Mace specialization mechanics? (warr/rogue)

Hello,

I've been looking into mace specialization and how it plays into armorpen.. Are they the same? I did some research on forums from 2015 discussing expose and sunder armor and how they work with armorpen. My main research consisted of Basasjoblu's guide on armorpen. Everyone assumes that mace specialization is the same as armorpen, and if this is so, how could this benefit anyone? Does it just function as an alternative for gems and enchants, allowing those gems and enchants to be open spots for other gems? Does it not benefit anyone after hard cap because it's just like armorpen? Or is it more like a multiplier, acting in accordance with sunder armor type abilities? And regarding those abilities, do they still apply in a multiplicative manner, or are they additive now?

Thanks for helping out a noob

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Originally Posted by Cvola

Hello,

I've been looking into mace specialization and how it plays into armorpen.. Are they the same? I did some research on forums from 2015 discussing expose and sunder armor and how they work with armorpen. My main research consisted of Basasjoblu's guide on armorpen. Everyone assumes that mace specialization is the same as armorpen, and if this is so, how could this benefit anyone? Does it just function as an alternative for gems and enchants, allowing those gems and enchants to be open spots for other gems? Does it not benefit anyone after hard cap because it's just like armorpen? Or is it more like a multiplier, acting in accordance with sunder armor type abilities? And regarding those abilities, do they still apply in a multiplicative manner, or are they additive now?

Thanks for helping out a noob

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Hi,
mace specialization gives % of armor penetration, it means that you reach higher % of armor penetration with less arpen stat on gear/gems. (hard cap with this talent is 85% on your character sheet or 1190 armor penetration ratting)

You can gear for/gem for more STR instead (210 more str to have equeal arp%).

Sunder armor is armor reduction, which is a different thing.

Short story: Stack sunder armor and fairy fire on bosses, each stack of SA or FF increases physical dmg taken by cca 2%.

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Target armor is first reduced by armor reduciton debuffs (like sunder, or fairy fire) and than armor penetration ignores up to your % armor from that. There is this weird formula resulting in you ignoring 100% of targets armor only if it has less than about 7K armor total, if target has more armor, you wont ignore all of it. (this is where armor reduction comes into play - if target has 9K armor default and you reduce it by 25% to less than 7K you get to bypass all of it with armor penetration - Raid bosses are prime example of this - with stacked Sunder and FF you ignore all their armor).

https://wowwiki.fandom.com/wiki/Armor_penetration

Read this bro, everything is nicely explained here.