitely. I think that impen is a very valuable defensive trait in pvp, and for someone who is relatively new to pvp (or even on a new toon or trying a new build or something) it's probably the best option in most cases. I think that with more experience and a higher level of comfort with one's own build, impen becomes a little less necessary.

It's not that being more experienced or comfortable with one's build makes the crits less severe or something. It's moreso that at a certain point, the mechanics of pvp sort of "click", but it happens at different times for everyone. However, once you hit that point where it "clicks," you start to pay more attention to what your opponents are doing and less on what you're doing with your own character. When you get to this point, it becomes a lot easier to outright avoid a lot of the scenarios where you, at one point, relied almost exclusively on crit resistance to keep you going.

Take me, for example. I primarily pvp on my magblade. Over the course of the last couple of years my build has changed pretty substantially (in large part due to new gear cycles and the evolution of this game on the whole). As time goes on I steer more towards damage and sustainability than and formal mitigation, but I can afford to do this because I don't have to watch my own character. I see other players' formations, who is going for a flank, who is trying to bait, etc. If you pay close enough attention, you have a really good idea of who is going to gank and when/where they will strike. Being able to anticipate these maneuvers alleviates the necessity for crit resistance to some extent. Knowing and being able to dodge or CC makes a huge difference in survivability, moreso than crit resistance imho.

(note: I don't run a gank build, rather a duelist-style "in your face" setup, where one would typically stack crit resistances. I wanted to add this in so as not to leave the impression that I'm one of those perma-cloak proxy gankers, in which case stacking damage is the intuitive go-to)

Silver_Strider · May 2016

NikaTheCat wrote: »

Silver_Strider wrote: »

NikaTheCat wrote: »

Silver_Strider wrote: »

5 pc Transmutation and maybe 30+ points into Resistant from the Steed Tree is usually enough crit resistance for me (~2k crit resistance with Transmutation proc). Since Transmutation gives all the regen you'll probably ever really need, especially when coupled with Kagrenac's, its a great set for PvP and very easy to proc with either mutation, jabs, or just by laying down the Templar House.

I recommend running 5 Kags, 5 Transmutation and either torag for the 2 pc or any monster set of your choose. This way, you can forgo Impenetrable entirely and run max Divine/Infused Gear on your character.

Going reinforced is a waste as there is simply too much penetration and armor reduction skills in the game that the extra armor is almost totally negated anyways.

Didn't really consider the Transmutation 5 piece before. Forgot that "allies" in ESO also includes yourself. And if you can proc it with Puncturing Sweeps and Templar House, then that's actually really good. Does this set have the weapons? Because it means sacrificing Kagrenac's 5 set bonus on the resto bar.

Yep, Transmutation comes in weapons. I have dual swords and a Resto staff for Transmutation.

Awesome! Do you know if you can proc it on any HoT tick or just the initial one? I usually have my Channeled Focus on the Resto bar, which won't have the 5 piece bonus, but maybe I can switch bars and get the proc on the secondary heal ticks.

Also what do you use for PvP - Channeled Focus or Restoring Focus (if any)? Yesterday finally got the Engine Guardian set, and with both Transmutation and Kagrenac's my regen might be pretty good, so maybe the 8% healing received and 8% damage reduction of Restoring Focus might be more beneficial now.

Procs on any tick, so you can use whatever HoT on 1 bar, return to the bar that has 5 pc Transmutation and still get the set to proc.

I use Restoring Focus but that's because I'm more a Templar Tank than DPS/Healer. You should have plenty of regen already between your gear and Engine Guardian that maybe Channeled Focus is a bit of overkill with the resource management but it's up to you really.

dylanjaygrobbelaarb16_ESO · May 2016

NikaTheCat wrote: »

Thanks for the replies!

I'm thinking about maybe making some vet14 gear just to test out different trait effectiveness by making my friends kick me in the face repeatedly and calculating the damage.
I understand the logic of impenetrable and criticals, but what matters is the numbers. Because in this game to stack some stat, you usually sacrifice something else (and it definitely should be this way). I just need to understand the cost efficiency of each stat.

kylewwefan wrote: »

Much of the damage you take from other players is from Crit. Yes, Impen is what you want in PvP, but it's worthless in the main game, as monsters don't Crit.

You want to raise your spell damage to hit harder in PvP. Sword n Board in PvP......not so good. I'll stop advice here because I suck at PvP.

I find sword and board more reliable in PvE to not die and block some of the boss damage. Mostly it just fits my play style. I will probably switch it for dual wield in PvP though.

holosoul wrote: »

Yes, the PVP exclusive trait which PVP is balanced around you having is essential in PVP.

If PvP is truly balanced around one trait, then it's not really balanced, is it?

you dont need to crunch numbers. get impen end of story. NON CRIT BUILDS have 40-50% crit!! and dps builds with hundings that arnt even focusing on crit have even higher rates, if you dont use impen you will get crushed. you also need to put a decent amount of cp into crit damage reduction.
i know whenever i come across pve player because they take massive damage from lacking impen( and crit resist cp) and die instantly(which is your problem) experienced pvp players can tell you dont have impen and lol when you die in 2 seconds.
that being said the trait changes will probably effect the meta, but ill bargain most will still run at least 5 impen and maybe 2 block reduction for pvp.

also if you make inferior gear and test, your test will be garbage. blue v14 and gold v16 is a world of difference stat wise

NikaTheCat · May 2016

Silver_Strider wrote: »

NikaTheCat wrote: »

Silver_Strider wrote: »

NikaTheCat wrote: »

Silver_Strider wrote: »

5 pc Transmutation and maybe 30+ points into Resistant from the Steed Tree is usually enough crit resistance for me (~2k crit resistance with Transmutation proc). Since Transmutation gives all the regen you'll probably ever really need, especially when coupled with Kagrenac's, its a great set for PvP and very easy to proc with either mutation, jabs, or just by laying down the Templar House.

I recommend running 5 Kags, 5 Transmutation and either torag for the 2 pc or any monster set of your choose. This way, you can forgo Impenetrable entirely and run max Divine/Infused Gear on your character.

Going reinforced is a waste as there is simply too much penetration and armor reduction skills in the game that the extra armor is almost totally negated anyways.

Didn't really consider the Transmutation 5 piece before. Forgot that "allies" in ESO also includes yourself. And if you can proc it with Puncturing Sweeps and Templar House, then that's actually really good. Does this set have the weapons? Because it means sacrificing Kagrenac's 5 set bonus on the resto bar.

Yep, Transmutation comes in weapons. I have dual swords and a Resto staff for Transmutation.

Awesome! Do you know if you can proc it on any HoT tick or just the initial one? I usually have my Channeled Focus on the Resto bar, which won't have the 5 piece bonus, but maybe I can switch bars and get the proc on the secondary heal ticks.

Also what do you use for PvP - Channeled Focus or Restoring Focus (if any)? Yesterday finally got the Engine Guardian set, and with both Transmutation and Kagrenac's my regen might be pretty good, so maybe the 8% healing received and 8% damage reduction of Restoring Focus might be more beneficial now.

Procs on any tick, so you can use whatever HoT on 1 bar, return to the bar that has 5 pc Transmutation and still get the set to proc.

I use Restoring Focus but that's because I'm more a Templar Tank than DPS/Healer. You should have plenty of regen already between your gear and Engine Guardian that maybe Channeled Focus is a bit of overkill with the resource management but it's up to you really.

Great, thanks! Will have to find myself some Transmutation weapons or gear then and maybe try out Restoring Focus.

dylanjaygrobbelaarb16_ESO wrote: »

NikaTheCat wrote: »

Thanks for the replies!

I'm thinking about maybe making some vet14 gear just to test out different trait effectiveness by making my friends kick me in the face repeatedly and calculating the damage.
I understand the logic of impenetrable and criticals, but what matters is the numbers. Because in this game to stack some stat, you usually sacrifice something else (and it definitely should be this way). I just need to understand the cost efficiency of each stat.

kylewwefan wrote: »

Much of the damage you take from other players is from Crit. Yes, Impen is what you want in PvP, but it's worthless in the main game, as monsters don't Crit.

You want to raise your spell damage to hit harder in PvP. Sword n Board in PvP......not so good. I'll stop advice here because I suck at PvP.

I find sword and board more reliable in PvE to not die and block some of the boss damage. Mostly it just fits my play style. I will probably switch it for dual wield in PvP though.

holosoul wrote: »

Yes, the PVP exclusive trait which PVP is balanced around you having is essential in PVP.

If PvP is truly balanced around one trait, then it's not really balanced, is it?

you dont need to crunch numbers. get impen end of story. NON CRIT BUILDS have 40-50% crit!! and dps builds with hundings that arnt even focusing on crit have even higher rates, if you dont use impen you will get crushed. you also need to put a decent amount of cp into crit damage reduction.
i know whenever i come across pve player because they take massive damage from lacking impen( and crit resist cp) and die instantly(which is your problem) experienced pvp players can tell you dont have impen and lol when you die in 2 seconds.
that being said the trait changes will probably effect the meta, but ill bargain most will still run at least 5 impen and maybe 2 block reduction for pvp.

also if you make inferior gear and test, your test will be garbage. blue v14 and gold v16 is a world of difference stat wise

Well, I probably will be too lazy to test anything anyway. After all these replies I kinda already made up my mind to try the impen. However, I have to disagree about testing inferior gear. You have to test the gear against the gear of the same level and quality, to see the proportion of gains and losses in each set. But it doesn't really matter what level it is. Of course, I want it to be as close as possible to my real level to get the approximate numbers, that's why I would make vet14 purple gear. I could make it vet16 gold, but I don't have 3000 vet16 mats and 160 gold tempers lying around just to make 2 sets of gear, when at least one of them I would probably never use.

Also it seems that there are players like @Autolycus that can live without impen just fine, I'm just not at that level yet. Not that having impen means you are a less skilled player, it's just a different playstyle. All I wanted to say is that it can be done, it seems.

Autolycus · May 2016

After a couple days of being out of Cryodiil I decided to head into the IC districts last night for some small-scale pvp. Turned out to be a pretty large 3-way (nonstop) fight happening in Arboretum, which seems to be our most hoppin' district for pvp in the NA PC server on Haderus.

I'm not the best pvper out there, of that you can be assured. But, I do think there is a certain comfort level in pvp that alleviates the need for things like impen, to some extent. To be totally fair, I've supported the use of impen and defend its validity still today, I just believe that it's unnecessary for some builds and some people.

I played in Arboretum for about an hour last night, and aside from a couple of major lag spikes, everything went pretty swimmingly. I was using my magblade build I mentioned (the duelist setup without cloak) and ended the night at 115 K / 10 D / 40 KB. I'd say that's pretty good in a group of 4 (against about 12 from each other alliance) in only an hour. The highlight here is that I only had 10 deaths in a full cloth build with no impen.

It's evidence that we can afford to explore other options. If anything, it's just some food for thought.

NikaTheCat · May 2016

Autolycus wrote: »

After a couple days of being out of Cryodiil I decided to head into the IC districts last night for some small-scale pvp. Turned out to be a pretty large 3-way (nonstop) fight happening in Arboretum, which seems to be our most hoppin' district for pvp in the NA PC server on Haderus.

I'm not the best pvper out there, of that you can be assured. But, I do think there is a certain comfort level in pvp that alleviates the need for things like impen, to some extent. To be totally fair, I've supported the use of impen and defend its validity still today, I just believe that it's unnecessary for some builds and some people.

I played in Arboretum for about an hour last night, and aside from a couple of major lag spikes, everything went pretty swimmingly. I was using my magblade build I mentioned (the duelist setup without cloak) and ended the night at 115 K / 10 D / 40 KB. I'd say that's pretty good in a group of 4 (against about 12 from each other alliance) in only an hour. The highlight here is that I only had 10 deaths in a full cloth build with no impen.

It's evidence that we can afford to explore other options. If anything, it's just some food for thought.

It's good to hear that different builds work for PvP. Today I too went to IC with a friend. Mostly we farmed bone shards n stuff, but met some players and we actually had some successful fights (i.e., I didn't die more than I killed). And I still haven't changed my gear to impen. Though, I now have my Engine Guardian and I chaned my Julianos weapons for Transmutation weapons as @Silver_Strider suggested. It was fun

driosketch · May 2016

Autolycus wrote: »

After a couple days of being out of Cryodiil I decided to head into the IC districts last night for some small-scale pvp. Turned out to be a pretty large 3-way (nonstop) fight happening in Arboretum, which seems to be our most hoppin' district for pvp in the NA PC server on Haderus.

I'm not the best pvper out there, of that you can be assured. But, I do think there is a certain comfort level in pvp that alleviates the need for things like impen, to some extent. To be totally fair, I've supported the use of impen and defend its validity still today, I just believe that it's unnecessary for some builds and some people.

I played in Arboretum for about an hour last night, and aside from a couple of major lag spikes, everything went pretty swimmingly. I was using my magblade build I mentioned (the duelist setup without cloak) and ended the night at 115 K / 10 D / 40 KB. I'd say that's pretty good in a group of 4 (against about 12 from each other alliance) in only an hour. The highlight here is that I only had 10 deaths in a full cloth build with no impen.

It's evidence that we can afford to explore other options. If anything, it's just some food for thought.

Heh, I was there a couple days ago too. I survived most every attempt by multiple NB aoe bomb attacks on our group. It wasn't until about 2/3rds through the night when I realized I was still in my PvE gear and had forgotten to swap for my impenetrable pieces. So I guess you could say impenetrable isn't 100% absolutely necessary. I'd likely attribute by survival to a little extra health, tons of heals, radiant mage light, a few CP in crit resist, and just good old fashion playing experience. Your mileage may vary.