Pierce, cut and blunt damage to shields

[Ronin]

Are there any differences between the damage types, if you are hitting a shield?

For example the iron war axe can be both used with 40c and 31p. Is it better to use 40c if you want to focus on destroying the enemy's shield, or does pierce have a different bonus damage to shields? Maybe disregarding the shield armor for example...

[Mr.K.]

Are there any differences between the damage types, if you are hitting a shield?

For example the iron war axe can be both used with 40c and 31p. Is it better to use 40c if you want to focus on destroying the enemy's shield, or does pierce have a different bonus damage to shields? Maybe disregarding the shield armor for example...

Blunt does basically no damage to shields. A buckler survived a 100 2H blunt swings when we last tested. As for pierce and cut, I suspect the only difference is the damage value. So 40c does more damage than 31p and 40p would do more damage than 31c. It could be that the armor and HP of the shield work just like they do with armor, but most shields have so little armor that it makes no difference.

[Teeth]

As far as I know all damage types are equally effective at destroying shields, it is just that cut has way higher base damage. Shield armour is very simple soak only I think, so 17 armour means that the damage in hitpoints the shield receives from a hit gets reduced by 17, regardless of type of damage. I think it is only the bonus against shield tag that offers a modifier for ignoring armour, instead of blunt/pierce as in the case of personal armour.

So to answer your question, 40c is better than 31p for destroying shields as 40 is a higher number than 31. The axe might even lose it's bonus against shield in secondary mode, but probably not.

Blunt does basically no damage to shields. A buckler survived a 100 2H blunt swings when we last tested. As for pierce and cut, I suspect the only difference is the damage value. So 40c does more damage than 31p and 40p would do more damage than 31c. It could be that the armor and HP of the shield work just like they do with armor, but most shields have so little armor that it makes no difference.

I am curious to which blunt 2h you used. The buckler has 45 body armour, which if I am correct about the way shield armour works, could mean that the armour soaked all the damage of the low intensity hits, making the shield practically indestructible. If you'd try with a bar mace I think you might find it breaking a lot quicker. I have broken shields with a quarterstaff, which probably would never break a buckler either due to the armour.

[Mr.K.]

I am curious to which blunt 2h you used. The buckler has 45 body armour, which if I am correct about the way shield armour works, could mean that the armour soaked all the damage of the low intensity hits, making the shield practically indestructible. If you'd try with a bar mace I think you might find it breaking a lot quicker. I have broken shields with a quarterstaff, which probably would never break a buckler either due to the armour.

I think it was the Long Iron Mace with 33b damage. Can't remember which buckler it was though. Low damage pierce weapons (1h) seems to break shields much much faster than blunt too so I always use the secondary mode against shields if the blunt weapon has it. Someone should either test these on EU3 or maybe cmp or someone can shed some light into how it actually works. It would make sense that a blunt weapon did close to zero damage to a shield. It's supposed to absorb the impact and blunt weapons would be easy to absorb as they don't cut through the surface.

[Moncho]

iirc, bonus vs shields duplicates the damage dealt to a shield, and since the armour soak only happens once per hit, it has a much greater effect against high armour shields (if the armour would have soaked 100% of the original damage, now it only soaks 50%!).

About the rest, not sure.

[Phew]

Lots of misinformation in this thread.

First off, the pierce secondary mode of Iron War Axe doesn't have Bonus vs. Shield, so you wouldn't use it to break shields anyway.

Second, the Body Armor value for shields acts just like the armor value on a player. It has the same soak/mitigation as a player with that armor, but also modified by shield skill (8% mitigation per skill point). As far as I know.

[Mr.K.]

First off, the pierce secondary mode of Iron War Axe doesn't have Bonus vs. Shield, so you wouldn't use it to break shields anyway.

Who said it does? And according to you a blunt weapon would destroy a shield just as fast as a pierce weapon. That's not true afaik.

[Phew]

Who said it does? And according to you a blunt weapon would destroy a shield just as fast as a pierce weapon. That's not true afaik.

The OP was asking which mode breaks shields faster on the Iron War Axe, 31p or 40c. Since only the 40c gets the bonus vs. shields (making the comparison effectively 80c vs 31p), there is no comparison.

And yes, my understanding of the shield soak/mitigation mechanics would mean that a given shield would survive about as long vs. a Bec as vs. a Long Hafted Spiked Mace. Obviously a Morningstar will shred a shield (not just because it's pierce, but because it has bonus vs shield). I used a +3 Military Hammer for like 5 generations, and it seemed to break shields about as effectively as other 1-handers without bonus vs. shield (that is, not very effectively, but ~20 hits will bring it down).

[Mammonist]

On an axe the cut damage is always higher than the pierce damage, so regardless of whether the pierce gets the bonus, the cut will always do more damage.

[Kafein]

Just nitpicking, but the part of armor that reduces incoming damage is called "armor reduce". The part that makes you bounce is called "soak" and doesn't exist for shields afaik. It wouldn't make sense anyway as there's 0 stun happening when you block with a shield, except when a blockstun occurs.

I always had the impression blunt had a malus against shields but that may only be due to the weak sound effect. If p and b don't keep their armor piercing bonuses against shields, cut is the evident winner by a large margin. Otherwise, maybe it is slightly better to use pierce on metal shields. On all others, cut is better.

[Phew]

Just nitpicking, but the part of armor that reduces incoming damage is called "armor reduce". The part that makes you bounce is called "soak" and doesn't exist for shields afaik. It wouldn't make sense anyway as there's 0 stun happening when you block with a shield, except when a blockstun occurs.

I always had the impression blunt had a malus against shields but that may only be due to the weak sound effect. If p and b don't keep their armor piercing bonuses against shields, cut is the evident winner by a large margin. Otherwise, maybe it is slightly better to use pierce on metal shields. On all others, cut is better.

Perhaps Paul or cmp could chime in on this thread and settle the matter. It seems like shields do have soak just like player armor, because the plated shields can be totally indestructible against 1h swords with moderate shield skill.  You can test this on DTV; get a steel shield and only 6 shield skill, and backpedal against a horde of peasants. The shield will never break.

And blunt breaks shields fine, it's probably psychological like you said, based on the dinky sound effect. I used a LHSM for a couple gens, and a military hammer for like 5-6 gens.

[Renegade]

Why should armor on shields work different from body armor?
Against zero armor every damage type should be equally effective. At somewhere around 15 armor all damagetypes are nearly equal. The more armor you have the better pierce and blunt get.
But since bonus against shield greatly increases the damage, it's mostly the best choice to use an axe.
If the damage of your cut weapon is the same as of a blunt weapon and neither of them has bonus vs shield you should prefer the blunt weapon...
If the enemy has enough shield skill it doesn't matter if you use pierce, blunt or cut. If you don't have bonus vs shield it takes forever to break the shield.
You should look for bonus vs shield, most damage, blunt, pierce, cut in this order

[Vodner]

For melee, shield damage formula seems to be truncate((truncate(raw_damage) - shield armor) * (1 - shield skill * 0.08)). If raw_damage - shield armor is 0, it just uses 0.

raw_damage seems appears be calculated by the same function that calculates raw damage for hits on players, so I would guess that it follows most of the same rules (powerstrike, wpf, speed bonus, sweetspot penalty, hold bonus, etc). No guarantees though, the function is enormous and I didn't spend too much time on it.

If a weapon has bonus to shields, then it deals double raw_damage. I didn't see any 'armor reduce' type code, or any code for specific damage types, but I may have just missed them.

e: just saw a stab from a long axe get the bonus to shield damage.

[Rhaelys]

For melee, shield damage formula seems to be truncate((truncate(raw_damage) - shield armor) * (1 - shield skill * 0.08)). If raw_damage - shield armor is 0, it just uses 0.

raw_damage seems appears be calculated by the same function that calculates raw damage for hits on players, so I would guess that it follows most of the same rules (powerstrike, wpf, speed bonus, sweetspot penalty, hold bonus, etc). No guarantees though, the function is enormous and I didn't spend too much time on it.

If a weapon has bonus to shields, then it deals double raw_damage. I didn't see any 'armor reduce' type code, or any code for specific damage types, but I may have just missed them.

e: just saw a stab from a long axe get the bonus to shield damage.

Long axe has a cut stab, so that doesn't really elucidate if pierce or blunt type attacks from weapons that have bonus to shield receive that bonus.

[Vodner]

Long axe has a cut stab, so that doesn't really elucidate if pierce or blunt type attacks from weapons that have bonus to shield receive that bonus.

This was in native, where it does 19b.