Curse

Muk Utep · Jan 03, 2007, 03:18 PM // 15:18

So I hear a lot of mixed opinions on the sundering mod. Some people call it useless, some people love it, and for what it's worth it appears to be the most expensive sword mod. I have several weapons, one of them a Forgotten Sword which has 20/20 sundering, and I'm curious as to how good it really is compared to the other available prefix mods. I'd write up a big neat maths chart but I doubt I'd get it right, so I'd appreciate if anyone could show me a breakdown that doesn't require a PhD.

DarkGanni · Jan 03, 2007, 03:24 PM // 15:24

Sundering Combined with Spells and Skills can be very powerful. for example lets make a skeleton slayer build for fow we can take a hornbow (has sundering 10% built in), adding a 20/20 bow string thats 30% already, then judges insight 20% and penetrating attack 20% more and there we go 70% armor penetration. My opinion on sundering is that its a good mod when combined.

GourangaPizza · Jan 03, 2007, 04:13 PM // 16:13

I believe that whether a prefix mod is good or not depends on how well it synergise together with the warrior's build. (E.g. a furious weapon is more favourable as compared to a sundering weapon, if the multiple skills you brought are adrenaline intensive.) Maybe Darkginni maybe right that sundering will help increase the warrior's damage output. However I believe otherwise. Since with a furious mod, there's always a high possibility for you to spam a high adrenaline skill twice (E.g. Dragon Slash) in a short amount of time. Hence giving an overall higher damage output over time as compared to a warrior using a sundering mod.

Dutch Masterr · Jan 03, 2007, 05:24 PM // 17:24

like Dark said, its good if you have some skills to add to the armor penetration. if your fighting a warrior, you must have an elemental weapon mod to do more damage. against everything else i use a sundering sword and axe, and a furious hammer. i also have a sword, axe and hammer that does elemental damage specificaly for fighting warriors.

Nexus Icon · Jan 03, 2007, 05:24 PM // 17:24

How does sundering compare to the other damage mods?
I wrote this as a breakdown in another thread a while back:

Quote:

Elemental mods have the potential to ignore a substantial amount of armour, resulting in up to 150% damage in some circumstances.
Vampiric gives you +3 armour-ignoring damage.
Zealous lets you regenerate energy faster than the standard 2 warrior pips.

Sundering on the other hand breaks down like this:
You have a 1 in 5 chance of ignoring 20% of your target's armour.

Let's say that you're hitting a warrior in Gladiator's (just for the sake of argument).

So say your hits are doing on average 30 damage against the warrior's 100 armour vs. physical damage (Glad's is 80 +20 vs. Phys).
4 out of 5 of your hits will do 30. 1 in 5 will do 45 damage.
Explanation: every 40 armour halves damage. If we take your 30 damage at 100 armour, that equates to 60 damage at 60 armour, 120 damage at 20 armour and 180 damage at 0 armour. So 80 armour, which is 100-20% (the amount of armour sundering penetrates), would result in 45 damage.

Now let's look at an Elemental mod in contrast:
An Elemental mod would immediately bypass the Gladiator's armour bonus of +20 vs. physical damage. That means that 5 out of 5 attacks would do 45 damage.
There's just no competition.

If the target had 100 armour vs physical and elemental damage, that's where Vampiric comes in. Vampiric is a guaranteed +3 damage every hit, meaning +15 damage over 5 hits. Whilst this LOOKS like it's the same damage as Sundering, remember that sundering is a chance, not a certainty.
Let's say that we have 4 hits instead of 5, and that sundering doesn't cut in.
Vampiric is still going to give you +12 damage in those 4 hits, guaranteed.

Does that help?

Effigy · Jan 03, 2007, 05:35 PM // 17:35

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...n dering+good

Summary: Sundering sucks. The end.

Muk Utep · Jan 03, 2007, 05:48 PM // 17:48

Quote:

Does that help?

It does, thanks for that. I have some more questions/comments:

Your example for elemental damage mods is only against an enemy who has extra armor against physical. Against players, this pretty much always consists of the +20 from warrior armor, whereas elemental resistance seems a bit more common. What about mobs, do their warriors have the same type of armor as players, and do many of them have any extra physical resistance that doesn't come from plain AL?

Also, your example would give the sundering mod a net bonus of 15 damage in 5 attacks (30, 30, 30, 30 and 45). That's an average, it could be lower or higher, but over the course of many fights, you'd get the average amount. Vampiric would add the same extra damage (5x+3=+15) with a neglectible life drain, but is not affected from critical hits where the damage from sundering would be increased, or am I mistaken?

draxynnic · Jan 04, 2007, 12:40 AM // 00:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by Muk Utep

Your example for elemental damage mods is only against an enemy who has extra armor against physical. Against players, this pretty much always consists of the +20 from warrior armor, whereas elemental resistance seems a bit more common. What about mobs, do their warriors have the same type of armor as players, and do many of them have any extra physical resistance that doesn't come from plain AL?

I haven't done any extensive testing, but I do remember being surprised when I switched from my normal fire sword to a physical one the first time I visited the Ring of Fire and found out that the fire sword did more damage, despite the expected extra resistance of hydras against fire. If anything, I'd say that extra resistance to physical is probably more common among monsters, as big melee casters like Hydras and Drakes seem to have a tendency to have high physical AL compared to elemental.

Generally, however, if a class is known for high AL against a particular thing, mobs of that class will have high AL against it too. Enemy Warriors almost always have higher physical AL than elemental, and vice versa for enemy Rangers. Other classes show a little more variation, but if something looks like it has a thick hide, chances are that thick hide is hard to cut through

.

LightningHell · Jan 04, 2007, 02:02 AM // 02:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by DarkGanni

Sundering Combined with Spells and Skills can be very powerful. for example lets make a skeleton slayer build for fow we can take a hornbow (has sundering 10% built in), adding a 20/20 bow string thats 30% already, then judges insight 20% and penetrating attack 20% more and there we go 70% armor penetration. My opinion on sundering is that its a good mod when combined.

They're added up? Are you sure it's not multiplicative?

By the way, I believe the 45 damage is wrong - it should be lower, since the graph should be exponential.

Higher armor works FOR Vampiric, not Sundering.

lightblade · Jan 04, 2007, 02:06 AM // 02:06

This topic had been discussed hundreds if not thousands of times!

Vampiric > Sundering

Simple as that.

warriorsmiley · Jan 04, 2007, 02:15 AM // 02:15

Yeah this has been discussed 100's of times vamp will out damage sundering. It will also benefit you with a 3-5 point heal especially with a IAS. I personally would rather have a furious mod over sundering because I would rather have a slight chance of getting my aderaline faster.

Now on that whole fow thing I would still rather run a vamp bow with judges insight and barrage a whole chunk of Constant damage not potential damage and a nice bit of healing.

Thom Bangalter · Jan 04, 2007, 02:49 AM // 02:49

Custo from QQ uses sundering. Remstar uses vamp. There are reasons for using sundering, but for DPS vampiric will win out everytime.

Arkantos · Jan 04, 2007, 03:22 AM // 03:22

Been discussed in very many threads. Search+Browse=Ftw!