Dragonstar Arena best pve in the game

Antirob

Started testing the Veteran mode of the arena and it is single handily the best pve is have done in the game. Please for the love of god do not nerf it. Also keep up the good work.

Attorneyatlawl

That's good to hear @Antirob... nerfing does seem to be the trend though . I'll have to give it a shot tonight...

Azarath_tiberius

Any idea how much XP you get as a VR12? I ,somehow, expect the normal mode to be the new Hircine's grind with a really good group.

Also don't leave us with so little information! What where the rewards? How many waves did you fight? Anything specific you could tell us about the mobs spawning there?

Share the knowledge plz!

Mahogany

Just finished normal mode with some guildies. Aside from a few new blue set pieces (Healer, Archer's Mind, Footman) that were level v13 (wtf Zeni?) there wasn't much interesting in the way of gear. Hopefully hardmode is better. Content was fun - though not exactly challenging on normal mode - and it was a breath of fresh air compared to running trials. Each "room" introduced a new mechanic along with related terrain/backdrops and the experience was long enough to feel satisfying upon completion.

Hardmode introduces new mechanics along with a soul counter. Looking forward to seeing if the loot rewards are worthwhile.

Oberon

@Mahogany - thanks for the post. Interesting stuff. Arenas sound fun

killedbyping

That Archers mind set just... O M F G !

15% critical damage bonus to Ambush attacks oO

Stack it with NightBlades bonus and you get insta kill any1 whith bow's Double Ambush trick or Wrecking Blow ambush.

zmanu

What's with the useless traits again, exploration on end game gear is a crime against merkind.

inf.toniceb17_ESO

zmanu wrote: »

What's with the useless traits again, exploration on end game gear is a crime against merkind.

that was my first thought when i saw that girdle.

Xsorus

killedbyping wrote: »

That Archers mind set just... O M F G !

15% critical damage bonus to Ambush attacks oO

Stack it with NightBlades bonus and you get insta kill any1 whith bow's Double Ambush trick or Wrecking Blow ambush.

And that is why it doesn't have impenetrable for its trait...otherwise every archer would be using it, including nightblades in PvP and wrecking face.

killedbyping

xsorusb14_ESO wrote: »

killedbyping wrote: »

That Archers mind set just... O M F G !

15% critical damage bonus to Ambush attacks oO

Stack it with NightBlades bonus and you get insta kill any1 whith bow's Double Ambush trick or Wrecking Blow ambush.

And that is why it doesn't have impenetrable for its trait...otherwise every archer would be using it, including nightblades in PvP and wrecking face.

Ehm uh ? You dont need impenetrable onself to make Ambush kills.
Ambush build is all about burts damage. You either kill target instantly or in few secs or you die. Impenetrable wont help you.

Xsorus

killedbyping wrote: »

xsorusb14_ESO wrote: »

killedbyping wrote: »

That Archers mind set just... O M F G !

15% critical damage bonus to Ambush attacks oO

Stack it with NightBlades bonus and you get insta kill any1 whith bow's Double Ambush trick or Wrecking Blow ambush.

And that is why it doesn't have impenetrable for its trait...otherwise every archer would be using it, including nightblades in PvP and wrecking face.

Ehm uh ? You dont need impenetrable onself to make Ambush kills.
Ambush build is all about burts damage. You either kill target instantly or in few secs or you die. Impenetrable wont help you.

You need it pretty much for every time you don't instantly kill someone

Baphomet

So they decide to add 15% damage to stealthed snipes and ambushes that can already break the 2000 dmg barrier. Bravo, Zenimax, bravo! You really understand how to balance a game.

Xsorus

Baphomet wrote: »

So they decide to add 15% damage to stealthed snipes and ambushes that can already break the 2000 dmg barrier. Bravo, Zenimax, bravo! You really understand how to balance a game.

If you live through it, you'll murder that archer in seconds

guybrushtb16_ESO

zmanu wrote: »

What's with the useless traits again, exploration on end game gear is a crime against merkind.

This. I could have lived with no trait on it whatsoever if the set bonus was really good, but exploration on it feels just insulting.

Attorneyatlawl

Baphomet wrote: »

So they decide to add 15% damage to stealthed snipes and ambushes that can already break the 2000 dmg barrier. Bravo, Zenimax, bravo! You really understand how to balance a game.

If I see an archer nearby or am going thru an area I figure I might be jumped, I throw up my obsidian shield and re-mount.... I've been sniped and laughed it off with only 3200hp + a 1k igneous shield (takes me down to about 2700hp and shield gone from even the most stacked archers). A crystal fragments doesn't even break the bubble always... stack a little more defense in pvp and so-called "1-shots" are easy to shrug off. ...Unless you're not a DC player, then please continue going glass cannon for me .

xsorusb14_ESO wrote: »

Baphomet wrote: »

So they decide to add 15% damage to stealthed snipes and ambushes that can already break the 2000 dmg barrier. Bravo, Zenimax, bravo! You really understand how to balance a game.

If you live through it, you'll murder that archer in seconds

Quoted for truth.

Brasseurfb16_ESO

killedbyping wrote: »

That Archers mind set just... O M F G !

15% critical damage bonus to Ambush attacks oO

Stack it with NightBlades bonus and you get insta kill any1 whith bow's Double Ambush trick or Wrecking Blow ambush.

You don't need to freak out, that set is not going to break WvW, because :

- First, you can already increase the base dmg of your Ambush by 20% while stealthed and invisible with the Stygian set.
- Secondly, critical damage bonus in this game is a joke because you only get halve of the tooltip value. 15% of 0.50 = 0.075, so you are actualy dealing 1.575 of your base damage with a critical strike with 5 pieces of that set. So a Nightblade with Hemorrhage, Shadow Mundus and Archers mind will be able to get up to a 1,675 critical damage modifier (unless using divine to pump it up to 1.70125).

So basicaly, you are already worrying about a weak set bonus while an already much stronger set is available for Nightblades using Ambush/Veiled Strike. And Snipe, while it will be slightly more powerfull as an initiator, will still not be an issue sinds the damage increase will be mediocre at best.

Quaesivi

zmanu wrote: »

What's with the useless traits again, exploration on end game gear is a crime against merkind.

I could live with it... if all 3 had useless traits...
Funny part is... Heavy Armor has a useless trait... Medium Armor has a useless trait... but surprise! Light Armor has Infused trait... how... shocking...

Brasseurfb16_ESO

Aenthel wrote: »

zmanu wrote: »

What's with the useless traits again, exploration on end game gear is a crime against merkind.

I could live with it... if all 3 had useless traits...
Funny part is... Heavy Armor has a useless trait... Medium Armor has a useless trait... but surprise! Light Armor has Infused trait... how... shocking...

Well-Fitted seems much more interesting in this build. 8% on rare quality, lets assume you get 10% with legendary. That's 70% cost reduction on sprint, 80% if you use a shield and 90% if you use a Shield and the Orc racials!

That's basicaly infinite sprint for you!

Natjur

They are looking at letting craters change traits on armor, so if that goes live, you can replace the enchantment and trait on any drop which makes a lot of drops sets worth a lot more

Maverick827

Natjur wrote: »

They are looking at letting craters change traits on armor, so if that goes live, you can replace the enchantment and trait on any drop which makes a lot of drops sets worth a lot more

Source?

LtCrunch

Maverick827 wrote: »

Natjur wrote: »

They are looking at letting craters change traits on armor, so if that goes live, you can replace the enchantment and trait on any drop which makes a lot of drops sets worth a lot more

Source?

^^^

Guppet

Natjur wrote: »

They are looking at letting craters change traits on armor, so if that goes live, you can replace the enchantment and trait on any drop which makes a lot of drops sets worth a lot more

Smart move. It will let them make drops the best gear, but keep crafters relevant.

PBpsy

Aenthel wrote: »

zmanu wrote: »

What's with the useless traits again, exploration on end game gear is a crime against merkind.

I could live with it... if all 3 had useless traits...
Funny part is... Heavy Armor has a useless trait... Medium Armor has a useless trait... but surprise! Light Armor has Infused trait... how... shocking...

Maybe it is a hint. Medium -Exploration-Take a Hike , Heavy -well fitted - Go for a stroll. Light -ok go play the game.

falcuk

So i come to this thread looking for info on the new content and all i see is a discussion on armour??? wtf... can we get back on topic and people post useful real info on the TOPIC of this thread ?:)

killedbyping

Brasseurfb16_ESO wrote: »

killedbyping wrote: »

That Archers mind set just... O M F G !

15% critical damage bonus to Ambush attacks oO

Stack it with NightBlades bonus and you get insta kill any1 whith bow's Double Ambush trick or Wrecking Blow ambush.

You don't need to freak out, that set is not going to break WvW, because :

- First, you can already increase the base dmg of your Ambush by 20% while stealthed and invisible with the Stygian set.
- Secondly, critical damage bonus in this game is a joke because you only get halve of the tooltip value. 15% of 0.50 = 0.075, so you are actualy dealing 1.575 of your base damage with a critical strike with 5 pieces of that set. So a Nightblade with Hemorrhage, Shadow Mundus and Archers mind will be able to get up to a 1,675 critical damage modifier (unless using divine to pump it up to 1.70125).

So basicaly, you are already worrying about a weak set bonus while an already much stronger set is available for Nightblades using Ambush/Veiled Strike. And Snipe, while it will be slightly more powerfull as an initiator, will still not be an issue sinds the damage increase will be mediocre at best.

Are you even aware that you always do critial damage with stealth attacks (which called ambush damage)?
Are you even aware that the least critical bonus damage with stealth attacks is 1.5x with out any other buffs ?
Bow attacks gain 2x critical bonus and 2h weapons have 3X critical bonus when attacking from stealth.

killedbyping

Brasseurfb16_ESO wrote: »

Aenthel wrote: »

zmanu wrote: »

What's with the useless traits again, exploration on end game gear is a crime against merkind.

I could live with it... if all 3 had useless traits...
Funny part is... Heavy Armor has a useless trait... Medium Armor has a useless trait... but surprise! Light Armor has Infused trait... how... shocking...

Well-Fitted seems much more interesting in this build. 8% on rare quality, lets assume you get 10% with legendary. That's 70% cost reduction on sprint, 80% if you use a shield and 90% if you use a Shield and the Orc racials!

That's basicaly infinite sprint for you!

So you spend few thousands of gold for ability to infinitily sprint run from mobs or other players who have better traits ?
I like that

Maverick827

Guppet wrote: »

Natjur wrote: »

They are looking at letting craters change traits on armor, so if that goes live, you can replace the enchantment and trait on any drop which makes a lot of drops sets worth a lot more

Smart move. It will let them make drops the best gear, but keep crafters relevant.

It would be nice, but there's still no source.

Lionxoft

killedbyping wrote: »

That Archers mind set just... O M F G !

15% critical damage bonus to Ambush attacks oO

Stack it with NightBlades bonus and you get insta kill any1 whith bow's Double Ambush trick or Wrecking Blow ambush.

Because the devs still think that playing the game at an average level includes using one ability at a time or not block clipping the animations. They are so behind.

Brasseurfb16_ESO

killedbyping wrote: »

Brasseurfb16_ESO wrote: »

killedbyping wrote: »

That Archers mind set just... O M F G !

15% critical damage bonus to Ambush attacks oO

Stack it with NightBlades bonus and you get insta kill any1 whith bow's Double Ambush trick or Wrecking Blow ambush.

You don't need to freak out, that set is not going to break WvW, because :

- First, you can already increase the base dmg of your Ambush by 20% while stealthed and invisible with the Stygian set.
- Secondly, critical damage bonus in this game is a joke because you only get halve of the tooltip value. 15% of 0.50 = 0.075, so you are actualy dealing 1.575 of your base damage with a critical strike with 5 pieces of that set. So a Nightblade with Hemorrhage, Shadow Mundus and Archers mind will be able to get up to a 1,675 critical damage modifier (unless using divine to pump it up to 1.70125).

So basicaly, you are already worrying about a weak set bonus while an already much stronger set is available for Nightblades using Ambush/Veiled Strike. And Snipe, while it will be slightly more powerfull as an initiator, will still not be an issue sinds the damage increase will be mediocre at best.

Are you even aware that you always do critial damage with stealth attacks (which called ambush damage)?
Are you even aware that the least critical bonus damage with stealth attacks is 1.5x with out any other buffs ?
Bow attacks gain 2x critical bonus and 2h weapons have 3X critical bonus when attacking from stealth.

EDIT (thx to Killedbyping) : Sneak Attacks work the following way :

You have 2 categories of Sneak Attacks (or Ambush whatever you want to call it)
1) Beeing Melee categorised Sneak Attacks ;
The Melee category automaticaly deals a critical strike and has a x3 modifier seperated from the critical damage modifier and stuns the target for 2sec.
2) Beeing Physical Projectile categorised Sneak Attacks ;
The Physical Projectile category deals a critical strike and has a x2 modifier seperated from the critical damage modifier and stuns the target for 2sec.


Secondly, the extra damage you get from extra critical damage stats only contributes to the Critical damage portion of a skill.
Base is 1.0 / Critical is 0.5 / Modifier = Base + Critical = x1.5

There are 4 ways to increase your critical damage output :
a) Using the Shadow Mundus stone wich adds 10% extra damage to the Critical portion of a skill.
b) Using Divine traited gear with the Shadow Mundus stone its base effect up to 52.5% (60% if you use an extra Shield)
10% x 52.5/100 = 5.25%
c) Using Hemorrhage passive, from the Nightblade classe, wich works exactly like the Shadow Mundus stone.
d) Using the new Archers Mind set to increase it with an additional 15%.

those effects are mutualy exclusive, it means if the critical portion of a skill was already increased by a critical damage bonus, any other similar bonus will contribute to the modified critical portion of a skill.

So lets make some theorcrafting and assume you are a Nighblade wearing 5 pieces of Archer's Mind, (Removed the Divine trait from the test), using both Shadow Mundus stone and Hemorrhage passive. And to top it off, lets add Stealthy from the Khajiit racial list to get an extra 10% dmg while Stealthed or Invisible.

Now lets take a random value and say ambush is going to deal 300 dmg, this is how the following damage is going to be calculated :

[(300 x 1) + (300 x 1.1 x 1.1 x 1.15) x 0.5] x 3 x 1.1 = 1678.7925

that's the dmg you are going to get with all the bonus listed above before any mitigation comes into play.

Now lets do the same calculation but we are going to replace the Archer's Mind set with the Stygian set instead.

We get the following results

[(300 x 1) + (300 x 1.1 x 1.1) x 0.5] x 3 x 1.1 x 1.2 = 1906.7400

wich demonstrate if an Nightblade uses an Ambush with the Stygian set, it will deal 11,95% +- more damage compared to a similar Nightblade using Archer's Mind set instead.

Now that I mathematicaly demonstrated that Stygian set is much more powerfull compared to the Archer's Mind one, how is that 15% critical damage bonus still OP?

killedbyping

Brasseurfb16_ESO wrote: »

killedbyping wrote: »

Brasseurfb16_ESO wrote: »

killedbyping wrote: »

That Archers mind set just... O M F G !

15% critical damage bonus to Ambush attacks oO

Stack it with NightBlades bonus and you get insta kill any1 whith bow's Double Ambush trick or Wrecking Blow ambush.

You don't need to freak out, that set is not going to break WvW, because :

- First, you can already increase the base dmg of your Ambush by 20% while stealthed and invisible with the Stygian set.
- Secondly, critical damage bonus in this game is a joke because you only get halve of the tooltip value. 15% of 0.50 = 0.075, so you are actualy dealing 1.575 of your base damage with a critical strike with 5 pieces of that set. So a Nightblade with Hemorrhage, Shadow Mundus and Archers mind will be able to get up to a 1,675 critical damage modifier (unless using divine to pump it up to 1.70125).

So basicaly, you are already worrying about a weak set bonus while an already much stronger set is available for Nightblades using Ambush/Veiled Strike. And Snipe, while it will be slightly more powerfull as an initiator, will still not be an issue sinds the damage increase will be mediocre at best.

Are you even aware that you always do critial damage with stealth attacks (which called ambush damage)?
Are you even aware that the least critical bonus damage with stealth attacks is 1.5x with out any other buffs ?
Bow attacks gain 2x critical bonus and 2h weapons have 3X critical bonus when attacking from stealth.

First, you apparently don't know how a sneak attack works in this game, so I'll be nice and explain to you how it works :

You have 2 categories of Sneak Attacks (or Ambush whatever you want to call it)
1) Beeing Melee categorised Sneak Attacks ;
The Melee category automaticaly deals a critical strike and has a x2 modifier seperated from the critical damage modifier and stuns the target for 2sec.
2) Beeing Physical Projectile categorised Sneak Attacks ;
The Physical Projectile category deals a critical strike and stuns the target for 2sec.



Secondly, the extra damage you get from extra critical damage stats only contributes to the Critical damage portion of a skill.
Base is 1.0 / Critical is 0.5 / Modifier = Base + Critical = x1.5

There are 4 ways to increase your critical damage output :
a) Using the Shadow Mundus stone wich adds 10% extra damage to the Critical portion of a skill.
b) Using Divine traited gear with the Shadow Mundus stone its base effect up to 52.5% (60% if you use an extra Shield)
10% x 52.5/100 = 5.25%
c) Using Hemorrhage passive, from the Nightblade classe, wich works exactly like the Shadow Mundus stone and wich stacks additively with similar effects.
d) Using the new Archers Mind set to increase it with an additional 15%.

So lets make some theorcrafting and assume you are a Nighblade wearing 5 pieces of Archer's Mind, swaped those traits (if rumors are true, it should be possible) to get 7 pieces of Divine armour, using both Shadow Mundus stone and Hemorrhage passive. And to top it off, lets add Stealthy from the Khajiit racial list to get an extra 10% dmg while Stealthed or Invisible.

Now lets take a random value and say ambush is going to deal 300 dmg, this is how the following damage is going to be calculated :

[(300 x 1) + (300 x (0.5 + 0.5 x (0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 x 0.525 + 0.15)] x 2 x 1.1 =
[(300 x 1) + (300 x 0.70125)] x 2 x 1.1 = 1122.85

that's the dmg you are going to get with all the bonus listed above before any mitigation comes into play.

Now lets do the same calculation but we are going to replace the Archer's Mind set with the Stygian set instead.

We get the following results

[(300 x 1) + (300 x (0.5 + 0.5 x (0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 x 0.525)] x 2 x 1.1 x 1.2 =
[(300 x 1) + (300 x 0.626125)] x 2 x 1.1 x 1.2 = 1287.99

wich demonstrate if an Nightblade uses an Ambush with the Stygian set, it will deal 14,70% +- more damage compared to a similar Nightblade using Archer's Mind set instead.

Now that I mathematicaly demonstrated that Stygian set is much more powerfull compared to the Archer's Mind one, how is that 15% critical damage bonus still OP?

Now go test it yourself and tell me how is over 3k damage of Wrecking blow is 2x modifier ?
What makes you think that by stating CRIT damage in tooltip they made it to affect only crit, but not Ambush(not talking about ambush skill) ? That just would not make any sense.

Also Stygian set only amplify the SPELLS, while Archer's mind works for any kind of attack + remain lesser bonus after you out of Stealth.

Im not theorycrafting like you here, ambush is what i do in PVP mostly.

Brasseurfb16_ESO

killedbyping wrote: »

Brasseurfb16_ESO wrote: »

killedbyping wrote: »

Brasseurfb16_ESO wrote: »

killedbyping wrote: »

That Archers mind set just... O M F G !

15% critical damage bonus to Ambush attacks oO

Stack it with NightBlades bonus and you get insta kill any1 whith bow's Double Ambush trick or Wrecking Blow ambush.

You don't need to freak out, that set is not going to break WvW, because :

- First, you can already increase the base dmg of your Ambush by 20% while stealthed and invisible with the Stygian set.
- Secondly, critical damage bonus in this game is a joke because you only get halve of the tooltip value. 15% of 0.50 = 0.075, so you are actualy dealing 1.575 of your base damage with a critical strike with 5 pieces of that set. So a Nightblade with Hemorrhage, Shadow Mundus and Archers mind will be able to get up to a 1,675 critical damage modifier (unless using divine to pump it up to 1.70125).

So basicaly, you are already worrying about a weak set bonus while an already much stronger set is available for Nightblades using Ambush/Veiled Strike. And Snipe, while it will be slightly more powerfull as an initiator, will still not be an issue sinds the damage increase will be mediocre at best.

Are you even aware that you always do critial damage with stealth attacks (which called ambush damage)?
Are you even aware that the least critical bonus damage with stealth attacks is 1.5x with out any other buffs ?
Bow attacks gain 2x critical bonus and 2h weapons have 3X critical bonus when attacking from stealth.

First, you apparently don't know how a sneak attack works in this game, so I'll be nice and explain to you how it works :

You have 2 categories of Sneak Attacks (or Ambush whatever you want to call it)
1) Beeing Melee categorised Sneak Attacks ;
The Melee category automaticaly deals a critical strike and has a x2 modifier seperated from the critical damage modifier and stuns the target for 2sec.
2) Beeing Physical Projectile categorised Sneak Attacks ;
The Physical Projectile category deals a critical strike and stuns the target for 2sec.



Secondly, the extra damage you get from extra critical damage stats only contributes to the Critical damage portion of a skill.
Base is 1.0 / Critical is 0.5 / Modifier = Base + Critical = x1.5

There are 4 ways to increase your critical damage output :
a) Using the Shadow Mundus stone wich adds 10% extra damage to the Critical portion of a skill.
b) Using Divine traited gear with the Shadow Mundus stone its base effect up to 52.5% (60% if you use an extra Shield)
10% x 52.5/100 = 5.25%
c) Using Hemorrhage passive, from the Nightblade classe, wich works exactly like the Shadow Mundus stone and wich stacks additively with similar effects.
d) Using the new Archers Mind set to increase it with an additional 15%.

So lets make some theorcrafting and assume you are a Nighblade wearing 5 pieces of Archer's Mind, swaped those traits (if rumors are true, it should be possible) to get 7 pieces of Divine armour, using both Shadow Mundus stone and Hemorrhage passive. And to top it off, lets add Stealthy from the Khajiit racial list to get an extra 10% dmg while Stealthed or Invisible.

Now lets take a random value and say ambush is going to deal 300 dmg, this is how the following damage is going to be calculated :

[(300 x 1) + (300 x (0.5 + 0.5 x (0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 x 0.525 + 0.15)] x 2 x 1.1 =
[(300 x 1) + (300 x 0.70125)] x 2 x 1.1 = 1122.85

that's the dmg you are going to get with all the bonus listed above before any mitigation comes into play.

Now lets do the same calculation but we are going to replace the Archer's Mind set with the Stygian set instead.

We get the following results

[(300 x 1) + (300 x (0.5 + 0.5 x (0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 x 0.525)] x 2 x 1.1 x 1.2 =
[(300 x 1) + (300 x 0.626125)] x 2 x 1.1 x 1.2 = 1287.99

wich demonstrate if an Nightblade uses an Ambush with the Stygian set, it will deal 14,70% +- more damage compared to a similar Nightblade using Archer's Mind set instead.

Now that I mathematicaly demonstrated that Stygian set is much more powerfull compared to the Archer's Mind one, how is that 15% critical damage bonus still OP?

Now go test it yourself and tell me how is over 3k damage of Wrecking blow is 2x modifier ?
What makes you think that by stating CRIT damage in tooltip they made it to affect only crit, but not Ambush(not talking about ambush skill) ? That just would not make any sense.

Also Stygian set only amplify the SPELLS, while Archer's mind works for any kind of attack + remain lesser bonus after you out of Stealth.

Im not theorycrafting like you here, ambush is what i do in PVP mostly.

Two things :

First, I downloaded tactical foundry and you were right. The bonus on sneak attack damage is x3 for Melee and x2 on Physical Projectiles (Edited that part in my previous post). I made my calculation on basis of the % I removed from targets in the first place. And I can only come to the conclusion ennemies healthbars are badly syncronised.

Secondly, I made some calculations again and I can confirm the damage from critical damage bonus only applies itself on the critical portion of the damage done by an attack.

with 178 weapon rating and 1818 Stamina :
my light attack was dealing 109 dmg with a normal strike and 175 dmg with a critical strike on a VR8 Giant Bat.

I proceeded to remove any Assassination skill to loose the Hemorrhage bonus and my light attack dealt 169 dmg with a critical strike.

a.) so if we directly add the critical damage bonus from Shadow Mundus stone and Hemorrhage, in your context the extra critical damage is added to the current modifier and should deal :
109 x 1.5 = 163 (-)
109 x (1.5 + 0.1) = 174 (-)
109 x (1.5 + 0.1 + 0.1) = 185 (-)

b.) In my context the critical damage is additive and its value applies a damage bonus to the critical portion of it.
(109 x 1) + (109 x 0.5) = 163 (-)
(109 x 1) + [109 x (0.5 + 0.5 x 0.1)] = 169 (+)
(109 x 1) + [109 x (0.5 + 0.5 x (0.1 + 0.1))] = 174(-)

c.) With results from a.) and b.) beeing wrong, it does seems more likely that critical damage bonus only affects the critical damage portion of a skill but multiple bonuses from the same effect are mutualy exclusive, causing the secondary critical bonus to actualy increase the already modified critical portion of a skill.

So instead you get :
(109 x 1) + (109 x 0.5) = 163 (-)
(109 x 1) + [(109 x 1.1) x 0.5] = 169 (+)
(109 x 1) + [(109 x 1.1 x 1.1) x 0.5] = 175 (-)

Made another test with Concealed Weapons and data confirms results from theory c.)

I'll edit my post to enlight those changes.

EDIT : Further testing must be made with the Divine set to see if the bonus applied by each pieces are mutualy exclusive to the stone bonus or actualy adding themself to the already existing bonus.