Stats Guide - Armor Break
Last update: 11/29/2021
The Armor Break (or "AB", "Penetration" or "Armor Penetration") is a stat that ignores a part of the enemy's defense.
Don't assimilate the Armor Break as a super armor destruction multiplier, thereby don't confuse it with the Super Armor Break stat!
For example, if the enemy has 1000 defense and you have 25% of Armor Break, then his defense falls down to 750. 100% of AB reduces the enemy's defense to 0, and this defense stat will never go under 0 with your Armor Break in terms of results (it can maybe reach negative values, but that doesn't seem to change anything). Due to this fact, it is useless to get more than 100% AB.
According to the defense rate formula, Armor Break has an exponential damage gain behavior: adding 5% more AB won't results in the same DMG output when adding them on 15% than adding them on 90%. Also, the damage increment will vary according to the enemy's defense, and on the attacker's level as well (see the defense rate calculation formula to understand it better).
Here is a table showing Armor Break's efficiency on endgame raids' bosses, from 0% to 100%:
Despite a potential urban legend about the fact Armor Break would proc only on basic defense value, a carried test* shows that it actually seems the Armor Break procs on the overall value, thus meaning it also procs efficiently against PvP enemies.
About enemies' defense reduction through skills
There are characters (mainly Jin and Iris) having skills that reduce the enemy's armor for a specific time. This buff works the same way than Armor Break, but then some particularities appear when combining both these skills' debuff and your own Armor Break.
- Let's say the enemy has 1,000 as defense value. Admitting one character of your team applies a defense debuff of 20% to this enemy, his defense falls down to 800.
- Now let's consider we have 50% AB in addition. Combined to this skill debuff, your AB will reduce the enemy's defense by 400 (and not 500). The end result is then (1000 * (1-20/100)) * (1-50/100)
Indeed, the game calculates the new enemy's defense based on your AB using the result of his native defense * the skill's defense debuff as reference. Here is a proper formula to calculate it:
[Enemy's Defense * (1 - {Skill Defense Debuff})] * (1 - [Armor Break])
In case of a choice to make between stats to add, this stat proportionally wins in strength among other multipliers in terms of long-term fights.
*Personal note: the carried test showed a ~1.5x damage gain with 6% AB vs 100% on a PvP geared player (800 average damage dealt at 6% AB vs 1200 average damage dealt at ~100% AB - both were normal hits). If the AB had proc'ed on the basic defense value only (as like few players said it should work), it would have reduced my opponent's defense by between 24 and 407 (it was an lv65 Iris player) and so, her defense rate by less than 0.05% (she had more than 50k defense). Since I used to not receive any extra buff from procs other than Cruel Slash's skill buff and only few equipment pieces to reach 100% AB (no adv passive buff, AoV weapon, soulstones, akashas nor brooches buffs except melters), and since the opponent didn't receive any resistance buff through her equipment, such a low reduction would not impact the damage I dealt by 1.5x then.
For little curious, I used:
- HH weapon. (the main reason why I didn't carried a test at 0% AB but 6% instead, since I had 6% AB on it and didn't want to roll this for the test to be honest)
- Cruel Slash's buff.
- HH leg guards. (those have been removed while carrying the test at 6%. Please note that any ATK buff was brought by them)
- HH jewelry to benefit of the 4-set buff. (I used to wear at least 3 of them to carry the test at 6%. Please note that the 4th one didn't give any ATK bonus at all)
- Melter brooches only.
- Titles n°246.
But so, it requires a high amount of AB to be really noticeable.
P.S: the test has been carried in District 6.