Percentage penetration, vs mitigation or vs resistance?

joshisanonymous · June 2016

Does penetration, when it's a percentage, apply to the target's mitigation or to the amount of resistance they have? For example, if someone has 40k resistance, which is a good amount over the mitigation cap off 50% that 32k resistance gives them, is a 10% penetration hitting their mitigation, leading to, I suspect, 45% mitigation left over, or is it applying to their resistance, reducing the number to 36k resistance, which is still over the cap, meaning that 10% is doing nothing at all?

Elevenstorm · June 2016

It applies to the current resistance. For example if bloodspawn boss in Spindle clutch had 20k physical resistance and you had 10% physical penetration you would reduce the boss resistance to 18k.

joshisanonymous · June 2016

Elevenstorm wrote: »

It applies to the current resistance. For example if bloodspawn boss in Spindle clutch had 20k physical resistance and you had 10% physical penetration you would reduce the boss resistance to 18k.

Ok, so then in PvP, going over the cap can still be useful even against players who are using percentage penetration?

Elevenstorm · June 2016

Yes, If you run 40k spell/physical resist and they have a % pen wep/ability you can still be at or above cap after they use it.

Vangy · June 2016

Don't think building purposely for high mitigation is a good idea. Its nice to have with heavy armour, but I do not recommend giving up other stats too much for it. Here's why;

This to my knowledge is how mitigation is calculated;

1. Physical/spell mitigation = (resistance - 100) / (level*10)

So if you have 30k resistance (either spell or phy)

All toons have a base of 100 armor and spell pen. A sharpened 2 hander provides around 5200 spell pen (can't rmb exact but its around that range). Light armour gives around 4900 spell pen with concentration. So before considering spell erosion;

30 k resistance = about 45% mitigation.

Considering penetration discussed above;

30 k - 5200 (from sharpened weapon) = 24.8k
24.8k - 4900 (from concentration) = 19.9k

Now your mitigation with 19.9k spell res is--> (based on formula 1 again) --> about 30%

Now let's consider major breach, since its a pretty common debuff. Major breach reduces spell res by 5281.

So now your mitigation becomes --> 19.9k - 5281 = 14.649k

Now your mitigation becomes --> about 22%.

Now let's consider CP for spell erosion. Let's say someone has around 1k spell pen from spell erosion (pretty common number);

14.649k - 1k = 13.649k.

So your final spell mitigation becomes -- > (13649 - 100)/(660) = about 20%

So essentially, someone not even trying to build for spell pen is bypassing about 55% of your mitigation while giving up 0 damage or sustain. You on the other hand, have to give up some serious damage and sustain to hit resistances like 30k. If you want to go OVER the cap, yes it will still work when people are running these kind of insane penetration numbers... But the REAL question is, what are you giving up to hit resistance numbers over the cap.....

Elevenstorm · June 2016

@Vangy is absolutely correct. IMO better to spec for block cost reduction and the ability to have immovability up a large percentage of the time for pvp. Even with high resists blocking is what's mitigating most of your damage in pvp as well as shields and elemental defender/hardy because of what vangy has already mentioned. This is why heavy armor is the weakest of the armors in pvp. Why wear heavy when you can wear LA and get reduced cost for magicka spells or medium and get 12% more wep damage and stam cost reduction?

Armitas · June 2016

Elevenstorm wrote: »

It applies to the current resistance. For example if bloodspawn boss in Spindle clutch had 20k physical resistance and you had 10% physical penetration you would reduce the boss resistance to 18k.

Percentages used to apply to mitigation percentages. 50% mitigation and 50% penetration were null. How far back did they change % to apply to resistance values?

MrTarkanian48 · June 2016

Vangy wrote: »

Don't think building purposely for high mitigation is a good idea. Its nice to have with heavy armour, but I do not recommend giving up other stats too much for it. Here's why;

This to my knowledge is how mitigation is calculated;

1. Physical/spell mitigation = (resistance - 100) / (level*10)

So if you have 30k resistance (either spell or phy)

All toons have a base of 100 armor and spell pen. A sharpened 2 hander provides around 5200 spell pen (can't rmb exact but its around that range). Light armour gives around 4900 spell pen with concentration. So before considering spell erosion;

30 k resistance = about 45% mitigation.

Considering penetration discussed above;

30 k - 5200 (from sharpened weapon) = 24.8k
24.8k - 4900 (from concentration) = 19.9k

Now your mitigation with 19.9k spell res is--> (based on formula 1 again) --> about 30%

Now let's consider major breach, since its a pretty common debuff. Major breach reduces spell res by 5281.

So now your mitigation becomes --> 19.9k - 5281 = 14.649k

Now your mitigation becomes --> about 22%.

Now let's consider CP for spell erosion. Let's say someone has around 1k spell pen from spell erosion (pretty common number);

14.649k - 1k = 13.649k.

So your final spell mitigation becomes -- > (13649 - 100)/(660) = about 20%

So essentially, someone not even trying to build for spell pen is bypassing about 55% of your mitigation while giving up 0 damage or sustain. You on the other hand, have to give up some serious damage and sustain to hit resistances like 30k. If you want to go OVER the cap, yes it will still work when people are running these kind of insane penetration numbers... But the REAL question is, what are you giving up to hit resistance numbers over the cap.....

One thing to keep in mind is the order that pentration is applied.

1) Debuffs
2) Percentage Penetration
3) Flat Penetration

So if you have 30K spell resist, and a Light Armor Wearing Sorc with a Sharpened Destro Staff uses Flame Reach on you and applies Major Breach with Elemental Drain.

30,000 - 5280(M. Breach)= 24,720

24,720 * 0.9(Destro Passive)= 22,248

22,248 - 5281 (Sharpened) - 4884 (Light Armor Passive) = 12,083

So you effectively go from 45.2% mitigation to 18.2% mitigation.

Penetration is pretty OP in this game. Given all the sacrifices in damage that you need to make the resistance cap it does not seem like a worthwile trade off to stack resistance.

joshisanonymous · June 2016

I'm not actually concerned with damage. I'm simply trying to have some fun with weird builds, hence the focus on health and resists. Besides what was just described as "not even building for penetration" sounds a lot like building for penetration.

Vangy · June 2016

joshisanonymous wrote: »

I'm not actually concerned with damage. I'm simply trying to have some fun with weird builds, hence the focus on health and resists. Besides what was just described as "not even building for penetration" sounds a lot like building for penetration.

Uhmmm... Okay.

heystreethawk · June 2016

joshisanonymous wrote: »

Besides what was just described as "not even building for penetration" sounds a lot like building for penetration.

It's not. I chop off 20k resistance right now without factoring destro staff or poisons & I'm gonna go build for penetration when I get home from work.

TYVM for the math