About warlord only card

[Sailor Vulcan]

I beg to differ Magemuse. While more dice is superior to piercing, piercing is still useful. if you have more dice AND piercing, you're more likely to do more damage then if you just had one of them. Piercing effectively converts a certain amount of normal damage to critical. So aside from any critical damage dealt normally with extra dice, you now get some of your normal damage to go through armor too. This is useful against creatures with more armor.

[sIKE]

I beg to differ Magemuse. While more dice is superior to piercing, piercing is still useful. if you have more dice AND piercing, you're more likely to do more damage then if you just had one of them. Piercing effectively converts a certain amount of normal damage to critical. So aside from any critical damage dealt normally with extra dice, you now get some of your normal damage to go through armor too. This is useful against creatures with more armor.

It is very useful for High Armor creatures. On a mage with a [mwcard=MW1J04] Battle Forge[/mwcard] throwing out armor like beads at Mardi Gras, you go get more dice, I will take the piercing any day. Irregardless regardless of the math.

[MageMuse]

I beg to differ Magemuse. While more dice is superior to piercing, piercing is still useful. if you have more dice AND piercing, you're more likely to do more damage then if you just had one of them. Piercing effectively converts a certain amount of normal damage to critical. So aside from any critical damage dealt normally with extra dice, you now get some of your normal damage to go through armor too. This is useful against creatures with more armor.

It is very useful for High Armor creatures. On a mage with a [mwcard=MW1J04] Battle Forge[/mwcard] throwing out armor like beads at Mardi Gras, you go get more dice, I will take the piercing any day. Irregardless regardless of the math.

For me that would depend heavily on how many dice, I'm already rolling.  If I'm already at 6-8 dice versus a 6 armor target without any means of getting rid of it, I will opt for the +3 piercing.  There comes a point when you can almost assume +3 piercing equals +3 damage against a 3 armor target.  3-4 I'm more likely going the dice route UNLESS I only need to bump my opponent to make it fall over.  You should always have an answer to high armor targets.  Point being, overall dice are always useful, piercing is situational but you will REALLY miss it when you need it.

[sIKE]

You should always have an answer to high armor targets.  Point being, overall dice are always useful, piercing is situational but you will REALLY miss it when you need it.

This!

[ringkichard]

This thread is in full silly mode. +2 dice is almost always better than +2 piercing, and +4 dice is better than +2 dice & +2 Piercing.

The exact math doesn't follow the rule of thumb perfectly, but generally, armor stops about .5 damage per point. Sometimes it stops as much as 1 damage per point (if your armor score is low compared to the number of dice. Other times it stops as little as 0 damage per point (if your armor score is high, compared to the number of dice.

You can see this by imagining a 3 die attack against a 6 armor creature. That 6th point of armor is largely worthless, and will only make a difference if the attack rolls all non-crit 2s.

Conversely, if you imagine a 3 die attack against a 1 armor creature, that 1 point of armor is very likely to be relevant. Any die that comes up non-crit (1 or 2) will make the armor useful.

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So what does this mean? Against a highly armored target you do not want piercing if the alternative is more dice. Piercing is less useful against highly armored targets, because Armor is less useful on highly armored targets. Taking an Iron golem from 5 arm to 4 arm is not helpful with a 3 die attack. 4 arm is still enough to soak all the non-crit damage most of the time, and whenever that happens, the piercing is worthless.

If that piercing had been +1 melee instead, the expected increase in damage value is at least .5 because of crits, and maybe higher if you can go over the top of the armor with normal damage.

Of course, against a very low armored target, you do not want piercing. Piercing is useless against unarmored targets, because armor is zero bounded. You can't have negative armor.

And in the Goldilocks zone, of neither too heavily armored nor too lightly armored, piercing is still almost-never better than just adding one more die.

The only time +X Piercing is better than +X attack is when it stretches across multiple attacks per activation, like when the creature both guards and attacks, or uses battle fury. But that's not because of the dice math, it's because of the limitation on melee+X in the rules. But then, you're comparing +X piercing to +0 dice in a corner case. And a printed 6 die melee attack is always better than a 4 die +2 Piercing attack, all other things being equal.

So, I'll say it again, if the alternative is +X dice, you never want +X piercing instead.

[sIKE]

Go fight Charmnya and see what you thoughts are then. I can not prove it via math but Piercing plays a nice roll against high armor values. I would rather have 3 die with 3 piercing over 6 die no piercing.

Experience on my part tells me something different than what the mathematicians and/or statisticians are able to document and I am not the flat earther type. But it sure feels like it here.

Like you Ring I am done with this.

[MageMuse]

Sat down and rolled dice ... and rolled... ...and rolled dice.

I would roll 6 dice assuming +3 Piercing versus 3 armor and 6 armor

I would then roll 2 additional dice.

Ring makes very valid points, but I just want to show my train of thought.

This is what I observed...  Piercing needs the targeted creature with an armor value equal to its number value.  This is assuming one realizes that +3 Piercing to +2 Dice are closer in performance than +2 Pierce and +2 Dice (it's not even close).

On the best roll possible, +3 piercing will never exceed the result from just adding 2 dice by more than 3 and that's assuming double blanks on the 2 extra dice.  Now consider a target with 6 Armor.  Roll 6 dice repeatedly.  Notice anything?  It's not easy to get exactly 6 normal damage to take advantage of the +3 Piercing. Now try rolling 2 extra dice along with those.  Now you will get those darn blanks but you will see 1s and 2s, some normal, some crits.  What I have found is whenever piercing reaches its full potential, it also means any normal 1s and 2s, rolled on the +2 dice, would result in damage to the target.

Example: 6 Dice Result of only 6 normal damage to a 6 armor creature.

+3 Piercing = 3 damage

The +2 dice could roll any normal damage result of 3 or more and meet/exceed the above damage.

+3 Piercing rolls can get the most favorable result and only beat an avg +2 dice roll (2 result) by 1.  Trust me getting 2-3 normal/crit damage from 2 dice is much easier than getting 6+ normal damage from 6 dice.  Have to say, piercing should be reserved for multistrikes.

Now if there's any holes in my observations, please point them out.

[ringkichard]

Ok, lets look at out from a defender's perspective.  A Wall is being attacked by a Troll. Which would the Wall rather have: armor +2 or aegis +2?
Aegis, right? It's better for the wall if the dice are never rolled to begin with, instead of risking a crit.

But these are equivalent questions! If the Wall would rather that the attack had less dice (aegis +x) than giving the Wall more armor (armor +x), then the troll should want the opposite and prefer armor +x to aegis +x. And if the Troll prefers higher armor but more dice, then the Troll should also prefer melee +x to piercing +x.

Basically, if someone offered the Troll +infinite melee but all targets got Resiliant (effectively infinite armor) shouldn't the Troll take that?  More armor just isn't as good as more dice, which is why it's not worth trading away dice for piercing.

[sIKE]

Ok, lets look at out from a defender's perspective.  A Wall is being attacked by a Troll. Which would the Wall rather have: armor +2 or aegis +2?
Aegis, right? It's better for the wall if the dice are never rolled to begin with, instead of risking a crit.

But these are equivalent questions! If the Wall would rather that the attack had less dice (aegis +x) than giving the Wall more armor (armor +x), then the troll should want the opposite and prefer armor +x to aegis +x. And if the Troll prefers higher armor but more dice, then the Troll should also prefer melee +x to piercing +x.

Basically, if someone offered the Troll +infinite melee but all targets got Resiliant (effectively infinite armor) shouldn't the Troll take that?  More armor just isn't as good as more dice, which is why it's not worth trading away dice for piercing.

I think this is a great topic but I am going to open up a thread on Dice vs. Piercing.