So I’ve been playing around with Hosav’s UI a bit lately and I’m getting weird kind of damage numbers. I’ve been testing on Elephants, and with a full Sunder stack I only end up doing maybe 2-3 more raw damage per attack.
Have I vastly over estimated the AC of Elephants? Have a vastly over estimated the AC reduction of sunder? Or any I just losing my mind? If any of you guys have some experience with testing Sunder application, I’d be happy to hear from you because I’m leaning towards it being next to useless.
Maybe it’s just because their AC is so small in comparison to their HP? Wiki has them at 1467hp and 59 AC. I would imagine that disparity would make the effects of sunder feel weaker than a more standard enemy. Who knows though, sunder could have gotten messed with since status effects were changed?
@Tuffman , I thought it was my idea, I believe sunder use to affect more the damage outcome. Of course I always use bleeding and poisoning more than sunder, but to the skeletons sunder was one way street. Still my poison axe is more effective on skeletons than ajas bane and I find that really weird. It wasn’t like that, for sure.
So I did a little more testing, and a little more investigation. 59 AC sounds really low, but thats approaching the higher end of NPC armor values. Rotbranch has 65, The Red Mother has 65, The Commander in the Unnamed city has 109. So what does this mean for Sunder? Its woefully undereffective. Across those 3 bosses I was looking at around 7 more damage for each of the first two attacks(those were just the easiest attacks to monitor while trying to keep Sunder stacked, the other combo hits were much if any better) with Aja’s Bane and a 45 strength build. I didn’t even do a single point more damage to the Commander until my second or third stack of Sunder.
So basically, my elephant tests weren’t way off, do with that information what you will. I still love my Ghoul Club.
The NPCs whether it be animal, humanoid, or other have very low armor thus low damage reduction, so if 1 sunder debuffs that by 10%, and a total of 50%, that is still negligible amount of plus damage achieved.
So since you are dealing almost the full damage without sunder, even the max. stack of it won’t help that much.
That’s why you should go damage over AP (and sunder) and use the advanced weapon damage kit instead of the master one because that max. 109 armor for enemies is nothing.
I’m really not sure here - I’ve definitely had a bunch of fights where it seems like sunder is making a fair bit of difference. My best example would be taking on rocknoses with an axe vs with a mace (I banned myself from using axes in my current playthrough, to force me to learn other weapons more) - even with higher strength it feels like axes take way more hits to kill them. Whereas with even low level clubs (and a character that’s never had more than 10 strength the entire playthrough), they seem to go down way quicker. I’ve been assuming that was down to the difference in AP/sunder - but looking at the numbers Tuffman has been finding, I’m now really unsure why I’m seeing such a big difference in results. I wonder what other factors might be in play that I haven’t considered…
I have always used a sunder weapon for myself, and a high damage sword for my thrall. Usually a crom blade once I secure one. This results in me not caring much about doing damage myself, rather just keeping stacks of sunder up and watching my hp. Might not technically be the best way to do damage, but it’s always worked well for me and I believe I (used to) notice the difference between my thrall hitting pre-sunder and full-sunder targets. I have not played for several months though so, pinch of salt.