How should we understand the "Walls of the Piercing Frost"?

it means that every unit that have more pierce armor will get extra dmg. in comparison with kronnos walls you sacrifice some early dmg for a better one when ai units gets armor.

 

I think it should be efficient against the High Priest of Loder.

 

I don't have the detailed maths in front of me but, since i am responsible of these stats what i can say is :
This is designed for specific targets / and or specific scenari the damage output of the piercing wall alone can greater than Kronos by around 5% more in those specific scenarios
If paired with the construction addition the list of those specific scenari and targets expends so therefore the damage "gain" is quicker to kick in compared to a kronos i dont have the value in mind but 10 15% better seems correct
Attack rate is not as global as damage but can peak higher in some cases which is exactly how we made the stats.
About the lack of Hp, true that you "lose" 10% compared to Kronos and even on cases where the damage is greater you can still lose "flat value" but and to me it's a big but keep in mind that on again most scenarios towers are butter to ais, the fact that you are facing AIs mean that you can bait them / or make walls to protect those towers is also a push from us to make players get better habits/ improve while rewarding them with a damage boost

I am not a fan of giving every clues at once and we want the community to experiment, get in our minds so they can feel where / when / how this is needed and or better. The idea is not to add straight up BIS items as you know, so the kronos will still be valuable and usefull in good hands. On higher armored units, Piercing frost wins, on units with less armor, Kronos wins. You have a situational choice of which to use, based on what you play more.

 

Yea cheers for the explanation Rekiem. The focus of the Roman and Rostam questpacks were armour damage and health > bonus damage and protection on the AI's gear, and as FFNEZ mentions it also means the ai's own armory upgrades become less impactful, they just might be marginally stronger at the start of the quest as a tradeoff. Non cav/ranged/infantry-tag bosses too, as Slyverick mentions, the armor pen goes further than BD/BDP, and only so much defensive stats is needed.

 

I did some rudimentary testing vs very high armor (.80 pierce armor) in Io Saturnalia. Just move the scout and shoot at the wall up the cliff and look at the hp chunks going down.

my old tower setup had kronos (66% hp,14.1%dmg) and delian archon.
my wall of piercing frost(61.6% hp, 8.3% dmg, 9.2% ia)

hp go from 2260hp to 1940hp with both items, I can endure that.

My old towers with kronos and delian did 7 dmg to the wall per shot
with kronos and piercing blueprint: 12 dmg per shot (71% more dmg than old towers)
with delian archon and wall of piercing frost: 10 dmg per shot (42% more dmg than old towers)
with both wall and blueprint of piercing frost: 14 dmg per shot (100% more dmg than old towers)

With the blueprint of pf as mainstay, going from kronos to wotpf (12 to 14 dmg per shot) is not as big a step tho, only 16% more dmg. There seems to be some diminishing return from having already reduced the armor.



I also waited for the 4min attack from 2 legionaire with .2 pierce armor, 1 speaman with 0 pierce armor and a slinger with .37 pierce armor and the treasure guardians with .3 pierce armor.
I tested with Blueprint of the Piercing Frost always ON, only kronos vs wotpf changed.

spearman(0pa) with kronos: 38 dmg per shot
spearman(0pa) with wotpf: 36 dmg per shot

legionaire(.2pa) with kronos: 32 dmg per shot
legionaire(.2pa) with wotpf: 31 dmg per shot

slinger(.37pa) with kronos: 27 dmg per shot
slinger(.37pa) with wotpf: 26 dmg per shot

guardians(.3pa) with kronos: 32 dmg per shot
guardians(.3pa) with wotpf: 31 dmg per shot

I'm not sure what to make of those numbers. The rounding makes it hard to get a good estimation of the %dmg loss or gained.

The ignore armor from the blueprint might reduce the effectiveness of additional ignore armor.

The guardians are taking the same dmg as the legionaires despite having .3pa vs .2 pa.

The slingers with the best pierce armor of the lot are still taking less dmg with the wall of the piercing frost than with kronos, so .37 isn't yet enough armor to make wotpf worth it.




Edit to add 2 more targets

Marion patroling and first wave: hoplites (.43pa) and sarissophroi (.56pa)
It seems like many units uses some pierce armor gear and didn't find base armored units without it.

with blueprint of the piercing frost still ON

hoplites (.43pa) with kronos: 24 dmg per shot
hoplites (.43pa) with wotpf: 24 dmg per shot

sarissophoroi (.56pa) with kronos: 20 dmg per shot
sarissophoroi (.56pa) with wotpf: 21 dmg per shot

That seems to be the point where my wotpf (8.3% dmg, 9.2% ia) gets better than my kronos (14.1%dmg). Both near average.

It's higher armor than the theory pointed out by Frogs.poison where frost would becomes better at .3pa. I still had lower dmg with frost at.37pa.

Considering that those numbers are rounded and since they are low dmg shots, it can produce high % error.

 

1/ of course i tried with kronos and the construction addition, like purpleganja said the construction addition itself is a gain of damage but at lower threshold, so delian is still relevant in cases where for example you can't build wall

2/ Still not on my pc but it's around the 3rd tier of armory that the pierce armor "takes over"

3/
armor_final_factor = 1.0 - (1.0 - ignore_armor_factor) * armor_factor

Also keep in mind that ignore is additive, not like armors in general so wall + construction addition gives 25 % ignore.

 

The formula for what Ignore Armor does is New Armor = Old Armor * (1-Ignore Armor Value).

Ignore Armor from multiple sources stacks additively rather then multiplicatively - Thus with what's currently the max Wall number, you can get up to 30% ignore armor.

TBH using Kronos in comparision isn't really the best bet - Kronos is NOT the highest damage walls available, even before this one was added. Kronos simply has the best defense-offense ratio. Legion Recruit's walls have a slightly higher damage roll (16%), there's a craftable green wall that has even higher (19.9%), a random lvl 12 rare wall that has 19.8%, and finally a random drop from lvl 18 crete chests that has up to 22.4% crit that's the best offensive wall for Guard Towers to most targets.

Anyway - DPS of MAXED Greek Guard Tower using https://unitstats.projectceleste.com/?build=ef9448d14b5da2d49102681c081e4eada7d5fc3d48d2ebb132e9024f

.5 armor targets (Shieldbearers, Sparabara, ect)
Kronos - 80.15 Frost - 86.42. Frost is roughly 7% stronger.

.3 armor targets (Most units with baseline pierce armor)
Kronos - 103.84 Frost - 104.82. Frost is stronger, but only just.

.2 armor targets (Legionarrie, Equus)
Kronos - 115.69 Frost - 114.11. Kronos is stronger, but only just.

On 0 armor targets, Kronos deals 139 dps, Frost, 132 dps.

Now, let's check the heavy armor targets.

.7 armor targets (Farbs, Celt Rams)
Kronos - 56.2 Frost - 67.4. Frost is nearly 20% stronger then Kronos.

.85 armor targets (All other siege)
Kronos - 38.6 Frost - 53.4. Frost is nearly 30% stronger then Kronos.

.91 armor targets (Fully upgraded siege)
Kronos - 31.5 Frost - 47.9. Frost is 35% stronger then Kronos.

Note that while the raw numbers assume maximum guard tower damage builds, the %ages in which Kronos vs Frost will be the same regardless of what tower you used - Perfect Frost will be 7% stronger then perfect Kronos against any .5 armor target, perfect Kronos will be 20% weaker then perfect against the 2 pop rams. You can also use any bow and any arrow and get the same results.

Of course, a perfect Frost is FAR harder to get atm then a perfect Kronos. Additionally, it's likely that the ignore armor range will be fixed to a much smaller %age.

Personally I would use Frost if you had the means/money even if they do change the ignore armor range to 8-10% instead of the current 5-14%. Guard Towers have absolutely NO problems killing low armor targets. They do have significant problems killing high-armor targets, which also tend to be targtes designed to kill guard towers. And against those targets, Frost is just much, much stronger then Kronos.

You should also put the frost blueprints on every single guard tower.

Addenum 12/18/2022 - Do not put on Forts if you don't want forts to break trees

 

Not on egy fort imo and it also depends how you use forts if you want them to "tank for you" which is really strong compared to a wall then hp delian is the way to go but for damage yes sure