Elemental Penetration.

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RunawayFixer wrote:

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Ahfack wrote:

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RunawayFixer wrote:

Spoiler

Elemental penetration is one of the best more damage multipliers, both in pve and pvp. When considering fights against players/mobs with overcapped resists, the penetration gem is so strong that it becomes mandatory.

But like all other straight more damage multipliers, the more damage from elemental penetration, gets reduced according to the pvp damage formula. Unlike mines/traps, damage over time skills, aoe shotgun skills, ...


So imo there is a case for straight up nerfing elemental penetration numbers or for making it less mandatory through a systems change, both in pvp and pve. But nerfing it in pvp and leaving it mandatory in pve, is imo not the way to go because having a mandatory pve gem perform different in pvp, reduces accessibility.

If the mechanics differ between pve and pvp, only players that read about this change (0 in game info and the wiki tends to miss info like this), will know that they need to further differentiate their pve and pvp setups. Only a minority will know about this mechanics change and not everyone of that minority will bother making separate setups. I know accessibility of pvp is already awefully bad, but that's not a good enough reason to allow it to get even worse.

On point as usual. What do you think about nerfing pen effectiveness just in PvP (50% or whatever is determined to be appropriate) while establishing a hard cap on max res in PvP?

I think a targeted change like this is a bad idea because it will change relative performance between pve and pvp of the penetration gems/passives. Different nerf formulas targeted at specific mechanics, will create different optimal builds for pve and pvp. Which is bad for accessibility. If there's nerfing or normalization going on, the formula needs to be as broad and fair as possible, so that a build in pvp plays somewhat the same as in pve.

But you could apply your same idea to all player defences (broad application vs targeted). What you're asking for with less -penetration and less +max, is actually good old fashioned normalization. We already have normalization of player damage, normalization of player defences would probably also help level the playing field.

To use an example:
Players can have between 75% and -60% chaos resistance. In pve the former would only be hit with less than 1/6th of the latter. In pvp the difference is less large, but still huge. Markuzs can fill in the gap here in no time. If there was a normalization applied of x0.5 centered around fe 50% resists, that 75% and -60% would become 62% and -5%.

The same principle could be applied to elemental resists after penetration/EE, armor, ... The pvp damage reduction and the pvp defence reduction would also need to be attuned to each other.


And a ps: if elemental penetration is found to be too much in pvp, that just means that elemental damage is too much. Elemental penetration is mandatory, everyone with elemental damage uses it. So instead of reducing elemental penetration only in pvp, you might just as well apply further reductions to all elemental damage in pvp.

And a pps: I don't think Rup's discussion belongs in this thread so I will resist getting involved :p

Thanks man! Totally makes sense. Thanks for contributing to discussion :)

After reading your explanation, it is definitely clear that elemental damage is too much, not necessarily just pen itself. However, I think getting 92 pen is way too much. There's a reason none of the T1 guys deal physical damage, and it's obvious why.

Over stacking pen, above 75 is kinda useless tbh, as you cannot penetrate someones resistances to negative, unless you know they are over capping res etc etc.

It's been interesting read, on the different views so far, and it addresses the lack of elemental defenses problem, and thee over reliance on pen, as 1% pen is roughly 4% more damge, and thee lack physical damage type, problems.

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Ahfack wrote:

After reading your explanation, it is definitely clear that elemental damage is too much, not necessarily just pen itself. However, I think getting 92 pen is way too much. There's a reason none of the T1 guys deal physical damage, and it's obvious why.

They just have to go back to one formula for everything with diminish return on high end, boom problem solved.

With all the pene you can stack now having 2 different pvp formula doesn't make sense anymore.

Rip I think you're getting upset over nothing, and you need to just CALM down. There's just a lot of bandwagon-hopping with broken bullshit that hasn't been adjusted is all. It's all you seem to use, so you may not have noticed it. So get your less-than-average-sized hands off your face and just calm down, girl.

Also, Lib classified WI as T2, not less than T0.

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Rupenus wrote:

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Turn your salt into something useful. Spend that effort helping grow the PvP community instead of bitching about it and maybe you'll feel less shitty about your characters/gameplay/life/whatever it is that makes you so angry.

what makes you think that we didn't? what do you know about pvp community, seriously?

you had a troll cwdt tank ES build now because you grab a 400 pdps bow you think you are pvp'er now? do you know what happened in the past? how many times we mailed Chris, how many times we addressed issues in pvp, some of them got fixed thanks to our efforts. (danzig and i played big part in frost wall fix, icedeal & vhlad made spark got nerfed, ahfack and many others mailed about inquisitor and made it fixed also etc)

do you know what we did in the past to improve pvp community? of course not. you are one of those that starts to think you upgraded yourself from pve to pvp when you become top 20 in pvp ranked.

sorry dude but you are not in the caliber that we can take you serious yet. go play some HoT build maybe we start to take you serious, in a bad way of course.

I like how this is about my pvp abilities, instead of literally anything else. All I claimed was that I PvP, and that I'm new. I'm sure you've spent a lot of time actually fixing things, but you seem to have lost sight of that and are now spending most of your energy shitposting and flaming instead.

Elemental penetration isnt a real problem. Instead there are 3 core problems when it comes to offense in pvp.

1. Few skills with crazy damage through secondary damage (mainly EA and heralds)

2. Few skills/supports with crazy damage through wrong T-values (traps, mines, cluster trap, minefield, multihitskills, heralds, enchantments)

3. Few skills with crazy damage because they are so good that they are super op even in pve (flameblast, blade vortex deserve a mention)



Some of the best pvp skills are in multiple categories (like blade vortex, bear trap, herald)

Try to use a skill that doesnt fit in to one of these three categories and you will find that your damage will be inadequate no matter how much pen you get.

Stop whining about a silly and meaningless thing like elemental penetration when the whole core of pvp is broken to this extent.

On top of these there are the important defense problems that are aegis and zerphi.

Elemental penetration is still effective past 75%, it will act as if they have negative resist! overcapping is only relevant to stuff like curse, ele eq, frost bomb. In the case the target is not overcapped, penetration basically works as if additively with any other resistance reducing effect.

you can test any skill on first white zombie in twilight strand
zombie has 0 lightning and fire res, try any fire spell with elemental focus so ignite does not produce more variance, with fire pen gem you consistently kill it in fewer hit

although I don't pvp much, and don't have much pvp knowledge, from what I know damage of the damage scaling is it doesn't use a different formula depending on resist... so 75% penetration is not exaggeratedly 300% more damage a lot of the time (it does get scaled so its far less than 300% but every other 'fair' damage boost is also scaled. When aoe overlap with gmp or +1 arrows (is problem wrong T value to account for multiple hits or is it aoe being allowed to shotgun?) is like 200-300% more damage on paper I think it is ridiculous enough to be on a fix list. Well The penetration is applied per hit so it is subject to pvp scaling properly so it's not truly 200-300% more damage, but imagine other support gems having same text as penetration gem... going from doing 25% damage -> 62% damage, 148% more damage. Even just the gem is ridiculous.

I am not a player who focuses on making pvp builds, but I once pvped on a support character, the only offensive gem setup I had was a 3 link arctic breath with gmp and cold pen and I managed to kill other players that didn't understand AoE overlap when they chased me to a wall in like 2 casts. I had about 50% increased damage total on tree or less.

I lurk these forums some amount and I saw lots of thread where showcase often was 60,70,80+ penetration, have anybody tried playing with 0% penetration?

I dont pvp test so I can't really claim that it is as broken as 300% more damage (that is subject to scale formula), but If you guys try playing with 0% penetration and see if it feels significantly different. I just tried using markusz pvp damage calculator and with 0 penetration vs 75 res and 75 penetration vs 75 resist is same as quadruple x-y damage. Just from the text I think penetration needs to be looked at in pvp, despite it being less polarizing (less of a core problem) as things such as unblockable/dodgable secondary damages, aoe overlap/multiple hits/non-T value scaled abilities, it is still pretty ridiculous numerically.

Even if we all wore veil of the night it's still support gem that gonna provide as much damage as any other generic gem. Though I guess generic support gem damage boost is not really significant and is all about choosing the strongest mechanics...

As I said before, imagine other support gems having text of 100-148% more damage, even if it doesn't affect game playstyle that much it is still completely ridiculous to be let in the game, it has nothing to do with being effective against high resists anymore ('picking support gems') it's just a ridiculous damage multiplier that reinforces effectiveness of stacking damage, and more important lessens relevance of other counterpick and strategy.

Who uses elemental resist flasks in pvp outside of ridiculous uniques? well flasks are a another thing...

Penetration effects all elemental abilities and apply to all (non dot) elemental damage! Right now it seems seasoned pvpers are just used to facing like infinite elemental penetration and the constant 'one-shot meta'.. well my point is maybe you guys lost some perspective of random noobs like me who play weak stuff all the time

When you have 0 elemental penetration, getting 1% means 4% more damage (if the target has 75% resists, so usually).
When you have 25% elemental penetration, getting 26% means 2% more damage.
When you have 50% elemental penetration, getting 51% means 1.33% more damage.
When you have 75% elemental penetration, getting 76% means 1% more damage.

And those are pve numbers, they are further equalized in pvp. With the diminishing results as they are, I still don't think the extra elemental penetration we got with the last few patches is that much too much. It's only in combination with all the other stat inflation since 2.1 that it becomes way too much :p

Getting 1 single pvp damage reduction formula for physical+elemental damage, would be a pretty good change I think. The different treatment probably lost it's purpose long ago.