How much armor pen does a CW need? (PvE)

midnightita · November 2014

Im going for 2.400, someone told me I need less.

Is this true?

ironzerg79 · November 2014

24% is the maximum armor of the boss mods. 22% for the toughest non-boss mobs.

I think 2560 gets you 24%, but if you have anything over 20%, you'll be fine

chemboy613 · November 2014

Stox did a study a long time ago and found that about 1950 (20%) is optimal for CW.

This is because the grand majority of your damage is NOT on bosses - that is it on everything else, which will rarely have resistances over 20%. I think the elites might have 22% resistance.

So since that last 4% of arp is rarely used, you are better off moving those 600 points into power, which should get you 3% dps or so.

Think of it this way, 4% more damage to elites/bosses, or 3% more damage to everything.

Of course for SW/TR (boss killing classes), then it makes more sense to go up higher.

abaddon523 · November 2014

I run with about 2500 armor penetration. The majority of the time a lot of that is wasted because of the reason Chem describes. However, I consider the extra damage on bosses to be worth the investment. The way the math works out for me:

I have 9000 power (1.54x damage increase). If I swapped 600 armor pen to power I would then have 1.575x damage increase. 1.575/1.54 = 2.2% increase in damage from the extra power, but 5.2% less damage on bosses.

It's your call which you'd rather have. I like being set up to kill bosses well because those are usually the most crucial parts of a dungeon run.

smulch · November 2014

Chem, damage on random mobs is generally meaningless because it dies so easily (you could have made a point about it back in the original game where every boss was an add zerg).

Bosses are the only place you can really wipe these days so I'd say that doing 4,1% more damage to the only thing that can kill you is more important.

darthpotater · November 2014

And who knows maybe Tiamat has more than 24% dmg reduction

chemboy613 · November 2014

Yes, the trash all dies easily too, I do know that.

Now, in the old content fighting bosses with adds was the problem. So the way to make the boss fight easy is to kill the adds. Hence stox is probably right in that situation.

In the new content... I'm playing other classes so that my CW doesn't get any more RAD than she already has XD Abaddon's argument is good too.

We are, quite honestly, splitting hairs here. It will also depend on how much power you have, as power is linear increase and arp % is multiplicitave.

So what's more valuable? 4% more damage to bosses, 2% more damage to elites OR whatever 600 power is worth to you (maybe 2.5% more to everything? Rough guess).

I think we could make good arguments for either.

Personally, I'm making sure everyone gets over 20%, don't mind anything between 20 and 24%, but i don't go over 24%. I'm guessing that anything between 20 and 24% is probably just fine.

smulch · November 2014

Honestly, I wish I could lower my armor penetration but it's just not possible haha :P

c1k4ml3kc3 · November 2014

midnightita wrote: »

Im going for 2.400, someone told me I need less.

Is this true?

I was going with 2500 Armor Penetration, thanks to the people that Chemboy spoke of, however I'm still perfectly content with the same damage I do with 1300 Armor Penetration. I guess that some spells simply don't take Armor penetration into the effect.

But check this out, the Draconic Armor and the Greater Red Dragon Glyph actually work with all spells as far as I've concluded and, whatmore, only in PvP.

So I gave up from checking that anymore

and just

stack power

like the worst player :cool: And that's cool, alright.

mmm1001 · November 2014

I was always wondering how does HV set work in relation to ArP - e.g. If you "steal" 3x450 defence from enemy, including boss, you would need only around 15% ArP for rest of his defense
Did anyone test that?

wixxgs1cht · November 2014

mmm1001 wrote: »

I was always wondering how does HV set work in relation to ArP - e.g. If you "steal" 3x450 defence from enemy, including boss, you would need only around 15% ArP for rest of his defense
Did anyone test that?

It works a bit different.

Arp reduces your opponent's defense by whatever percentage your stats grant you. AFTERWARDS the debuff from HV is applied, putting the foe's defense "into the negative". So you benefit from both - Arp and HV. So against bosses, running with only 15% Arp would be gimping your damage significantly.

chemboy613 · November 2014

mmm1001 wrote: »

I was always wondering how does HV set work in relation to ArP - e.g. If you "steal" 3x450 defence from enemy, including boss, you would need only around 15% ArP for rest of his defense
Did anyone test that?

Think that mobs have something like armor class. Say a mob has an armor class of 40 - or 20% DR. You have 20% damage resistance, which lowers that 0.

Now on players and mobs, the HV set and buffs like it work differently. On a player, HV will remove 450 defense as indicated in the tooltip. This could be a lot of mitigation or a little mitigation, depending upon that player's defense stat.

Now, mobs don't have a defense stat to remove from, so instead of removing their defensive stat, HV and debuffs like it instead act as damage multipliers. This means that each "stack" is not 450 less defense but 10% more damage.

So they stack completely, and since damage buffs stack to infinity, there is no theoretical limit on how many buffs you can put on a mob and potentially do insane damage.

chemboy613 · November 2014

c1k4ml3kc3 wrote: »

I was going with 2500 Armor Penetration, thanks to the people that Chemboy spoke of, however I'm still perfectly content with the same damage I do with 1300 Armor Penetration. I guess that some spells simply don't take Armor penetration into the effect.

But check this out, the Draconic Armor and the Greater Red Dragon Glyph actually work with all spells as far as I've concluded and, whatmore, only in PvP.

So I gave up from checking that anymore and just stack power like the worst player :cool: And that's cool, alright.

You are obviously being sarcastic ^^ But i'm quite sure anything under 20% is sub-optimal

c1k4ml3kc3 · November 2014

chemboy613 wrote: »

You are obviously being sarcastic ^^ But i'm quite sure anything under 20% is sub-optimal

I'm annoyed, not sarcastic, heh. You are correct MoF-wise about armor pen and the comprehensive guide you wrote about is nicely calculated, but there're just some things which don't fit and I'm too tired to test it now, but after MOD5 comes I will have to be far more serious about bugs and powers which don't/are working flawlessly.
So far not a single problem with MoF. The only one is that it doesn't show how much debuffing damage was done and that the damage shows up on other people's logs.

chemboy613 · November 2014

c1k4ml3kc3 wrote: »

I'm annoyed, not sarcastic, heh. You are correct MoF-wise about armor pen and the comprehensive guide you wrote about is nicely calculated, but there're just some things which don't fit and I'm too tired to test it now, but after MOD5 comes I will have to be far more serious about bugs and powers which don't/are working flawlessly.
So far not a single problem with MoF. The only one is that it doesn't show how much debuffing damage was done and that the damage shows up on other people's logs.

Oh sure, i too wish that was shown, but i don't think the log records it. That's obviously something we can't address b/c we can't change how the game logs things.

That is something i wish we could log as we could then really figure out player effectiveness. Until then we are just doing approximations, albeit the best ones we can come up with.

Unknown · November 2014

This content has been removed.

chemboy613 · November 2014

etelgrin wrote: »

or how does greater plague fire stealing 15%x3 times of his defence works then? How much ArP would you need then?

They are unrelated. Each stack is a 3% damage buff. I believe in PvP it is working as it says, though i have no tested that personally.

chemboy613 · November 2014

Let's simply -

Under 20% = not enough
Over 24% = too much

veshorok · November 2014

chemboy613 wrote: »

Let's simply -

Under 20% = not enough
Over 24% = too much

quick question since you know or tested nearly everything.
is it confirmed 24% for Mod4 bosses?
i just wonder why i barely iceknife Lostmauth by 100k while average on Valindra in VT is 150k+?
(both without any sick debuffers like DC/MoF)

UPD i'm sitting on 24.6%

c1k4ml3kc3 · November 2014

For PvP you want to go more than 24% and especially as a MoF who uses RoF. Don't even mess with RoF, Smolder and focused wizardry

chemboy613 · November 2014

veshorok wrote: »

quick question since you know or tested nearly everything.
is it confirmed 24% for Mod4 bosses?
i just wonder why i barely iceknife Lostmauth by 100k while average on Valindra in VT is 150k+?
(both without any sick debuffers like DC/MoF)

UPD i'm sitting on 24.6%

Actually, i am not entirely sure. 24% has been the cap since beta.

It would be interesting to see someone actually test this. My arp isn't that high and IDK how to raise it without lowering power to get a good, solid test. Maybe some CW out there somehow has too much arp and we can test.

How much armor pen does a CW need? (PvE)

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