Damage vs Penetration

Gan Xing · October 2017

At what point would building for penetration be negligible and not help with damage? Specifically for weapon penetration and resistance.

In otherwords, if I wanted to focus more on penetration than damage, at what point would I be shooting myself in the foot for every increase in penetration I add?

Vapirko · October 2017

Any increase over the resistance of your enemy? But since enemies and players vary in amount of resistance its better to aim for a certain amount say maybe no more than 10k pve and pvp its really only necessary to hit like 5k. After this point I believe its just better to aim for wpn damage. Of course you can spec specifically for a certain fight.

raj72616a · October 2017

in pvp, never
in pve, over 18500 total penetration

Pierce Armor from the tank will get you 5280 penetration
some group have Minor Fracture/Breach and give you 1320 more
Sunderflame Set +3440
Night Mother's Gaze Set +2580
Crusher enchant on Infused Torug's Pact Set +2740
Roar of Alkosh Set +3010

if you're in a group with all these, you don't need sharpened.

Ragnarock41 · October 2017

Run pure damage in PvP.
It also helps your heals and other stuff that scale from your damage.

Baconlad · October 2017

I absolutely dissagree in pvp. Every toon in this game runs atleast 10k unbuffed resists. Maybe slightly less for magsorcs...id rather deal the extra damage to everyone else than deal extra damage to just one or two class specs.

Also depending on whether or not you are running procsets (skoria, overwhelming surge for example) those procsets will deal more damage based on your spell penetration, not spell power (not effected by sorc shields). All around you get much better results from penetration than spell damage.

Having said that, i would aim for no more than 12k spell pen and no lower. Just my two cents. Depends on your build, squeezing as much damage out of skills or procsets, abd how many enemies can counter that spell pen

Minno · October 2017

PvP only (you do 15000 tooltip direct DMG and 15280 debuff)
- at 15000 armor, you will have ignored their armor. If they have 20% in ironclad and 10% in Hardy, they will have 64% total mitigation. (5544 DMG)
- at 18000 armor debuff, same buffs, 65% total mitigation (5316 DMG)
- at 21000 armor, same CP buffs, they will have 67% total mitigation. (5065 DMG)
- at 26000 armor, same buffs, they will have 69.8% total mitigation. (4646 DMG)

Now let's look at a 10k debuff:
- 15000 armor, 66% mitigation (5125 DMG)
- 18k, 68% mitigation (4874 DMG)
- 21k, 69% mitigation (4623 DMG)
- 26k, 72% mitigation (4204 dmg )

And now a 8k debuff:
- 15k, 67% mitigation (4958)
- 18k, 69% mitigation (4706)
- 21k, 71% mitigation (4455)
- 26k, 73% mitigation (4036)

Based on that, it looks like a 2% reduction to their total mitigation. But looking at the DMG hurting your 15000 resist target, adding 5280 pen will add about 419 DMG to your burst number. Major breach/fracture will give you that extra DMG.

While a low amount, if they didn't use a shield or high impen, you could be looking at a higher initial DMG and in turn a higher burst. If you try to stack higher than 10k, without a debuff mechanic, you'll have to choose between reducing elfborn or reducing your dmg mitigation stars. At high CP levels you might be able to give up some points, but overwise you still need 155 points total for minimum offense (and 75 points left over)

Conclusion:
10k pen in PvP seems to be ideal. After that, you'll give up too much DMG/crit to capitalize on the DMG bonus and before 10k you'll do less DMG on the target. This means less crit and less burst DMG. Using a debuff spell will give you extra burst without giving up on stats so that's why I say aim for 10k pen in PvP.

I'm sure someone can write a better summary (especially with showing exactly how increasing the DMG is at 7-8k pen compared to using 10k pen and a 5280 debuff), but that's how I feel about penetration versus DMG in PvP. As a Templar my DMG tooltips are not high compared to nightblades, so taking spell erosion away and adding another 2-3% in tham/master didn't make much sense since adding 5280 pen was giving me more DMG.

Also shields/block weren't calculated. But then again, shields can be cc'd to prevent recasting and with the changes to some abilities going through block I imagine block not being much of an issue.

TheDoomsdayMonster · October 2017

@Minno

Awesome post and I agree with you about targeting about 10k Penetration for PvP (I have 11k myself)...

SodanTok · October 2017

PVP wise
Lets not forget not all ways to gain the penetration are ideal. Hitting 10k penetration on stam build (so without light armor passive) and without access to Major Fracture is not good way to build damage where 10k on light armor build with Major Breach is literally free.

But yes, the 10k is good stat to aim for. Overall I would say good rule of thumb is to not get more than half the enemy resistance so 8k-13k. At that point, damage gain from penetration comes awfully close to damage gain from weapon/spell damage (that also boosts healing)

vMaick · October 2017

raj72616a wrote: »

in pvp, never
in pve, over 18500 total penetration

Pierce Armor from the tank will get you 5280 penetration
some group have Minor Fracture/Breach and give you 1320 more
Sunderflame Set +3440
Night Mother's Gaze Set +2580
Crusher enchant on Infused Torug's Pact Set +2740
Roar of Alkosh Set +3010

if you're in a group with all these, you don't need sharpened.

18200 actually, and don't forget 100 base penetration

Minno · October 2017

SodanTok wrote: »

PVP wise
Lets not forget not all ways to gain the penetration are ideal. Hitting 10k penetration on stam build (so without light armor passive) and without access to Major Fracture is not good way to build damage where 10k on light armor build with Major Breach is literally free.

But yes, the 10k is good stat to aim for. Overall I would say good rule of thumb is to not get more than half the enemy resistance so 8k-13k. At that point, damage gain from penetration comes awfully close to damage gain from weapon/spell damage (that also boosts healing)

Well stamina is more flexible, pending class/weapon/race. Mace gives 10% each, maul gives 20% penetration, bow's focused aim for minor fracture, DK's get an AOE major fracture, NB's get a ranged major breach/fracture, templars get a ranged minor breach/fracture, wardens have an AOE burst spell with major fracture.

With sharp+33 into piecing you'll have 5761 (7081 if you include minor fracture). If you use mace, even against a 15000 armor target you'll have 3834 extra penetration, which brings your total to 9595 (10915 with MiF). DKs, nbs, s+b users will be the best way to get more than 10k pen on Stam builds. And then arguably since Stam can stack WD easier than mag can stack SD, the 33k Stam 4k DMG boost with 10k pen is equal to the 15280 pen with 3k sd; especially if certain races can get crit chance or Regen to let you stack DMG/pen traits.

Bow users have to decide on stacking pen or going DMG, sadly.

But I think it depends on your build for Stam; if it's taking more resorces to go from 9k to 10k, it's probably better to stay at 7-9k pen but increase your weapon DMG. Especially since your WD will increase both your burst and your heals with vigor.

Asardes · October 2017

It's pretty easy to calculate: players have a resistance cap of 66K, as opposed to NPCs who only have 50K. So each 1K of penetration will increase damage against players by 1.5% and against NPCs by 2%, unless you are at penetration cap, which, for stamina, is pretty hard to reach. Players in 5L/1M/1H still have 9.2K physical resistance and 11K spell resistance not taking into account CP in Light Armor Focus or Spell Shield if playing CP campaign so that will be about the minimum you encounter in PvP.

A sharpened 2H weapon gives you 2752 penetration (4.17% damage increase against players, unless they are shielded when it doesn't matter), same you can get from Lover mundus (unless wearing divines). You can get 3.9K penetration wit 49 CP in Piercing. Concentration LA passive gives 4884 spell penetration, so over-penetration is more likely to occur for magicka users. Running sharpened in PvP is not so beneficial after HotR traits change, especially if you are running 2H: infused (better enchant procs) or nirnhoned (higher spell/weapon damage) on 2H or main hand will be better; sharp is still a viable option for the off-hand weapon since it's not lessened like infused (when you weave mainly your main hand enchant goes off) or nirnhoned (off hand spell/weapon damage value is diminished in total base spell and weapon damage calculations). Also one good thing about nirhnoned vs. sharpened or even infused is that it boost your healing too, and also works if you don't weave (ex. a 2W Mage Templar casting mostly ranged spells).

So Nirnhoned or Infused 2H or main hand, and sharpened off-hand if DW.

Zama666 · June 2021

this 18500 pen amount - is that mean I need to have 18500 penetration to do ANY damage, or crit?
what if I have less

Or is this for a group..

Been playing for a bit, but never thought about this...help?

Tanks,

Amerises · June 2021

So a couple people commenting no longer play the game. There is no piercing, nor a 100 base penetration.

Penetration is 1% per 500 in PvE, up to max of 36.4%, or 18200 penetration.

Armor = resistance = damage mitigation

Penetration works against resistance. If you have more penetration than the enemy has resistance, the over penetration does nothing.

Dungeon and trial bosses are the only thing that has 18200 resistance, or else your looking at around 9000 for overland bosses.

If you have 1487 penetration, and the enemy has 9000 resistance, about 15% of your damage is mitigated.

In PvP, 660 penetration = 1%. As people have said, in PvP, people have different resistances, but 10000 is a good number to shoot for, because too much is not doing anything.

So do you need it? Absolutely not.