Powerburrito20 wrote: »

Does anyone know how much penetration ( or mob armor reduction ) = how much wep. dam.? like strength of automation gear gives 400 wep dam, but sunderflame drops phy. res. by 3440. with changing nothing else, which gear would theoretically give more dps? I know there are a ton of other variables, but just as kind of a guide line..

Per "slice" of gear bonus, penetration will generally give better damage results than weapon/spell damage. But that obviously assumes many things.

Penetration for mobs removes 1% of mitigation per 500 penetration. So that 3440 will remove 6.88% mitigation from the mobs pool of (assuming) 18200 resistance. They go from around 36% down to 29%. A hit for 10000 will now be 7100 from 6400.

400 weapon damage well you would need the skills coefficients to know for sure from here but it will generally be less than that.

Some skills like Wrecking Blow have a high coefficient of 1.6354, so those 400 weapon damage will add 640 more damage to the skill, but other like Surprise Attack is only 1.08 so it would add substantially less.

Powerburrito20 wrote: »

@danno8, @Asardes so your saying GENERALLY that 3440 penetration SHOULD produce more dps than 400 weap. dam.

my idea is trying to get my solo dps up, and since I know i'm no where near penetration cap, i'm thinking of trying a set of sunderflame instead of the automation i'm currently running ( 690 stam sorc with NMG and automation right now )

Yes, up until you hit the penetration cap of 18200 (half that for landscape trash) penetration will outperform weapon/spell damage per slice of gear it is offered on. That includes the specific example of 3440 and 400 you give.

If you run solo, or in a poorly optimized group, sharp will beat precise offhand up to the penetration cap. Most of the builds presented on various sites are assuming an optimized group.

Powerburrito20 wrote: »

@danno8, @Asardes so your saying GENERALLY that 3440 penetration SHOULD produce more dps than 400 weap. dam.

my idea is trying to get my solo dps up, and since I know i'm no where near penetration cap, i'm thinking of trying a set of sunderflame instead of the automation i'm currently running ( 690 stam sorc with NMG and automation right now )

Need some context here, for what content are you trying to increase your solo dps? Are you trying to do Maelstrom or increase your dummy parses?

Because for Maelstrom you also have to consider sustain and heals, which is not a consideration in 3m dummy parses for example. So in Maelstrom context you need a wep dmg (or Acuity, works well with Crit Surge) or perhaps a sustain set like Vicious Seprent

Now for the dummy remember that as a stamsorc you lack Major Fracture, so stacking penetration (Lover, Sunder, TFS, Kragh+Kena) will probably lead to best single target dps.

Asardes wrote: »

Also most Maelstrom mobs have 9-12K resistances, not 18K. So using a penetration set there isn't very effective. VO+Hunding or Automaton would be ideal.

Maulkin wrote: »

Powerburrito20 wrote: »

@danno8, @Asardes so your saying GENERALLY that 3440 penetration SHOULD produce more dps than 400 weap. dam.

my idea is trying to get my solo dps up, and since I know i'm no where near penetration cap, i'm thinking of trying a set of sunderflame instead of the automation i'm currently running ( 690 stam sorc with NMG and automation right now )

Need some context here, for what content are you trying to increase your solo dps? Are you trying to do Maelstrom or increase your dummy parses?

Because for Maelstrom you also have to consider sustain and heals, which is not a consideration in 3m dummy parses for example. So in Maelstrom context you need a wep dmg (or Acuity, works well with Crit Surge) or perhaps a sustain set like Vicious Seprent

Now for the dummy remember that as a stamsorc you lack Major Fracture, so stacking penetration (Lover, Sunder, TFS, Kragh+Kena) will probably lead to best single target dps.

Like these two mention, it does depend a good deal on your current stats, class and what you are trying to do.

Before Morrowind came out, penetration stats on equipment were around double on weapons traits, and the slice for penetration as bonuses on equipment were higher as well. Penetration was a no-brainer for weapons and Spriggans and Spinners were really good sets for just about all builds.

Now that it got nerfed it's a more complicated question, but the good news is that the other options like Precise and Nirnhoned for example are close to or better than Sharpened so you can't make a terrible choice, maybe juts not a "perfectly optimal" one.

@Amdar_Godkiller So if your accurate, if i traded 400 weap. dam for 3440 penetration, I would only add roughly 2.32% damage done. Hardly seems worth it.

This is such a complicated subject if you take into account PvE, groups, solo, no-CP, etc.

Is there a rule of thumb ratio for each of those? Otherwise, I honestly just lose track.

For overland content typical resistance is 9k-12k Bosses are almost guaranteed to be at 18k. You can test this by using the 2h ulti and check you resistance gain before and after the ulti usage.

Normal 1 dungeons- same
Normal 2 dungeons- 9-18k resist
Vet 1- 18k
Vet 2- 18k higher health
Normal DLC-9k adds 18k boss
Vet DLC-18k high health
VDSA- 9-18k
Malstrom 9-12k bosses 18k.

As a stamina build since we run medium for pve, have no penetration in our armor passives. As stated above penetration is key to improving dps. The more pen u have the higher the percent of your tooltip will make it to the health bar of the enemy. Like using ur fist to punch through drywall. As you add penetration u remove a layer of drywall until you get to just paper. Same power but the wall is much thinner and is much easier to get through. With weapon damage your increasing the power of your punch but the drywall thickness stays the same and you loose strength trying to get through the wall. If solo build for pen. Group setting is one pen set 1 damage set. If 2 or more stam in the group. 1 uses sunderflame and 1 uses nmg to share the resistance reduction to the whole group. I think people place importance of weapon damage as the biggest priority and its actually a small portion of the equation. 9k is typically the sweet spot. Over that and you will overpenetrate the majority of resist. Once your there focus on a large stamina pool as your abilites, ultimate, etc scale off of this resource primarily. Weapon attacks such as light and heavy will scale better with weapon damage and is good to focus on this last once the big 2 are taken care of. To acheive this i would recommend 2 fang (a pen set 2 body 3 jewlery as we want this active on both bars. Then a damage/utility set such as hunding because crit is still very important or hulking drauger which is the stamina equivilant of necropotence. 30,000 max stam is the equivalent of 300 weapon damage. 40k is 400 with 3 weapon damage glyphs is roughly 522 weapon damage. Gold weapons is about 200 wd per pc. So dont worry about stacking a bunch of damage sets because the damage is there if you know what to build for. Also weapon damage has a steep cost as most rely on a proc for a short duration and is prone to diminishing returns. Stacking penetration a easier and gives the best results. Crit and crit damage is still very important and is the cream of the crop as far as overall damage potential. We will do damage with attacks that look like this 100, 100, 100, 150. We critted on that last one. Now lets look at this one 100, 150, 150, 150. We increased our crit chance from 25% to 75% and our damage went from 450 to 550 at an 81% increase in damage. Doesnt seem like much, but each tick of each and every damage ability has a chance to do 150% extra damage. This crit value of 40 to 60% is considered optimal as any more will decrease our weapon damage or sacrifice max resource gains.

Powerburrito20 wrote: »

@Amdar_Godkiller So if your accurate, if i traded 400 weap. dam for 3440 penetration, I would only add roughly 2.32% damage done. Hardly seems worth it.

3440 penetration is about 20% stronger than 400 weapon damage under normal conditions, so it's still the better option, but yeah the sets are pretty balanced. I think it's more like a 1.5% increase to damage done under average conditions for the skills that deal physical damage. It's going to be about a 9% increase to poison injection and anything else that isn't physical damage.

Running almost 10K penetration with the typical Hundings+Spriggans and >50 points in piercing. All I need is major fracture and I'm good to go.

GeorgeBlack wrote: »

Hahahahaha.

This games combat is all about passive stats. Definatly not with action, timing and reaction

This game is trying to get the best of both Words, ain't that nice?... What do you mean by "reaction and timing and etc" btw, is there a lack of it ? A matter of Tab mechanics vs manual aiming? ...? Of course some other games out there offer super fluent and realistic anims, but in regards to other current MMO having different scopes, not that much. But yeah you gotta be patient and eager to take some video game leisure time into something else than mere smash n'slash over pixels.

You might want to try the builds you plan to wear on PTS. If you make an endgame level toon, you start with an inventory stuffed with all sets etc. all goldened, and unlimeted supply of transmute crystals and test on dummies and/or overland bosses as much as you like.