Finally nailed down the armor penetration mechanics

[Ræin]

I spent most of the day finishing up my tests and cleaning up the sheet and doing some fun theorycrafting, which I have a new page in the sheet dedicated to.

Sheet is here [docs.google.com]

To give a summary:

1. Lunatic (and grim reaper most likely) refund a percentage of the damage that is blocked by an enemies armor (Same thing as their weak points and resistant points). At rank 5, lunatic refunds 10% of that blocked damage. That translates to anything between 90% increased damage and 1.75% increased damage depending on how resistant that particular part is.

2. Burst Arts that say they ignore enemy armor prevent all of the damage being dealt by that attack from being reduced by more than 60%. There may be some variation on the exact number across ranks and different arts, but that is how the mechanic works. This does stack with lunatic and lowers the maximum reduction to 54%.

3. The training dummy has zero damage reduction. So in practice the numbers you see in game will be lower in 99% of scenarios.

4. Weapons that have multiple damage types (Short Blade, Buster Blade, Biting Edge, Heavy Moon) and weapons that hit over a large area (Variant Scythe) will benefit significantly more from both lunatic and BA penetration than weapons that deal a single type of damage.

[Tregarde]

Wow. Good job! And thanks for putting in all that work.

[Ræin]

Small edit: first section of the fight is uncertain. I am sure about the remainder of the fight.

Relatively minor update, the final boss, story mode Odin, untested for assault mission yet is entirely immune to any kind of armor penetration. Both Lunatic and burst arts with pen behaved as if there was no penetration attached to them. This seems to be the case in all 3 phases, but honestly I don't see this as a major factor in evaluating armor penetration's usefulness. If you are really focused on max dps to the final boss, make sure you take a different AT and BAs.

[RexEviL]

Originally posted by Rein:

Relatively minor update, the final boss, story mode Odin, untested for assault mission yet is entirely immune to any kind of armor penetration. Both Lunatic and burst arts with pen behaved as if there was no penetration attached to them. This seems to be the case in all 3 phases, but honestly I don't see this as a major factor in evaluating armor penetration's usefulness. If you are really focused on max dps to the final boss, make sure you take a different AT and BAs.

Thats interesting I remember nemesis working. Until it devours.

[Ræin]

Originally posted by RexEviL:

Originally posted by Rein:

Relatively minor update, the final boss, story mode Odin, untested for assault mission yet is entirely immune to any kind of armor penetration. Both Lunatic and burst arts with pen behaved as if there was no penetration attached to them. This seems to be the case in all 3 phases, but honestly I don't see this as a major factor in evaluating armor penetration's usefulness. If you are really focused on max dps to the final boss, make sure you take a different AT and BAs.

Thats interesting I remember nemesis working. Until it devours.

I was using twilight moon, based on the data when the armor penetration is working on burst arts it is capped at a 60% reduction, a blue number showed for attacks against rear legs. Blue numbers are generally around the 70+% area. The BA itself still works and does damage, but specifically its ability to avoid reduction seems to be removed. This also did happen around the time the devour started so it is possible that there were wierd interactions.

That being said, I didnt plan on testing when I went into the fight and I just happened to notice it. That means I didnt record enough numbers to get the exact reductions involved. Unfortunately we can't repeat that fight but I will note down that I may be off on the first phase.