Talk:Snipetron Vandal/@comment-71.84.12.230-20130727175757/@comment-13117751-20130729155420

To clarify the difference between armor pierce and armor ignore I have a comment somewhere on the Latron weapons page answering someone who also asked about the difference between the two. It got bumped down a bit by more recent posts but it's definitely still there (just look for some fella who asked 1) 2) 3)   ). However, to save you the trouble of looking, I'll redo a shorter summary here.

Armor ignoring properties on a weapon means that the projectiles it fires inherently do not factor in a target's defence on hit (there are actually a few exceptions, but that's something else entirely). The base damage that you see is the damage you should get, more or less. An example of this is the very commonly used boltor. Traditionally higher level enemies get exponentially higher defence, but armor-ignore weapons do not care. They do the same damage to a level 100+ enemy that they would to a level 10 enemy. Another feature of this is that you generate the same damage shooting pretty much anywhere on the enemy. If you shoot an ancient in the body, which is usually protected, it ignores the armor on its torso and does normal damage anyway. With traditional bullet weapons one would have to aim at the weak spots at the ends of their limbs.

Armor piercing properties on a weapon essentially act the same as the armor piercing "ELEMENT" damage type (i.e. piercing hit mod, if you want an example). Essentially the "shot" possesses all the benefits and drawbacks of being armor piercing. An example is the Snipetron Vandal, of course. Certain enemies like the grineer are actually weak to the armor piercing elemental damage type, and therefore shooting a weapon like the snipetron vandal at them actually grants you bonus damage (50% more on medium grineer, i.e. the common lancer). On the flipside, light infested enemies (i.e. crawler) resist the armor piercing element, so you get reduced damage firing at them (50% less). Like armor ignoring weapons, an armor pierce weapon can hit an enemy anywhere and do consistent damage. So as in the previous example, shooting an ancient in the chest with the snipetron will do full damage, where most weapons would have their damage mitigated.

What makes armor pierce and armor ignore so similar is that most enemies do not have any scaling defences against armor pierce, so essentially it acts in the same way armor ignore does. An example is that heavy gunner you mentioned. As heavy gunners reach higher levels, their defences against normal bullet damage increase, however their defences against armor pierce do NOT (in fact, they don't really have any defence against armor pierce to begin with). This is true with pretty much every single enemy. Their resistance to armor piercing does not increase with level, so shooting at a level 100+ enemy with an armor piercing weapon does the same damage as it would on the same enemy if it were only level 10, just like armor ignore.

So really in the long-run the only difference is that bonus damage against medium grineer and damage penalty against light infested (keep in mind ancients are NOT light infested and actually grant bonus damage if shot in the head with an armor piercing weapon...thus there is no drawback to using an armor piercing weapon against ancients). Also one thing to keep in mind is that the resistances and bonuses affiliated with armor piercing really only affect the BASE hit of the weapon...mods that are calculated off the base damage should be unaffected (unless this was changed recently).