roro4066
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Post by roro4066 on Feb 26, 2017 15:40:19 GMT
i've always wondered what should be better: having amor pen or attack/crit damage bonus.
So i have been doing several tests with my DW rogue inquisitor vs hakkonites warriors, hakkonites bruisers and standard animals in jaws of hakkon DLC.
keep in mind that my inquisitor has taken the "Ambush passive skill" that gives 50% armor penetration while in stealth and 6 sec after the first attack out of stealth. other than that no armor pententration at all.
I did those tests with 2 differents sets of gear:
1/ armor penetration bonus of 42% (which brings my inquisitor to 92% with ambush)
2/ critical damage bonus of 36% (didn't have imbued tusket hides yet to get more)
as results:
against a medium armored hakkonite (65 armor rating) i got 2 times 4200 damage with twin fangs by performing a crit with setting 1
2 times 4000 damage with setting 2
against an heavy armored bruiser hakkonite (97 armor rating) i got 4200 with setting 1
3300 with setting 2
against a low armored archer or animal ( between 25 and 35 arm rating) i got 4300 with setting 1
4700 with setting 2
So as conclusion, ennemies that have a minimum of 65 armor rating represent for sure less than the half of the ennemies you encounter in the frostback bassin ( which is one of the hardest area in DAi if not the hardest), that's why i would say that most of the time you'll do more damage with better attack or crit damage bonus ( with enough crit chance of course) than with armor penetration, especially if your party has abilities to sunder armors very often.
So as other conclusion if you're a rogue or a warrior with no possibilities to sunder armors, i'd say try to reach about 40% or even 50% armor penetration before boosting your attack or any other damage bonus like critial dam bonus. if your party is efficient at sundering armor often enough ( i would say about 3 sunders per ennemy), you'd better go with attack or crit damage bonus.
Hope this will help some gamers that are a bit confused with armor penetration (as i was) and feel free to add in or comment this thread.
have fun!
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Post by Urban Ghost on Feb 26, 2017 17:46:53 GMT
Pentration is always worth it.
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Post by PapaCharlie9 on Feb 26, 2017 20:23:32 GMT
It depends. If the average armor of enemies you are usually up against is higher than or about the same as your average damage, Armor Pen is worth it. It's effectively a damage booster under those circumstances. Once your average damage is significantly more than average armor, it's not worth the opportunity cost versus other crafting options. Plus, it's worthless against unarmored enemies.
So I usually craft for armor pen early in the game, but by the time I get to Skyhold, I toss it in favor of attack and crit/crit, or flanking damage for DW.
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roro4066
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Post by roro4066 on Feb 26, 2017 21:13:53 GMT
Papacharlie,
that makes sense, now my weapons are hitting pretty hard and it's true i noticed very low damage output at the begining of the game in the hinterlands, especially against bears and defenders templars with shields.
anyway i've got now my imbued tusket hides and dragon webbing so let's go for crit damage bonus for my final dagger... just wait a bit to kill hakkon to get ice dragon scales for my crit hit chance for the little sister...
Once again thanks for your feedback papacharlie.
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Post by alanc9 on Feb 26, 2017 22:01:49 GMT
It depends. If the average armor of enemies you are usually up against is higher than or about the same as your average damage, Armor Pen is worth it. It's effectively a damage booster under those circumstances. Once your average damage is significantly more than average armor, it's not worth the opportunity cost versus other crafting options. Plus, it's worthless against unarmored enemies. So I usually craft for armor pen early in the game, but by the time I get to Skyhold, I toss it in favor of attack and crit/crit, or flanking damage for DW. I'm not certain the average is the best way to approach the question. A lot of the things that you won't get any advantage from armor pen on are things that you're going to kill quickly whichever choice you make. Other things being equal -- as if they ever are-- I prefer to kill the troublesome things faster |
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Post by capn233 on Feb 27, 2017 2:07:01 GMT
things being equal -- as if they ever are-- ... Succinct summary of how all these advanced theorycrafting discussions end up.  Since armor comes out of base damage, the lower the base damage the more likely AP will end up benefiting you against a wider variety of targets. I agree with above that as your base damage increases, you might not see much benefit especially if you have party members applying sunder. But it is one of those things where you have a simple answer like "it is worth it" or "it is not worth it." Lot of ways to get AP or Sunder, don't necessarily need to craft for it, as rogues and warriors both have passives and actives that can add them. |
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Post by zeypher on Mar 1, 2017 18:58:11 GMT
Well honestly since both warriors and rogues can get sunder which reduces value of AP for me atleast.
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Sylvius the Mad
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Post by Sylvius the Mad on Apr 11, 2017 20:11:22 GMT
I hate that we have to run these tests. If they'd just documented the mechanics better we could learn all these answers from reading a manual.
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Post by LukeBarrett on Apr 11, 2017 22:06:38 GMT
I hate that we have to run these tests. If they'd just documented the mechanics better we could learn all these answers from reading a manual. I've made it my mission to ensure that all future projects I work on (including whatever it is I'm doing right now  ) uses much less complex mechanics and makes them a lot more transparent from a User facing perspective. It genuinely makes me sad seeing all the work that had to go in to DAI from the community just to understand what might happen when you attempt to deal damage. |
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Sylvius the Mad
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Post by Sylvius the Mad on Apr 11, 2017 22:54:41 GMT
I hate that we have to run these tests. If they'd just documented the mechanics better we could learn all these answers from reading a manual. I've made it my mission to ensure that all future projects I work on (including whatever it is I'm doing right now ) uses much less complex mechanics and makes them a lot more transparent from a User facing perspective. It genuinely makes me sad seeing all the work that had to go in to DAI from the community just to understand what might happen when you attempt to deal damage. I like the complexity. I just wish it were documented. I like planning my builds and min-maxing. I'd just rather not have to do data-mining first. A digital equivalent of a 200 page manual would be ideal. Back in the day, I would read through a game's manual before playing it. I wanted to understand all the systems in advance, and ideally learn the UI from the screenshots so that when I played the game I could just play it, with all the learning already done. The learning is fun, but I don't really want to do the two things at the same time. I also collect tabletop RPG rulebooks. I enjoy learning those systems, even if I never play them. |
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Post by arvaarad on Apr 12, 2017 3:33:05 GMT
I hate that we have to run these tests. If they'd just documented the mechanics better we could learn all these answers from reading a manual. I've made it my mission to ensure that all future projects I work on (including whatever it is I'm doing right now ) uses much less complex mechanics and makes them a lot more transparent from a User facing perspective. It genuinely makes me sad seeing all the work that had to go in to DAI from the community just to understand what might happen when you attempt to deal damage. I know it's an edge case, and exposing more common mechanics, like the overall damage formula, takes precedence. But in this purely hypothetical project, I'd love to see notations for which abilities deal friendly fire. I like playing with FF on, but I do prefer knowing which abilities trigger it. Annnnnnd much to my chagrin, I find myself saying "I agree with Sylvius" once again. I enjoy complicated mechanics. I like finding strange corner cases in the ability trees and stacking bonuses to the point of absurdity. My inner mathematician is delighted. I expect there's not a lot of overlap between "people who read damage formulas" and "people who would be upset by an overly-complex damage formula." That said, I'm assuming that localization and balance tweaks make it harder to maintain user-facing technical descriptions. So I can see why simplification might be a necessary evil. In a project which may or may not exist and which may or may not require localization and/or balance tweaks.  |
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Post by LukeBarrett on Apr 12, 2017 17:21:37 GMT
Complex Mechanic: Armor penetration Simple Mechanic: Armor reduction gives the same benefit, increases damage versus heavily armored enemies, with out having to do any math on the fly: Scenario: Target reduces 32 damage from armor and you deal 50 total damage. If you had armor penetration of 20% how much damage would you do? Easy to understand if you put some time in to figuring it out BUT on a quick glance you could figure it out easily if you had 6.4 armor reduction. Point being, it's very possible to have a large number of mechanics to give you that depth without it requiring an excel spreadsheet to figure out if you're actually increasing damage or not. Again, all hypothetical... |
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Post by PapaCharlie9 on Apr 13, 2017 21:58:00 GMT
I hate that we have to run these tests. If they'd just documented the mechanics better we could learn all these answers from reading a manual. I've made it my mission to ensure that all future projects I work on (including whatever it is I'm doing right now ) uses much less complex mechanics and makes them a lot more transparent from a User facing perspective. It genuinely makes me sad seeing all the work that had to go in to DAI from the community just to understand what might happen when you attempt to deal damage. Sounds good to me. There's no point to complexity when, after doing the min/max theorycrafting of a 20 term formula, the entire player base settles on the three things that are worth buffing and ignore the rest. Just start with the "good stuff" to begin with and leave it at that. I'm much more interested in complexity of real-time tactical choices, like dodge vs. block, light vs. heavy hit, etc. Build a system that rewards learning the optimal moves and counter-moves for each situation and you'll have a winner. |
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roro4066
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Post by roro4066 on Apr 24, 2017 10:00:10 GMT
I hate that we have to run these tests. If they'd just documented the mechanics better we could learn all these answers from reading a manual. i don't hate to run these tests because it helps me understand the game mechanics way better than what i previously thought. believe me, i made dozens of tests about this game and you would sometimes be really surprised of the true difference between what you THINK the game does and what it ACTUALLY does. A nice example of this is my other thread " 1 twinfang rings wins over 2 critical damage bonus rings" if you're curious enough. But i agree things could have been better explained, and newcomers to this game would never catch some of the most important mechanics of such games. Anyway guys, thanks to all of you for your recent feedback |
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Sylvius the Mad
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Post by Sylvius the Mad on Apr 24, 2017 16:16:32 GMT
I hate that we have to run these tests. If they'd just documented the mechanics better we could learn all these answers from reading a manual. i don't hate to run these tests because it helps me understand the game mechanics way better than what i previously thought. believe me, i made dozens of tests about this game and you would sometimes be really surprised of the true difference between what you THINK the game does and what it ACTUALLY does. A nice example of this is my other thread " 1 twinfang rings wins over 2 critical damage bonus rings" if you're curious enough. But i agree things could have been better explained, and newcomers to this game would never catch some of the most important mechanics of such games. Anyway guys, thanks to all of you for your recent feedback I certainly want to know all that stuff. I just think it should be laid out for us in a book. With math. The exact calculation should be available without us uaving to reverse-engineer it. |
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Post by arvaarad on Apr 25, 2017 2:56:38 GMT
I certainly want to know all that stuff. I just think it should be laid out for us in a book. Man, I wish video games still came with feelies. I even tried to get the collector's edition of DA:I for exactly that reason. Sold out before I got to it though.  But the box manual was always the best part. I can't even count how many lazy weekends were spent flipping through those things, reading the seemingly randomly-chosen hints and the in-universe chapter intros. They were just so wonderfully odd. Like a programmer or gameplay designer had lovingly written every page. Even now, I still prefer stapled-together disc manuals to glossy, well-organized third-party guides. |
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) uses much less complex mechanics and makes them a lot more transparent from a User facing perspective. It genuinely makes me sad seeing all the work that had to go in to DAI from the community just to understand what might happen when you attempt to deal damage.
