Piercing vs Plain

If I recall correctly, the way piercing works is if the monster's dmg reduction exceeds your damage bonus, then the piercing will
deal out base damage, ignoring your damage bonus and the monster's damage reduction.

If your Damage Bonus exceeds the monster's DR, then your DB is weighed against the monster's DR.

A few quick scenarios (all using plain flak 4 and piercing 6):

Plain flak 4 base dmg = 110*1.4 = 154
Piercing flak 6 base dmg 110*1.3 = 143

1) Wave 2, lowest player level 15. (monster DR 27.125)

flak 4: 154*1+(80 - 27.125)/200)) = 194.7
piercing 6: 143*1+(80-27.125)/200)) = 180.8

2) Wave 10, lowest player level 15. (monster DR 83.25)

flak 4: 154*1+(80 - 83.25)/200)) = 152 dmg
piercing 6: 143*1+(80-83.25)/200)) = 143 (i.e. base damage since monster DR is higher than your DB)

3) Wave 16, lowest player level 15. (monster DR = 125.125)

flak 4: 154*1+(80 - 125.125)/200)) = 119.25
piercing 6: = 143

This table shows the monster's Damage Reduction depending on wave and player level. When monster DR exceeds 80 (which I put in bold), then the piercing "kicks in" (assuming your DB is 80)

If your DB is below 80, then just look for where your DB is on the graph and that's where piercing kicks in for you.

What all this means, if you don't care for the math stuff, is in most cases:

1. A plain + wep gives you an edge in the early waves.

2. In the middle waves, piercing and plain are about equal.

3. In the later waves, piercing has a slight edge as long as a low level player is still alive. If all the low level players die, then piercing gives you a very big advantage.

In the case of 3, say for example that wave 16 starts and the lowest level player is level 15. This means
monster DR is 125.125. But then, all the low level players die and now the lowest level person is level 75. The monster Damage reduction instantly changes to 177.625.

If we plug this DR into the dmg equation here's what happens with a flak 4.

Lowest player level 15: 154*1+(80 - 125.125)/200)) = 119.25 (8 shots to kill a titan)

Lowest player level 75: 154*1+(80-177.625)/200 )) = 78.825 (12 shots to kill a titan)

Conversely, a piercing 6 flak on wave 16 will always do 143 dmg (7 shots to kill a titan) regardless of what players/levels are still alive.

If you're a low level player without a lot a DB, then peircing will do more damage than plain damage weapon alot more of the time. So, peircing is everyone's friend

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lol...

320 do you ever get a chance to play after Druid changes stuff?

This is actually a very good topic to create. There should be a DruidsRPG Wiki. That would own.

Continuum wrote:

lol...

320 do you ever get a chance to play after Druid changes stuff?

lol... bot got me curious because this topic of piercing vs plain came up before. So I plugged the equation into excel and then used the alright Edit > Fill... command.

Fro13 wrote:

If you're a low level player without a lot a DB, then peircing will do more damage than plain damage weapon alot more of the time. So, peircing is everyone's friend .

Yeah, really all you have to do is look at the monster's DR on that table and compare it to your own DB. If the monster's DR is higher than your DB, then piercing is "on". I bolded the ~80 figures since most people interested in this stuff would have max DB. But the savvy up-and-comers should realize that piercing is good while they're filling out their stats.