Talk:Damage 2.0/@comment-83.254.89.86-20140122171917/@comment-186.136.108.121-20140122191408

I agree that impact damage seems to be underwhelming in-game, especially since you can zap all shields far better with Magnetic, and leave Heat as a third which is only bad against... shields. A good Jack-of-all-trades at first glance would be Puncture+Magnetic+Heat.

Off-game, though, blunt force trauma weapons don't necessarily have to bend armor to cause damage. In the case of hard plate armor, a strong blunt blow would simply transmit force to the body directly: mace hits the armor, armor hits you. If a blow is strong enough to bend a plate of material, the latter would likely simply break, resulting in a "piercing" type of attack, because hard materials generally tend to crack instead of bend. That is, unless the armor was soft enough to bend a lot before breaking, in which cas I'm not sure it should be made into plate armor in the first place.

Then again, blunt force is far more effective against light armors which bend, since there is either less material or less rigid, preventing it from absorbing and ditributing the blow before it gets to the fleshy bits. The reason blades are bad against heavy armor is that blades are designed for cutting, so they're relatively light with a sharp edge, and the pressure resulting from hitting hard armor would result in the blade losing its edge. Finally, strong puncturing impacts often involve small sharp pieces of very hard material, which require more precision to deal lethal blows with since they can pass through soft flesh very easily. All of this is why slash/blades/shrapnel are generally understood to be better against unarmored targets, impact/blunt against light armor, and piercing/puncture against plate armor.

In any case, this here involved a hefty bit of supposition and simplification, it's not always that simple. I also don't know that much about modern military armors, or what kind of materials the Grineer use for them besides being called "Ferrite" and "Alloy", which suggests metallic plates. Whatever, I'm sure Joe the "I was on the Navy" guy will come right up to correct my bullshit.