Long story short: Whichever is best doesn't have a definite answer in all cases and you can use any with pretty much no difference.
Long story as is: test performed on previous PTS as stamblade on 6m dummy, Selene / Relequen / Advancing Yokeda - all weapon combos.
Things to keep in mind: daggers buff pretty much everything you has, axes are hard to proc in AoE situations on all targets.
4. Armor Penetration and Mitigation
This is probably the most complex part of damage calculation, simply because the formula is a bit unintuitive. In ESO, every enemy (may it be a NPC or a player) has a resistance value. You can circumvent that resistance by using items and passives that let you "pierce" through the armor and deal higher damage to the target. So in general, you want to circumvent all armor the enemy has to deal "true" damage. This can either be achieved through own penetration, meaning all sets, buffs etc that increase your own armor penetration rating, or through debuffing the enemy, and thus reducing resistances. There are % amps and flat stats for penetration, and I will go through it in detail
The formula looks like this:
Armor Mitigation =1-((((Target Resistance - Target Debuffs)*(1 - % Penetration ) - Penetration)/(Target.EffectiveLevel * 1000))))
So we start with 1. We start with one because the "true" damage let's us do the full damage. If we manage to achieve the full penetration, we simply do not deduct anything from 1, and therefore do the full unmitigated damage.
Then we have the target's resistance, which is 18200 in PvE for all veteran content mobs and target dummies. In PvP, it depends on how much spell or physical resitance your target has. Then we deduct all the debuffs the target has on it. There are multiple debuffs that apply to this category, such as major and minor fracture or breach (5280 and 1320, respectively), the 5- piece of roar of alkosh (3010) and the crusher weapon enchantment (which is amplifiable with torug's pact and infused and yields 1622, 2108 and 2741, respectively).
Afterwards we deduct % penetration amps, such as the Maul + Mace bonuses that ignore up to 20% of the target's resistance. The key takeaway here is that these %- amps are applied after debuffs, but not after your own penetration. This means that major and minor fracture reduce the effectiveness of mauls and maces, but sets like spriggan, twice-fanged serpent, penetration cps etc do NOT. So be aware which debuffs you have available, because if there are only few debuffs, you might even be better off with a mace over a dagger. The Break-even point between amces and daggers lies somewhere around 5000 & 6000 of penetration debuffs (which is often achieved in trials, but less in four man and solo content). I can provide statistics on this upon request.
After that, your own penetration value is deducted, so here's where most of the sets and the lover mundus belong. You might notice how penetration is mostly shown as a flat value, such as 5280 and 1320 for the major and minor debuffs. This needs to be converted into a % value so we can multiply it with the rest. That's what the denominator of the above formula is for:
The effectiveness of penetration depends on the level of the target. In PvE, enemies are considered as level 50 because they don't have CPs, so the denominator in these cases is 50000, while in PvP it is mostly 66000.
NOTE: There are some types of damage that ignore armor resistance either way, notably bleeds and oblivion damage. Both of these cannot be mitigated, so skills that indicate that they let enemies "bleed" or deal oblivion damage will always inflict their true damage value. This is mostly irrelevant for PvE, but in PvP, this is often an effective strategy against targets with high resistances.
Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »Long story short: Whichever is best doesn't have a definite answer in all cases and you can use any with pretty much no difference.
Long story as is: test performed on previous PTS as stamblade on 6m dummy, Selene / Relequen / Advancing Yokeda - all weapon combos.
Things to keep in mind: daggers buff pretty much everything you has, axes are hard to proc in AoE situations on all targets.
Cps in piercing and the lover do not impact maces. They are a personal buff, not a debuff on the mob.from here- https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/422268/a-comprehensive-guide-on-damage-dealing-in-elder-scrolls-online/p14. Armor Penetration and Mitigation
This is probably the most complex part of damage calculation, simply because the formula is a bit unintuitive. In ESO, every enemy (may it be a NPC or a player) has a resistance value. You can circumvent that resistance by using items and passives that let you "pierce" through the armor and deal higher damage to the target. So in general, you want to circumvent all armor the enemy has to deal "true" damage. This can either be achieved through own penetration, meaning all sets, buffs etc that increase your own armor penetration rating, or through debuffing the enemy, and thus reducing resistances. There are % amps and flat stats for penetration, and I will go through it in detail
The formula looks like this:
Armor Mitigation =1-((((Target Resistance - Target Debuffs)*(1 - % Penetration ) - Penetration)/(Target.EffectiveLevel * 1000))))
So we start with 1. We start with one because the "true" damage let's us do the full damage. If we manage to achieve the full penetration, we simply do not deduct anything from 1, and therefore do the full unmitigated damage.
Then we have the target's resistance, which is 18200 in PvE for all veteran content mobs and target dummies. In PvP, it depends on how much spell or physical resitance your target has. Then we deduct all the debuffs the target has on it. There are multiple debuffs that apply to this category, such as major and minor fracture or breach (5280 and 1320, respectively), the 5- piece of roar of alkosh (3010) and the crusher weapon enchantment (which is amplifiable with torug's pact and infused and yields 1622, 2108 and 2741, respectively).
Afterwards we deduct % penetration amps, such as the Maul + Mace bonuses that ignore up to 20% of the target's resistance. The key takeaway here is that these %- amps are applied after debuffs, but not after your own penetration. This means that major and minor fracture reduce the effectiveness of mauls and maces, but sets like spriggan, twice-fanged serpent, penetration cps etc do NOT. So be aware which debuffs you have available, because if there are only few debuffs, you might even be better off with a mace over a dagger. The Break-even point between amces and daggers lies somewhere around 5000 & 6000 of penetration debuffs (which is often achieved in trials, but less in four man and solo content). I can provide statistics on this upon request.
After that, your own penetration value is deducted, so here's where most of the sets and the lover mundus belong. You might notice how penetration is mostly shown as a flat value, such as 5280 and 1320 for the major and minor debuffs. This needs to be converted into a % value so we can multiply it with the rest. That's what the denominator of the above formula is for:
The effectiveness of penetration depends on the level of the target. In PvE, enemies are considered as level 50 because they don't have CPs, so the denominator in these cases is 50000, while in PvP it is mostly 66000.
NOTE: There are some types of damage that ignore armor resistance either way, notably bleeds and oblivion damage. Both of these cannot be mitigated, so skills that indicate that they let enemies "bleed" or deal oblivion damage will always inflict their true damage value. This is mostly irrelevant for PvE, but in PvP, this is often an effective strategy against targets with high resistances.
Combat metrics is bugged when it comes to mace pen. It adds 10 or 20% on YOUR physical mitigation to the penetration part of it. See here- https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/5393129/#Comment_5393129, so dont use CM as a way to tell the pen you get, use math.
So on live, with just major fracture the target, a mace would give you 1282 pen (((18200-(100+5280))*10%)/500. Which is a ~2.5% increase to damage.
Though, I am interested in your pts parses with maces against live ones, the only thing zos has stated about pen is that the base 100 everyone has, is getting removed. What makes you think anything else has changed?
.Maces were a PITA to test, because when I asked someone with the same version of CM to test those on the live server, the reported penetration was the expected one (that is, with mob-specific armor after debuff, then 10/20 percent of the remaining) but the WH PTS damage was significantly higher than swords, which should wield a very similar increase.
. I didn't bother too much with it once I realized it, since Maces have pretty much no use in PvE since targets need to be massively debuffed already and a target dummy self-buffed is favorable for soloplay already, and I didn't feel like redoing yet more parses after doing at least 80 of those (lazyyyyyy).