Talk:Armor penetration

Your math is bad, Ollj. No matter what someone's AL is, if they increase it by 40 (assuming the damage dealer is level 20 for spells and has 12 in the attribute for weapons), the damage received will be halved. --Fyren 04:51, 13 Aug 2005 (EST)

my math is from [here], whats your source, general rumors? death penalty is NOT simply subtracted fron the armor (though its a nice simplification that works fine within lower AL) !


 * Fine, let's use that site. With base damage of 100 and armor of 67, to use one of your examples, damage dealt is 88.58.  Your text said the "half life" for 67 armor would be 44 armor.  67 + 44 = 111.  Base damage of 100 and armor of 111 results in 41.32.  88.58 / 2 != 41.32.  With 100 base damage and 107 armor, resulting damage is 44.29.  This is half of 88.58.  Adding 40 armor halved the damage.  Your own source refutes your numbers.


 * The formula empirically derived by SonOfRah for weapons is actual_damage = damage * 2 ^ ((attribute * 5 - AL * (1 - penetration)) / 40) for an attribute of 0-12. For spells, actual_damage = damage * 2 ^ ((caster_level * 3 - AL * (1 - penetration))/ 40).  "Damage" is either the spell's listed damage or the random roll from the weapon's range.  There are other modifiers, of course, but this is the basic gist of it.  --Fyren 05:23, 13 Aug 2005 (EST)


 * Also, death penalty has nothing to do with armor. --Fyren 05:24, 13 Aug 2005 (EST)

hey fyren. you should read my text more closely and stop confirming it if you want to prove it wrong! your examples are all limited to 0% armor penetration, mine are not! 100 damage on 60/100/140 armor with 0% armor penetration, shows a half life evers 40 AL. 100 Damage on 75/125/175 armor with 20% armor penetration shows a half life every 50 AL. btw we are all using the same formular, I just understand it! in (y)our formular 1-"penetration" gets multiplied with "AL"/40. casterlevel doesnt have to be variable, however the half live depends on "penetration"

This page, as written is FUBAR
Ollg, it is apparent that English is not your first language. Please, please, refrain from wholesale edits requiring the competent and extensive use of it. You have almost completely trasmogrified this article into a nigh incomprehensible explanation of armor level, and invoked terms from chemistry to obfuscate an already complicated value.

IMO, my rewrite left this article clearly defined this term as RELATIVE to the AL of the situation in question, something your rewrite completely ignores. Armor penetration DOES effectively modify the AL of the attackee, although other factors go into the actual calculation of damage, I noted this.

Take a step back and see how astray this article has become. Define the TERM. --Jackel 07:39, 13 Aug 2005 (EST)


 * For the record, I am an engineer, I studied math and physics in college, and I am an experienced player who's been around since almost when the game was first started and I want to state for the record that I have no idea what this article is talking about. None. What is "Armor half life"? How did Gordon Freeman get in this website? :)
 * More importantly, if your math is from that site, then how about you refer readers to that site, instead of reporting it as if you actually came up with it? Isn't that the honest thing to do? --Karlos 09:03, 13 Aug 2005 (EST)
 * this is not about armor level. its about armor penetration. of course thats linked to armor.
 * half life is more than a game by valve, it has a physical (and matematical) meaning: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half_life . you must have missed that in college.
 * I think you're the one missing my point. The article is NOT readable. I promise you this: I will rewrite it, and I will rewrite it into English rather than Gibberish and I will move the Gibberish to a spearate math article and free the users from your oppressive reign of mathematical terror over their articles! :) You have to understand that the average user clicking on Armor Penetration wants to know what it means, that's it. --Karlos 09:22, 15 Aug 2005 (EST)
 * "Armor Penetration gives a damage boost." For someone determined to include incomprehensible formulae, this is a gross oversimplicifation.


 * "The higher a playrs AL the more armor gets weakened, because it ignores a percentage of armor and weaker armor is exponentially worse." Huh? I think I know what you mean, but such a poorly worded phrase will be misunderstood by most new players, I should think.


 * ''"The higher a playrs AL is the lower is the foes boost by armor penetration in Percent-points, but high armor lowers percent points more than armor penetration raises them.
 * "25% penetration doubles the damage on 160 armor by just adding 10% penetration damage to 10% damage while 25% Armor penetration on 60 armor adds ~35% penetration damage tn 100% damage." Do you proof read anything you edit? This has almost 100% incomprehensiblilty.
 * I can't make any sense of that graph either, can anyone else, besides Ollj that is?--Jackel 02:33, 18 Aug 2005 (EST)
 * Yeah, this article is pretty incomprehensible. Ollj's typos don't make it any easier to understand either. Also i dislike the use of word half life, i understand what it means as a physics term, but some people probably don't and people should not be forced to read this wiki with a dictionary (or read another article) just to understand the words. Also I think it is not quite the right word here, the meaning is slightly different than Ollj seems to think. I am voting for complete reword/reformat by someone not Ollj. The formula (yeah it's formula not formular) could also be scrapped and just link [here] --Geeman 02:46, 18 Aug 2005 (EST)
 * the examples below the graph should help reading the graph. Its not much different from fast casting. just rewrite whatever you want to--Ollj 02:50, 18 Aug 2005 (EST)
 * There, how about that? I think this is an equitable comprimise. I don't want to throw out all the potentially interesting data Ollj has added, but it is too far beyond what the average reader is going to want to know, or likely to understand.--Jackel 05:46, 18 Aug 2005 (EST)

Research Questions section
This section seems to be entirely speculative, not to mention dubious. I am deleting it. The author is free to argue for its reinclusion here, but I will oppose a simple revert. F G 15:08, 18 April 2006 (CDT)


 * Can you be more specific about what you thought was deleteworthy about that passage? Your comment on the talk page was very cryptic. Feel free to respond on the article's talk page -- just trying to get your attention. &mdash; Stabber (talk) 15:37, 18 April 2006 (CDT)

Well, to start with, I simply dislike how big a deal this wiki makes with Judge's Insight. By my count, the mention of its anomalous behaviour can be found on: And possibly others that I've missed. It is horribly overdone.
 * 1) Judge's Insight
 * 2) Holy damage
 * 3) Light damage
 * 4) List of skill anomalies
 * 5) Ignore armor

Secondly, the passage was all about a theoretical interaction of armor ignoring damage with armor penetration. To date there is no skill or attack in the game that has both conditions. The ignore armor article states it pretty nicely, I think: "it is generally believed that when armor is ignored, armor penetration isn't relevant (for both technical and semiotic reasons)."

Thirdly, it is completely a mystery to me what a matter of mostly specialist interest needs to be featured so prominently on such an article. This sort of arcana belongs in damage, or perhaps in armor -- not in armor penetration, which is mostly a list of skills that cause armor penetration.

Fourthly, there is no fourth reason. That's it. Just three reasons. F G 16:00, 18 April 2006 (CDT)


 * You are quoting my own text to me from the ignore armor article. Also, JI is not really made a big deal of in holy damage and light damage as you claim -- just one line notes. Now, although I'm peeved that you are dismissing this passage simply because you don't like the "big deal" we make of JI, you do have a point that the interaction is theoretical, and therefore would interest only crazies. I'll leave your deletion unopposed for now unless someone else joins my side. &mdash; Stabber (talk) 16:10, 18 April 2006 (CDT)

Re-open damage calculation discussion.
An anon user (which is actually Kuntz on www.guild-hall.net) edited the article with the following:

''The two types of armor you can wear are base armor and bonus armor. There is an easy trick to tell them apart. Base armor could be called semi-colon armor as there is a semi-colon in its description. For example; "Armor: 60". Bonus armor could be called plus-sign armor as there is a plus-sign in its description. For example; "Armor +10". Base armor can be penetrated while bonus armor cannot be penetrated. This is important to remember when calculating damage. For example consider a Monk has 60 AL and +10 AL while enchanted, a shield with 16 AL and +10 AL against Lightning, and a +5 AL + 7 AL against Elemental sword. This Monk would have a total of 100 AL (60+10+8+10+5+7) against Lightning, however the 25% penetration from Lightning Orb will only effect 68 of that AL. The Monk's final AL would then be 83 ((68 * 0.75) + 32), and not 75 AL (100 * 0.75).''

I suggest confirming this edit, which seems correct (and Kuntz is a respected member of www.guild-hall.net) but I cannot verify at this moment. The revert seems to be in violation of GW:YOU and GW:AGF --Draygo Korvan 12:07, 16 June 2006 (CDT)


 * For reference, when did Kuntz did the test? Also did he test against the non-Factions Virtuoso's armor (which uses completely different wording)?  My prior test results are in Talk:Damage/Archive4, done in December 2005. If his tests are newer, then I have no issue switching to his, as long as numbers and methods of testing are posted here (no re-test needed, just want the data from his original test).   The revert was done because I had actual test results (and I linked to it when I performed the revert), whereas the edit being reverted simply stated stuff.  I wasn't suggesting the person was vandalizing the article, but between the anon being misinformed/misguided, relying on a test prior to December 2005, relying on a test after December, two out of the three "good faith" scenarios involve the anon being wrong (but with good intentions).  In the end, I simply chose the version of the article that is backed by a talk page posting.- 12:18, 16 June 2006 (CDT)

Here is his test, which is reletively simple: ''Testing is simple, roll a PvP Monk with Boon and the enchanters armor, have a friend bring some Pen damage skill, and away you go. I've known this for awhile, re-tested with Kriegar multiple times in the last week, nothing has changed. Pen works out to (60 * .75) + 10, not 70 * .75.''

It's exactly why they list AL two different ways, just like they list damage two different ways.

''Armor: 60  Armor +10''

''Two different ways. Just like Evis has a +42 which is never ever effected by armor. The base damage of Evis will be effected by armor, then +42 is added onto that result. The lowest you'll ever hit with Evis is 43~ because of this.'' Copied from http://www.guild-hall.net/forum/showpost.php?p=492290&postcount=15 --Draygo Korvan 12:22, 16 June 2006 (CDT)


 * BTW, you might want to carefully re-read the actual content of the policies you cited. Since I'm an involved party, I cannot avoid biase, but to the maximal ability of my attempt at objective judgement, I believe I was in perfect compliance with both policies (take into consideration my edit summary of the article also).  - 12:18, 16 June 2006 (CDT)
 * I was specifically talking about the So, when you can reasonably assume that something is a well-intentioned error, correct it without just reverting it or labeling it as vandalism. clause in GW:AGF. I dont mean to pick on ya but your action caused a negative post to show up in www.guild-hall.net about guildwiki, something I think the GW:YOU and GW:AGF are ment to help avoid. For something that can be easily tested as this, i think the proper action should have been to test it ingame first, then edit any mistakes and post about it in the discussion page. --Draygo Korvan 12:31, 16 June 2006 (CDT)