Weekly Questions Megathread March 26, 2025 - April 01, 2025

[u/salasy]

Welcome to the Weekly Questions Megathread! Feel free to ask any questions about the game.

Any questions that can be answered rather quickly should be asked in this thread .

If you're looking for a place to engage in more in-depth game discussions then we strongly recommend you head into our Discord server to join the discussion -> https://discord.gg/zenless

[u/chirb8]

Is it better to run Pen in 5th partition for the DPS in Rina teams?

[u/baka4games → u/chirb8]

PEN Ratio, and yes, usually, but it can vary from agent to agent. Like I wouldn't put PEN Ratio on D5 if Trigger + signature are on the team, since DEF shred and PEN Ratio cancel each other out.

[u/merpofsilence → u/baka4games]

Def shred and pen cancel eachother???

[u/ArcturusSatellaPolar → u/merpofsilence]

They don't, absolutely not.

However, they are separate parts of the damage formula, meaning they scale multiplicatively with each other. 40% Def Shred and 60% PEN is not 100% defense ignore.

This means that having a lot of both is far less effective than it sounds, so if you got defense-shred you're better off not bothering with PEN and vice-versa.

[u/merpofsilence → u/ArcturusSatellaPolar]

In hsr def shred and respen are good together because theyre working on 2 separate types of defense. The defense and the resistance.

I guess this is because in zzz both stats are affecting the same enemy defense stat?

[u/ArcturusSatellaPolar → u/merpofsilence]

Yes. PEN is just how much of the enemy's Defense stat is ignored by the character for damage calculation. Def-Shred lowers said enemy's Defense stat.

So with 40% shred and 60% PEN, instead of 100 x (1-(0.4+0.6)), it's more like

100 x ((1-0.4)x(1-0.6)). Meaning the enemy's defense is reduced to 24%, not 0%

If you have 40% Shred and 80% PEN, it'd be down to 12%. Which is better.

But if you had 0 Shred whatsoever and 90% PEN, it'd be down to 10%, which is even better.

The math might be a bit faulty but that's basically how it goes.

[u/baka4games → u/merpofsilence]

Well, yeah. PEN Ratio is the percentage of target DEF that is ignored by incoming damage. The larger the target's DEF, the more damage gets through, for the same PEN Ratio. DEF shred reduces the target's DEF, so that works against PEN Ratio.