What attacks ignore Kinetic Armour?

I've been soloing outside Ventari's Refuge to train pets with an Ele/Ranger. I use Stone Daggers, Eruption (nor practically broken since the AI update as enemies no longer hang around to get blinded. Expensive DOT), Earthquake, Kinetic Armour, Earth Attunement, Troll Ungent, and the two Pet spells to have it and ressurect it. With Kinetic Armour providing +76ish AL, damage from enemies drops like from 20-30 to 6-8. But when they do a specific attak like Power Shot or one of their warrior attacks, they do 20-30 damage. It seems as though the bonus damage for the skill negates the AL bonus from Kinetic Armour.

Can anyone explain how damage and Kinetic Armour works?

Ah, the wonders of the damage system...

Armour only applies to the base part of the damage. The bonus is armour ignoring. This is true of ANY armour, not just KA. For example, the bull in pre-searing (designed as a target for mesmers) has low health but super-high armour, hits against himtend to do 1-2 damage. If you hit him with a Power Shot though, you see that it is your bonus+1-2.

Is it silly? Yes it is. It means that single bonuses like Eviscerate are great when your base damage makes up much of the hit, but vs higher AL you are better off hitting more often with bonus damage that ignores the AL boost (Cleave, for example) In general then, vs high AL opponents you want to spam attacks with a damage bonus as much as possible.

Try it; Take a pet out for example, a low level pet, but with high beast mastery. Attack a level 10 minotaur or something, and watch little "-3" and "-4" pop up. Then hit your ferocious Strike, and it hits for 30+, since it is the bonus, unmodified, plus the 3 or 4 damage. They surely have AL, but it is ignored for this calculation.

well warriors get the benefit of having a % of armor prenetation for each point in strength while using attack skills wich might cause em to hit you higher

Oh, right. So all bonus damage is armour ignoring. Yes, silly's an adequate description! Still now I know that I can work with it. Thanks.

BTW - what about damage reduction? Presumably only AL armour doesn't apply to bonus damage, but all other damage reductions do. eg. A Fire Wand (10-18)+Conjure Flame (13) against a foe with Asbestos Breastplate (+30 AL to fire) recieves the full 13 damage from the Conjure Flame, but a Mantra of Flame reduces all the damage, Wand and Conjured Flame?

I don't know exactly how all the effects work - for example, I know that the bonus fire damage from Ignite Arrows/Kindle arrows IS affected by AL. But the damage bonus intrinsic to an attack isn't. I would guess in fact that your Conjure Flame is also affected by AL, since it isn't a bonus as part of an attack skill.

Damage reduction (Shielding hands, for example) does affect the extra damage from an attack skill.

So you'd guess added physical damage bypasses AL, but added or extra elemental damage doesn't? That's why I'm seeing it on Powershots and Sword Chops. I'll go hang around some Charr and their flaming arrows and see if I can confirm this

Well, actually, I'd guess that damage bonuses from attack skills bypass AL. I think that bonus damage that is elemental or physical is affected by AL, but to test that you'd need to check the effect of Read the Wind or Favourable Winds - they both add to the arrow damage without being attack skills, and they should add physical damage. If they are affected by AL then it is simply that the bonus damage from an attack skill bypasses.