Up to you really, it's definitely not mandatory but I think it's a good idea to have some. It depends on whether you believe you can keep your shields up enough to make any impen reduntant. Spinners is easy enough to farm; you could try to pvp with some impen and without to see if it makes a difference to you. I've combined 7x impen with 2 large pieces of heavy and boundless storm with good results, but with everyone running around with a minimum of 15k penetration since one tamriel I'm thinking I might lose the heavy armour. I'm keeping the impen for now though.

I confirm what Outsider said, damage left over after shields taken down can crit (for the remaining damagee). I also go Infused big and impen small.

If your shields are down ur Dedz, so I personally don't run any Crit.

Infused & divines make the Magika pool bigger thus wards stronger, and that's better.

Also if ur healer runs Transmutation you get group Crit from that

Infused large impen small.
Actually makes a huge difference was duelling two sorcs yesterday one had impen and the other didn't and I could instantly tell as soon as the duel began.

I have a slightly different perspective on impen, personally. While it can be defined and described in a number of ways, the way I view it is as "a margin of error" for us as players. The more impen someone has, the more "leeway" they have to get hit, to make mistakes, to struggle for resources, build ult, etc.

In short, I would suggest that if you are confident in your ability to maintain shields whenever it is appropriate (not necessarily 100% of the time, just when needed), your need for impen diminishes. I use a zero-impen build for dueling and small-scale pvp, and the only time I feel that impen would benefit my build (rather than divines or infused) is when I'm off my game. If I'm paying attention to my opponent and responding appropriately, impen is all but unnecessary.

psychotic13 wrote: »

Thinking large infused small Impen is the way to go from all the replies.

I think like someone said earlier it all depends on your playstyle and how big your shield is. If you always keep your shield up impen is pretty pointless, but if you aren't use to playing with a shield up 100% of the time some impen may be useful

Minalan wrote: »

Remember that impen was nerfed this cycle by a third. So it takes 100 points of crit resist to get a percent crit damage resist. It used to be 66 points or so.

It's far less effective now to stack it. 1000 points of impen will prevent 10% crit damage. Someone with 10% elfborn (everyone?) will just cancel that out.

It's a nerf to make other armor traits more useful.

That's something I must've missed, thanks for the heads up.

Autolycus wrote: »

I have a slightly different perspective on impen, personally. While it can be defined and described in a number of ways, the way I view it is as "a margin of error" for us as players. The more impen someone has, the more "leeway" they have to get hit, to make mistakes, to struggle for resources, build ult, etc.

In short, I would suggest that if you are confident in your ability to maintain shields whenever it is appropriate (not necessarily 100% of the time, just when needed), your need for impen diminishes. I use a zero-impen build for dueling and small-scale pvp, and the only time I feel that impen would benefit my build (rather than divines or infused) is when I'm off my game. If I'm paying attention to my opponent and responding appropriately, impen is all but unnecessary.

Well my shields are up almost constantly when in battle, the only thing is that if the overlap damage can crit then Impen may be useful to have a little. But I suppose going infused/divines would give me more magicka equating in bigger shields and slightly higher damage..

Minalan wrote: »

In 'no-CP' campaigns I usually don't run impen because nobody has the high resources or CP damage to 'one shot' you. That's what makes Azuras fun, everyone is a fresh level 50 and performance depends on skill.

The only time that a lack of impen hurts is if there are too many people all over you. And in many of those cases you're dead anyways.

Random dual/triple proc set guy disagrees with you!!
I got hit for 8k Velidreth proc today on azuras. With 6 piece impen and about 15k armor.