Critical Damage: Thief or Shadow ?

Elderfunk · May 2014

I am a VR4 rogue/assassin type NB using DW on my primary bar. My two main dps skills are Ambush (as an opener) and Surprise Attack, in addition I use skills like Killer's Blade, Swallow Soul and Blood Craze. This build is fairly reliant on critical hits, so I use daggers and medium armour, and have narrowed down my Mundus Stone choices to The Thief and The Shadow. However, here I am stuck. The Thief raises my weapon crit chance from 34% to 39% and my spell crit chance from 12% to 17% (the latter doesn't display properly, but I think it's just a visual bug). This increase seems decent enough. But how does it compare to the extra damage from The Shadow? Apart from knowing how much extra damage does it provides, it would also be useful to know whether skills like Ambush or Surprise Attack use the spell crit or weapon crit chance value, and whether spells like Swallow Soul can crit.

It would be awesome if anyone could shed some light on this matter.

Sleepwalker · May 2014

From what I've read, in your particular case, you're going to want to go with Thief. If it puts you at 39%, a crit potion will put you at 99%. I hear 40% is the number to strive for to hit 100% crit when necessary and maximize the dps from a crit-dependent build while not gimping other stats.

Not an expert. Just passing along information read in another thread. I'm curious about other opinions on the matter as well as I'm building a Sorc that wants that 100%.

Worstluck · May 2014

Teleport Strike, Assassin's Blade, Veiled Strike all use physical/weapon crit, although their damage scales with magicka. Strife can now crit, as well the hot it gives you can crit, however, this is based on spell crit value. Basically any class spell that seems like a melee skill will use physical crit, while any ranged or aoe 'spells' will use spell crit. I would use the thief stone as well, over the shadow stone.

cjmarsh725b14_ESO · May 2014

From the simple testing I've done I think both stones are bugged at the moment, the Thief stone in the UI only and the Shadow stone completely. The thief stone gives a base of 5% spell crit and the Shadow doesn't seem to add to my crit damage at all. The Thief stone bonus will show up in your character sheet as soon as you activate the stone and up until you zone out or log out. If anyone has noticed the Shadow stone working please let me know.

dsalter · July 2014

any news on this one? looked up the same question and no real answers

yelloweyedemon · July 2014

How is your build a crit focused build, and you only have 34% crit chance?

I'm at 59% with no thief stone equiped. You are doing something wrong...

And btw shadow.