Guild Wars 2

I felt very inspired and i tought starting a topic about what would happen IF and only if critical damage was turned into an entirely new stat wich would be armor penetration would likely result into. This is a topic about theorycraft on a possible armor penetration stat.

Player wear armors and monster have variable amount of armor level giving player armor penetration stat would balance the game physical damage wise without making those that dont rely on it useless. There is a limit of how much you can downgrade a monster armor level and at one point some class have so little armor it doesnt realy mather if you penetrate it or not.

The armorless elementalist should be taking as much damage or barely less then the plated tank when it comes to armor penetration so likely the stat would be like up to 50% and it would be weaker on target with no armor but stronguer on ennemies with high amount and toughness. Thing is 50% of 1k armor and 50% of 3k armor is a lot of armor loss for the tank but very little for the glass cannon who barely will take more damage then before.

The defrence between critical damage and armor penetration is that you get to actualy murder those tank easyer without actualy making it so you can take on other glass cannon like if they where made of paper (contrary to critical damage wich just burst down everyone regardless of spec and actualy isnt so great against armored target and make lots of people whine about bunker behing OP in pvp because you cant kill them) effectively making glass cannon versus glass cannon fight less of a ‘’lets see who 1 shot backstab the other first’’ game and more of an actual battle and likely increasing the level of skill required to run a tank in pvp and decreasing the difficulty of glass cannon build to actualy be viable without behing a constant ‘’oh god i got one shoted again by another glass cannon’’ fest or a backstab killing spree.

Since bosses also have variable armor level this would make berserker style character effective in some fight and ordinary in others while condition would have prety much static damage behing decent in all fight but be master in none. Then youd have the third type wich is the guy who DOESNT run condition or armor penetration, this guy would be somewhat good in fight wich doesnt include high armor level but would be weak against heavily armored bosses (this guy is generaly the support player or the control player). We get to keep good damage in pve for zerkers, make tank less of a nuisance in pvp and make support and control builds viable damagewise 50% of the time (better then never viable at all).

so in order or damage for classes

1. Tanklike and support damage character have similar damage to zerklike character but will effectively hit like moskito on well armored bosses effectively keeping zerker as THE best damage in game in all situation but giving a shot to class wich dont run on armor penetration for a good part of the game without making the zerk unefective

2. Zerkerlike character will utherly destroy bosses and player with high armor level so no more endless bunkers in pvp, we finaly get to have a rotation between armor damage and condition damage (cond damage is king because it ignores armor but the damage in itself isnt so great yet, issue is cond damage can actualy be ran on tank as well so zerker character gets utherly destroyed)

3. condition user will be somewhat decent in all situation but will never actualy be at a serious advantage in comparison to other spec damagewise.

This way we give a direct counter to tank builds in pvp and wvw give condition damage a place in pve and zerker in party gets to still be top dps without making it so that other spec cannot perform on equal level to it in some fights and be usefull (sure zerker will deal slighty better dps then the damage tank at best on a few encounter but since he can penetrate armor he can actualy deal insane damage to armored boss that both condition user support, control and bunker cannot.

kyubi.3620:

The armorless elementalist should be taking as much damage or barely less then the plated tank when it comes to armor penetration so likely the stat would be like up to 50% and it would be weaker on target with no armor but stronguer on ennemies with high amount and toughness. Thing is 50% of 1k armor and 50% of 3k armor is a lot of armor loss for the tank but very little for the glass cannon who barely will take more damage then before.

Until you realize that armor is in damage formula denominator, so in both cases the target takes double damage.

between having 1500 armor for the tank and 500 armor for the glass cannon who will also do you the same effect you wont see that much of a damage taking defrence save for the fact that the armored guy will actualy be way easyer to beat

between 500 armor loss and 1500 armor loss who do you think take the most increased damage?

50% of 1000 = 500
50% of 3000 = 1500

PS likely you yourself wont be affected by armor penetration if the guy actualy run a bunker so it will likely look more like a 1000 armor versus 1500 armor. You just increased the damage take by a good percentage while the same damage wont be as high against target with low armor wich have less to loose

think of it like health percentage damage, Having a smaller health bar or a higher health bar look like loosing the same health from a percentage point of view but the bigger health bar actualy takes longuer to heal back up then the smaller one so taking 5000 damage on a 11k health bar isnt as catastrophic because you can likely fully heal it in one shot then taking 15000 damage on a 30k health bar where it will require several heal and time to fully regenerate.

kyubi.3620:

between 500 armor loss and 1500 armor loss who do you think take the most increased damage?

50% of 1000 = 500
50% of 3000 = 1500

Both will take double of what they would take without armor penetration.

Damage formula is (Various Damage Multipliers)/Armor, so:

1000 armor: Damage/1000 — Armor Penetration —> Damage/500 = 2 x Damage/1000
3000 armor: Damage/3000 -- Armor Penetration —> Damage/1500 = 2 x Damage/3000

You will exactly need half of the amount of hits you needed without armor penetration.

If you reduce target armor on x%, you get:

Damage = Stuff / (Armor – Armor*(x/100)) = Stuff / (Armor*(1 – x/100)) =
= ( Stuff / Armor) * (1 / (1 – x/100) ) = ( Stuff / Armor ) * ( 100 / (100 – x) )

You multiply damage dealt by [ 100 / (100 – x) ] no matter how much armor the target has.

You have designed a damage multiplier which does exactly the same thing critical damage currently does but which applies to every hit instead of just to crits.
Even better, you have designed a non-linear one that gets stronger the more of it you have.

It’s not CritDamage, it’s CritDamage in steroids.

Vargamonth.2047:

kyubi.3620:

between 500 armor loss and 1500 armor loss who do you think take the most increased damage?

50% of 1000 = 500
50% of 3000 = 1500

Both will take double of what they would take without armor penetration.

Damage formula is (Various Damage Multipliers)/Armor, so:

1000 armor: Damage/1000 — Armor Penetration --> Damage/500 = 2 x Damage/1000
3000 armor: Damage/3000 — Armor Penetration --> Damage/1500 = 2 x Damage/3000

You will exactly need half of the amount of hits you needed without armor penetration.

If you reduce target armor on x%, you get:

Damage = Stuff / (Armor – Armor*(x/100)) = Stuff / (Armor*(1 – x/100)) =
= ( Stuff / Armor) * (1 / (1 – x/100) ) = ( Stuff / Armor ) * ( 100 / (100 – x) )

You multiply damage dealt by [ 100 / (100 – x) ] no matter how much armor the target has.

You have designed a damage multiplier which does exactly the same thing critical damage currently does but which applies to every hit instead of just to crits.
Even better, you have designed a non-linear one that gets stronger the more of it you have.

It’s not CritDamage, it’s CritDamage in steroids.

l;ets see it that way um?

how armor work is normaly that for a set number of armor point you have a set number of percentage. While the ele with 1k going to 500 might have lost 5 to 10% of his armor reduction the guy who just lost 1500 might have lost up to 25 to 30% of his damage reduction from what i know, going from 1000 to 500 doesnt in any way double the amount of damage you take. anyway what we comparing here is the ability of a tank (aka knight precision power thougness) and a zerker who likely got about 1200 armor at best

the tank armor is downed to about the same armor level – the zerker is already at that armor level —-- result into equality of stats and making both build viable against one another

in the case of the soldier build wich use vitality, consider the fact the soldier is gunna take more damage then the zerker in the first place because the zerker still has armor penetration.

now on a damage basis when hiting an armored boss
the bunker deals reduced damage
the zerker deals next to full damage and is definitively necesary to take down the boss health quickly

against an unarmored glass cannon boss
The bunker and the zerker deals similar damage with the zerker hiting slightly more but taking more damage wich makes the zerker usefull but not enought of a gain/risk to be worth the use as much as the bunker on that fight

This result into people using variable build and behing good in situationnal time as any build should be and not at all time.

Dont confuse armor reduction with vulnerability Vuln increase damage taken percentage while armor penetration would simply put ‘’ignore armor percentage by deducing from the total foe armor numbers’’ and not increase base damage percentage.

you obviously don’t know how the armor stat works in GW2. Your idea of armor penetration has merits, but you should REALLY consider how the stat works before rejecting valid criticism in the formulas you propose.

Going from 1000 to 500 armor will double the damage you receive. Going from 10000 to 5000 armor will double the damage you receive too. Going from 3000 to 1500 will double it again.

What you can do is setup armor penetration to reduce only the bonus armor players receive from the toughness stat. Since a player armor is “base + toughness” and pure glass canons don’t have the second component (well, actually everyone has at least 900 toughness if I remember well), your armor penetration will only affect people that gear for defense and have no effect on the others.

stof.9341:

you obviously don’t know how the armor stat works in GW2. Your idea of armor penetration has merits, but you should REALLY consider how the stat works before rejecting valid criticism in the formulas you propose.

Going from 1000 to 500 armor will double the damage you receive. Going from 10000 to 5000 armor will double the damage you receive too. Going from 3000 to 1500 will double it again.

What you can do is setup armor penetration to reduce only the bonus armor players receive from the toughness stat. Since a player armor is “base + toughness” and pure glass canons don’t have the second component (well, actually everyone has at least 900 toughness if I remember well), your armor penetration will only affect people that gear for defense and have no effect on the others.

Either way the principe is to actualy base armor penetration on reducing a variable amount of the damage reduction the opposite character has based on his total damage reduction. People with less damage reduction takes next to no consequance while iron clad gets to be hit by a truck. I guess it all comes down to how thoughness and armor is designed.

sure that if we base armor penetration on reducing the toughness of the opposite target rather then the armor stat itself we actualy get to have something wich is worthwhile.

Then it all comes down to the large health pool player running stuff like soldier behing an issue because they will likely do the same damage as you and yet have a bigger health bar, however when it comes to anywhere else then pvp zerker will still be top, cept that large health pools will get owned by player with good toughness who heals for their full health bar in an attrition battle so maybe it would look like this

zerker kill armor —- health pool kill zerkers —- armor kill healthpool

Conditionmancer still will be an issue however if they actualy can pull out more damage then zerker does while remaining uber tanky but if they actualy does similar total damage while behing cleansable beating a tanky conditionmancer should be the prety much the same as beating a tanky physical unit, effectively placing a weakness for about every single build.

I might be wrong but i think i included rampager in my actual calculation if it comes down to rampager and berserker dealing the same base damage yet that rampager cant pierce armor and deals condition damage/physical hybrid while zerker pierce armor and does only physical damage.

Likely rampager will be subject to condition cleanse but condition damage is so easy to apply it might cause a problem

Every game has different damage formulas.

Gw1 used with the idea of damage reduction, which worked as a multiplier and was calculated like this
In Gw2, armor is just the denominator of the damage formula

regardless of formula isnt there a way for them to actualy implement a decent physical damage anti bunker specility?