Penetration gems mess up balance between ele/physical

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woodyfly wrote:

I found out the hard way that elemental builds are much stronger than pure physical. My ele bow build blew my physical build out of the water

i have yet to see a "attack" build use a penetration gem. you are using an "attack" skill skoll and its likely your damage is split up into 3 elements, so a penetration gem is only going to help 1 of them. bow builds usually attack fast. if you are not using 1 pure element in your bow build than multiplying your mana cost by 1.4 is probably out of the question when you could instead use a better and more cost efficient gem.

i dont like how all you guys are talking about elemental "attacks". post a elemental "attack" build that uses a penetration gem. i have yet to see one. there are better gems to equipe

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Torin wrote:

Ok, so where are these numbers? Where are the calculations?

First page.

Please actually read the thread before your input. I'm taking the time to read your reply there's no reason I have to repeat mine because you didn't bother to read them.

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DeadlyPencil wrote:

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woodyfly wrote:

I found out the hard way that elemental builds are much stronger than pure physical. My ele bow build blew my physical build out of the water

i have yet to see a "attack" build use a penetration gem. you are using an "attack" skill skoll and its likely your damage is split up into 3 elements, so a penetration gem is only going to help 1 of them. bow builds usually attack fast. if you are not using 1 pure element in your bow build than multiplying your mana cost by 1.4 is probably out of the question when you could instead use a better and more cost efficient gem.

i dont like how all you guys are talking about elemental "attacks". post a elemental "attack" build that uses a penetration gem. i have yet to see one. there are better gems to equipe

Lighting rolls with biggest top end damage and most ele builds will use wakes. A highly geared ele attack build will have about 10-100 on wpn, 5-50 on both rings with ammy, 1-120 from wakes (bow users will have 5-50 on quiver, DW will have 10-100 on 2nd wpn). Of course then there's wrath and added lighting damage supports.

While the damage is split up across all 3 elements, people will lean towards getting lighting bonus as it allows for very large bursts.

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Moosifer wrote:

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Torin wrote:

Ok, so where are these numbers? Where are the calculations?

First page.

Please actually read the thread before your input. I'm taking the time to read your reply there's no reason I have to repeat mine because you didn't bother to read them.

I did read it, that is why I asked. I now went again to read it because I must have missed it and again there is nothing. There are no calculations or explanations how any number has been achieved on page 1.

I will lay it out in simple terms.

You are fighting a player with capped resists.
You link Penetration for -40% resist against your focused element.
Target is now taking (40+25)/25 = 260% of the damage he took before you socketed pen.
That is equivalent to a "160% more damage" modifier.
Cost is 1 link and a 1.4x mana cost multiplier.
Doesn't that seem a little too good in this very specific uncommon scenario, especially since there's no way to itemize and counter that debuff?
Simply the cheapest imaginable DPS boost, and a very large boost at that.

Torin, you're being intentionally thick. Asking us to spell out for you what has already been stated multiple times. This is intended to prove a point that our gripe is somehow not clear at all or at least not straightforward. But it is.

This happens all the time and it's really quite frustrating, because to make it plain I have to be inflammatory on the opposite spectrum, pick the single example that makes penetration look as broken as possible. Now we both appear completely unreasonable: you holding a hand over your eyes going "I don't get it" and me lighting your pants on fire to prove a point.

Let's all just cut the bs and be reasonable, I hate these kinds of arguments. I don't really think penetration is THAT broken. It does pose a problem for PvP though.

Alrighty this is where i should i come in with a few opinions too i think.

yes, the 115k dps is achievable on my build with flask, but keep in mind it would mean sacrificing too much es for that because i replace es gloves and boots with malis and wakes (down to 8kes on that setup).

Normally i go around with 12.6kes and 60k on flask, still the damage with elemental weakness seems to be ridiculous even without flask, i haven't tried using a lightning penetration gem but it seems i will have to, so i can provide some proper feedback on this, although this would mean sacrificing the added lightning damage support, ill have to see how i pans out, if penetration turns out to do more dps than added lightning damage then i'd say thats pretty wrong


But by just eyeballing it, as elemental weakness already makes the dps 1 shot most mobs i say another reduction in the mobs resistance via penetration gems just seems overkill in my opinion.

(Although keep in mind, that elemental damage has the quite significant drawback of not being able to leech life/es unless you sacrifice a gem slot)

Also i'm not sure how the dps would work out with spells, since im a melee based char.

Maybe casters do need the penetration gems along with the ele weakness curses to make the damage viable, in that case i suggest making penetration gems not work with melee or bows.



Conclusion: 1.merciless vaal died with 1 diamond flask with my normal setup (60k on crit) i just used ele weakness and replaced added lightning damage with a 40 lightning penetration. so yeah... those gems are overdoing it, curses are enough i think. Without lightning penetration vaal dies slower, 2 diamon flasks are needed i think

2.With the max dps(115k) gear on,merciless vaal dies in 1 cleave with diamond, ele weakness and lightning penetration support, just shows how unnecessary another ele enhancing skill gem is.

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Zakaluka wrote:

I will lay it out in simple terms.

You are fighting a player with capped resists.
You link Penetration for -40% resist against your focused element.
Target is now taking (40+25)/25 = 260% of the damage he took before you socketed pen.
That is equivalent to a "160% more damage" modifier.
Cost is 1 link and a 1.4x mana cost multiplier.
Doesn't that seem a little too good in this very specific uncommon scenario, especially since there's no way to itemize and counter that debuff?
Simply the cheapest imaginable DPS boost, and a very large boost at that.

Torin, you're being intentionally thick. Asking us to spell out for you what has already been stated multiple times. This is intended to prove a point that our gripe is somehow not clear at all or at least not straightforward. But it is.

This happens all the time and it's really quite frustrating, because to make it plain I have to be inflammatory on the opposite spectrum, pick the single example that makes penetration look as broken as possible. Now we both appear completely unreasonable: you holding a hand over your eyes going "I don't get it" and me lighting your pants on fire to prove a point.

Let's all just cut the bs and be reasonable, I hate these kinds of arguments. I don't really think penetration is THAT broken. It does pose a problem for PvP though.

I understand the "bug" of support reducing 75% resist and not 110 or whatever the player really has. That is achievable by anyone with this support. Physical resistance(armor) is already broken through with critical flasks and evasion with RT. This just levels the playing field. Now we got a way to go through all defenses. Only problem is combining this with critical hits. Maybe this support should reduce critical damage by 50% or something similar?

Moosi, I think you're highly overstating the amount of light damage one ele user may have. Sure, I may have 75% light, however, ele weapon users do not focus on one element. In fact, in some cases, ele hit, they have no control at all over said element.

I may agree that pen gems make PvE balance a bit....skewed; in pvp, you actually are rarely on top of a phys-crit build, which, inherently, have 5% or less mitigation towards said damage. However, I digress; pvp as it stands is exceedingly broken in many ways that have already been hashed repeatedly by many users in here.

While debating the fact that ele pen help ele weapon users a bit, even though I would say that it only applies to maybe 50-75% of an average ele users damage, look at the overall balance between ele weapons and their ele counterparts, spells.

Spells can shotgun, which allows for an exceedingly larger, then intended I believe, damage. Even with 25-30k dps personally, I feel that an FP witch with a quarter or half my dps, can and will be doing more dps then I do, simply because of shotgunning.

So while you are all debating whether or not pen gems affect the balance too badly, realize on the same token, that armor is already basically ignored in any pve situation it is found in, due to the large numbers output by most phys users, and that RT makes evasion mobs utterly useless. Seeing as how phys attacks and RT usually go hand in hand, phys effectively, in most cases, can potentially ignore any defense with the exception of ES on mobs; where as pen gems will only ignore or lower it by what, 45%?

Assuming the high ele damage weapon damage is balanced around the fact that it must deal with arbitrary resists that exist everywhere, it feels more like a band-aid, and the issue is biting the game in the ass, instead of balancing the resist system to be more in-line with the other defenses, they simply cranked up the damage.

In the end, one must discuss and determine what we are balancing ele damage vs; you can't really compare it to phys damage, as phys damage is exceedingly different then ele damage, both in terms of where it is derived from, mostly jewelry, akin to facebreakers, where as phys builds get it mostly from weapons; and how it is mitigated.

A large amount of the reason why ele damage gets so high is the availability of it, literally, everywhere, which is another reason I haven't seen addressed on here. Players with xxxk dps with ele have devoted a literal shit ton of item slots to aquiring said damage. We are talking rings, amulets, boots, gloves, weapon(s), offhand.

I know personally, when I was playing my build with around 25k dps and the pen gem, mouze, dealing less then half my damage, was still killing as fast if not faster then I was, with his ground slam. Which raises another point, due to aoe efficiency; Wytch, with his 115k dps, may do zomgdamage, but I bet someone with a quarter of his dps, with a better aoe, would clear a lot faster. He uses conc effect, which makes an already lackluster melee aoe, even smaller.

So while pen gems themselves may be an issue, you can't really take it without considering the overall scenario.

indeed epsi, but i took Amplify and Blast radius nodes to just even out the aoe reduction of concentrated effect so its now on just the standard cleave aoe, aoe isnt a problem here.

But the point is that i dont really think another support that enhances ele damage is necesary. ele damage is good as it is, its really quite overpowered as i have found out today if you use a penetration gem along with a ele weakness curse.

I think that the new curses and the old ele weakness curse are enough for the resist mobs.

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VictorDoom wrote:

indeed epsi, but i took Amplify and Blast radius nodes to just even out the aoe reduction of concentrated effect so its now on just the standard cleave aoe, so aoe isnt a problem here.

But the point is that i dont really think another support that enhances ele damage is necesary. ele damage is good as it is, its really quite overpowered as i have found out today if you use a penetration gem along with a ele weakness curse.

I think that the new curses and the old ele weakness curse are enough for the resist mobs.

I feel that the pen gems are an absolute requirement for pvp, but rather overkill in PvE. I still however feel pen gems as they exist now, are somewhat balanced and fit along the lines of the game. I honestly think they should behave more like I thought they did earlier, where they reduce the resists if they are above 0, but do nothing if the resists are below 0, basically making stacking all of the -res curses and this gem, a bit overpowered. It's nice to have pen gem as an alternative to the "MUSTHAVE" ele weakness curse. This was actually the first ladder I have played an ele user without using ele weakness; and I have grown quite attached to proji weak.