Help with PvE Penetration and Hammers/Mauls?

JeibuKul · February 2019

Trying to figure out some math with armor penetration and how much hammers/mauls can actually contribute? Would love some help from more experienced players and theory crafters. Not even really sure if all my math is right from what information I have been able to gather. I have been told that the maces passive gets figured in after all the debuffs, of course if this is wrong, then it would provide 3640 penetration a lot of the time, which I think would be good. Which honestly if this passive could be changed to a good solid number that would probably be best.

Base Armor : 18,200 (so with no debuffs on the enemy, single mace would give 1,820 pen, dual/2h would give 3640)

Subtracting the group debuffs from the enemy armor.
Major Fracture: -5280
Minor Fracture: -1320
Infused Torug Crusher: -2740
Alkosh: -3010

Would leave the enemy with 5,850 Armor (Single mace = 585 penetration, dual/2h = 1170)

So before base, buffs, and cp, the enemy would be at 5,265 (single) or 4,680 (DW/2H) armor.

Base Penetration +100 which would lower the amount of penetration a stamina character needs to 5165 / 4580.

So..
if you have Divine Lover's (+4196), you would need 10 / 4 points in piercing CP to be slightly over cap.
if Sharpened +1376/+2752, you would need between 20 - 44 points in piercing CP to hit the cap, depending on which combination of single mace, dual/2h, single sharpened or two.
Twice-Fanged would need 9 / 3 points in piercing.

Of course combinations of the buffs are also possible. But I am wondering at what point would maces be better than swords? It would seem in a solo setting or pvp, they would probably be ahead. But I don't think 1170 penetration would be as good as 5% extra damage? Or would the ability to save some Champion Points and allocate them differently make a difference? or the ability to pick different traits on your armor/weapons, or a different mundus?

Anyone have any insight/maths/information that would help, other than "sword good"?

Side Note: Against an armored pc in PvP a 2h mace could provide up to 6,620 penetration.

Ramber · February 2019

Maces debuffs are calculated last as i learned years ago (unless that has changed) which is alway what made them useless. its not 10 percent of 18.2k its 10 percent off after all other debuffs/CPs/etc... so its not 1800 its more like 200-500 ballpark.

Ramber · February 2019

Ramber wrote: »

Maces debuffs are calculated last as i learned years ago (unless that has changed) which is alway what made them useless. its not 10 percent of 18.2k its 10 percent off after all other debuffs/CPs/etc... so its not 1800 its more like 200-500 ballpark.

With a mace on a solo parse you will see a dps increase by less then 1k but in a group it will be like its not even there with pierce armor and crusher enchant debuffing but almost 8.5k off the top.

Bladerunner1 · February 2019

JeibuKul wrote: »

But I am wondering at what point would maces be better than swords?

Live servers have 2H swords at 5%, 1H swords at 2.5% damage buff. But since the damage multiplier is additive to CP multipliers + berserk + slayer, it's closer to a 3.5% buff for 2H, 1.75% for 1H.

PTS servers have 2H swords set at 6%, or
more like 4.2% after adding with other standard multipliers.

So to find the point of Mace/sword damage parity in future content, in a situation that accounts for the full 18.2K penetration, solve for X:

X/50000 = .042

A maul must provide approximately 2100 penetration to be equal in strength to a great sword. It would be like having all but the Alkosh debuff -AND- Crusher active on a target. Most dungeon runs I've joined tend to include the crusher glyph and major fracture, so Mace is about to go off my list entirely.

There's more to balancing than making damage of a sword equal to damage of a Mace, you have to compare penetration trade-offs in other parts of a build. You could drop the warrior stone and use lover. You could drop Nirn and use Sharpened. You could drop Velidreth and run Kragh. You could drop 2 percent of thaumaturge / master at arms and get 2000 more piercing. In every single one of those trades, the amount of damage gained by picking penetration over the alternative is much much higher, so the choice of a Mace should be a lot stronger than a sword. But they're making it a really crappy option for pve in the future.