viper mace, dagger or sword? a poll on my math problem.

Aggrolas · December 2016

ok so here's the thing I'm having trouble deciding whether to make the viper sting mace, sword or dagger legendary. I'm not rich and it took along time to farm mats, however I'm currently running hounding and viper with monster set. I have a hounding sword nirnhoned and one sharpen. All the viper weapons are sharpen and i'm having some trouble with the math i guess you could say i'll give you some stats on my setups first and if there already is a post like this please redirect me because couldn't find one.

First setup:
-Nirnhoned sword hounding (for extra damage to shields)
-viper mace sharpen ( for penetration passive in dual wield tree)
stats:
crit 58.7%
wep dmg unbuffed 2767
surprise attack 7k (a skill and the dmg on tooltip)

2nd setup
-Nirnhoned sword hounding (for extra damage to shields)
-viper dagger sharpen (for more crit)
stats:
crit 63.7%
wep dmg unbuffed 2767
surprise attack 7k

3rd setup:
-Nirnhoned sword hounding (for extra damage to shields)
-viper sword sharpen (2.5% extra dmg passive)
stats:
crit 58.7%
wep dmg unbuffed 2767
surprise attack 7206

4th setup:
-hounding sword sharpen
-viper dagger sharpen
stats:
crit 63.7%
wep dmg unbuffed 2640
surprise attack 6835

5th setup:
-hounding sword sharpen
-viper mace sharpen
stats:
same as dagger less crit 58.7%

6th setup:
-hounding sword sharpen
-viper sword sharpen
stats:
crit 58.7%
wep smg unbuffed 2640
surprise attack 7036

I realise this is a lot but I only need to know which ones best I'm currently undecided between 1 and 6. but i don't know if 2 and 3 are a valid option given that so many run heavy armor with impen nowadays it seems futile to get the extra 5% crit on 2nd setup and you do get less physical pen with 2 swords on 3rd but more dmg. I kind of want the nirnhoned but science tells us to leave that *** at the door, and I don't really understand how physical pen works.
skills I use differ depending on where I am but most of the time mark is on the bar, have almost 3k physical pen with champion points.
*Running on playstation so can't do a serious dps test

Jciampi · December 2016

Physical penetration works best on a heavy armored person. Sharpened vs light armor is kind of useless. As there wasn't really any armor to ignore. Precise or nirn would be better. A heavy armor guy or boss who has tons of armor. That's where penetration (sharpened) shows its beauty. So. I hate to say it but it's up to what you want to do with your guy. I rock sharpened everything cause I Tank. I'm always hitting a boss or heavily armored foe. So it works for me. I do enough damage as is against mages so I don't need precise or nirnhoned to help. Rather focus on bosses.

Aggrolas · December 2016

I'm using this for pvp and since it's so many different types of foes both heavy, light and medium. I kind of need a nice setup that works all around. effective against 20k physical resistance and trishield users.

Czirne · December 2016

Jciampi wrote: »

Physical penetration works best on a heavy armored person. Sharpened vs light armor is kind of useless. As there wasn't really any armor to ignore. Precise or nirn would be better. A heavy armor guy or boss who has tons of armor. That's where penetration (sharpened) shows its beauty. So. I hate to say it but it's up to what you want to do with your guy. I rock sharpened everything cause I Tank. I'm always hitting a boss or heavily armored foe. So it works for me. I do enough damage as is against mages so I don't need precise or nirnhoned to help. Rather focus on bosses.

This is false. Sharpened gives you flat value of penetration, therefore it is as efective on light armor target as on heavy armor target. it always reduce enemy armor by 5160.
5160 armor is about 8% damage reduction. For example, lets say you hit someone with 5160 armor for 10 000 damage, after reduction(8%) its 9200 damage. with sharpened trait it will be full 10k(800 damage increase).

Now lets say you hit someone with 20 640 armor for 10k damage - after reduction(4x8%=32%) its 6800 damage. with sharpened trait you ignore 5160 armor(32%-8%=24%), you hit for enemy for 7600 damage, again 800 damage increase.

You see, if you have 10k tooltip, sharpened trait ALWAYS incease your damage by 800, no matter if you hit light or medium or heavy armor target(unless your target have less than 5160 armor, of course).

Aggrolas · December 2016

Czirne wrote: »

This is false. Sharpened gives you flat value of penetration, therefore it is as efective on light armor target as on heavy armor target. it always reduce enemy armor by 5160.
5160 armor is about 8% damage reduction. For example, lets say you hit someone with 5160 armor for 10 000 damage, after reduction(8%) its 9200 damage. with sharpened trait it will be full 10k(800 damage increase).

Now lets say you hit someone with 20 640 armor for 10k damage - after reduction(4x8%=32%) its 6800 damage. with sharpened trait you ignore 5160 armor(32%-8%=24%), you hit for enemy for 7600 damage, again 800 damage increase.

You see, if you have 10k tooltip, sharpened trait ALWAYS incease your damage by 800, no matter if you hit light or medium or heavy armor target(unless your target have less than 5160 armor, of course).

by 20640 armor do you mean physical resistance or actual armor?

Kutsuu · December 2016

Personally on a NB who has some investment in crit damage (shadow mundus, ~70 points in crit damage CP) I almost always go daggers. I just value a higher frequency of crits over the 5% dmg bonus or armor penetration.

Czirne · December 2016

Aggrolas wrote: »

Czirne wrote: »

This is false. Sharpened gives you flat value of penetration, therefore it is as efective on light armor target as on heavy armor target. it always reduce enemy armor by 5160.
5160 armor is about 8% damage reduction. For example, lets say you hit someone with 5160 armor for 10 000 damage, after reduction(8%) its 9200 damage. with sharpened trait it will be full 10k(800 damage increase).

Now lets say you hit someone with 20 640 armor for 10k damage - after reduction(4x8%=32%) its 6800 damage. with sharpened trait you ignore 5160 armor(32%-8%=24%), you hit for enemy for 7600 damage, again 800 damage increase.

You see, if you have 10k tooltip, sharpened trait ALWAYS incease your damage by 800, no matter if you hit light or medium or heavy armor target(unless your target have less than 5160 armor, of course).

by 20640 armor do you mean physical resistance or actual armor?

in this context armor=physical resistance - number you see in character sheet. its just an example anyway. Point is sharpened increase damage to light armor by same flat amount as damage to heavy armor.
But percentual damage increase is bigger to heavy armor, regardless it is a same flat value of damage - 9200 to 10k is 8,7% damage increase, 6800 to 7600 is 11,76% damage increase.
From this perspective is sharpened stronger when fighting person in heavy armor than when fighting person in light, altough its 800 more damage in both cases.

Panth141 · December 2016

Sharpened is best. Even against light armour wearers, unless you're gaining a decent amount of penetration from elsewhere (Spriggan, Piercing CP) then the 5160 from sharpened DW will always be significantly more damage than any other trait; the bump up from other -> sharpened is IMO more significant than your weapon choice. I haven't done the full maths on this as I'm still in lazy Christmas mode - but I'm fairly confident in that assumption.

SquareSausage · December 2016

Czirne wrote: »

This is false. Sharpened gives you flat value of penetration, therefore it is as efective on light armor target as on heavy armor target. it always reduce enemy armor by 5160.
5160 armor is about 8% damage reduction. For example, lets say you hit someone with 5160 armor for 10 000 damage, after reduction(8%) its 9200 damage. with sharpened trait it will be full 10k(800 damage increase).

Now lets say you hit someone with 20 640 armor for 10k damage - after reduction(4x8%=32%) its 6800 damage. with sharpened trait you ignore 5160 armor(32%-8%=24%), you hit for enemy for 7600 damage, again 800 damage increase.

You see, if you have 10k tooltip, sharpened trait ALWAYS incease your damage by 800, no matter if you hit light or medium or heavy armor target(unless your target have less than 5160 armor, of course).

I think he was meaning over penetrate a light armour dude, for example by using sharpened maces with say kra'gh and that has major fracture on them, so his pne would be greater than the resists of the victims arour values.

Czirne · December 2016

SquareSausage wrote: »

Czirne wrote: »

This is false. Sharpened gives you flat value of penetration, therefore it is as efective on light armor target as on heavy armor target. it always reduce enemy armor by 5160.
5160 armor is about 8% damage reduction. For example, lets say you hit someone with 5160 armor for 10 000 damage, after reduction(8%) its 9200 damage. with sharpened trait it will be full 10k(800 damage increase).

Now lets say you hit someone with 20 640 armor for 10k damage - after reduction(4x8%=32%) its 6800 damage. with sharpened trait you ignore 5160 armor(32%-8%=24%), you hit for enemy for 7600 damage, again 800 damage increase.

You see, if you have 10k tooltip, sharpened trait ALWAYS incease your damage by 800, no matter if you hit light or medium or heavy armor target(unless your target have less than 5160 armor, of course).

I think he was meaning over penetrate a light armour dude, for example by using sharpened maces with say kra'gh and that has major fracture on them, so his pne would be greater than the resists of the victims arour values.

OP asked specificly about sharpened trait. In cyrodil almost everyone has major resolve, major fracture just negates that buff. noone runs 7 light in cyrodil, lowest armor value is around 9k. To overpenetrate it he would have to use spriggans + sharpened + cp.
Basicly everything under 9k penetration w/o major fracture is not overkill.

Aggrolas · December 2016

man i thought this would be a good idea but now it seems counter productive since it only raised more questions than intended.
lets make it simpler and put it like this, you may only say which setup you'd prefer on your own toon wearing the same sets and velidreth as a monster set

Dyride · January 2017

I would go option 5 with Sharpened Sword and Mace.

Fighting any enemy with >17k resists which is what you get typically with Heavy armor and SnB, the Mace comes out to better damage than a sword.

kessik221 · January 2017

Havnt you heard? Proc sets are going to be unable to crit. Time to farm a new set. Personally i think sword dancers gonna be new meta.