Spell penetration worth it?

[Lasos]

Hello everyone,

Which category does Spell Penetration fall into: "Not worth it", "nice to have" or actually "essential" for beating some of the higher SRs on the server? I'm thinking both PvE and PvP-wise. PvP-wise, I saw these SRs from a different thread on the forum:

Drow/Monk 20: 32
Battleclerics: 35
Caster Clerics: 39
Pure Druids: 42

Seems a 27/3 wizard build without any spell penetration will have a lot of trouble with any of the above-mentioned classes in a fight. Is this the same for PvE? Have never played a caster on the server before, but it seems that with all the amazing changes to Spell Foci, that this is much more Interesting to pick another one of these rather than Spell penetration, however, if it leaves the build unable to break SRs of both monsters and players, then I do not think that trade would be worth it.

Any inputs are most welcomed!

[Wytchee]

If you 26 or more caster levels, no. Any less and you may want to consider it.

Caster clerics and druids can be stripped of their spell resistance with a single spell.

Battle clerics... lol

[Baron Saturday]

Not worth it. The only reason SR mattered in that thread was because the character under discussion was a True Flame sorcerer. Every other offensive casting class that I can think of has access to stuff like dispels, breaches, powerful summons, spells that bypass SR, or some other way of dealing with high-SR enemies.

This is part of why TF's aren't considered all that powerful - sure, they can blast out damage like nobody's business, but their lack of other tools makes them a one-trick pony and thus easy to counter.

[Hunter548]

It's never worth it unless you're doing some abomination build with sub 20 CL. Breach spells lower SR for non-monks.

[Lasos]

Great, that solves a bit of a problem in regards to my feats. Thanks a bunch everyone!

[StrykerMontgomery]

If i had the time and patience, is roll up a 50 spell resist monk just to spite all of you lol.

[Hunter548]

If i had the time and patience, is roll up a 50 spell resist monk just to spite all of you lol.

Spell pen still wouldn't be worth it. 50 SR is still only a 10% chance for a spell to hit with Epic Spell Pen, assuming 26 caster levels (Which is kind of standard, assuming you don't care about dying to any level 10 with knockdown).

[StrykerMontgomery]

Perfect, so i can make a 25 monk 5 shadow dancer with improved expertise with epic dodge, HiPS, massive speed, UMD (damage is lacking so some lvl 6 spells on wands might be fun besides obvious UMD uses) and still not have anyone touch my SR because of the mainstream amount of cookie cutter metaing

Alas, I do not have the time though.

*EDIT*

BUT they are right. Seems most peoole try to squeeze the most out of their build these days and if you are tight on feats you probably don't want to get spell penetration. I just dont consider it a useless feat by any stretch of imagination.

[Baron Saturday]

It's not useless, it's just almost always worse than the alternatives.