how does the penetration mechanic feels like?

[AndreaColombo]

^ and even then, by the time a max-DEX Elf Priest casts Devotions, my melee guys have already beaten Skulking Terror below half of his health bar. The Priest’s contribution is late and, at that point, very unimpactful.

 

We’ll see how this changes when average speed weapons are given the appropriate recovery time. At present, casters are close to useless.

[Yosharian]

 

One thing that might add some perspective on this --

 

I didn't really understand the why of the penetration system until Josh explained it in some SA posts.

 

I've seen this preface a lot when talking about new or changed mechanics.  Almost every change we've made has been due to feedback on Pillars 1.

 

* People complained that the DR system felt "mushy" because it was a linear, sliding scale (it also didn't deal well with high damage values) and caused damage value bloat.

 

 

Mushy = I see information and I'm not sure what, if anything, I should do with that information because the cost:benefit analysis is not straightforward.  Should I care if I'm doing 10% less damage?  20% less damage?  Should I attack with something else?  Does it matter?  If nothing else, Deadfire's current Pen/AR system makes that calculation pretty easy.  If your Pen is below the target's AR, it's a really bad situation and you should do almost anything other than move forward with that attack in its current state.  Attack another target.  Switch weapons.  Use a different attack.  Empower an ability.  Get a buff.

 

When that difference moves into the marginal realm, it's not really a straightforward calculation.  A 10% damage difference may or may not mean the difference between downing a target in 5 hits vs. 6, which is the actual importance because that's your action economy.  A 70% damage difference is almost certainly going to result in the enemy taking far more attacks/actions/time to defeat.

 

So that's why the Pen system uses a harsh threshold and why they're unlikely to move to a purely incremental (i.e., +/- 5% per point or w/e). They basically moved to the Penetration system because 1) it's percentage based so deals with very high damage values better, and 2) they like that there's a clear line that tells players "whoops, time to change strategies."

 

 

 

As someone who was completely confused by Penetration (ooh err missus) before, this explanation really explains what the devs are going for.  Thanks!

 

However, I also have questions:

 

1) How does 'you need to switch weapons based on your enemies' match up with subclasses like the Devoted who are based around using one weapon?  If they have to switch weapons consistently then doesn't that defeat the purpose of the character concept?

 

2) Why not just go straight for the weapons that have the most penetration?  Why bother using any of the other weapons?

Edited February 26, 2018 by Yosharian

[Lamppost in Winter]

 

 

1) How does 'you need to switch weapons based on your enemies' match up with subclasses like the Devoted who are based around using one weapon?  If they have to switch weapons consistently then doesn't that defeat the purpose of the character concept?

 

2) Why not just go straight for the weapons that have the most penetration?  Why bother using any of the other weapons?

 

 

1) Devoted gets bonus Pen, damage and other stuff with their preferred weapon. Their whole thing is that they trade versatility for mastery of one weapon type, so in other situation they'll either have to eat the penalties associated with their non-proficient weapons or just deal with not doing as much damage to a certain enemy.

 

2) At high base damage you still might do enough damage even at lower Pen that it's not worth switching. Stacking Pen also doesn't gain any benefit unless you're at 2*enemy armour rating. That being said others have said dual-wielding fast, high-pen weapons seems to be the most powerful melee strategy right now.

[MaxQuest]

1) How does 'you need to switch weapons based on your enemies' match up with subclasses like the Devoted who are based around using one weapon?  If they have to switch weapons consistently then doesn't that defeat the purpose of the character concept?

Weapons in beta4 will have 7 and 9 PEN respectively.

A devout gets +2 PEN in selected weapon. He can take that 7 PEN one and happily live without switching.

 

2) Why not just go straight for the weapons that have the most penetration?  Why bother using any of the other weapons?

Becuase lower-pen weapons have higher base damage. And if you have an AR-debuffer in your party this could result in higher dps. This is especially essential for ciphers, who want to maximize their focus gain and will get aided in this by their team (e.g. AR-debuffs, Aefyllath, Shared Flames, etc). Edited February 26, 2018 by MaxQuest

[KDubya]

Are they rebalancing armor as well as changing weapon penetration to 7 or 9?

 

If not light and medium  armor looks totally worthless as even low penetration weapons will go right through them. Even plate at the same  value as the high penetration weapons looks to be of questionable value. 

 

Will have to see what they have come up with but with release being five weeks away not sure how much can be changed based on feed back from the next beta.

[MaxQuest]

Josh didn't mention armor values.

 

This makes me think about survivability of our frontline. Also have to notice that some enemies on PotD get a bonus to Penetration (e.g. Titan had +4)

 

In PoE1 for instance, we could encase our tanks/offtanks in plate armor which was stopping 80%-50% of damage coming from low-hitting enemies, while vs limited-in-numbers hard-hitters we had [hard-cc] or [high-defenses + soft-cc].

 

AR buffs would likely become even more crucial. Also we'll have to see the new base damage values. As those of weapons that had 5 PER, are being tuned down.

Edited February 26, 2018 by MaxQuest

[dunehunter]

I come with an idea to make full penetration not doing full % damage, and make overpenetration do full % damage.

 

The idea is like this:

 

if Pen >= 2 X AR, one receive 100% damage no matter what kind of armor he wear, but it's harder to meet overpenetration when wearing plate.

 

if Pen >= AR

1. for heavy armor, one receive 70% of total damage.

2. for medium armor, one receive 80% of total damage.

3. for light armor, one receive 85% of damage.

 

if Pen < AR, each point of diff reduce the damage received by like 15%, until reaching a threshold = 25%. For heavy armor it means Pen - AR = 3, for medium/light armor it means 4.

So no matter how high your armor is, you will still receive 25% damage.

 

In this way Medium and Light armor is still useful as you still get some damage reduction even when your AR is lower than enemy Pen. While Plate still keep it's lead in damage reduction.

Edited February 26, 2018 by dunehunter

[Yosharian]

I come with an idea to make full penetration not doing full % damage, and make overpenetration do full % damage.

 

The idea is like this:

 

if Pen >= 2 X AR, one receive 100% damage no matter what kind of armor he wear, but it's harder to meet overpenetration when wearing plate.

 

if Pen >= AR

1. for heavy armor, one receive 70% of total damage.

2. for medium armor, one receive 80% of total damage.

3. for light armor, one receive 85% of damage.

 

if Pen < AR, each point of diff reduce the damage received by like 15%, until reaching a threshold = 25%. For heavy armor it means Pen - AR = 3, for medium/light armor it means 4.

So no matter how high your armor is, you will still receive 25% damage.

 

In this way Medium and Light armor is still useful as you still get some damage reduction even when your AR is lower than enemy Pen. While Plate still keep it's lead in damage reduction.

Sounds pretty good to me, maybe tweet Josh?

[wahmann1]

I come with an idea to make full penetration not doing full % damage, and make overpenetration do full % damage.

 

The idea is like this:

 

if Pen >= 2 X AR, one receive 100% damage no matter what kind of armor he wear, but it's harder to meet overpenetration when wearing plate.

 

if Pen >= AR

1. for heavy armor, one receive 70% of total damage.

2. for medium armor, one receive 80% of total damage.

3. for light armor, one receive 85% of damage.

 

if Pen < AR, each point of diff reduce the damage received by like 15%, until reaching a threshold = 25%. For heavy armor it means Pen - AR = 3, for medium/light armor it means 4.

So no matter how high your armor is, you will still receive 25% damage.

 

In this way Medium and Light armor is still useful as you still get some damage reduction even when your AR is lower than enemy Pen. While Plate still keep it's lead in damage reduction.

I like where you are going with this. I would start at graze, though:

20% damage from graze in heavy armor

30% damage from graze in medium armor

40% damage from graze in light armor

50% damage from graze in no armor

+50% for penetration (70-100% for full PEN)

100% for over-penetration (armor is like butter)

[hilfazer]

That -1 PEN for dual damage type weapons is stupid.

"Hey! We're giving this weapon 2 damage types so it's better against armor... and we also take 1 PEN to make it worse against armor!"

What a lack of focus.

 

And Saber with modal on will have 9 PEN... it's a high penetration. On a slash specialized 1h sword - the worst weapon against armor.

Obsidian must be on some crusade against realism!

 

What's platemail's slashing AR? Is it at least 10?

 

Josh didn't mention armor values.

[...]

AR buffs would likely become even more crucial.

 

I'm not sure. Looks like the game is going to be be designed around 100% damage going through.

 

Upping PEN as well as Armor values do not make much sense so i don't think Armor is changing.

 

 

[gGeorg]

That -1 PEN for dual damage type weapons is stupid.

"Hey! We're giving this weapon 2 damage types so it's better against armor... and we also take 1 PEN to make it worse against armor!"

What a lack of focus.

 

And Saber with modal on will have 9 PEN... it's a high penetration. On a slash specialized 1h sword - the worst weapon against armor.

Obsidian must be on some crusade against realism!

 

What's platemail's slashing AR? Is it at least

 

one handed light(weight) slashing weapon, has higher pen than battle axe or pike which are (much heavier weight and ) dedicated armor pierce....

Just nonsense

Hatchet, probably worst defensive weapon ever has bonus for defense

Just nonsense

It looks to me, that someone from dev team decided, that "Sabre is the best" and period. :D

We are lucky enough its not light-sabres. Although, spaceship would improve PoE2 a lot.

Edited February 28, 2018 by gGeorg

[wahmann1]

That -1 PEN for dual damage type weapons is stupid.

"Hey! We're giving this weapon 2 damage types so it's better against armor... and we also take 1 PEN to make it worse against armor!"

What a lack of focus.

 

And Saber with modal on will have 9 PEN... it's a high penetration. On a slash specialized 1h sword - the worst weapon against armor.

Obsidian must be on some crusade against realism!

 

What's platemail's slashing AR? Is it at least 10?

 

Josh didn't mention armor values.

 

[...]

AR buffs would likely become even more crucial.

 

I'm not sure. Looks like the game is going to be be designed around 100% damage going through.

 

Upping PEN as well as Armor values do not make much sense so i don't think Armor is changing.

I don't think I'd go as far as "stupid," but I think the chance to make the modal vary the damage type was a mistake. Warhammer should have been a crushing weapon with an Armor Piercing modal.