how does the penetration mechanic feels like?

[MaxQuest]

If estocs were given a slight damage bump, that should even things out?

Estocs deal 38% less damage than Great Swords against 0 AR. So it's understandable that they can come on top in dps, only when Great Swords deal minimal damage due to penetration thresholds.

 

Estocs (in their current iteration) could be situationally worth it under the current all-or-nothing system, as there are situations when you have to choose: [deal 70% less damage with the Great Sword], or [switch to Estoc and deal only 38% less damage instead].

 

Under the new gradual system, base values for weapons would have to be revised. But in order to do so, lets list the weapons and their effects first

Here's a spreadsheet I started. Feel free to add missing stuff, as it's faster together.

 

Well I think enemies should do enough damage that they don't need a 30% bonus to be a threat to naked characters...

Seems more logical and easier to balance to me, but I dunno. I certainly don't want everyone to run around naked to cheese mechanics.

It's actually a bit harder to balance =)

Imagine there are [high damage, low pen] and [low damage, high pen] weapons.

In this game you can get +4 PEN buff, + PEN talents, and also lower enemy AR by 4. And if you can achieve final PEN >= enemy AR with a [high damage, low pen] weapon for majority of encounters, then it becomes strictly better.

 

That's also the reason behind of dealing extra damage when you have penetration overflow.

 

But yeah, 'harder to balance' does not mean impossible)

 

I want Armor Penetration to do what is in its name - penetrate armor. At best it will make armor do nothing and i'll be doing full (100%) damage. If there is no armor, penetration can't do anything, just like cold is useless vs cold immune enemies.

I think I would agree with this too, if the target has no armor I don't see why PEN should do anything.

Yes and yes.

Two ends of the spectrum would be: high Pen / low DPS weapons and low Pen / high DPS weapons.

High Pen would be better vs well armored target while high DPS would be better vs low armor targets.

Understood that.

But have to mention that the first quoted sentence makes it harder to arrive to two well balanced ends of the spectrum.

Atm estocs are only worth it in a very tiny PEN-AR window. As Dr. Hieronymous Alloy noticed specifically when you are at -2,-3,-4 or -5 deficit.

That's an interval of length 4. And having any spell that increases your PEN or decreases enemy AR by 4, rules Estocs out completely, by making a Great Sword an always better solution. And ss you can see in the comments, this was also mentioned by KDubya, and Gromnir (if I understood him right, although in his case I'm never sure)

 

Now I must say that, it's still possible to make high pen weapons worthy (i.e. equally viable), while not having bonus damage above 100%. But this would require shifting the resting point.

 

Under the current system you always wanted to have PEN higher than AR and deal 100% of damage. What I am thinking is shifting this thing to the left.

Where it's ok/viable/or even optimal to have lower PEN with some weapons and deal 70-80% damage. While high pen weapons would be able to push you up to 100%.

 

---

Now the question is:

v1. do we want [high dmg, low pen] and [low dmg, high pen] weapons deal approximately the same final damage vs any target? For example: Great Sword has 40% higher base damage but only 70% of damage goes through (against low armored target); vs estoc that has 100% of damage going through. 1.4 * 0.7 ~= 1; or another example: Great Sword has only 40% going through high AR; while estoc has 55% going through: 1.4 * 0.4 = 0.56 ~= 0.55

v2. or we want [high dmg, low pen] to be effective vs one group of enemies; and [low dmg, high pen] weapons effective vs other group of enemies?

Edited November 23, 2017 by MaxQuest

[Answermancer]

Yeah, that makes sense. Good explanation.

[KDubya]

I believe that it comes down to where the enemies are at with their armor values, especially for various damage types.

 

If most enemies are going to be in the 7-11 range with bosses being higher, then the answer will be Estocs unless you can lower Armor by 1-4 points easily. Armor looks to generally have -2 to its weakest type except the heavy types have -4 to their weakest so defeating people looks to hinge on having crushing and piercing.

 

If most enemies get into the 11+ range you're going to need both Estocs and armor defeating powers. Say hello to the Superb Estoc using Devoted/Shattered Pillar with Thunderous Blows for 9+3+3+4 = 19 Armor penetration without any outside buffs, mundane Plate will be overpenetrated

 

If the enemies are tuned a little too much or too little a non-penetrator team could either breeze through most encounters or hit the armor wall all the time. Plus as you obtain enchantment levels the mobs can easily keep pace to either maintain the snoozefest or result in massive ranting on the boards

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

 

 

Under the new gradual system, base values for weapons would have to be revised. But in order to do so, lets list the weapons and their effects first

Here's a spreadsheet I started. Feel free to add missing stuff, as it's faster together.

 

 

 

 

One correction: war bows and hunting bows deal slash/pierce damage not just piercing. 

 

I think the next step is a chart comparing each weapon's performance vs each AR from 0 to 15 or so.

Edited November 23, 2017 by Dr. Hieronymous Alloy

[MaxQuest]

One correction: war bows and hunting bows deal slash/pierce damage not just piercing.

Someone already fixed that)

 

I think the next step is a chart comparing each weapon's performance vs each AR from 0 to 15 or so.

I think comparing each one - would take too long. Plus some weapons seem to be more into utility department.

Let's just take 3 damage oriented weapons atm, with different penetration values but same attack/recovery durations.

 

 

 

v4 is my take on penetration thresholds without bonus damage on pen overflow as requested by hilfazer and Answermancer.

So far... not quite. It looks that in order to achieve two balanced "ends of the spectrum", Estoc would need have much higher penetration. Or... we could make penetrating weapons having a higher min-damage that is always going through

 

 

Gonna fiddle later.

 

 

Edited November 23, 2017 by MaxQuest

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

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."

 

 

[MaxQuest]

* 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

Well, as long as the information is displayed by the game (and is complete and not faulty) I see no problem in figuring things out, including the answers on the mentioned "should I attack with something else", "does it matter", etc.

 

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

PoE1 had it's percs when it was comming to AR system. But yeah, I know that Josh wanted to migrate to percentual damage reduction. Even in PoE1 there are some traces of Damage Thresholds in the source code, by which one could figure out that someone had multiplicative and not additive reduction in mind.

 

Personally I don't really mind, is it DR or AR, is it linear, gradual or all-or-nothing (although having minor sweet spots is always nice). But I'd like all weapons to be equally useful, i.e.: in one situation it's clearly better to use this dps weapon, in another this dps weapon, but overall they to have the same usefulness. So far though it's kinda obvious that if one is into melee dps, he will try to have enough Pen with a Great Sword or Quarterstaff, than having to fallback to Estocs.

Edited November 24, 2017 by MaxQuest

[PangaeaACDC]

The advantage with the POE1 system is that it was easy to understand what was going on, and when you checked the combat log it was easy to see it as well. Once you introduce percentages, it gets more "muddy", and it's not as easy to quickly do the math in your head. The (current) POE2 system of percentages is more versatile in terms of high damage though, where for the most part the POE1 system didn't do much. Of course there were exceptions, with creatures with 30-ish DR, and outright immunity.

 

Hopefully the new attempt of gradual percentages will work better balance-wise, as it was pretty harsh to only get 30% damage if you lacked one point of penetration.

 

I'm a little worried about everything handling about penetration though. May not be the best idea if people are 'forced' into overwhelmingly considering penetration in termso f what builds are good/viable. Some of us may actually care a little bit about the R and P in RPG too, and not min-max and special build so heavily.

[hilfazer]

PoE1 had it's percs when it was comming to AR system. But yeah, I know that Josh wanted to migrate to percentual damage reduction. Even in PoE1 there are some traces of Damage Thresholds in the source code, by which one could figure out that someone had multiplicative and not additive reduction in mind.

 

 

In Fallout 1, 2 and New Vegas DT was an absolute (additive) reduction. Maybe it is just an original name of what later become "Damage Resistance"?

[MaxQuest]

^ Maybe. Though at time I got the sensation of multiplication. Was imagining that the initial idea was of DT being percentual, were incoming damage can be reduced up to 20%, with the exception of crush damage which could only be reduced up to 40%, making it sort of good vs high armored targets.

[Answermancer]

DT was definitely Josh's term for flat reduction in previous games.

I can't remember if New Vegas had for DT (flat reduction) and DR (percent reduction), but I'm pretty sure Fallout 1 and 2 did, at least.

 

I think they initially planned the same system for Pillars, but then settled on just flat reduction and renamed it from DT to DR just to make things a bit less confusing to new players.

After seeing your table of "v4" and taking into account your previous explanation I can see the need for some kind of overpenetration bonus (although I don't think it's super intuitive, but then I don't think the system in general is super intuitive, compared to the Pillars 1 system).

Edited November 25, 2017 by Answermancer

[KDubya]

One interesting side effect is how weapon damage no longer determines how useful your weapon is against high armor foes.

 

In PoE you grabbed a two handed weapon to punch through armor. Now you just need penetration. A stiletto will out damage a Great Sword in the right armor range. Dual wielding fast weapons no longer gets penalized with the old armor system.

 

I think a chainsaw build of a Berserker/Soul Blade (Witch) with +4 penetration from frenzy and another from cipher using accurate clubs will have a base pen of 10 without enchantment. You'll be hitting at +25% speed from frenzy with a +5 Might boost and another +40% from Biting Whip.

[Kaylon]

I really don't understand why the penetration was not changed to a percentage that scales linearly... +1PEN should reduce DR by 10%, +2 by 20%,... +10 by 100% and anything above +10 will increase your damage instead. The new system is actually worse than it was in PoE1. I'm under the impression they sacrifice logic/realism just to make choices harder for the players. I hope they will focus more on the enchantment/crafting part (which was pretty lackluster in PoE1)  and is a better way to increase complexity...

[Dr <3]

My shoot for the revision of the penetration system, that comes in my mind after reading what others have posted so far:

 

 

PEN = AR      -->    100% dmg

 

PEN < 1 AR   -->     95 % dmg (-1 = -5% dmg)

PEN < 2 AR   -->     85 % dmg (-2 = -5 + -10% dmg)

PEN < 3 AR   -->     70 % dmg (-3 = -5 + -10 + -15% dmg)

PEN < 4 AR   -->     50 % dmg (-4 = -5 + -10 + -15% + -20% dmg)

PEN < 5 AR   -->     30 % dmg (-5 = -5 + -10 + -15% + -20% + -20% dmg)  --> CAPPED

 

 

PEN > 4 AR   -->   105% dmg  (+4 = +5% dmg)

PEN > 8 AR   -->   110 % dmg (+8 = +10% dmg)  ---> CAPPED

 

 

RATIONALE:

- in my absolutely personal opinion, i think that Penetration mechanic should not been a way to boost dps to much. Nonetheless this system  will give a small "prize" if you can reach a very high penetration, but is very little to discourage building only around penetration for dmg oriented characters.

- the thing i liked less about the current system is the that only 1 point less of Penetration vs AR dump your total dmg from 100% to 30%. And this is a multiplicative effect, so the dmg gimpage remains very strong also if you have on your side major dmg boni (might, high quality weapons, talents, ecc). So i tried to put in a "granular effect" to have the dmg scaling in steps instead of just one big bad threshold

- the steps of the dmg threshold stair becomes more deeper as you "go away" from the equality point.  So you don't need to focus on the exact value, you just now that if you are "near" equality point (let's say up to 2-3 points) in the end the dmg done will be enough, but more the difference increases more your dmg will get blocked, and you better do something to chage the situation (buff yourself / debuff enemies / change weapons ecc / activating modals / ecc).

- the colours of the tooltip could be green for >4, orange between +3 and  -3, red if <-3 .

 

Let me know if someone find these ideas interesting or not

[fiddlesticks]

The problem with a scaling system like yours is that it makes manual computation of the optimum really hard. The current Pen mechanic is very transparent in that sense. Can't reach the threshold? Better switch weapons or change tactics. Whereas if the reduction is -5% and then -10% etc. it's not as clear which weapon is best under which circumstances. I think that's what Josh meant when he said the old DR system was "mushy" (and personally, I agree with him. In PoE1, I relied on gut instinct more than math when it came to weapon switching).

[Dr <3]

On the other side i fell i rarely look for "optimum", much more often for "good enough" .  With a scaling system is easy to roughly have an idea about how much dmg is going trough (up to 70% if you are at -3 penetration), without the need to know the exact numbers. And more you go away from the equality point, more the penalties for dmg become harsher. With the current system if you are even 1 point short there is an abrupt decay of your dmg.

Also the 30% dmg moltiplicator if you have very high penetration is a bit overkill, since atm if you want to go high dps the easiest route is stack penetretion buff and AR debuff, instead than dmg boni

[Andronidas]

 

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."

 

 

 

 

How about this way, as an attempt of making a clear system that's harsh enough to make you think and at the same time keeping some of the scaling so you dont become useless:

 

PEN -1-3 compared to AR   = 70% dmg (call it "underpenetration" or something)

PEN -4 or more compared to AR = 30% dmg (Still called "no penetration")

 

 

Then just add 5% per penetration point over enemy AR and cap it at 30%, keep the current system or don't implement overpenetration at all - that's less important, as I think the punishment is most important. Also a gradual overpenetration system would make penetration buffs almost mandatory every battle (which is boring), which is why I would personally be in favor of keeping the old overpenetration system allong with what I just demonstrated for underpenetration.

 

 

Gradual, yet harsh!

[Daled]

I'm pretty sure they'll not change overpenetration, is clear, scales (2*AR scales while >4 or something like that doesn't) and it's not particularly OP or UP.

 

After reading Josh's reason for the system change I now understand why they changed it and which problems had the previous one.

 

With that in mind I'm starting to appreciate the perks of the new system, personally I would try to leave everything as it is now but change the damage of "no penetration" from 30% to 50%. 50% means not much difference in early levels due to low damage numbers but it would scale to have a major impact later in the game while not being as harsh as 30%.

Edited November 25, 2017 by Daled

[demeisen]

The problem with a scaling system like yours is that it makes manual computation of the optimum really hard. The current Pen mechanic is very transparent in that sense. Can't reach the threshold? Better switch weapons or change tactics. Whereas if the reduction is -5% and then -10% etc. it's not as clear which weapon is best under which circumstances.

 

Yeah, but do people really want the system to be that obviously clearcut?

 

I'd rather have more complexity to it.  That said, I do want some weapons to be better in some situations so the player has motivation to attack weaknesses and defend against strengths.  I like penalties for getting it wrong... but not step-function penalties, as a general rule.

[hilfazer]

I'm pretty sure they'll not change overpenetration, is clear, scales (2*AR scales while >4 or something like that doesn't) and it's not particularly OP or UP.

 

They can keep overpenetration and just change dmg multipliers from 0.3/1/1.3 to 23/77/100. That would also require changing either all damage values or all values of HP. That change would not affect balance it's just for common sense.

 

After seeing MaxQuest's tables i can see removing overpenetration is not a good idea. Poleaxe was never better than other options and estoc is most likely underpowered right now. 

Actually 0.3/1/1.3 is is best in terms of balance as poleaxe was better than greatsword in 2 cases but still not good enough since GS bested poleaxe 5 times*. Maybe blunt is the best physical damage type, i don't know, i don't have beta access.

 

*I'm not including very high armor values even estoc could not penetrate.

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

One other thing that just occurred to me --

 

Does this mechanic change mean that Dex is a more valuable damage stat now than Might, clearly?

 

In the first game, statistically, over a long fight, Dex was clearly the better overall damage stat; the problems were just that 1) high dex builds ran into armor problems due to the threshold mechanic, and 2) damage from might was more "front loaded" (especially if you could one-shot an enemy) whereas dex got more valuable the longer the fight was.

 

 

In this game though:

 

1) Might doesn't seem to effect penetration at all, so it no longer has that role of pushing past armor

 

2) fights are a lot longer (pacing decisions, new increased miss rate, etc.)

 

I haven't run the numbers myself but I suspect that these mechanical changes mean that Dex and possibly Per are far better "damage stats" than Might is. The only exception would be builds that somehow broke the action speed calculation and got a lot of "free" attacks from somewhere.

[Boeroer]

MIG is now a multiplicative damage boost (like DEX always was - sort of).

 

I don't know if it stays that way, but BMac confirmed that it is no longer additive in the current beta.

 

That explains why chars with very high might combos (Ogre/Frenzy/Helwalker/priest buffs) are doing so much damage right now - especially when overpenetrating because that's also multiplicative.

Best combo to show this I think is Helwalker/Berserker because he not only gets very high MIG but also +PEN from Tenacious. Add a weapon with a good dmg/pen ratio and behold the Schlachtfest.

Edited November 26, 2017 by Boeroer

[KDubya]

One other thing that just occurred to me --

 

Does this mechanic change mean that Dex is a more valuable damage stat now than Might, clearly?

 

In the first game, statistically, over a long fight, Dex was clearly the better overall damage stat; the problems were just that 1) high dex builds ran into armor problems due to the threshold mechanic, and 2) damage from might was more "front loaded" (especially if you could one-shot an enemy) whereas dex got more valuable the longer the fight was.

 

 

In this game though:

 

1) Might doesn't seem to effect penetration at all, so it no longer has that role of pushing past armor

 

2) fights are a lot longer (pacing decisions, new increased miss rate, etc.)

 

I haven't run the numbers myself but I suspect that these mechanical changes mean that Dex and possibly Per are far better "damage stats" than Might is. The only exception would be builds that somehow broke the action speed calculation and got a lot of "free" attacks from somewhere.

 

Now Might is applied multiplicatively so all your other damage boosts get increased by might. There is a thread on it somewhere. The UI is screwy in that it doesn't clearly show the actual influence of Might.

 

Now keeping Might low on guys with big damage boosters like Cipher and Rogue is a bad idea.

 

I actually was thinking that pumping Might instead of Dex might be the way to go now. Especially if you dual wield, the free -50 action speed blows the slightly less than -3% per point of dex right out of the water.

[hilfazer]

 

Does this mechanic change mean that Dex is a more valuable damage stat now than Might, clearly?

 

 

If increase in DPS is same, yes.

Dex no longer suffers from armor system but Might still suffers from overkill, something Dex is immune to.

 

Dex also affects all actions while might only damage and healing.

Moreover Dex bacame better for spellcasters:

- they can unload all of their spells in each encounter and if they run out of spells they can restore half of them through empower,

- casting time became longer and Dex can counter this,

- by casting spells faster you're less vulnerable to interrupts.

 

But Might gives you bigger DPH so i guess it's more impressive to watch. Huge DPH has very strong psychological effect after all.

[Boeroer]

I agree that high DEX helps wizards/druids/priests' a lot atm. The casting times for most (offensive) spells are so long that you can really feel the difference between 15 and 20 DEX.