How do I calculate value of pen vs damage.

lukoi · August 2019

As I compare damage sets, weapon passoves etc, I find myself largely at a loss on determijg which way to go with my character.

Which does more damage in the end between a 14% passive damage increase or 3450 penetration (obviously this is physical damage penetration in the case of spriggrans)?

Is one better to go with in the long term fight, vice maybe one is better in bursting down a target specifically?

Any help appreciated.

Masel · August 2019

https://youtu.be/4KV0Hr9Oz7o

I have Formulae and stuff in the video.

Pen depends on the enemy level and mitigates enemy resistance. Basically you have this relation:

Damage done to the target=Raw damage*(1-Resistance/(Level×1000))

So an enemy at level 50, with 20000 resistance will mitigate 20000/50000=40% of damage through the resistance and take 60% of the damage. Players in no cp are level 50, while in cp, they are level 66 (50 plus CP/10).

What penetration does is reduce the resistance value or bypass it like this:

Resistance left=Base Resistance-Resistance Debuffs)*(1-% Penetration)-Own Penetration

Debuffs are things like major fracture, % is stuff like the destro staff passive or mace/maul passive and own penetration is stuff like spriggan, lover mundus etc.

So if you have a set that Grant's you 1000 penetration against the above mentioned enemy, you reduce their resistance to 19000, making the target only mitigate 19000/50000=38% of damage. So the target will take 62% damage from you, generating a 2% damage increase to before. As a rule of thumb, you can say that every 660 pen in cp content is equal to 1% more damage, while in no cp, 500 roughly equals 1% more damage.

ku5h · August 2019

They say that "pen is mightier then a sword", so that's something i guess.

malistorr · August 2019

This is a really loaded question and it's something that's been asked many times in this forum, even by me. From my understanding, you want minimum 9k pen period, and possibly more depending on content you're going to run and what extra pen buffs you expect to get from groups in trials and 4-man dungeons if you run those. Basically you want enough pen to get enemy resists effectively at 0, then put all resources into damage through spell damage, max magic, spell crit. etc. Whatever you think is best. (My example is mag sorc., so stamina and weapon damage of course for stam toon.) This was a pretty good talk about it that I started:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/487683/spell-penetration#latest

It doesn't really matter how you get to your ideal numbers. For example you can get pen from weapon trait, mundus, gear set bonus, or even CP.

You can get spell damage from mundus, traits on jewelry or weapons, gear set bonuses etc.
You can get max mag or stam from tons of sources too.
Just mix and match to hit your ideal numbers.
Use the build editor for help, although I doubt it's perfect. Use testing on dummies. Use testing on real enemies (mobs and bosses) and use an Add-on that can show you useful stats from the fights. Elite players spend months using all of the above tools to fine tune their builds. A lot of us don't care to be "best" because we know there is no such thing. I say tweak your build as you can to improve like transmuting the traits on your gear and fine-tuning your CP. But don't let it take away from you just playing the game and having fun. There are many "good-enough" ways to design a toon. As long as you can have fun, enjoy the game, and be successful, then mission accomplished for most people.

TBois · August 2019

You can pull some equations for uesp build editor. The editor is a great tool to help assess builds as well.

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/UESPWiki:EsoBuildEditor

lukoi · August 2019

I appreciate it, but frankly I can't see how the one directly impacts damage done vice the other using that editor. It's a great tool, but not really what I need in this instance.

cjhhickman39 · August 2019

.

TBois · August 2019

lukoi wrote: »

I appreciate it, but frankly I can't see how the one directly impacts damage done vice the other using that editor. It's a great tool, but not really what I need in this instance.

Use the "effective weapon damage" stat

AcadianPaladin · August 2019

Here's what I know about spell/weapon penetration. Note this is PvE only; PvP is very different since enemy players' resists run the gamut but are generally way higher than any boss would have. Overland mobs have about 9.1k resists so more than that is wasted on them. On the other hand, big bosses have 18.2k resists.

There are spells that reduce a foe's resists and since most organized groups run those spells, a dps in an organized group generally goes for well under 18.2k pen. So it is a combo of who (if anyone) you are fighting with at your side, and who your foes are, coupled with the fact that big bosses always represent much more of a threat so they are arguably what you might focus on.

A general tip is that adding 500 pen adds about 1% to your damage up until you reach your foe's cap. In my case, each and every version of my elf is a soloist who likes to consider herself a boss killer. So whether she's playing as a mage or archer variant, she likes quite a bit of spell/weapon pen respectively, depending on what type of resist debuffs she can apply to her foes. All mage variants run Elemental Drain, for example, to debuff over 5k mag resist from her foes.

Here are some sources of penetration and rough numbers below. I'm not recommending all these things by any means but it is a good list to pick and choose from.

Spell Pen: 5x Light Armor passive bonus gives 4900 pen. A gold staff with sharpened trait gives 2750 pen. 5 pieces of Spinners armor set gives 3450 pen. 55 CP in Spell Erosion gives 4200 pen.

Weapon Pen: 5 pieces of Spriggans armor set gives 3370 pen. 55CP in Piercing gives 4200 pen. I didn't check the numbers but a gold bow with sharpened trait should give about 2750 pen I figure.

This post is not meant to be authoritative or to have all the answers - just some observations from the forums and the experiences of a solo elf boss hunter.

lukoi · August 2019

Thanks all, and @Masel really appreciate the thorough breakdown and AP for the added insight.

lukoi · August 2019

So if Im reading this right, the trade off example I used would equate to something like this:

Deadly guile offers a 14% damage increase but only to specific types of damage, whereas something like Spriggans would offer up around 7% in no-CP (more like 5-6 in full CP, but offset by putting more CP points into pen), but across all physical damage types?

So the trade off can be assessed based on the types of damage your character does (based on weapons/class lines), and you can decide whether you get more bang for your buck with one or the other?

Spizzie · August 2019

I calculate it individually each time I make a decision on Max Stat/Spell or Weapon Damage/Penetration. One thing that seems pretty constant is that unless you're over-penetrating, penetration scales better than Max stat or Spell/Weapon damage. The downside is that it doesn't affect healing and doesn't help you against people who run alternative damage mitigation (major/minor protection, perma block, etc.). But if you have the opportunity to go with Sharpened or Nirnhoned, Sharpened will almost always result in more damage.

lukoi · August 2019

Then why do folks consistently recommend nirn before sharpened in main hand in DW builds? Wouldnt that be backwards?

Masel · August 2019

lukoi wrote: »

Then why do folks consistently recommend nirn before sharpened in main hand in DW builds? Wouldnt that be backwards?

Nirn yields a full trait value of 200 weapon damage pre-amplified, while sharpened only yields half a trait.

The reason is that main hand weapon in dual wield contributes with 1335 to your weapon damage, and 15% of that is 200, while your offhand only grant 6% of 1335 from the dual willed passive. So putting nirn on the offhand amplifies only the small value, but on the main hand it applies to the full 1335.

Sharpened only grants 1378, which is equal on both hands. So putting sharpened on offhand and nirn on mainhand is simply the strongest damage option.

lukoi · August 2019

Awesome @Masel, thanks for the clarification.

The Elder Scrolls Online

How do I calculate value of pen vs damage.

Best Answer