I never really understood this....
Judge's Insight converts the damage that you deal into holy damage. People often praise this because of the fact that holy damage ignores armor. Well, if that is the case, why is it that JI also tacks on 20% armor penetration?
If your damage ignores armor, then it wouldn't matter how much armor penetration you have, right?
Please, someone help me out here!
Bonus Question: Is it better to run (as a warrior) JI by yourself, or have a caster run it on you?
Judge's Insight and Armor?
anti_z3r0
Lewick
As I remember, from reading a thread by a developer from some time ago, holy damage doesn't ignore armor, per-se. It ignores the elemental barriers of armor. For example, some elementalist armor has protection against all elements. Holy damage ignores this particular aspect of the armor. The damage is then calculated against the regular armor rating based on the type of weapon you're using (slashing, blunt, piercing) and applies the formula at a 100% rate (which is normal for normal mobs) or 200% rate for undead mobs.
With Judge's Insight, the 20% armor piercing is applied to the formula as a reduction of the target's non-elemental armor (if they have 80 armor, it'll reduce 20% from that resulting in a final calculation of 80 - 16 or 64 armor) and then runs the calculation of damage based on that 64 armor (standard penetration formula.)
At least that's how I understood it.
As for your bonus question, would you rather have a monk using a spell slot on you for JI or leave that spell slot open for other skills? I personally would use JI as my own spell slot with my R/Mo, but it's entirely situational for me. I think it's actually a better skill for rangers than penetrating shot. It's cheap, it lasts for 20 seconds (24 for me because all my bows have 20% enchantment increases) and it provides the same level of penetration as penetrating shot. Unfortunately it takes time to cast and you have to reapply it many times.
In other words, it's really subjective as to whether you should cast it or whether someone else should cast it. Inevitably a healing monk probably would have less smiting skill than you would. Whoever has the highest smiting skill should probably be the one to cast it.
With Judge's Insight, the 20% armor piercing is applied to the formula as a reduction of the target's non-elemental armor (if they have 80 armor, it'll reduce 20% from that resulting in a final calculation of 80 - 16 or 64 armor) and then runs the calculation of damage based on that 64 armor (standard penetration formula.)
At least that's how I understood it.
As for your bonus question, would you rather have a monk using a spell slot on you for JI or leave that spell slot open for other skills? I personally would use JI as my own spell slot with my R/Mo, but it's entirely situational for me. I think it's actually a better skill for rangers than penetrating shot. It's cheap, it lasts for 20 seconds (24 for me because all my bows have 20% enchantment increases) and it provides the same level of penetration as penetrating shot. Unfortunately it takes time to cast and you have to reapply it many times.
In other words, it's really subjective as to whether you should cast it or whether someone else should cast it. Inevitably a healing monk probably would have less smiting skill than you would. Whoever has the highest smiting skill should probably be the one to cast it.