Assumption: The percent in the blessing description is per stack applied, so at 15 stacks the t4’s 4% will give 60% rending and at 20 stacks will give 80% rending.
[Edit: A comment has pointed out this assumption is almost certainly wrong, with it instead capping at 20% rending and not depending on stacks.]
Method of testing values:
Simulate 15 stacks of penetrating flame on a target having 60 rending with t1 Uncanny Strikes and 20 stacks having 80 rending with t2 Uncanny Strikes, both on a sword with otherwise neutral perks.
Barebones pysker build to get venting shriek with creeping flames, but carefully avoiding all damage buffs to get constant values.
Selection of units with each of the armor types: Sniper for Unarmored, Pox hound for Infested, Shotgunner for Flak, Rager for Maniac, Reaper for Unyielding, and Crusher for Carapace.
Apply 6 stacks of soulblaze with Venting Shriek from above 85 peril, take note of base damage ticks, then reset everything.
Apply 6 stacks of soulblaze with Venting shriek, but this time building 5 stacks of t1 or t2 Uncanny Strikes on a different mob, take note of damage ticks.
Possible Issue: 6 stacks is a low value and its damage is likely to be quite rounded, and so working out damage boost % is going to be vague, but higher stacks kill mobs too quickly and 6 stacks is still good enough for rough estimates.
My interpretation
The impact of the blessing is minor, except against crushers. The 0%, 11%, and 15% boosts are much lower than the boost that most other weapons get from many other blessings, and have a fair bit of time investment before they are active against a fresh target. The impact verses Crushers is exceptional though. However, the Carapace damage, while significantly improved, is mostly because without rending it has a 0.1 coefficient. Even with the boost from rending it is still a very slow way to kill them. I tested against a Crusher again, but this time with 15 stacks, and found they take 12 damage per tick without rending and 84 damage per tick with 60 rending. Given they have 3600 hp on damnation, it would take 15 stacks of soulblaze with Penetrating Flame about 30 seconds to kill one. This is without any other buffs (though even if you somehow got enough buffs to double your damage it is still 15 seconds, which still isn’t fast). That time also ignores the setup time to get up to 15 stacks, assumes that it is refreshed several times to maintain 15 stacks, and that you keep the staff held the whole time to apply the debuff by having the weapon active. It is hardly going to evaporate a pack of crushers, and will likely remain one of the slower ways to kill them compared to most other options. The old trick of using t4 uncanny on a melee will remain the most optimal way for a Purgatus to deal with a pack of crushers.
Conclusion
The new Penetrating Flame blessing will have a small impact to slightly improve Purgatus damage against gunners and elite targets, will help against crushers but isn’t likely to trivialize them, and won’t have any impact at all against chaff and some specials. It will be better than the no boost at all offered by the currently available Purgatus blessings, but it isn’t going to ‘break the game’, at least no more than is currently possible with a well played Purgatus build.
Nice work! We’ll have a better idea of how strong the rending blessing will be on both the Purgatus staff and the Flamer once the update drops, but it’s good to see that it won’t be as game breaking as some are making it out to be.
I dont agree with it having any carapace damage tbh, the most engaging part of using purge is switching to blitz or melee to take out the remaining armored targets. now players are gonna goon with it non stop and blind their teammates.
The code for the blessing has been in the game for quite a long time. Based on the code the blessing applies up to 4 stacks of rending and the cap is 20 stacks for 20% rending in total. The rending debuff is not based on how many stacks of soulblaze or burn the enemy has, but rather it’s an independent debuff that applies on hit. The numbers may be adjusted in the patch but I personally don’t think they will be.
I dont really know why fire is getting rending. The purpose is horde clear, not anti armor. Now it is able to do both? This update is looking really grim balance wise. It seems like the game is losing a lot of its identity with these changes.
I agree, but if it’s going to take 30s to wear down a crusher it’s not going to be the new meta. Smart players will continue to switch to their DS4 or Deimos.
I was pretty sure it was already non issue. Its the bulwark trivializing that really does it for purge, once again the Darktide players that be are putting way too much stock in killing crushers. Are you jealous of his drip or something? They’re so non threatening but any time something can kill them incredibly inefficiently without melee its somehow broken. Huh?
Well… if we’re going by realism instead of balance, it does make sense. You’re literally frying the armoured enemies inside of their own armour. Do I personally think it’ll be a little bit too strong for balancing reasons? Yeah.
That is really interesting. So my assumption was wrong, which isn’t surprising. If it is just 20% rending (actually “brittleness” in this case?) I think its going to have very little benefit for the Psyker and will mostly just help their teammates finish off the things they’ve softened up. I’ll edit my post to point out the assumption is probably wrong. Thank you.
@syllogism Do you have any idea how the Blaze Away is coded to work with the Purgatus by any chance? Currently there are two versions of it, ‘x% power for every 10% of magazine spent during continuous fire’ and ‘x% power for every shot fired during continuous fire’. Neither translate directly. It seems likely we will get a version of the former though, with ‘magazine spent’ being replaced with channeling time or something. If we got the latter and could carry the power buff between attacks and get the benefit on the primary fire then it will be significantly stronger.
I’m still of the opinion that flame dots should just get a flat 10% Carapace damage efficiency instead of a rending blessing for multiple reasons, but I’m not worried about the blessing “breaking the game” so to say.
No, that code isn’t currently available. I assume that it’s channeling time and you lose the buff when you stop channeling. E.g. with a full charge you’ll get the full benefit after you’ve spent half of your charge.
But that was before I learned about base pen issues etc. so results may vary depending on weapon. Also I’m not sure what 60% rending looks like, and the dmg increase may not be a linear +60% of the percentages above.
Now, I don’t have any dmg numbers to post. But what I DO know is that for a long time now you’ve been able to do things like:
Take a 50 crushers
Purge them up to 15 stacks of SB
Switch to a Force Sword & do weakspot hits or spam push-attacks (counts as 1-dmg weakspot) to stack up Uncanny Strike (rending)
Vent and/or switch back to purge to refresh SB
Switch back to sword & keep the rending capped
Watch them all die in short order
So the dmg from SB DoT alone is absolutely effective with rending. Doing that in-game isn’t ofc as simple, and it’s very situational whether that’s even required. But if you get up to 60% of that with just the flamer itself? That changes everything.
Because then you’d have not just carapace but the flak/unyielding/maniac dmg bonuses all of it on, all the time. And remember we’re talking about rending, not brittleness. It’s a buff on you, meaning the weapon & DoT’s would be doing that armor pen all the time even on fresh enemies, likely based on your highest SB stack in any given moment.
So if just the DoT alone can do all that to 50 crushers in ~15-20s with 100% rending - half of which you’re doing zero dmg since you’re just stacking the SB, and then stacking & refreshing the rending…? Imagine what the DoT & direct dmg both will do when there’s no need to ever switch off or do anything else?
If an attack only deals 1% of its regular damage against carapace, it will deal 11% regular dmg against carapace if you add 10% rending.
If it deals 80% regular dmg against carapace, it will deal 90% if you add 10% rending.
With 100% rending, any attack will deal full dmg to carapace. If you take my two examples above, 100% vs 0% rending could mean a 9900% dmg increase (1 to 100), or it can mean a 25% dmg increase (80 to 100).
I used a blue Illisi with block efficiency & Uncanny III (3 stacks = 60% rending) and a gray Purge staff with just these talents (so no dmg talents, perks or blessings to mess with the results):
For the first 2 I just built peril up to 85%+ to get 6 SB from Vent, then for the rending did 3 push-attacks and checked that Uncanny was at 3 stacks.
For the latter 2 I purged up to 15 stacks (and made double sure that it was 15, you wouldn’t believe how often a gray staff put a crit and made it 16 x.x), then same as before.
I can’t test Purge’s direct dmg since the rending isn’t active if I’m not wielding the sword, but I think this gives a pretty good picture of what to expect.
Yup, you’ve reproduced my results. But as Syllogism has pointed out it is very likely that it will cap at 20% rending, have no connection to soulblaze stacks, but apply to all damage that creature takes for 5 seconds. Basically brittleness but capped at 20% rather than 40% from what I can tell.
