Armor Type and Damage Type - help pls

[Ra3id]

Hey all!

 

Firstly, I'm loving the game. I'm a fan of Obsidian, and especially a fan and friend of the Critical Role folks, so my support is unconditional. 

 

So, I'm sure to a lot of you, the damage type to armor type mechanic is easy, and I'm sure it will be once I understand, but I have basic questions (I already did research in-game and out, and really didn't find an easy answer).

 

Currently, I'm lvl 5 with a party of 5 and I'm fighting a single IRONCLAD CONSTRUCT on 'relaxed' difficulty...and he's destroying me regardless my proper positioning. I can hear my party members all complain about their damage type being wrong, but I'm not sure how to fix it.

 

Is it better to use 'crush' weapons on the Ironclad? Why is his defense so strong against my entire party? Am I just out of my league right now? Or is it simply my weapons of choice? I'm using a sabre, a battle axe, and a bear as the main front line, and magical and arrow damage from a distance. Should I switch my front line to smashing/crushing damage?

 

I hope this makes sense. I appreciate the help!

[Ra3id]

I don't want to go crazy here, but I'm bumping this. I just know most of you know how to help. Pretty please. I'm sure the post was just...overlooked. 

[Amentep]

Might be better suited to the character builds and strategies forum, so I've moved it.

[Voss]

Right, so in general, to so full damage, the Penetration stat of your weapon needs to equal or exceed the relevant armor stat (crush, Pierce, slash) of the target. For those constructs, when you meet them, they probably won't.

 

So, you have a couple choices (and potential combinations):

 

Equip weapons they are weak to (in practice, this means carry a main weapon and an alternate weapon that does the other two damage types).

 

Just plow through with the lower damage. I found this viable on classic, as they were largely incompetent attackers. Only thing requried was interrupting fan of flames.

 

have lot of lightning attacks. Ciphers and druids can be helpful here. Also empower.

 

Have abilities that can lower AR. Chanters, ciphers at a decent level, mace modal, a couple other things at high level.

 

Strip deflection and increase accuracy so you can crit a lot (which increases pen)

Edited May 14, 2018 by Voss

[Witness41920]

Hey all!

 

Firstly, I'm loving the game. I'm a fan of Obsidian, and especially a fan and friend of the Critical Role folks, so my support is unconditional. 

 

So, I'm sure to a lot of you, the damage type to armor type mechanic is easy, and I'm sure it will be once I understand, but I have basic questions (I already did research in-game and out, and really didn't find an easy answer).

 

Currently, I'm lvl 5 with a party of 5 and I'm fighting a single IRONCLAD CONSTRUCT on 'relaxed' difficulty...and he's destroying me regardless my proper positioning. I can hear my party members all complain about their damage type being wrong, but I'm not sure how to fix it.

 

Is it better to use 'crush' weapons on the Ironclad? Why is his defense so strong against my entire party? Am I just out of my league right now? Or is it simply my weapons of choice? I'm using a sabre, a battle axe, and a bear as the main front line, and magical and arrow damage from a distance. Should I switch my front line to smashing/crushing damage?

 

I hope this makes sense. I appreciate the help!

First, let me give you some basic information:

 

Every type of armor has a base armor rating (a number). For example, on leather armor this number is 5. This means that leather armor provides an armor rating of 5 against all attacks, regardless of damage type. It then has Crush 3 and Freeze 3, this means that instead of 5, it only provides an armor rating of 3 against Crush attacks and Freeze attacks. Without understanding anything else about the system, what this should tell you is that people in leather armor are more vulnerable to crushing and freezing damage.

 

The next thing you have to look at is the type of damage you're dealing and the penetration value of that damage. Every weapon and damaging spell or ability has a penetration value listed. This value is compared against the armor's armor rating against that damage type.

 

So if we use the above example of leather armor and we use, for instance, a fine war hammer which does piercing or crushing damage, the interaction would look like this (simplified):

 

I attack (my accuracy against your deflection), I score a regular hit. My war hammer has a penetration value of 9, your armor has an armor rating of 5 against piercing and 3 against crushing, the game will use crushing damage for the attack since it will hit harder. Because my penetration value of 9 is more than double the armor rating of your defense, my attack will do 30% more damage (this is called overpenatration).

 

If the reverse were true and I were attacking your fine brigadine armor with an armor rating of 10 against my club with a penetration value of 7, then my attack would do -70% damage (this is called no penetration).

 

It sounds like what is happening is you're using an attack type that the target is extremely resistant to so you're dealing very little, if any, damage to your target when you hit.

 

You can see the relative stats of your target by hovering over them in combat, you'll see a list of their defenses and armor ratings against certain attacks. Make sure you're targeting their weakest ratings if you wish to drop them quickly and easily.

Edited May 14, 2018 by Witness41920

[Climbatize]

On 5/14/2018 at 9:28 PM, Witness41920 said:

If the reverse were true and I were attacking your fine brigadine armor with an armor rating of 10 against my club with a penetration value of 7, then my attack would do -70% damage (this is called no penetration).

Wow, that was probably the best explanation you can get on the web - so simple yet so informative (even the dumbest would understand), good work, Witness.

But one thing i find illogic: if armor rating is 10, why the penetr. value of 7 would make an attack do -70%? Does that mean the penetration of 9 would make it -90%, or -50%?

Shouldn't 7 againt 10 be -30%, as 8 against 10: -20%, 9 against 10: -10% and 10 against 10: 0% bonus damage (normal weapon damage)?

[Boeroer]

Those are the dmg reductions when underpenetrating (AR-PEN < 0):

-1: -25% dmg

-2: -50% dmg

-3: -75% dmg

If you have -4 or-5 it doesn't matter, it's still -75%.

Those are the actual numbers. Also see:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/armor-and-penetration

The -70% thing was an early version that got patched into the more granular one you see above.

As you can see it's simply -25% per point of underpenetration until you  reach -3.

Note that this dmg reduction is not a simple additive malus but goes through double inversion most of times (as long as you have any damage bonus as well), meaning the dmg loss is in fact way more severe, especially if you cumulate several maluses. For details see:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/inversions

Tl;dr: avoid underpenetration at (nearly) all costs since it's one of the most severe dps losses you can have (besides misses, grazes and hard CC).

It also means that having very high AR is extremely beneficial for your survivability. It has a lot more impact than armor had in PoE1.

 

Edited December 28, 2019 by Boeroer

[Climbatize]

4 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Those are the dmg reductions when underpenetrating (AR-PEN < 0):

-1: -25% dmg

-2: -50% dmg

-3: -75% dmg

If you have -4 or-5 it doesn't matter, it's still -75%.

Ah, i see it now, thanks - makes quite a sense.

But one thing you can't be ready for to avoid as you mentioned:

4 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Tl;dr: avoid underpenetration at (nearly) all costs since it's one of the most severe dps losses you can have (besides misses, grazes and hard CC).

Because you can't get info on enemy resistances if you meet them for the first time, only trial and error as far as i can guess

[Boeroer]

Yes. Metaknowledge is very valuable because of that.

Of course you can try to equip your characters with a broader variety of dmg types. For example not only give sabres but sabres in weapon set 1 and hammers in weapon set 2.

This is often better than focusing on a special weapon type and try to raise PEN via modals (which have drawbacks). 

Certain character ideas with certain unique weapons may collide with that approach though. But from a mechanical perspective flexibility usually is more valuable than specializing (when it comes to weapons and PEN).

Even a Devoted can profit from that because fists do always get a proficiency and can be a good backup option (if you picked a non-crushing weapon as Devoted - like sword or battle axe - and if you take Monastic Unarmed Training).

This is from the perspective of PotD difficulty (since enemies' AR is +2 there). On lower difficulties you can get away with less optimized weapon use since you will encounter over-armored foes less often.

Edited December 28, 2019 by Boeroer