Talk:Turtle Shell

armor penetration???
Did someone test this or made it up? According to all the damage equation research done prior to the FPE, and the description of Turtle Shell, I would expect armor penetration have absolutely ZERO effect on Turtle Shell's protection capabilities. It's hard to imagine what could've been changed/added to the damage equation for Factions to make the behavior work as claimed by that note. -SolaPan 01:32, 27 March 2006 (CST)


 * I may have misstated the note, but what I meant is: Spells with 25 Armor penertration are highly effective at going around this skill, not nullifying it. My Lightning Orb is supposed to do 106 dmg, against them, with armor penetraion and after Turtle Shell, it does 104! Which means, it basically delivered. :) Compare this to good old Stone Daggers doing zeroes. :) My point is that such high armor penetration goes a long way in canceling out that protection. Si? --Karlos 14:02, 27 March 2006 (CST)


 * Your explanation makes no sense. Armor penetration is part of the AE, whereas the skill description suggests that it is part of the DShift, which I think is PanSola's question. I.e. what is the difference between: (a) Lightning Orb against a turtle with no Turtle Shell, and (b) Lightning Orb against a turtle with Turtle Shell. If the difference is equal to the damage reduction of the skill, then the note in the article is misleading. 14:10, 27 March 2006 (CST)
 * Exactly as stabber said. Karlos, your Lightning Orb is supposed to deal 106 dmg, assuming enemy has 60 AL against lightning (if your level is 20).  Now, GW creatures in snowy areas tend to be weak vs fire, in fiery areas tend to be weak vs cold, I don't thikn it's a stretch to conjecture that in watery areas tend to be weak vs lightning.  So you might find your lightning orb, without the effect of turtle shell, might be delivering 130 damage. -SolaPan 14:48, 27 March 2006 (CST)


 * Take spell A, it does 106 dmg, not take spell B, it also is listed as 106 dmg with 25% armor pen. Against the turtles, spell A does 106-21 so it does 85. Spell B is supposed to do 106 pre-armor pen, and -say- 125 post armor-pen, so it ends up doing 104 dmg. Spell B is a better method to kill the turtles than Spell A.
 * This is particularly true for the lower end of the damage spectrum, Where Stone daggers does 0 and 0 and Flare would do 20-30, Lightning Strike and Lightning Arc do 40 dmg or so. What's mis-leading? --Karlos 20:29, 27 March 2006 (CST)
 * It's misleading because it sounds like armor penetration goes "around" the protection, when actually it just increases the initial damage before it gets reduced. So, what it really is supposed to say would be "Because it deals a lot of damage, it will deal a lot of damage after taking turtle shell effect into account" as opposed to "armor penetration reduces teh effect of turtle shell".   -SolaPan 20:38, 27 March 2006 (CST)


 * The note never said "armor penetration reduces the effect of this skill" what are you talking about? The note said High Damage Air Magic spells with armor penetration are effective in getting THROUGH (nor around) this defense. That means in overpowering it, not negating it. --Karlos 21:14, 27 March 2006 (CST)


 * the phrase "getting through" was preciously the source of my and stabber's confusion in misunderstanding what you were talking about originally. In any case, a air spell that deals 125 damage after considering armor penetration, isn't any different for a spell that simply does 125 damage, so I fail to see the merit of the note.  -SolaPan 21:37, 27 March 2006 (CST)


 * Fastest "direct damage" way to kill them. Barring none. --Karlos 21:41, 27 March 2006 (CST)
 * Well it would also be the fastest "direct damage" way to kill anything else woudln't it?
 * Besides, the significance of the armor penetration is ONLY in the fact that it increases the pre-reduction damage of the skill. As such, I think the focus of the note should be the single-packet spikeness of the skill.  The explicit mention of "25% armor penetration" seems to distract from the main point. -SolaPan 22:27, 27 March 2006 (CST)


 * Karlos, your recommendation basically amounts to "take high damage skills". That's a rather obvious and general recommendation. Like the PC says in the Competitive Mission cinematics, "Thanks. I'll try to remember that." The skill Turtle Shell doesn't require any specific strategies. It's just Shielding Hands with a different name. Any strategy that works against Shielding Hands &mdash; except for enchantment stripping &mdash; will also work with Turtle Shell. 00:37, 28 March 2006 (CST)
 * Or rather, switch enchantment stripping to stance stripping, and add criticle hits to the mix. (-: But yeah I concure.  -SolaPan 04:47, 28 March 2006 (CST)


 * Last try, then I am out.. My point is: If you are an ele, who wants to take the above mentioned "high damage" spells to over-power Turtle Shell, then your best choice would be Air Magic, because while Fireball would look like it's going to deliver more damage on paper, it will actually deliver less. Does this apply to everything else in the world? Perhaps. The question is, is it "pertinent" here? Not, should it be everywhere else? Simply two questions...Is telling eles that they are better off using Air Magic to over-power this skill:
 * A) Correct? (You both seem to agree it is)
 * B) Useful?
 * Your argument is that B is not true because A is always true. I think it is useful because dealing the most damage to a single target is not always the best approach and spiking is not always useful. Example in mind is the Bladed Aatxe. They are basically oblivious to all kinds of ele damage. In this case, Fire Magic is the best approach with Immolate, Rodgort's Invocation and Mark of Rodgort to keep them on fire, because burning will go right through their high armor. So, my proposed theory is that, of all the Ele magic schools, I think Air is the best way to deal with them. I am biased, I have been a spiker since June. :) --Karlos 09:48, 28 March 2006 (CST)


 * I think you continue to miss the point about our objection to that comment. Armor penetration is not relevant to this skill. In fact, neither is the note about life stealing, strictly speaking. The only relevant point is how to end the stance, so the Wild Blow bullet point is the only one that should remain. However, I'm not going to stick my neck so far as to remove these bullet points. 15:24, 28 March 2006 (CST)


 * As long is my most recent revision of that bullet point stands, I am satisified. I have revised it so it is no longer misleading, and the "air spike spell with 25% armor penetration" serves as an example of high-damage dealing.  I wouldn't mind seeing that whole bullet point get deleted, but I don't mind it staying either.  Stabber summed up most of my thoughts though. -SolaPan 15:38, 28 March 2006 (CST)


 * I give up. :) --Karlos 15:54, 28 March 2006 (CST)


 * Checking out the page for the first time, I was wondering why the bullet points seem to contradict each other, which lead me to visit the talk page. While armor ignoring air spells are definitly high powered spells, taking that class is a bad example, since any non-armor ignoring spell would be as efficient. The more important point mentioned above (but not in the bullet points) is the weakness to air or lightning by (most? all?) turtles. If this could be confirmed, it would be helpful to add. --Xeeron 20:34, 29 March 2006 (CST)


 * I believe it is because they are Eles, not because they are turtles :) --Karlos 20:55, 29 March 2006 (CST)


 * Why would Eles be weak against lightning? -SolaPan 23:07, 29 March 2006 (CST)


 * Because their armor is made of toilet paper. Expensive, fancy toilet paper. --Karlos 23:17, 29 March 2006 (CST)


 * Xeeron meant turtle AL vs lightning might be of a lower value than their AL vs other damage types. Your response made it sound like Elementalist armor are weaker against Lighting damage than against other damage types, when you actually meant Elementalists have weak armor across the board.
 * If their armor aren't especially weak to a certain damage type, then I expect the ones with level greater than 20 to have an AL of more than 60. Level 23/24 will probably be in the 70 AL range.  Of course you are free to call ranger armor toilet paper too, but paper quality is kind of a subjective measure and isn't very helpful. -SolaPan 23:31, 29 March 2006 (CST)


 * I did not say that which you assumed I said. I do not have to elaborate on a theory you conjured from words I did not say. Good luck with that though. --Karlos 23:55, 29 March 2006 (CST)


 * The more important question to solve is: Why is Karlos toilet paper conductive? Metal strips?? Gold inlays??? =P --Xeeron 00:05, 30 March 2006 (CST)
 * Sorry Karlos, that I made the wrong assumption and interpreted your words as being "Ele armor are weak across the board". I have striken the misinterpretation out. The alternative ("Ele armor are weaker against lightning damage compared to other damage types") made less sense to me though.  It would be helpful if you can elaborate on what you did say though. -SolaPan 16:43, 30 March 2006 (CST)


 * Here is what I did say: Ele armor is weak. --Karlos 16:57, 30 March 2006 (CST)


 * I don't care as much about what you did say (because I can scroll up and read for myself) as much as I care about what you mean/intend with respect to the idea that a certain group of creatures' armor may have special weakness against lightning (whether the reason is due to species or profession). The brevity and vagueness of your comments make it unclear what you think on the particular issue.  I have to assume that your original comment were meant as part of a meaningful participation of discussion, but without furthur elaboration, no matter what your intentions were, the comments you leave are not being helpful. -SolaPan 17:30, 30 March 2006 (CST)


 * What I said and what I meant are the same thing. It seems I do have to repeat it for the third time, so here goes: Turtles take high damage from Air spells because they are eles. All eles are owned by ele spells because their armor is weak (60 AL) and most of the time they have little to no protection against other elemental damage (with the exception of Earth magicians). 60 AL + 25% armor penetration = 45 AL, the armor level of Succulent Junipers (yes we need to test to verify that). Now, we reach a point where you, PanSola, have to decide whether to:
 * a) Ask me to repeat what I said because (to you) it makes no sense in light of how you perceive this discussion.
 * b) Proceed to tell me why my remark is invalid in this discussion. To which I will respond: "Tough luck, I made the remark in this discussion.. Sue me!"
 * c) Leave it at that and go back to exploring Xeeron's proposition that somehow Turtles are more susceptible to Air Magic than other schools of magic, somehting I did not say and have no idea where he got that from.
 * d) None of the above.
 * I look forward to your choice with undying intrigue. --Karlos 18:00, 30 March 2006 (CST)


 * It wasnt my proposition, but SolaPan's: "I don't thikn it's a stretch to conjecture that in watery areas tend to be weak vs lightning" (at the beginning of this talk page). That deserves testing and (if true) being mentioned in the bullet points. --Xeeron 19:04, 30 March 2006 (CST)


 * Problem is, there hasn't been any water in that sea for 200 years. You think Jade is conductive to electricity? --Karlos 19:50, 30 March 2006 (CST)


 * So, things that would be of interest to research, following Xeeron's comment, would be
 * 1. Kappa's AL against lightning damage versus the other 3 elements.
 * 2. If Kappa's AL is lower against lightning compared to other 3 elements, do the same research for Siege Turtles and other members of the Turtle species (if there are others), to see if this weakness is a species trait.
 * 3. Considering skeletons have different AL against different physical damage types, it would be interesting to see if Turtles have different AL for Blunt vs Slash/Pierce.
 * Of course the FPE is over, so this would need to wait til Factions come out. -SolaPan 17:30, 30 March 2006 (CST)

What I want to know is, does the fact that armor is calculated before the reduction result in a total overall increase in damage? (Compared to say, if the damage on the lightning spells were reduced first, and THEN the 25% AP was calculated) Evan The Cursed (Talk) 09:54, 30 March 2006 (CST)


 * Let's do the math:
 * Assuming Armor Penetration of 25% causes you to do 25% more damage (wrong assumption, I know, I am just looking for a percentage). Now, assume a spell that does 100 dmg and the turtle's defense takes away 20 dmg. So, if the deduction take place before the armor penetration, the damage would be:
 * Damage = (100 - 20) x 1.25 = 100 dmg
 * If the deduction takes place after armor penetration:
 * Damage = 100 x 1.25 - 20 = 105 dmg
 * As you can see, deduction after armor pen takes away less damage than if it's deduced before armor pen. I believe deduction after is what takes place. --Karlos 14:36, 30 March 2006 (CST)