• Navaash

This is as close to a "blue plz" post as I'll ever make.

Blizzard needs to come out and tell us already exactly what spell penetration does. It's a stat that has some utility in PvP but by all accounts is completely worthless in PvE. Yet both the mage and warlock T3 sets have it (10 on warlock legs and 23 between the mage bracers and robe), which is a complete waste of points that could be better spent elsewhere, like spirit or more damage.

That and they stick it on items gained in the high-end PvE raid game (Malice Stone Pendant, Gem of Nerubis, Veil of Eclipse, and the unnamed staff off of Kel'Thuzad - provided they haven't changed that item). The first three I can kind of understand, since they're off relatively easy bosses, but off of the last boss of the hardest zone in the game?

All the theorycrafting in the world since they introduced this stat with Ahn'Qiraj hasn't been able to come up with a good use for PvE. So just tell us already what the deal is.

 

enshula

Work out resist of mob. Higher the mob resist then higher the spell penetration utility.

10 resist = 2.5% on the sliding scale of average damage taken.

So 10 taking mob from 75 to 72.5 is worth 10% more damage while 2.5 to 0 is only worth 2.564% more damage.

Of course if you notice that in general mobs in PvE tend to have only the level based resist then yes it becomes useless.

 

Vhad

Thats the general trend, its hard to tell if they have any innate resist and all the addons that supposedly tell you boss resists are way off.
Wish they lowered the amount reduced and put back +vulnerability some how. Right now spell penetration has no use but pvp.

What!?

 

enshula

Does it help on something like a spellbinder?

 

◊ Praetorian

Right, that's what I don't get. I understand penetration on AQ gear which is somewhat PvP oriented. I understand it on random nonset items. But when Blizzard min/maxes t3 sets for pure raiding the way they have -- Faith surely does not have +dam on it for a reason -- and then puts penetration on those sets, that tells me that either Blizzard is very, very confused, or we are all missing something about its value in PvE settings. I'm increasingly leaning towards the former, but it's just weird.

 

• Navaash

If a mob is already magic immune, penetration doesn't do anything against it.

 

Maklar

As I don't wear it, any idea if it helps on chromatic stuff? Or possibly on red drakes if your fire and whatnot.

 

• Chicken

Those don't show up as "n type (n resisted)" as far as I know. So it's not resists, it's just a buff they have that reduces damage done on them by certain spell schools.

buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of

 

◊ Praetorian

It obviously helps there, but most mobs fall into two categories:
1) Low enough resist that CoS/CoE negates it entirely.
2) High enough resist that you aren't going to bother at all regardless.

Fireballing a Red Drakonid is never going to be smart, whether you have +40 penetration or +0.

I suppose if there were more things with 100-120 resist to various elements such that you need penetration on top of a Curse, then it'd help. But there aren't, really.

 

Goggles

I assumed it did however there aren't many of these. The majority of mobs in BWL, AQ (and I assume Naxx although I haven't been there properly yet) don't appear to have significant resistances. CoE/CoS is enough to get rid of most partial resists I get.

Not actually a member of Refusion on Burning Blade.

 

Harem

Remember coe also reduces target resistance by 75, so even if mobs do have a certain reasonable amount of resist, its pretty much null and void in a raid setting.

Just to make the 20 spell penetration I have on my current gear hurt me even more, could someone work out how much damage or crit its equivalence is in ilvl?

"Puns are inherently evil, in the "must do evil!" sort of way."

 

Hober

In my opinion the only way they could make it a worthwhile stat is by letting -resistance items lower the mob's resistance into negative á la old school CoS/CoE.
This would make the items containing -resistance worthy of thier iLvL

 

Necrotoid

Yes, yes it is. I wish they would put in the mid level resist mobs (100-150) so these stats did something for our PvE gear. My Doomcaller is excellent raiding stuff, but wtb crit instead of -resist please!

DOT and rot.
Travian: Phased Weasel, -144 | 61, Damascus.

 

Myonax

No, WTB +hit with spells instead of penetration :(

 

Copernicus

If -resists does anything, it does it at a better value than hit/crit%. 1% crit is about equal to -10 resists. At level 60, -10 resists is worth an extra 2.5% of damage, if something is being removed.

At this point, I have to assume that Blizzard noticed partial resists on level 61-63 mobs, and assumed that -resists would remove that. Which it doesn't, since that's a skill based resists that can't be overcome. :(

 

Aphyrax

Wait, are you suggesting that Blizzard does not know the mechanics of its own game? They have shown a lack of understanding of what is effective (pre buff Arcanist for example, or magisters - yay INT and SPI) but I would *hope* that they at least know the basics of the game they work on every day.

 

Jaerel

I actually like that idea a ton if they could toggle vuln hits for just NPC's. I won't lie...negative resistance hits in pvp were jawdropping, and a lot of fun, and I wouldn't squirm too much if they brought them back. They weren't terribly balanced though :).

 

Wizardspike

Actually....i don't know how people don't know this yet, but i noticed massive partial resists on naxxramas bosses, especially patchwerk.
So i looked at some warlock spreadsheet and it showed that patchwerk has something like 126 fire res, razuvious 146, noth 124, grobbulus 91, heigan 67 and gluth 63.
So it looks like spell penetration has quite a lot of use on bosses.

This of course sucks for me because i have hardly any spell penetration gear.

Just some thoughts for you to ponder

 

Hematite

Warlocks have exactly zero interest in spirit, and I'd guestimate half of them are running around with Demonic Embrace - yet until Plagueheart their sets have been swimming in it. So given past and present caster itemisation choices I'm going to go for "confused." It seems to be just a dross effect to tag on an item to make it look better, they probably feel compelled to stick it on random items after all the hype it got previously.

Also: The WSG reward trinket(s) seems to have way more spell penetration than their budget allows, and that supports this further.

 

Hober

Ah yes, that would be one way to put salt on the raider vs. pvper wound. While I never had the joy of being fire for CoE goodness, a guildy provided a screenshot while he was in felheart of a 4.2k crit shadowbolt, which up until I got a Toep+zhc and specced AP was impossible to even get close to in damage. That was many months after they removed vulnerability bonuses. Then they nerfed the 3 minute mage :<

I'm sure it's possible so it only works on mobs and would be seriously cool

 

arch

I suspect that the spellpenetration was put on the tier3 gear to help leveling to 70 in the expansion. You will most likely encounter both mobs and players on your way to 70 that holds some resistances.

I dont think PvE was considered at all when the stat was created.

 

Mazrim

If you could parse that information for a month or two to the point where you had thousands of casts with the same amount of spell penetration at once, that information would be better suited, because from what I've seen through using GLOCK (i know it isn't accurate but keep reading) is that whatever amount of penetration i had on, bosses would have my penetration with coe + 20(ish), which would show that the algorithm for glock was sort of working because it was showing that the boss had the resistance but wasn't right because you cant negate that 24 resistance to everything.

I had glock going for a month, starting around the time we were learning patchwerk so i had plenty of casts on him, somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000. I reinstalled some addons and lost the info but I do remember him showing up at 91 fire resist with an average vulnerability of 79 from arcane subtlety and curse of elements getting pushed off every now and then.

What I'm trying to point out is that with using glock you can judge the spell resistance of mobs even though its broken by first using as little spell penetration gear as possible and seeing what it shows up for those bosses, which should be around 20 more than what you are using, in my case: arcane subt and coe only. After getting a lot of parses with that, if a mob was showing resists of far greater than 85, you could assume it actually had that much fire resist and add some penetration gear accordingly.

Would be nice if blizzard made penetration gear work against level based resists though, =/

 

Mosh

This is false. This is caused by parsing addons not properly registering level-based partial resists. I'm 98% confident Patchwerk has practically no resists.

 

arch

There's no way in hell they have that much resistances. I remember reading exactly what Mosh is saying, that addon is not working properly.

I haven't noticed any weird behaviour from any of the 13 bosses I´ve fought in Naxxramas compared to AQ, only level based partials which is 20 or so.

 

Mosh

The reason why GLOCK is showing about 20-25 more resist than what you're wearing/using (eg showing 95 fire resist with CoE on) is because of the level based partial resists which have nothing to do with spell penetration at all but still get counted in GLOCK.

Basically:
Patchwerk has 0 Fire Resistance. You put on CoE and wear 40 penetration. This puts Patchwerk at base-135. You get partial resists worth roughly 20-25 resistance (but these are NOT caused by resistances, but rather his level), and GLOCK therefor thinks he has 20 resistance left after the debuffing. This puts him at 155 fire resistance, according to GLOCK. Even though he has 0.