RIP Precise, We Hardly Knew Thee

Replies: 31

[spoiler title = "Change Log"]

2/10/17 – Minor updates

12/17/16 – Sets added

9/29/16 – Reformatted and updated for One Tamriel

[/spoiler]

Ladies and Gents,

We are gathered here today to pay our respects to the trait known as Precise.  Precise was good to us in our times of need, helping us deal with long, mindless trash encounters through AoE spamming.  He was an adequate fellow for solo content, and some of the foolhardy among us even questioned his merit during solo boss fights.  With One Tamriel nearly upon us, however, we can now fully lay our comrade to rest.  Let us not lament his passing, but instead be thankful for the good times that we shared with him, particularly during his embodiment in our Lightning Staves.

*Ahem* Seriously, I’m hoping that this will the be the /thread to end all discussion of Precise v. Sharpened.  PRECISE IS DEAD, LONG LIVE SHARPENED.  With One Tamriel, all mobs will have the same resistance as that previously reserved for bosses (18.2k).  Quite simply, what this means is that penetration on your weapons will be BiS in over 99.9% of all combat encounters.  No matter how you calculate it, the damage gained from the extra crit granted from Precise will not equal the damage gained from Sharpened’s penetration.

The only very very rare occasion that people will ever use Precise is when a boss has had their resistance negated by raid debuffs.  The list of raid debuffs and the amount of resistance they negate are as follows:

Physical & Spell Penetration

Base Penetration: 100

Major Fracture/Breach: 5280

Minor Fracture/Breach: 1320

Sharpened Trait: 5160

Infused Crusher Enchant: 1946

Alkosh x5: 3010

Physical Penetration Only

Night Mother’s Gaze x5: 2580

Sunderflame x5: 3440

Kra’gh x1: 1935

Spriggan x5: 4000

Twice-Fanged x5: 5000 (when 5 stacks applied)

Spell Penetration Only

Concentration Passive: 4884

Spinner’s x5: 4000

What this means is that if you can find a combination of the above numbers that will get you to 18.2k WITHOUT Sharpened, then it is permissible to use Precise.  As can be seen, this will be very difficult to achieve for all but the most coordinated of raid groups.  Even then, Precise will only be worthwhile on single target boss fights; Sharpened will be needed for all other encounters as even the most coordinated of raids will not be able to pull off fully debuffing all the mobs in other encounters.

TL:DR Just use Sharpened and only Sharpened ever. 

• This topic was modified 5 months ago by  Duckbutta.