How armor piercing works

[LionEddy]

Hi all,

Can someone explain me how AP works? If for exemple I have one unit wit 0 armor and another with 100 (with same defense value) do they get the exact same damage from an AP source?

In other words does AP completely negate all armor? If yes armor seems a very bad investment to me. The majority of late game units has AP.

[Elitewrecker PT]

"In other words does AP completely negate all armor?"
Yes
BUt it's affected by physical resistance and ward save.

[Eldi]

Not all units have high AP.
Armour is blocking a lot of non AP too don't forget.

[Ashardalon]

ap damage is also always only a portion of the damage so your armor will still be fully functional for the non ap portion of the damage

[CrUsHeR]

Move your mouse over the unit's damage numbers.

The tooltip shows the exact portion of armor-piercing vs. regular damage (and other effects)


So the unit summary where it lists "Armour-Piercing" as a property is kind of misleading. Units only have a certain portion of AP damage, even those where this doesn't show up in the summary.

[Conflagration]

The higher your armour, the less non-AP damage will do up until about 200 armour when non-AP basically won't affect at all. AP is common, but the only units that have entirely AP attacks are ghosts. Against them, armour is indeed functionally useless and only Ward Save will negate their damage. Elsewhile, at the very least large chunks of damage can be resisted.

[Lunos]

Armor Piercing ignores all armor. Armor still has a place because all units do a combination of armor piercing and non armor piercing damage. If you mouse over the damage stat you can see the exact breakdown. So having armor is still better than not having any regardless of what you are fighting. Armour piercing may be more common in the late game but that doesn't mean that every unit you fight will have it. Heavily armored units are still very much needed as a front line unit and for soaking up ranged missile fire.

[CrUsHeR]

Originally posted by Obsidian:

The higher your armour, the less non-AP damage will do up until about 200 armour when non-AP basically won't affect at all. AP is common, but the only units that have entirely AP attacks are ghosts. Against them, armour is indeed functionally useless and only Ward Save will negate their damage. Elsewhile, at the very least large chunks of damage can be resisted.

Not sure what you mean with "ghosts"?


> If a unit has Magical Attacks, it ignores Physical Resistance.

> Magical Attacks are still reduced by Armor and Ward Save.

> Magic Resistance has been changed to Spell Resistance in WH3, so this doesn't reduce damage from Magical Attacks anymore.


Perhaps you are mixing this up with Flaming Attacks? These are only reduced by Fire Resistance and Ward Save. That's why Tzeentch is so powerful, with the units having both Magical and Flaming attacks (combined with Warpflame and Kindleflame)

[Ashardalon]

he means wraiths
https://twwstats.com/unitscards?units=f%3D0%26k%3Dwh_main_vmp_inf_cairn_wraiths%26m%26r%3D0%26v%3D117993925529018569&units=f%3D0%26k%3Dwh_main_vmp_cav_hexwraiths%26m%26r%3D0%26v%3D117993925529018569
100% of their damage is ap
meanwhile fire attacks arnt ap, its just normal damage that can be both ap or not, with fire vulnerability and resistance modifying it
main trait of fire damage is that it reduces regen
nothing about tzeentch is that powerful, its all in your head

[CrUsHeR]

Originally posted by Ashardalon:

meanwhile fire attacks arnt ap, its just normal damage that can be both ap or not, with fire vulnerability and resistance modifying it
main trait of fire damage is that it reduces regen
nothing about tzeentch is that powerful, its all in your head

https://totalwarwarhammer.fandom.com/wiki/Flaming_attacks

"This type of damage can only be reduced with Fire resistance or ward save. "

[Ashardalon]

its still not pure ap
and you still need it to be magical to get past physical resist
thats just bad wording in the wiki

[Aleera]

Originally posted by CrUsHeR:

https://totalwarwarhammer.fandom.com/wiki/Flaming_attacks

"This type of damage can only be reduced with Fire resistance or ward save. "

The wiki is wrong on occasion.

Flame damage does not convert the damage to ap. It's merely a contact effect, like poison, sundering, wailing, frostbite.

With flame reducing healing and being subject to fire resistance and weakness modifiers.

[Aleera]

Originally posted by LionEddy:

Hi all,

Can someone explain me how AP works? If for exemple I have one unit wit 0 armor and another with 100 (with same defense value) do they get the exact same damage from an AP source?

In other words does AP completely negate all armor? If yes armor seems a very bad investment to me. The majority of late game units has AP.

Yes, AP attacks fully ignore armour. Every unit ingame has some armor piercing in their weapon. The only unit's that have full armor piercing are ghostly unit's. Which are quite rare, with only really appearing in 2 factions.

Armour in a easy explanation works like this.
You take between half to the max value of your armour of any non ap damage source. Down to a minimum of 1. Damage cannot be reduced to anything lower then 1.

So a unit with 20 armour, will negate between 10% to 20% of non ap damage.
A unit with 50 armour will negate between 25% to 50%.
A unit of 100 will negate between 50% to 100%
A unit of 150 between 75% to 100%
A unit with 200 armour will negate 100% of non ap damage.

Again, non ap damage cannot be reduced below 1.

Even a unit with 200 armour and 90% wardsave (the max value) will still take 1 damage from any attack that connects.

Hope I explained it for you.

[Powercow]

For completion's sake, certain spells can also be 100% armor piercing, or some can have no armor piercing at all. But spells are also affected by spell resistance, and missile spells (like Fireball) and bombardment (like Searing Doom) spells are also reduced by missile resistance.

[LionEddy]

Thanks all for the explanations. I love WH:TW but I couldn't wrap my head around some of the mechanics.

Maybe one more question if I may. I was wondering about the importance of model counts in each unit. I know about hitbox size and mass but does the actual number of models have any other importance except hitbox size and mass?

A unit with exact same stats would be better with more models or less?

[Sera]

feel free to add me, I have 2k hours in wh2 and 3k in wh3. I will help If I can !