Major fracture IS physical pen. The only difference is that it is considered a debuff, and, thus, cannot stack (you can't apply the same major/minor buff to a target). So for example, apply noxious breath on a target that has been hit with ransack or surprise attack/attacked by someone with night mother's gaze will result in 5.2k pen, and not 5.2k*X (where X is the sources of major fracture applied).
On the other hand, flat pen stacks because it is not a named debuff.

To conclude, having access to major fracture is the easiest and strongest way to get penetration, but you still want to invest cps into pen and maybe slot something like spriggan's.

Edit: in PvP, penetrating 660 armor grants you 1% extra damage against your target. Remeber to apply your minor fracture before attacking with your hard hitting abilities! It will give you a massive damage boost.

I believe those function the same. Increasing your penetration by X should have the same effect on damage done as lowering enemy resistance by X.

The only formula we have is that devs estimated 1437 of penetration (stat that purely affects only damage and has cap at enemy resistance) has set value of around 129 weapon damage (stat that has no cap, can be increased by other modifiers and affects healing too) or 1096 stamina (stat that works like weapon damage, but on top affects indirectly your sustain by increasing your resource pool).

There is no other formula because penetration is not your stat (it is not affection your damage). It is affecting enemy damage taken. 660 penetration will strip 1% of player resistance which is reducing their damage taken by 1%. 500 is doing the same but for pve mobs.

But the above stated set value formula can help you in one way, at least on stamina build generally for pure damage focus the 1437 pen will always result in more damage than 129 weapon damage which always results in more damage than 1096 stamina.

//edit:
To directly respond to title. There is no difference between major fracture (debuff decreasing enemy resistance) and penetration (your stat decreasing enemy resistance)

thedude33 wrote: »

Sharee wrote: »

I believe those function the same. Increasing your penetration by X should have the same effect on damage done as lowering enemy resistance by X.

So Major Fracture debuffs for 5280 Physical resistance. Would you need 5280 penetration to do the same damage if you didn't have Major Fracture on the enemy in PvP?

Yes. All Major Fracture does is that it makes everyone hitting the target like they got 5280 penetration. Or in other words Fracture remove that armor from them and your penetration is just making your attacks ignore that much armor.

You guys are good. Thank you!

Davadin wrote: »

and something got buffed last patch.

my build had 14% penetration with spriggan and 2H maul (i solo a lot in cyrodiil).

after patch im about 16%.

Where are you getting these numbers from ? Maul is 20% Pen and there are no other %based Pen sources.

Davadin wrote: »

my archaic baseball bat with a spike ball on top just got real....... it's so much that I unslot nox breath and put in expert hunter for extra crit and 3% damage.

I'm pretty sure that Major Fracture is worth more damage to your build than 10% critChance and 3% WpnDmg

So what if your damage is not that high in the first place. Would penetration still result in more damage than just stacking damage? How much damage you need before penetration is a more desirable stat than max stamina or pure damage?

Also remember that, often, Penetration will not help your healing while Damage/MaxResource will.

Aznox wrote: »

Davadin wrote: »

my archaic baseball bat with a spike ball on top just got real....... it's so much that I unslot nox breath and put in expert hunter for extra crit and 3% damage.

I'm pretty sure that Major Fracture is worth more damage to your build than 10% critChance and 3% WpnDmg

not when im maxing up the 18k cap. post-patch im 16% already.

also, there's 0 cost for slotting Evil Hunter. there's cost for Nox breath and I may miss. (im a filthy cazual)

Nerftheforums wrote: »

Demra wrote: »

So what if your damage is not that high in the first place. Would penetration still result in more damage than just stacking damage? How much damage you need before penetration is a more desirable stat than max stamina or pure damage?

Demra wrote: »

So what if your damage is not that high in the first place. Would penetration still result in more damage than just stacking damage? How much damage you need before penetration is a more desirable stat than max stamina or pure damage?

Test boi. It is waaaaaay to subjective to give an answer without numbers on hand. There are A LOT of variable. As a rule of thumb tho, penetration tends to out class raw damage/resource. But maybe 500 extra wd could outperform 3.5k pen if your initial damage is super low.
Remeber that penetration is a damage multiplier: the less base damage you have, the less effective it become and viceversa

How can i test this? I don't have a dummy and still low cp. I think i have around 2.1k wpn dmg and trying to decide between automaton and spriggan. I recently switched servers and will have to farm one of those sets so trying to decide which ahead of time. Used to use automaton and it worked well enough but spriggan is much easier to find. Btw I am mostly pvping.
Btw thanks for input.