Armor penentration in Judge's insight obsolete?

I have a question about the skill "judge's insight". In the description, it says that "target ally's attacks deal holy damage and have +20% armor penetration".

If I look up 'holy damage' in your online glossary, this means "damage that ignores armor". What then, is the 20% armor penetration necessary, if the the armor is negated anyway (because it is "holy")?

Judge's Insight is its own dmg; so it would be -(<your dmg>) -(<judge's Insight>) -(<any other type of +dmg with an enchantment>)

its giving you armor pen for your weapons attack.

on your screen it looks like its bundled together; but on the receving end it could look like... -44(barrage) -16(judges insight) -26(indesary arrows)

Holy damage does not always ignore armour; generally speaking, holy spell damage does, holy weapon damage does not.

Ok. This would make sense then, but how then is the damage rate of judges's insight defined? Because the skill itself will not show you how much damage it will inflict.

I do understand that holy damage emanating from a skill will be different that "light damage" from a weapon. But holy damage as such is defined in the official online Guild Wars glossary as "damage that ignores armor". And this skill clearly spells out that the damage dealt by target allies is "holy", thus following the glossaries description it would have to ignore armor (with the given factor that the holy damage is directly emanating from a skill). Therefore, armor penetration would make no sense.

Well, it doesn't. What it means is that warriors get no bonus armor vs. physical and rangers get no bonus armor vs. elemental since it's neither of them. And then you get armor penetration on top of it.

I see the added value of holy damage, but then Guild Wars should change its online official description of 'holy damage'. That is what triggered this whole discussion for me in the first place.

What is more confusing, is that if you take for example the skill 'symbol of wrath', it will deal exactly the damage that the skill says it does, thereby clearly showing it is negating armor.

I think, in order to fulfill the effects as has been posted by players so far of judges insight, GW should change the skill description to "target ally's attacks deal LIGHT damage and have +20% armor penetration. That would make more sense. Holy damage then deals damage that negates armor (such as symbol of wrath), and light damage ignores the effects of armor vs physical or armor vs elemental damage.

On the other hand, this would have a NEGATIVE effect on spellcasters who use conjure spells (such as conjure flame), and who need their elemental damage weapon (such as a fiery axe) in order to deal extra damage. If the fiery axe suddenly deals light damage , you don't strike for additional damage if you've just called up 'conjure flame'.

Don't forget you also get the added benefit of 2x damage against the undead, which can come in handy wherever they appear.

What all of you are thinkin, is that the spell read like so:
Judge's Insight - Enchantment Spell
For 8-18 seconds, attack damage dealt by target allies attacks is holy damage and have +20% armor penetration.

In this case instead of deals it *is* holy damage and the +20% armor has no point. But this would be overpowerful since you could deal exactly the numbers your skill attacks claim you can actually deal. Against undead and tormentor/wearing Necromancers you could deal double that total!

The actual description is this :
Judge's Insight - Enchantment Spell
For 8-18 seconds, target ally's attacks deal Holy damage and have +20% armor penetration.


The difference?

If it deals holy damage than it just changes the type(like fire, cold or lightning just like the ranger spirit Winter does to all damage).

Unlike actual holy spells it will not automatically penetrate armor because it is part of an attack and it deal the subtype 'holy' and *is* not holy in itself.

This spell simply gives you the ability to deal double damage to undead and Tormentor-armor wearing Necromancers and makes your attack penetrate by 20% regardless of creature-type, weaknesses or strengthd against it.

i played most of this game in a monk-warrior pair group with my bro and i honestly did not really see any noticeable difference between using JI and not using JI on my attacks.

I think this is a very nice try at an explanation. And I'm sure the makers of GW have meant it this way. However, how do you then explain, with your emphasis on the word 'deals', the description of the following skill:

Smite
Attack. This attack deals (Min: 10 - Max: 55) Holy damage. If attacking, your target takes an additional (Min: 10 - Max: 35) Holy damage.

I can assure you that this the damage dealt by this skill negates armor. And again, noone seems to notice that 'holy damage negates armor' according to GW, whichever way you want to turn the words. There is no 'subtype' of holy damage in the online manual (glossary) of GW. The only subtype I can think of is LIGHT damage (as included in some holy smiting rods): that would make sense. Light damage is damage dealt by most smiting rods, which has the positive effect of holy damage, namely that it does double damage against the undead, and there is no special armor against it (unlike elemental or physical damage); however it does NOT negate armor.

Another good reason to clarify this is because this skill, if i understand the above comments correctly, is actually quite negative to your fellow spellcasters who uses a conjure spell: but it is absolutely not clear from the description that there could be a negative side effect to this skill (most people will just go "wow, holy damage, that MUST be good).

It's a skill with a misleading description. Welcome to Guild Wars.

Game mechanics guide:
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/content...nics-id674.php

I haven't touched the GW online manual in forever. It's incorrect on a few counts. Spells with holy damage have an inherent "ignore armor" effect, so they deal 100% of damage. Judge's Insight, which doesn't deal damage in and of itself, just turns weapon damage into Holy damage, which is still affected by armor. Same with Light-damage weapons, which are essentially Holy damage; damage through Holy weapons is affected by armor, while damage through Holy attacks aren't.

I've tried Judge's Insight with my beast master build and while I did notice some +damage, I feel Weaken Armor adds more than Judge's Insight. I am not 100% sure but I "feel" like my pet does more damage with Weaken Armor. I did this before they show Pet's damage and that's why I said I "feel" like. Maybe it's about the same since both has -20 penetration.

I guess Judge's Insight main purpose is to cut through warrior's physical defense. My pet can only do physical damage and it does pathetic damage on warriors. Judge's Insight should improve that a lot since it's Holy damage and doesn't suffer from warrior's special +defense against physical damage on his armor set, but my pet still suffers from warrior's base +80 armor and his +damage absorption right?

I guess my point is that Judge's Insight doesn't add that much damage if your pet targets caster. You may find Weaken Armor adds more.

The good thing about JI is that you can cast it on any ally and the recharge is only 10s.

Weaken Armor and Judge's Insight don't have the same penetration. WA reduces armor by 20 AL, while JI reduces it by 20%. 20% of your target's armor is usually going to be less than 20 AL.

I disagree. My PvP warrior monk uses that skill as a prime damage dealing skill and my damage normally skyrockets against anything not a warrior.

There are also "holy", "Shadow" and "Chaos" mage weapons, and they all don't ignore armor. Just say ALL weapon attacks have to fight against armor except Illusionary Weaponry.

Just wondering ...since we're on the topic of penetration....how do penetrating shot and judge's insight stack...40% of AL or 20% off and then another 20% off

There are no weapons dealing holy or shadow damage, actually. They deal "light" and "dark" damage. The mesmer weapons do deal chaos damage, but the spells no longer describe themselves that way, so there's no inconsistency there either.

Necros wearing Necrotic/Tormentors don't suffer double damage vs Holy spells. Someone here has tested this and found that these armors suffer an additional 5 points of damage per piece of armor.

Yeah Dragonblood is right u would just be hitting 20 more damage against those necros if they in full necrotic or tormentors belive me i have suffered the bad consequences of tormentors lol.