Penetration vs Damage

Zama666 · July 2021

Hello,

Read a thread from 2017 that said in PVE shoot for 18500 pen.
PvP run straight damage.

In 2021....what should I be focusing on?
When does one outweigh the other.

PvP how much pen?
PVE?

Tanks,

Z

El_Borracho · July 2021

In PVE, there is a penetration cap that you can hit through CP, skills, sets, and group buffs. You want to be close to it without going over as you then begin to waste resources. Penetration really only matters in PVE when fighting bosses. This is predominantly a group PVE thing as hitting the penetration cap with a solo build means you are actively taking points out of damage and crit and putting them in penetration or wearing gear with penetration buffs over damage and crit.

PVE prefers crit over damage buffs. PVP prefers damage buffs over crit because most players are running higher resistances and armor values. You can up your penetration through sharpened weapons, maces, sets, or CP for PVP purposes, just as with PVE. Group buffs and some set buffs in PVP are lower than in PVE, however.

Nothing has drastically changed with those basics.

AcadianPaladin · July 2021

PvE. Overland you want to be able to cut through about 9k damage resistance. You want about 18k in group dungeons.

Getting through a foe's damage resistance comes from penetration and debuffs. If you fight with others, their debuffs help you. So if you are solo and fighting a group dungeon boss you want your pen + debuffing to reach about 18k. If you are doing the same fight with others, any debuffs they apply also help you. Major breach, for example debuffs its target by over 5k for all allies who are attacking it. It is not unusual in a decent group of 4 for the tank + healer to debuff the boss about 9k - so you would only need about 9k of your own pen.

In summary, for PvE, you want at least 9k actual pen. How much beyond that depends on who you are fighting, who (if anyone) you are allied with and how much debuffing you can inflict on your foe.

In my own case, I do a lot of solo group dungeon work so I look to carry around 13k pen, then augment it with my own major breach to bring the amount of resistance I can get through up to around 18k. I give achieving this higher priority than spell/weapon damage and crit%.

Not at all qualified to offer any advice on PvP since all I know how to do in Cyrodiil is repair walls and gates.

Kusto · July 2021

18200 is the pen cap in pve. Tanks at min apply major and minor breach (pierce armor) ~9k, and most use crusher enchant on back bar. So if you're mag dps you're already at the cap thanks to the light armor passives. If you're stam then you may need to use other sources to get closer to the cap, like sharpened weps, sets, lover mundus, but it all depends on what content and what the tank is using.

For pvp you should stack as much pen as you can because everyone runs with high resistances this meta. Even the squishy ganker NBs have 20k resists and all others 30-40k + everyone wears Pariah.

Zama666 · July 2021

So where is weapon damage in all of this?

Penetration reduces damage?

Or do you have to overcome 100% of the pen to do damage?

I am trying to get my hands on Pariah fast....just so I can run away. PvP=Penetration vs Player

El_Borracho · July 2021

@Zama666 For PVP you want only damage and penetration. There are many numbers out there. I have seen 5,000 for stamina builds and up to 18,000 for mag builds. It seems like 7,000-9,000 is a sweet spot. I'm only throwing those out there as examples as there are players who go far lower and way, way higher, like a gank build. This isn't like PVE where health, stamina/magicka, or penetration values are more defined.

Damage and penetration are finite values. You want a balance of both. Too much penetration means you are taking resources out of damage. Too little penetration and your damage can not overcome the target's armor and resistances. Finally, all of this depends on if you are running a CP campaign or no-CP campaign.

If you want to see how it plays out, set up a build with the skills you want to run in PVP. Then grab a bunch of different sets, like Fury, Spriggans, Titanborn, Spell Strat, or anything that is either heavy damage, heavy penetration, or a balance of both. Grab one armor-heavy health set like Alessian Order, Fortified Brass, or Plague Doctor that gives you a constant resistance level so you are not insta-killed. Head into a no CP campaign and try out different damage/penetration sets. You will not be a world-beater, but it will keep you alive long enough to help you see what kind of damage you can inflict with each set.

EDIT: One thing to remember, in PVP there are players who run super high armor and resistance builds, even in no CP, as well as players who run almost naked. Just because you struggle against one player does not mean your setup is bad. Stay a while, see what it does over the the time you are in there against multiple players.

Amerises · July 2021

So where is weapon damage in all of this?
Stam 6k, mag 5k is pretty average PvP. This after self buffs.

Penetration reduces damage?
Your penetration augments your damage AGAINST the enemies resistances(amour). 18.2k for PvE group bosses. 9k overland and public dungeon bosses. In PvP is more common than not that people have at least 20k resistances; it would be uncommon to see otherwise.

Or do you have to overcome 100% of the pen to do damage?
No, 660 armour reduces 1% of damage for PvP, and 500 armour is 1% mitigation in PvE. The more penetration you have, the more you cut through (decrease) their mitigation/armour.

I am trying to get my hands on Pariah fast....just so I can run away. PvP=Penetration vs Player
PvP is "Player vs. Player" and PvE is "Player vs. Environment"

silver1surfer69 · July 2021

Zama666 wrote: »

Hello,

Read a thread from 2017 that said in PVE shoot for 18500 pen.
PvP run straight damage.

In 2021....what should I be focusing on?
When does one outweigh the other.

PvP how much pen?
PVE?

Tanks,

Z

There is a very basic rule of thumb:

-50 wp or spell dmg is about 1% dmg (remind modifiers).
-662 armor/662 penetration equals +/- 1% dmg.

Like others have said bosses have 18200 armor.
The armor cap is 33100. With major and minor breach being about 9k and ppl stacking pen u can go easily 40k armor in pvp and do not waste something.
There are things that give you max pen, like onslaught or corrosive armor. In pve grps a lot pen is provided eg by the tank. A mag char will likely have more pen and a stam charnwill have higher wp dmg (in mean) if not stacking specifically - thats because light vs medium armor (or wp like destruction staff). In combat metrics you can see in the sheet after a fight how much pen you had in mean and max and eg how much overpenetration you had.

Something worth mentioning here is that both stacks additively (pen only until max armor of target). That means both get the full value if added more unlike eg block mitigation - this stacks multiplicative, meaning only a fragment will be added.

I guess the majority of pvp players will tell you that pen is the thing to go for. Some say the diminishing return is greater for dmg (meaning pen would be better), i can not see why. Remebering the rule of thumb, its just equal. its scaling linear and not else. If you answer that its not scaling linear then pls explain to me how and why. To be clear im not 100% sure that it scales linear but im quite convinced that it does.

ImSoPro · July 2021

You need a balance of both. I’d say at least 10k pen for PVP and try to reach somewhere around 18k for PVE. 10k pen in PVP is good because most people have at least 20k resists(25-30k is the most common really). That combined with high damage will be plenty to take people down in PVP. Also remember that resistance debuffs work together with your self buffed pen to help you penetrate further. And as @El_Borracho said already PVE values crit over damage.

relentless_turnip · July 2021

Zama666 wrote: »

So where is weapon damage in all of this?

Penetration reduces damage?

Or do you have to overcome 100% of the pen to do damage?

I am trying to get my hands on Pariah fast....just so I can run away. PvP=Penetration vs Player

Armor reduces your opponent's damage by whatever amount they have. Penetration ignores this same number. 660 armor is equal to 1% armor. Meaning if you have 6600 armor(for example) you would mitigate 10% of incoming damage. If someone had 6600 penetration their damage would ignore your mitigation.

If your spammable had a tooltip of 10k the above armor would mean your opponent took 9k damage. If you had a 10k tooltip along with the above mentioned 6600 penetration they would take the entire 10k damage.

PvP penetration is the best thing to stack in terms of damage. Pve it's mainly crit chance/damage.

Zama666 · July 2021

This Glyph:
Glyph of Decrease Health is a Glyph in Elder Scrolls Online that deals Unresistable Damage

Does this by pass armor? Is basically the best pen you can get?

What is Unresistable Damage? Is the the same as an Oblivion Weapon?
Is it magic based.

Ultimately, what is it's relationship to armor and penetration?

Tanks,

Z

AcadianPaladin · July 2021

I'll take a stab at the unresistable damage. My guess is that it does indeed cut past all resists - and that is good. The downside is that it only applies to a small portion of your damage so you still need to build for pen for all the rest of your damage. There are not enough such unresistable damage effects available to build around that and safely ignore pen.

silver1surfer69 · July 2021

Zama666 wrote: »

This Glyph:
Glyph of Decrease Health is a Glyph in Elder Scrolls Online that deals Unresistable Damage

Does this by pass armor? Is basically the best pen you can get?

What is Unresistable Damage? Is the the same as an Oblivion Weapon?
Is it magic based.

Ultimately, what is it's relationship to armor and penetration?

Tanks,

Z

Yes, yes, yes (=same), no/doesnt matter (=not magic based), its relation is that it bypasses it. Its always the amount of dmg in the tooltip, no matter what. You cant shield it. You cant block it. You cant mitigate it.

Asardes · July 2021

Even in PVP it's still penetration which is the best stat to invest in for damage, especially with so many people running high resistance sets like Fortified Brass, Armor Master or Mark of the Pariah. It's pretty hard to over-penetrate. The minimum resistance people have is around 15k physical - light armor setup with Major Resolve and no additional bonuses - and around 18k spell - medium armor with Major Resolve and no additional bonuses - and those are good numbers to aim for. Next stat to invest in is probably weapon/spell damage, and then maximum main resource and weapon/spell critical which is the least important. Your main resource recovery should be around 1.5-2k or even higher for some builds.

Ippokrates · July 2021

Asardes wrote: »

Even in PVP it's still penetration which is the best stat to invest in for damage, especially with so many people running high resistance sets like Fortified Brass, Armor Master or Mark of the Pariah. It's pretty hard to over-penetrate. The minimum resistance people have is around 15k physical - light armor setup with Major Resolve and no additional bonuses - and around 18k spell - medium armor with Major Resolve and no additional bonuses - and those are good numbers to aim for. Next stat to invest in is probably weapon/spell damage, and then maximum main resource and weapon/spell critical which is the least important. Your main resource recovery should be around 1.5-2k or even higher for some builds.

After last cut in CP, i have seen some nice builds going for 3k regen.

Also, remember that Oblivion dmg is limited by max health cap, so i do not think it is too useful in pvp.

Oreyn_Bearclaw · July 2021

I will do my best...

Skill tooltip values for the most part scale off two things. If they cost magic, they scale off of max magic and spell damage, if they cost stamina, then they scale off max stamina and weapon damage. Let stick to magic for the sake of discussion.

Lets say I am a sorc and I want my crystal frags to hit as hard as possible. There are two ways I can do this. I can increase my max magic or I can increase my spell damage. In terms of tool tip value, that is it. As a general rule, 10.5pts of max magic is equal to 1 pt of spell damage. Increasing either or both will make your Frags hit harder on paper.

Now penetration and armor resist comes into play. People talk about a hard cap in PVE of 18200, because that is how much armor resist most trial bosses have. Not aware of any boss that has more than that. If a boss has 18200 armor, and I have 18200 pen, then I am hitting them as if they were naked. All my damage gets through their armor. If they have 18200 armor and I have 20,000 pen, well I have over penetrated. All else equal, I hit them the same as the first example. Because everything in this game comes down to trade offs, over pen is bad, because the resources spent on getting pen could have been used elsewhere for more max magic, spell damage, or crit. If I have 9,100 pen and they have 18200 armor (maybe I am solo), well they are gong to mitigate some of my damage.

In PVE, penetration is like a group project. Each role is going to potentially bring something to the table. Most importantly your tank will give your group a lot of penetration. You have your own penetration as well, they simply add up. This is the first thing most trial groups coordinate. A good raid lead will tell the DPS what Pen they need to be at or very near the cap.

In PVP, it's more of a judgement call. You might fight a player with 10k armor resist (this is the potato that goes down in 2 seconds), you might have a tank that has 40k+ (this is the guy acting as a damage sponge). The analysis is the same. It's unrealistic to think that you will completely remove a tanks armor in PVP, so along with Max magic, and Spell damage, you need to figure out how much pen you want to roll with. Pen does not effect tool tip value, but it does affect damage on the target. The correct pen against one enemy might be overkill or insufficient on another. Most players are probably somewhere in the low 20k's for armor resist in PVP.

Lastly, we have crit chance. When you crit, you get a damage multipler, which like anything else can be buffed with various things. Crit doesnt increase tool tip value, but over time, it can have a massive impact on the amount of damage you actually do. In PVE, enemies have no crit resist. Because the multiplier for criting is so big, most people in PVE focus on crit first as its the best way to increase DPS all else equal, once they are at the pen cap.

In PVP, not only do people have armor, they also have crit resist, which reduces the crit multiplier when they receive critical damage. Most people in PVP run enough crit resist to make stacking into crit a wasted effort. You are better off finding the an appropriate balance of Spell Damage, Max Magic, and Spell pen.

You never know the correct number of spell pen in PVP, because each target is always different, so again, its a judgement call. Generally speaking, as long as you aren't overpenetration, it is one of the best things to focus on for damage against a specific target. In PVE, you always know what pen you need. Your first goal should be to get there with the help of your group.

In PVP your self buffed pen is typically going to be higher than PVE. Conversely, you are typically going to run with a lot less crit in PVP than you do in PVE.

Eviction · July 2021

I've been trying to find out the same thing. I'm happy you posted this!

Kryptonite_Kent · October 2021

So if 50 spell damage = 1% damage and 660 pen = 1% damage... lowering your spell damage decreases your damage to gain pen which just decreases the targets damage mitigation, which means now youre doing less damage but more of it is going through... but conversely if you increase damage you increase damage and lower pen so your damage is higher but less of it goes through...

The question is which is a bigger output, or is it a wash, because its not a 1 to 1 ratio

Veinblood1965 · October 2021

Same I just posted this very question earlier today except added crit.Thanks.

Ippokrates · October 2021

Kryptonite_Kent wrote: »

So if 50 spell damage = 1% damage and 660 pen = 1% damage... lowering your spell damage decreases your damage to gain pen which just decreases the targets damage mitigation, which means now youre doing less damage but more of it is going through... but conversely if you increase damage you increase damage and lower pen so your damage is higher but less of it goes through...

The question is which is a bigger output, or is it a wash, because its not a 1 to 1 ratio

Well, it is slightly more complicated. You need to balance both factors.

Of course the best solution is to raise pen to enemy resistance, so for example in Vateshran you have 3 base values: 9100, 12103 & 18200 - depending on type of resist in PVE enemy can consume around `18%, 24% or 36% of your dmg.

Now, lets say your char, just with gold weapon & glyphs should have around 3k w/s dmg + 30k of main resources, so your basic skills, like Veilled Strike would hit with 6k dmg.

As you can easily calculated, with different pen your 6k dmg would be reduced to ca. 5k, 4,5k or 4k. So not good.

If you are playing in team, your tank should drop enemy resistance by 9k, so basic resist will covered. If tank is good, he will get additional 3k from Alkosh or Crimson oath, so 12k will be covered. Of course in team you can further drop enemy resist but usually, in 4team scenario, you should cover missing 6k, because it will reduces your 6k dmg by 12%, so instead of 6k you will hit for 5,3k. You are loosing 700 dmg. You can take a good dmg sets that will buff your dmg those remaining 700-800 dmg, so your base dmg will be 6800, but then.... you will be making 6k dmg, so basically an exchange would be pointless. And the more dmg you would accumulate, the more you will lose.

So it is advisable to try to reach those missing 6k pen before going for pure dmg or crit. Magic folk have easy, cause light armour is covering those missing 6k, but as a stam player, i can strongly recommend to get a sharpened maul/maces on your front bar, unless you can get a maul and cover missing 3k pen from sets like Kragh, Tzogvin... OR ignore the mauls completely, if you are going for sets like Stuhn

MudcrabAttack · October 2021

Kryptonite_Kent wrote: »

So if 50 spell damage = 1% damage and 660 pen = 1% damage... lowering your spell damage decreases your damage to gain pen which just decreases the targets damage mitigation, which means now youre doing less damage but more of it is going through... but conversely if you increase damage you increase damage and lower pen so your damage is higher but less of it goes through...

The question is which is a bigger output, or is it a wash, because its not a 1 to 1 ratio

It all depends on the stats you currently have, whether penetration will be better than weapon or spell damage.

Here’s the way to check for a hypothetical pve stamina build, just swap stamina to magic and weapon damage to spell damage for a mage:

Example build
5500 existing buffed weapon damage
33000 existing buffed stamina
16700 penetration total (group + self supplied)
Major Brutality (20% damage multiplier)
Minor Brutality (10% damage multiplier)
2 fighters guild skills (6% damage multiplier)
6 medium armor (12% damage multiplier)

Which is stronger
129 weapon damage buff from 1 piece of Molag Kena
or
1487 penetration from 1 piece of Kragh?

1 pc kena

% increase from extra weapon damage =
100 x extra buffed weapon damage / (current weapon damage + current stamina / 10.5)

100 x 129 x (1+.2+.1+.12+.06) / (5500 + 33000/10.5) =

2.21% damage buff

1 pc kragh

% increase from extra penetration = extra penetration / 500 (for pve)

1487 / 500 =

2.98% damage buff

Weapon damage won’t affect the damage of an enchantment, so it would be slightly less percent if enchantments are a big part of the damage. If there’s 17000 or less total penetration accounted for in PVE, extra penetration stat is almost always stronger than more damage.

You typically don’t want to overdo penetration, anything beyond 18200 in PVE is wasted. If you have 22k penetration in PVP and are hitting someone in light armor, a lot of the penetration is doing no good

Urzigurumash · October 2021

MudcrabAttack wrote: »

Weapon damage won’t affect the damage of an enchantment, so it would be slightly less percent if enchantments are a big part of the damage.

Nor does it affect Alchemical Poisons. It does however affect Status Effect DoTs.

For PvP I think a simple rule is just go for 5k pen on the low end, and 15k on the high end, outside of Debuffs.

Tigertron · October 2021

It might be helpful to explain where these numbers come from.

So in PvE the max resistance a MOB has is 50,000, in PvP it's 66,000 for players so 1% equals 500 and 660 penetration respectively. PvP math is the same as PvE math so I'll just show PvE.

If you have 500 penetration is reduces the MOB resistance by 1% and...
18,200 is 36.4% of 50,000. With no pen you do 36.4% less damage.

So...
when you have 0 pen its the same as saying your damage is debuffed by 36.4%
You can take your tooltip damage and remove 36.4% and that will be your actual damage.

If we take that 36.4% debuff and extrapolate it out as a damage increase in percentage, at the low end you get 1.57% damage increase for each 1% pen increase and at the upper end it's 1% = 1%

You can chart this yourself. Say tooltip damage is 4000 with no pen you do 2544 (4k - 36.4%), with 1% or 500 pen you do 2544.126 (4k - 35.6%) up to 17,700 pen where you do 3974.3 (4k - 1.01%). BTW incase it is not obvious 1 pen = 1/500

So a safe rule of thumb is to split the difference and say 1% increase in pen is equal to a 1.3% increase in damage when your pen is in the range of 6000 to 12000. This is how I weigh the trade offs because I am almost always in this range with my builds.

Syrpynt · October 2021

Tigertron wrote: »

So in PvE the max resistance a MOB has is 50,000, in PvP it's 66,000 for players so 1% equals 500 and 660 penetration respectively. PvP math is the same as PvE math so I'll just show PvE.

If you have 500 penetration is reduces the MOB resistance by 1% and...
18,200 is 36.4% of 50,000. With no pen you do 36.4% less damage.

So...
when you have 0 pen its the same as saying your damage is debuffed by 36.4%
You can take your tooltip damage and remove 36.4% and that will be your actual damage.

If we take that 36.4% debuff and extrapolate it out as a damage increase in percentage, at the low end you get 1.57% damage increase for each 1% pen increase and at the upper end it's 1% = 1%

You can chart this yourself. Say tooltip damage is 4000 with no pen you do 2544 (4k - 36.4%), with 1% or 500 pen you do 2544.126 (4k - 35.6%) up to 17,700 pen where you do 3974.3 (4k - 1.01%). BTW incase it is not obvious 1 pen = 1/500

So a safe rule of thumb is to split the difference and say 1% increase in pen is equal to a 1.3% increase in damage when your pen is in the range of 6000 to 12000. This is how I weigh the trade offs because I am almost always in this range with my builds.

Forgot to mention that most mobs are below 13,000 armor points.

There are calculators out there to help you figure out if you need to put your last points into Power or Penetration, if you are truly ignoring critical chance/damage.

I personally am happy to see power returning to be competitive with critical damage. Not sure why critical chance and critical damage has to be "the best". If one chooses one playstyle over the other, there should be no penalty, simply a different path leading to a similar result. Like life.

silver1surfer69 · April 2022

MudcrabAttack wrote: »

Kryptonite_Kent wrote: »

So if 50 spell damage = 1% damage and 660 pen = 1% damage... lowering your spell damage decreases your damage to gain pen which just decreases the targets damage mitigation, which means now youre doing less damage but more of it is going through... but conversely if you increase damage you increase damage and lower pen so your damage is higher but less of it goes through...

The question is which is a bigger output, or is it a wash, because its not a 1 to 1 ratio

It all depends on the stats you currently have, whether penetration will be better than weapon or spell damage.

Here’s the way to check for a hypothetical pve stamina build, just swap stamina to magic and weapon damage to spell damage for a mage:

Example build
5500 existing buffed weapon damage
33000 existing buffed stamina
16700 penetration total (group + self supplied)
Major Brutality (20% damage multiplier)
Minor Brutality (10% damage multiplier)
2 fighters guild skills (6% damage multiplier)
6 medium armor (12% damage multiplier)

Which is stronger
129 weapon damage buff from 1 piece of Molag Kena
or
1487 penetration from 1 piece of Kragh?

1 pc kena

% increase from extra weapon damage =
100 x extra buffed weapon damage / (current weapon damage + current stamina / 10.5)

100 x 129 x (1+.2+.1+.12+.06) / (5500 + 33000/10.5) =

2.21% damage buff

1 pc kragh

% increase from extra penetration = extra penetration / 500 (for pve)

1487 / 500 =

2.98% damage buff

Weapon damage won’t affect the damage of an enchantment, so it would be slightly less percent if enchantments are a big part of the damage. If there’s 17000 or less total penetration accounted for in PVE, extra penetration stat is almost always stronger than more damage.

You typically don’t want to overdo penetration, anything beyond 18200 in PVE is wasted. If you have 22k penetration in PVP and are hitting someone in light armor, a lot of the penetration is doing no good

I know its an old threat - just browsing through.

I do not get your math. 129 dmg is modified in my case (3xmedium + major brutality + minor brutality): 6%+20%+10%=36% =>129x1,36= 175 dmg (buffed). 50dmg is about 1%, so thats 3.5% dmg increase. Pen on the other hand works on all, like poisons and stuff.

MudcrabAttack · April 2022

silver1surfer69 wrote: »

MudcrabAttack wrote: »

Kryptonite_Kent wrote: »

So if 50 spell damage = 1% damage and 660 pen = 1% damage... lowering your spell damage decreases your damage to gain pen which just decreases the targets damage mitigation, which means now youre doing less damage but more of it is going through... but conversely if you increase damage you increase damage and lower pen so your damage is higher but less of it goes through...

The question is which is a bigger output, or is it a wash, because its not a 1 to 1 ratio

It all depends on the stats you currently have, whether penetration will be better than weapon or spell damage.

Here’s the way to check for a hypothetical pve stamina build, just swap stamina to magic and weapon damage to spell damage for a mage:

Example build
5500 existing buffed weapon damage
33000 existing buffed stamina
16700 penetration total (group + self supplied)
Major Brutality (20% damage multiplier)
Minor Brutality (10% damage multiplier)
2 fighters guild skills (6% damage multiplier)
6 medium armor (12% damage multiplier)

Which is stronger
129 weapon damage buff from 1 piece of Molag Kena
or
1487 penetration from 1 piece of Kragh?

1 pc kena

% increase from extra weapon damage =
100 x extra buffed weapon damage / (current weapon damage + current stamina / 10.5)

100 x 129 x (1+.2+.1+.12+.06) / (5500 + 33000/10.5) =

2.21% damage buff

1 pc kragh

% increase from extra penetration = extra penetration / 500 (for pve)

1487 / 500 =

2.98% damage buff

Weapon damage won’t affect the damage of an enchantment, so it would be slightly less percent if enchantments are a big part of the damage. If there’s 17000 or less total penetration accounted for in PVE, extra penetration stat is almost always stronger than more damage.

You typically don’t want to overdo penetration, anything beyond 18200 in PVE is wasted. If you have 22k penetration in PVP and are hitting someone in light armor, a lot of the penetration is doing no good

I know its an old threat - just browsing through.

I do not get your math. 129 dmg is modified in my case (3xmedium + major brutality + minor brutality): 6%+20%+10%=36% =>129x1,36= 175 dmg (buffed). 50dmg is about 1%, so thats 3.5% dmg increase. Pen on the other hand works on all, like poisons and stuff.

It depends on the totals you’d have in a fight weapon or spell damage, stamina or magicka, as shown in the equation above

Alternatively you can type those totals into this and compare damage changes for any skill

https://esoitem.uesp.net/viewSkills.php

ADarklore · April 2022

silver1surfer69 wrote: »

Zama666 wrote: »

This Glyph:
Glyph of Decrease Health is a Glyph in Elder Scrolls Online that deals Unresistable Damage

Does this by pass armor? Is basically the best pen you can get?

What is Unresistable Damage? Is the the same as an Oblivion Weapon?
Is it magic based.

Ultimately, what is it's relationship to armor and penetration?

Tanks,

Z

Yes, yes, yes (=same), no/doesnt matter (=not magic based), its relation is that it bypasses it. Its always the amount of dmg in the tooltip, no matter what. You cant shield it. You cant block it. You cant mitigate it.

So... would it be better to use the Unresist glyph or Weapon/Spell damage glyph for soloing group dungeons? I typically run the WD/SD glyph on all my front-bar weapons, so am intrigued to know whether it would be good to switch.

Zama666 · December 2022

Hello!

Well I followed some advice here. Got Heartland Conqueror (5pc - Helmet, Jewerlyx2, and 2-H Maul, and Lightning staff). And running it with Orders Wrath (which I might just change)

The weapons are running Glyph of Weapon Damage on both
along with the Sharpened trait. So Heartland kicks in.

The Maul has about 6k pen the staff less.

with the Maul equipped, my total pen is about 14k
with the staff equipped my total pen is about 11k.

I am also wildly tossing around Caltrops and casting Restoring Focus. And I am getting a lot of buffing from other team mates

Now some opponents are getting scratched.

Is that added Penetration only affecting my light and heavy weapon attacks?
I am guessing my jabs would not be any better, correct?

The other issue is with the Maul. I am trying to animation cancel light attacks with jabs. In PVE it seems to work, in PvP, I never see light attacks, like it is extremely mis timed or just not happening....

so slowly it is coming along

Tanks 4 da info y'all!

Z

Malprave · December 2022

Zama666 wrote: »

Hello!

Well I followed some advice here. Got Heartland Conqueror (5pc - Helmet, Jewerlyx2, and 2-H Maul, and Lightning staff). And running it with Orders Wrath (which I might just change)

The weapons are running Glyph of Weapon Damage on both
along with the Sharpened trait. So Heartland kicks in.

The Maul has about 6k pen the staff less.

with the Maul equipped, my total pen is about 14k
with the staff equipped my total pen is about 11k.

I am also wildly tossing around Caltrops and casting Restoring Focus. And I am getting a lot of buffing from other team mates

Now some opponents are getting scratched.

Is that added Penetration only affecting my light and heavy weapon attacks?
I am guessing my jabs would not be any better, correct?

The other issue is with the Maul. I am trying to animation cancel light attacks with jabs. In PVE it seems to work, in PvP, I never see light attacks, like it is extremely mis timed or just not happening....

so slowly it is coming along

Tanks 4 da info y'all!

Z

Don’t use the same glyph on more than one weapon. With identical glyphs one will fire and the other will not because they share the same cooldown. With the setup you have the weapon damage glyph would typically be on the staff, and you would run wall of elements to proc it(it will proc this way even while you are in the front bar provided wall is up and on a target. This is probably one of the least understood concepts in the game.
As an added note other than light and heavy attacks, only weapon skills will proc weapon enchants.

Malprave · December 2022

Zama666 wrote: »

Hello!

Well I followed some advice here. Got Heartland Conqueror (5pc - Helmet, Jewerlyx2, and 2-H Maul, and Lightning staff). And running it with Orders Wrath (which I might just change)

The weapons are running Glyph of Weapon Damage on both
along with the Sharpened trait. So Heartland kicks in.

The Maul has about 6k pen the staff less.

with the Maul equipped, my total pen is about 14k
with the staff equipped my total pen is about 11k.

I am also wildly tossing around Caltrops and casting Restoring Focus. And I am getting a lot of buffing from other team mates

Now some opponents are getting scratched.

Is that added Penetration only affecting my light and heavy weapon attacks?
I am guessing my jabs would not be any better, correct?

The other issue is with the Maul. I am trying to animation cancel light attacks with jabs. In PVE it seems to work, in PvP, I never see light attacks, like it is extremely mis timed or just not happening....

so slowly it is coming along

Tanks 4 da info y'all!

Z

PS- penetration affects all attacks, light, heavy, and skills.
You have twice as much penetration as you need for pve. In organized trials you only need about 6k unless that’s changed and even in small dungeon groups you just don’t need more. I’m probably going to get pushback here but I find pen to be an overrated stat and any debate about where you are in relation to the cap at 18k is probably best left to your raid leader(if you’re into trials).

In PvP you need a little more but generally you’ll have to find other ways of defeating highly armored players other than pen. (Attacks that ignore armor) Too much pen is wasted against opponents with lesser amounts of armor.

DrNukenstein · December 2022

Here's a really easy rule of thumb for when you want raw damage, or side stats (crit d, crit c, pen)

greater than 32 points in resource= side stats

less than 32 points in resource= raw damage

Reasoning: The less resources you have, the more significant each line of raw damage is to your output. It takes a lot of tooltip damage for side stats to clearly boost damage more than just adding more damage would. With a significant investment in your primary resource stat, the side stats will scale your sum damage (resource/10+WDorSD) while avoiding the diminishing returns of stacking tooltip damage.

You have to consider that 129 damage is not 129 damage. It's 129(%scaling modifiers * increases in output from side stats * %damage modifiers * %damageincreasingdebuffsonyourtarget); that can make a really big number really fast.