Actual "value" of 5% armor penetration...

martakurill

Okay, outside of the pen mod, I know of two sources of armor penetration...the delta trait and the Harmonic Resonance Relay (which gives 5% at mk 14 epic). My question is this...what is the value of 5% armor penetration compared to other mods?

In theory, could a mk xiv epic resonance relay provide a bigger damage output boost than a vulnerability locator?

Could it be worth slotting the delta trait instead of some of the other dps traits, like the 4% critical chance one?

I ask because [pen] seems to be the top weapon mod these days, and I would think (never know with cryptic), that 5% armor penetration would be equal in worth to at least, say +10 critical severity (incidentally, the vulnerability exploiters grant about this...which would suggest that 5% armor pen is about as valuable as 2% critical hit chance, at least in Cryptic's eyes...).

Thoughts?

thissler

Okay this should give you a start.

And before anyone goes there, know these assumptions.

That the post is using very conservative values for the effect of penetration.

That outside of Borg NPC's it may be questionable if say, Undine or Heralds, have any positive resistance at all.

Positive Resistance Rating, even ONE point of it, puts a mad hurt on stacking this particular debuff.

That the spreadsheet provided does calculate the pen debuff accurately if you take the percent as a magnitude.

Other than that you do of course need to know how much damage your doing now and how your doing it to evaluate any change to a build.

Severity for instance doesn't have a static value. It depends on things like acc and crith.

And somewhere there's a big formula for all this, and someone should be by to link it shortly.

EDIT: When reaching for a value, or the need to be able to say, oh wtf what is this worth here's something to think about. It's common for games to be designed so that some stats are more valuable than others at different gear levels, ability levels, and essentially what other stats you may have. Things like Pen and Damage are awesome at low gear levels as opposed to severity because at low gear levels you typically do not have much critical chance. And they can be abundant easy to get stats. So you take em. Then you get a space set and some consoles that pump you up to 10 to 15 percent critical chance and you may just decide your done with something like [Dmg]

Anyway.

So if there's one thing you take away from the blog, take away the thought that all these stats are related and changes to one can have dramatic effect on what is your current 'most valued' stat.

martakurill

Thank you for this thissler, it made for interesting reading. I'm always amazed by how knowledgeable and helpful people are here on the forums, and the amount of work you guys put into making this stuff accessible to the general community.

So again, thank you!

jarvisandalfred

thissler wrote: »

Okay this should give you a start.

And before anyone goes there, know these assumptions.

That the post is using very conservative values for the effect of penetration.

That outside of Borg NPC's it may be questionable if say, Undine or Heralds, have any positive resistance at all.

Positive Resistance Rating, even ONE point of it, puts a mad hurt on stacking this particular debuff.

That the spreadsheet provided does calculate the pen debuff accurately if you take the percent as a magnitude.

Other than that you do of course need to know how much damage your doing now and how your doing it to evaluate any change to a build.

Severity for instance doesn't have a static value. It depends on things like acc and crith.

And somewhere there's a big formula for all this, and someone should be by to link it shortly.

EDIT: When reaching for a value, or the need to be able to say, oh wtf what is this worth here's something to think about. It's common for games to be designed so that some stats are more valuable than others at different gear levels, ability levels, and essentially what other stats you may have. Things like Pen and Damage are awesome at low gear levels as opposed to severity because at low gear levels you typically do not have much critical chance. And they can be abundant easy to get stats. So you take em. Then you get a space set and some consoles that pump you up to 10 to 15 percent critical chance and you may just decide your done with something like [Dmg]

Anyway.

So if there's one thing you take away from the blog, take away the thought that all these stats are related and changes to one can have dramatic effect on what is your current 'most valued' stat.

First, I think OP was talking the 5% armor pen trait, not the [pen] mod.

Secondly, I think you're misinterpreting the results of Pen. It doesn't have a varying result, it's a constant result. But it temporarily debuffs the target (~.1 seconds) the instant that the weapon with the mod hits, which means that sometimes you have 2 or 3 stacks of [pen] on the target at the same time.

Third, if you're looking for a DR calculator, I have this one (you'll need to make a copy of it to edit it obviously, like yours). That calculator is based off the work of Rbaker82 here, and the following resist info may be useful if you want to continue looking into it - [Pen] is classified as an injury, and IF applies an injury of magnitude 15 to the target anytime someone with IF damages it for ~.1 seconds.

And finally, if you're comparing something, it really helps at least some of us to have the numbers. It's all well and good to say that CrtD>CrtH>Acc>Dmg at end-game, and how good or not good [over] is, but but this really shows it, and also shows the difference, so that people who like one thing in particular (be it the over mod or something else) know how significant or insignificant the difference is.

thissler

jarvisandalfred wrote: »

First, I think.[/URL]

Followed by some stuff you thought.

Yes. Your're right. Yes, things like beta are different than injuries. I just happened to have some data off of the spiral beam thingie on the Galor and ran away with it.

Whoops.

Moving on.

I made the same table and calculations that you linked to me over a year ago now. Maybe closer to two. Thanks for adding the new mods.

And thanks for the link.

And...you're the guy that will most likely say something like...

It's all well and good to say that CrtD>CrtH>Acc>Dmg at end-game, and how good or not good

You do that constantly. I'm the guy that says you need to know the entire picture and all the related numbers. JUST like I stated in the blog post. And I do give numbers. Honest. I'm not asking you to and I rather hope you don't read any of my other posts, but I do.

And you should be able to edit the calculator if you follow the link. I've signed out of all my accounts and I can edit the required fields as a guest.

And the calculator came with the compliments of Virus, who at the time was having some discussions with baker.

Cheers.

EDIT: You may want to clear up "debuff" and "Injure" because now I'm starting to see "debuff' used to cover multiple types of...debuffs. Just a thought. Maybe we only use debuff for the beta's and fomms of the world, put them in cats, whatever.

And something else. From the baker thread:

Indeed, the Nanite proc appears to be implemented as an injury of magnitude 5, and not a debuff of magnitude 5. What implications does this have? Consider the hypothetical PVP situation below:

DRM Sources
Disruptor Accolade: 2
Starship Threat Control 6/84: 8.4
Starship Hull Plating 9/99: 14.85
4x Advanced Neutronium Alloy Mk XII: 4 * 21.25 = 85 (the tooltip says '21.2', but I believe this is a rounded value)
(Total DRM = 110.25)

If the attacker shoots at this target using normal disruptors and lands a Disruptor Breach, the multiplier will be:
DM = M(110.25, 10, 0, 0) = m(110.25)/m(10*m(110.25)) = 0.5240591815

If the attacker had instead used Nanite Disruptors and landed a Nanite Cloud, the multiplier would be:
DM = M(110.25, 0, 5, 0) = m(110.25)/m(5) = 0.5241015344

So the attacker would deal more damage with Nanite Disruptors than normal disruptors, even without considering increased shield bleedthrough. Indeed, against any uninjured target with m(r) * (100/(100+b)) less than 0.5 (for example r=109.808, b=0), increasing i by 5 will always result in a higher damage multiplier that increasing d by 10.


End Quote.

Okay so fine. The disruptor breach DM is greater than the nanite cloud DM. So you do more damage. Okay. How much bigger?

0.0000423529

That's how much. Honestly, am I even reading that right? Essentially both damage modifiers are 52%. I don't see a difference until I go out past the thousandths? Is this meaningful? I'm not even sure.

It might be meaningful when your combining sources, especially considering what happens to Ratings. Or when you have more of them. It's seen to be pretty consistent that at low values of both, separately they seem to do about the same thing. And at large values, they don't. Looks like handing out major injuries is a very effective way to go. But if you only had a little bit of either one, they look pretty much the same. Even when you calculate it out to five places.

jarvisandalfred

thissler wrote: »

F
EDIT: You may want to clear up "debuff" and "Injure" because now I'm starting to see "debuff' used to cover multiple types of...debuffs. Just a thought. Maybe we only use debuff for the beta's and fomms of the world, put them in cats, whatever.

Sure, I can work on that. So far as I know, there aren't many outliers, but then that was once true with cat 2's...

thissler wrote: »

That's how much. Honestly, am I even reading that right? Essentially both damage modifiers are 52%. I don't see a difference until I go out past the thousandths? Is this meaningful? I'm not even sure.

It might be meaningful when your combining sources, especially considering what happens to Ratings. Or when you have more of them. It's seen to be pretty consistent that at low values of both, separately they seem to do about the same thing. And at large values, they don't. Looks like handing out major injuries is a very effective way to go. But if you only had a little bit of either one, they look pretty much the same. Even when you calculate it out to five places.

First things first, you're looking at the difference between an injury of magnitude 5 a and a debuff of magnitude 10 and seeing them be almost exactly the same - make nanite a 10 injury and it's now 45% vs 47.6% vs 50%. That alone should tell you that the difference is significant.

The difference becomes especially apparrent in PvP when you have a target at say 50% DR (110 DRM). Drop a debuff of 25 on him, it goes to 43.8%. Drop an injury of 25 on him, he goes to 37.6%.

Or if you're considering an NPC that already has the misfortune to be around a recluse. That NPC's already at -128% DR (assuming that that the recluse has debuffed him by 150). Add an injury of 25? -164.1%. Add a debuff of 25? 144%.

So, yes, if everything else approaches 0, the point is moot (A target at 0 base damage resist with no injuries or debuffs takes the same exact effect from an injury or debuff if they're the same magnitude). But in PvP, most people have resists (at least I'm assuming so), and in PvE, most people have already brought hefty (or at least some) debuffs, and the difference is significant.