Clvl: 18
Prerequisites: Critical Strike.
Effect: Additional chance to hit.
Properties: Does not work with elemental or guided arrows.
Synergy from: None.
Synergy to: Valkyrie: +40 AR/slvl.
Penetrate boosts Attack Rating by 35% for the first point and by 10% for every point invested thereafter. Every bowazon should have one point in Penetrate for no other reason than it's a prerequisite to Pierce. If you're playing Hardcore, you'll probably be allocating points into vitality, so Penetrate is recommended alongside a plethora of +AR items.
The significance of Penetrate becomes apparent as your AR develops into the thousands yet your chances to hit a monster seemingly start a slow downward slide. And I'll admit that, yes, hitting stuff in Hell difficulty level, especially in v1.10 is hard. There's a reason why it's so hard for your über-dexterity bowazon to hit anything in Hell with anything besides Guided Arrow even though she has AR in the ten-thousands, and it's not because you didn't invest enough points in Penetrate. The reason is that Penetrate may raise AR, but this has little bearing to the way AR relates to To-Hit percentages, as reported by Chuck Hsiao:
The To-Hit formula, in percentage form, is: 100 × AR/(AR + DR) × 2 × alvl/(alvl + dlvl)
The misunderstanding here is that your level affects things. In reality, the only time it affects things is if the overall To-Hit is bumping against the 5% or 95% caps. At any other time, the level part of the equation can be discarded. The whole point of making a comparison of which is better and such is to try to generate the highest overall damage. Because we are trying to make the different variables independent, it should become clear that the best way to work with the numbers is to take percentage changes. For example, if [we] try exact number changes, then how much another point into Strafe affects things depend on what your bow average is, etc. Thus, the all-important quantity is the percentage change (usually increase).
For any given level, when you're changing the AR & DR part of the equation, the level part is constant. You can ignore it. In short: your level doesn't matter. Having a high Penetrate to counter a level disadvantage doesn't work. For the skeptics, let's try a concrete example. Say your base AR was 1,000, the monster's DR is 500 and you're level 25 and the monster's level 50. Then To-Hit is:
100 × 1,000/(1,000 + 500) × 2 × 25/(25 + 50) = 44.444%
Now let's bump up your AR to 2,000. Then we have:
100 × 2,000/(2,000 + 500) × 2 × 25/(25 + 50) = 53.333%
This results in a percentage increase of (53.333 — 44.444)/44.444 = 20%.
For those of you who aren't math-inclined, notice that this also means that your To-Hit was raised by 9%.
Now let's do the same with you at level 50. We thus have:
100 × 1,000/(1,000 + 500) × 2 × 50/(50 + 50) = 66.667%
100 × 2,000/(2,000 + 500) × 2 × 50/(50 + 50) = 80%
Your To-Hit was raised here from 67% to 80%, thus you gained 13%, which is more than the 9% you gained in first example. As Chuck argues, the percentage increase is the same. However, notice that your unadjusted To-Hit has jumped from 44.444% in the first example to 66.667% in the second example just by raising the attacker's level!
Again we find a percentage increase of (80 — 66.667)/66.667 = 20%. Your level shouldn't be a consideration when thinking about Penetrate, unless the To-Hit is bumping against the 5% or 95% caps.
This is somewhat incorrect: your level should be the first consideration when thinking about your To-Hit percentages. However, the argument in the beginning of this article was that having a high Penetrate to counter a level disadvantage doesn't work, and it doesn't.
…
While Penetrate increases AR rather linearly, the formula the number is plugged into has severe decreasing returns (I say decreasing instead of diminishing because of the set diminishing returns formula that Blizzard uses to calculate stuff like Critical Strike per level, etc). When you're at the higher reaches, whether you're doing 89% or 89.5% To-Hit doesn't matter too much. On the other hand, putting points into other stuff means that, while you're be hitting a bit less, the overall average damage that you do increases by a lot more.
— Chuck Hsiao
Monsters in Hell difficulty have an average level of 75~85, so your character is suffers a level disadvantage that will plague her until she hits the late 80's.
Though investing in Penetrate is generally a good idea, don't dump a point into Penetrate every level until you hit the max and don't use Penetrate as some sort of patch to fix your low chances to hit a monster: the skill just doesn't work that way. Again, the higher your level, the less you'll need Penetrate, so keep that in mind: not only will your higher level help your To-hit percentages, but you'll also have better items open to you. Due to the plethora of +AR bonuses from items, auras, and spirits available, Penetrate is arguably the weakest of the passive skills. My recommendation is to give this skill one to ten points, then let dexterity, +AR items and +skills take care of the rest.
Bug Report!
The Attack Rating bonus from Penetrate is negated by the Blessed Aim aura from a paladin or town guard. That is to say that the AR bonus from Blessed Aim overrides that of Penetrate. Other Auras with AR% bonus will not negate Penetrate's AR bonus.
last updated: Friday, September 28, 2007
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