Whats so good about 10/10 armour penetration on weapon?

Re-tested with input from players on both sides. It seems that the vamp damage does indeed add on, and is completely unstoppable (including absorption). It does NOT show from the attacking player's side. In other words the damage number you see float up is only the base damage, and you are doing another 5 that you don't see.

Also, it is unaffected by Aura of the Lich (does not do half damage like everything else).

Err? For the purposes of comparing its effectiveness to something else, it does equal 1 every 10. You go by expected values, not by outlying possibilities like "well it could theoretically go off every time".

That's because it's life stealing, not damage.

You can't really compare the effectiveness of something if it's in the value of percentage chances against something else that's a constant. Which is what makes the vampiric a better mod for 'damage' as sundering isn't reliable to do that.

Well you have to use SOME method to compare them, since you have one slot in your bow which can take one OR the other. What would you suggest one do in making this decision, if not use the expected values?

Isn't that exactly what the guy you were responding to was saying?

Actually, its NOT 10% increased damage. Its Ignores 10 armor on the target when it happens. I suggest you go ahead and do your 00b3r calculations with a little bit of English comprehension

It can be useful if you are using a spike axe. Why?
-I dont care about sustained dmg over time, statistically, if I use the sundering, it will do around the same dmg.I just want the chance that it happens on a spike.
-There is the POTENTIAL to do it close together. Its not 1 every 10 hits, its a 1 in 10 chance to occur every hit.

I agree completly with qwe4rty. If we are talking DPS then lets go Vampiric. (using a skill like Battle Rage takes full advantage of the added damage)

When it comes to spiking massive damage is everything. The extra penetration, though activated only rarely, is still quite helpfull.

IMO opinion though 'Furious' is the best mod. No need to bring frenzy for me thanks a lot.

Any mods is good in the game. But i just don't get why people would label certain weapons with 10/10 armour penetration the best weapon in the game.

Allllright.

1) Sekkira can't do math, even if it is wrong math. .1*42 = 4.2.

2) For purposes of DPS Calculations, saying it goes off every ten hits is the way to compare it to vampiric.

3) 10% sundering even on 3 hits in a row is not going to do much extra damage. Even when spiking, I would prefer +20 damage over 4 hits as opposed to the chance to do some extra damage.

And here I recall it being referred to as a single hit of 10% armour penetration which is +4.6 damage to 60AL.

Yes yes, but I still stick firm to saying you can't accurately predict DPS on an item which has a chance to do a varible amount of damage. Which is what this is all about, isn't it?

I suppose I should now change my stance to start arguing with you so I am suddenly in favor of the sundering mod?

Um, if we're talking over, say 100 hits or more, then yes, you can predict it pretty well. If we're talking over like 5, then you can still predict it, but the results will have a large standard deviation.

As to your last part.... um.... what? As you will notice, only the first point was directed at you.

Excuse me if I sound all philosophical here:

Small question about mods, does anyone run watchful spirit or mending when wielding vampiric? I do, but it doesn't seem like an effective way, maybe I should just unequip? It seems kind of annoying to unequip and reequip.

a critical hit is a 10% penetration. sundering is just an increase of critical hits. imagine that it said increases chance for critical hit instead of 10% penetration. it means the same thing but worded differently.

btw its not that sundering has 10% chance of striking. i mean a 10% increase to your criticals would be worth it, BUT sundering only triggers with SKILLS. which mean all those attacks you are doing does absolutly nothing different. don't get me wrong i have used and tested it. when it does trigger it is great (nailed some 60 al class with a 158 dmg final strike b/c of sundering).

since it only triggers with skills it makes this mod horrible. since most wars go with some form of IAS the zealous mod is THE best mod for any warrior.

under IAS you attack 1 per seconds with sword or axe. 3 pips of energy is 1 energy regain per second. under zealous you have 1 pip of energy regen + 1 energy per seconds (3 pips of energy regen) you will have effectively 4 pips of energy regen.you just doubled your energy regen w/o using any skills or attribute points.

rangers are very nasty with the zealous mod as well. their expertise reduces the cost of skills so much that they never really cost over 7 or 8. haven't done the math on this since GwG calculator on speed is crap. if anyone know rate of bow attacks with and w/o IAS let me know.

vampiric i still don't like. the dmg is life stealing so it does not show up and cannot be prevented (as you should notice that shadow dmg and life lose cannot be reduced except by sheilding hands). the -1 hp pip = 2 dmg per second. under IAS you will net 1 hp gain (sword or axe 3). if you plan on getting hp from vampiric don't. w/o any IAS you will accually be losing life. the dmg it does is nice. take in account for 10 hits (enough to charge final thrust) under a 3 vampiric would be an extra 30 dmg. hammer i just don't know about. even under IAS its so slow it really doesn't matter.

bows on the other hand have access to barrage and quick shot. rangers can take full advantage of this mod. the normal dual>qs>savage will add another 20 dmg to the chain. now take 8 man ranger spike you'll get an extra 160 dmg that cannot be stopped as long as the ranger connects with arrow. under fw and rtw only evade or block skills are going to save you.

I did alittle math that is COMPLETLY BASED ON IF THE CHANCES WORKS OUT PERFECTLY. That is, 1 sundering hit per 10 hits. It compares Vampiric and Sundering.

A 5/-1 Vamp over 10 hits is going to take 50 Health from them - that does not change and its not varible - that 5 dmg a hit is going to happen no matter their Armor or what spells their using.

For sundering I picked the most common setup - 80 AL armor to start with (Warriors armor). Remember from 80 AL to 70 AL there is a gain of 13% damage on any given hit (71% to 84% damage done).

To make that extra 50 health decrease like Vamp gives automatically, you would have to be hitting on average of atleast ~270 dmg a hit on their 80 AL armor. (270 at 71% damage comes to about 319.4 dmg on a sundering hit - that is at 84% damage).

The percent increase in 10 AL increments goes down as the AL goes up (60 AL going down to 50 AL is a 19% increase in dmg as an example whereas 80 to 70 is a 13% increase) - making Sundering more useful the LOWER the starting AL.

But (and again..this is GIVEN THE 1 IN 10 HITS) Sundering is only going to be as effective as vamp when your doing in access of 200 dmg a hit (260 in my example because of higher AL) - Which...I dont think you'll see your toon averaging at 200+ dmg a hit..He'd be a killing machine 2-hit killing most casters and you wouldn't need sundering anyway.

Even if it hit 2-3 times in the 10 hit span, you'd still have to be averaging pretty high to get close to the 50 dmg vamp gives no questions asked.

So in short:
Vamp in a 10 hit span will give 50 health decrease (dont want to call it damage and anger someone)

For sundering to give that same health decrease you'd have to be averaging at 200+ dmg a hit if it happened 1 in 10 hits. Sundering is only useful if you get lucky and get multiple sundering shots in that 10 hit period..and even then - Vamp still might beat it and is MUCH more consistent.

Also..Vamp ignores damage reduction..Sundering cant.

(BTW - Thats for a 5/-1 vamp of course. I think this is the reason melee weapon vamp mods dont go all the way to 5/-1 = just so sundering is somewhat useful).

There is nothing good about it.

pretty much. 10% only triggers on skills. vampiric and zealous trigger all the time. furious might be 10% but it triggers on any attack.

No, what this is all about is comparing its effectiveness to other mods, and to do that you use the expected damage. There's no point in your calling down whoever it was for considering it in these terms. I'll ask again, if not that, then just what is it you plan to do to compare them? Or I guess your position is that it doesn't do any DPS since we can't accurately predict it.

You can't. It's unreliable and therefore not worth it.

What do you mean you can't compare them? This is an issue of what to do when given this choice which is a part of your character creation. So what do you do when you get to the weapon customization screen? Your brain explodes because there is no way to make this decision?

One minor strength rune > 10/10 sunder...

hm...i need to get my head on straight. :P i read this thread when at around 2 AM in the morning....forgive me.

if it works like that, then it's completely different.

You can compare any two objects in the world, in many cases via mathamatics. The fact that something can trigger 10% of the time means that on average you will have it trigger once every ten hits. Sometimes it may trigger ten times in ten hits. Sometimes it may trigger zero times in ten hits. If I flip a coin, their is a 50% chance that it will be heads. On average, one out of two flips will always be heads. This is exactly the same kind of comparison

Of course, since it will only trigger on skills, you now have to say it will trigger once every ten attack skill uses.

No thanks, I'll keep my zealous.

Similar thing with furious. Whether it triggers off of attack skills or any hit, it is unreliable. When I put a mod on my weapons, and when I put a skill on my bar, I should be in control of when it triggers, and I should be able to say "yes, when I *insert action here* this mod or this effect will trigger/happen". If you could activate the sundering mod (say, every 10 seconds of 100 seconds) it migh have a use, because you could activate it immediatly before an axe/hammer/sword spike. But you cannot.

Except for the fact it sells pretty well.

My point is, you can calculate its average damage over time with mathamatics, but even that is not accurate enough to predict what will happen in actual practice, hence it's not worth using due to its overall low average extra damage output and even that is not something you can rely on to be true.

The only reason why I like a furious mod is because of adrenaline skills possibly having a faster time to charge which doesn't really matter in the long run because when it does charge, I switch over to vampiric for extra effect.

10% armor penetration with a 10% chance is the same thing as 1% armor penetration 100% chance.

Sure if you only take 10 trials you may have 0-5 armor penetration attacks, but with a large enough sample size 10/10 gives you 1% armor penetration.

Thus 1% armor penetration can be accurately used to describe 10/10 sunder mod's effects. We all know that 1 point in strength is 1% armor penetration 100% chance and how little extra damage that yields. In conclusion 10/10 sunder is useless.

10% chance for 200% adrenaline is the same thing as 20% extra adrenaline 100% chance and thus obviously more useful than sunder.

qwerty: Your argument is sunder is good for the chance to spike damage.

What is the chance that two hits will consecutively do armor penetration? 10% x 10% = 1%

What is the chance that three hits will conseuctively do armor penetration? 10% x 10% x 10% = 0.1%

So you're aiming for that chance<=1% to spike a minimal amount of extra damage? You're going to need a better argument for the sunder mod.

Nobody ever said you can predict precisely how much damage that mod is going to put out, you're arguing against a void. This discussion is about COMPARING the different mods you can put on your weapon, and to do that you use expected value. Yes, the sundering turns out not to be worth it, but that is not because the damage output cannot be exactly predicted, it's just because it sucks. You telling people not to use expected value when comparing it to other mods is completely ridiculous, because it gives us no way to know which mod we should use.

I mean what are you saying, if the sundering gave triple damage with 10% probability, we shouldn't use it because it's unreliable? No, that's stupid, because on AVERAGE it would give out way more damage than a vampiric. So now if we have a case that's more even, how would we make a decision?

Oh that's right, we would look at the EXPECTED VALUE.

You just used +EV as a term . . .

Sekkira, we can use numbers to compare sundering, because last time I checked, sundering mod != naked singularity.

I'm not telling people not to use the expected value or more precisely, theoretical value to compare to other mods. I'm saying that because it's theoretical value is miniscule in comparison to other mods ALONG with the fact that that value is theoretical and not solid makes it completely not worth it.

Err, then what was this little exchange all about? This is the whole reason I started arguing with you in the first place:

He's stating a comparitive opinion (exactly the same as your final opinion) that vamp is better than sundering by comparing it to an assumption that the sundering goes off 1 in 10. You agree with his conclusion, but tell him NOT to make comparisons to a 1 in 10. Basically, you ARE telling people not to use expected or theoretical value for comparisons.

I think if the expected value were more than vampiric, nobody would care about its unreliability and they would go ahead and use it. In fact, as somebody mentioned, the variability of the damage is a bonus, because it makes spikes harder for the healers to predict and deal with, whereas in terms of damage over the long term it is pretty much identical to something more consistent (basic probability).

Ok, so 10/10 sundering is trash, and only noobs pay a ton for it because they think it is good. Any arguments? None? Ok good. We're done, I think. Just drop it.

I think we're talking about it in terms of how the weapon mod actually performs, not how much gold you can get for it from some scrub in LA dis 1.

Sundering can be better than vampiric or zealous if:

a. you spend a lot of time casting (for example, ranger with traps & nature rituals), or

b. you're not in the habit of equipping vamp/zealous only while attacking

Most of the numbers I've seen simply measure DPS or energy gain while attacking. But it would be more practical to see results for various builds and playstyles, taking into account the loss of H or E during casting or idle times. There's a subtle penalty for even that measely -1 H degen, whether it be the waste of a skill slot for Mending or a few points of your monk's energy pool. You'd be surprised how many monks (myself included) have that silly nervous habit of healing that trivial little sliver of health on a vamp-equipper just before a battle

The thing is, if you are going to be casting or trapping, you tend to switch out to an energy+ item, be that a staff or offhand and wand. Most people know to carry a secondary weapon that does not have a vampiric mod on it, due to the pre-battle wait time and for down times between fights. As to zealous, if you are not attacking, you do not have it equiped for the same reasons as vampiric. If the battle is over, you need not worry about energy, and if the battle has yet to begin, I would hope you did not need to worry about enegy.

Some folks are not in the habit of unequiping them, it is true, but that is the kind of thing that they need to start doing. Even if you switch to an empty slot, you lose the life/energy drain. Sundering will still only trigger off of a hit, is worse than vampiric or zealous in combat situations, and has no effect when not in combat. Add to that the fact of the other mods having no effect when not in combat (due to unequiping), and we see that sundering is still a worse mod.

You can swap out the weapon while trapping and etc. as well. And saying that there are advantages because some people don't play right (monks being wasteful with healing, or not swapping out the weapon when out of combat) is like saying carrying a rez is useless if you don't rez people when they die. You know better, so play right, and choose the item that works better when played right

I still don't understand how people can be coming up with all these "computations" to prove how often a 10/10 weapon will hit. Someone else mentioned it, but apparently it bears repeating:

A 10% chance is 10% every time it is checked. It's not .01% over 100 hits (or whatever convoluted math you used to validate your figures). If you flip a coin, it's 50% chance of landing on heads. The next time you flip the coin, it's STILL 50%, because the coin doesn't care (or know) what it's previous toss was. It has no bearing on what WILL happen in the future. Over time, the coin flips will "probably" maintain a 50% - but it's never certain, because each flip stands on it's own.

The game triggers an event, if the sundering mod can be applied. It "rolls" a random # between 1 and 100, and if it "rolls" any number between 1 and 10, the mod is applied. It doesn't check what happened the last time it ran the check. If the mod fails to trigger three times in a row, the game doesn't apply any modifications to it's check to increase the chances. Conversely, if it "hits" three times in a row, it doesn't care either. It simply does it's check, and moves along. Yes, I know this is simplified, but it's how it works.

If you don't understand the math don't call it convoluted.

You're right, each trial is independent of all previous trials. 10% per hit is 10% per hit, regardless of what happened before hand.

However sunder works by having a 10% chance to do 10% extra damage. That is essentially the same as 1% extra damage (10% x 10% = 1%).

Let's use another example. Let's say you have 10% to do 100 extra damage per hit. Out of every 10 hits (in a large enough sample size) you will do 100 extra damage. 100 extra damage per 10 hits is the same as saying 10 extra damage per 1 hit, it's merely reducing ratios.

10% chance x 10% armor penetration = 100% chance x 1% armor penetration = 1% chance x 100% armor penetration

Now you'll never be able to 1% or 100% armor penetration on a single attack, but across a gazillion hits 10/10 sunder mod will average out to 1% armor penetration per hit and thus can be used to determine a mod's effectiveness (judging effectiveness/hit).

throw out all the garbage you have seen trying to calculate dmg or how often it will occur. all of the calculations and probiblity is not the point. the point is that sundering can only trigger on SKILLS. it is not 10% chance on every attack you do.

warriors cannot spam attack skills.

rangers can use it for barrage or qs but that's about it.

casters will NEVER need this mod because it only affects attack SKILLS not spells.

now for instance a touch ranger would be awsome with this but since the touch skills ignore armor anyways its not needed.

there are better mods out there and most of the time adding the 10% dmg isn't going to be a game swinger.

the fact that it only triggers on SKILLS makes the mod horrible and unusable. well i shouldn't say unusable people still use the paladin build for some reason.

but warriors have 1% arm pen on every str attribute point.. so if a warr has 10 str.. that means the warr will fix amount of 10% pen? and plus sundering mod it will be 10%(fixed) + 10%(10%chance) ???

I was agreeing with you, I just pointed out some flaws. I'm being pedantic.

No, he said right there that "You are doing more damage in 1 in every 10 hits", which signifies that sundering triggers every 10 hits, which it doesn't. I was merely pointing that out.

I'm sure it's quite possibly it would be used a great deal more if this was the case. Personally, I prefer not to put faith in probability, no matter what the odds.