Weapon Crit: So what does it actually do and how does it do it?

RizaHawkeye

On Zone Chat today, I asked this same question. The conversation went something like this:

Me: What is weapon crit and how does it work?

Zone Chat: It causes more damage.

Me: How?

Zone Chat: It doesn't cause more damage. It just increases the likelihood of causing damage.

Zone Chat: Wait, what? Crit causes damage.

Me: But how does it work??

Zone Chat: Crit increases your ability to cause more damage.

Me: What does that even mean? By a percentage?

Zone Chat: Are you a nightblade?

Me: No. Why?

Zone Chat: Because only nightblades benefit from WC. So don't worry about it.

Me: Why would only nightblades benefit from weapon crit?

Zone Chat: Don't listen to him. Everyone benefits. Nightblades just benefit more.

Zone Chat: You're an idiot.

Zone Chat: Oh yeah? Well so's your MOM!

Zone Chat: You dissing my mom?? Well, you're dad's an &%*$$#@!!

***

So that's the answer I got. No exaggeration (just a bit of artistic license so I could clean up the profanity and leave out the "Looking for group," "Want to join my super-cool guild", and "I need some attention now" chats).

Seriously, can anyone actually explain this? When I drink a potion that gives me a 400 weapon crit buff for 12 seconds, what does that actually mean? Does it mean I instant kill or does it cause more damage and why do only nightblades need it?

Am I wasting my time brewing weapon crit potions? What's the best way to take advantage of weapon crit?

Thanks for any help!!

lolo_01b16_ESO

Well, weapon crit displays the chance to do a critical hit with a stamina based skill. The number (400 for your potion) will be translated into a percentage number, depending on your level. A critical hit usually does 50% extra damage. If you are a nb, a Templar, use the shadow mundus, put champion points in increased critical damage or use one of the temporary buffs (aggressive warhorn, beast trap) you can increase the extra damage, and if your opponent uses armour or champion points to reduce critical damage, you'll do less extra damage.

Peel_Ya_Cap_517

lolo_01b16_ESO wrote: »

Well, weapon crit displays the chance to do a critical hit with a stamina based skill. A critical hit usually does 50% extra damage. If you are a nb, a Templar, use the shadow mundus, put champion points in increased critical damage or use one of the temporary buffs (aggressive warhorn, beast trap) you can increase the extra damage, and if your opponent uses armour or champion points to reduce critical damage, you'll do less extra damage.

Wait, does it not also increase the chance of a critical light or heavy weapon attack??

Kevmeister

I don't know what the exact numbers are, but presumably like any other games, Crit is a damage multiplier, and it's divided into two parts:

Crit Hit (Chance)
Increases the likelihood in landing a critical hit, which deals more damage

Crit Hit Damage
Increases the damage whenever you proc-ed a Critical Hit

As mentioned, I don't know the exact numbers to how much the base Crit Hit Damage is, but the base Crit Hit is 0, and is augmented by gears/enchantments/The Thief Mundus stone.

Judas Helviaryn

Weapon Crit is really Weapon Crit Chance. The amount of weapon crit you have increases the chance that you will critically strike an opponent with any given move that is related to the weapon crit, such as stamina based moves and some melee moves. Right now, without addons, you are shown an arbitrary number that doesn't mean anything on items that increase your crit, like 400. If you hit your character panel, the stats show a weapon crit %. When you critically strike an opponent, you do a certain amount of bonus damage for that hit, which can be increased with champion points and certain buffs.

Zone is often a bad place to get advice, hang around the forums more! We'll take care of you!


~Judas

MrDerrikk

Peel_Ya_Cap_517 wrote: »

lolo_01b16_ESO wrote: »

Well, weapon crit displays the chance to do a critical hit with a stamina based skill. A critical hit usually does 50% extra damage. If you are a nb, a Templar, use the shadow mundus, put champion points in increased critical damage or use one of the temporary buffs (aggressive warhorn, beast trap) you can increase the extra damage, and if your opponent uses armour or champion points to reduce critical damage, you'll do less extra damage.

Wait, does it not also increase the chance of a critical light or heavy weapon attack??

Weapon Crit increases the crit chance of all weapons other than staves, which scale off Spell Crit.

lolo_01b16_ESO

Light and heavy attacks with weapons that scale of stamina (all melee weapons + bow) will crit in the same way as your stamina based skills do. Staff light and heavy attacks will be calculated with spell crit.

HebrewHatchet

A critical strike hits for 150% damage. Weapon critical applied to weapon based attacks, spell critical applies to spell based attacks.

If you have weapon crit of 50%, it means half of your weapon based attacks will cause 150% damage.

There is a conversion factor for when crit is measured in points and I don't know what it is. Let's say, for example that the conversion rate is 40 points of crit are equivalent to 1% crit then a potion that grants 400 weapon crit for some amount of time would raise the chance of any weapon based attack being a critical strike by 10% for that period of time.

If you'd like to know exactly how much it raises your critical strike chance, then pop a potion and open your character sheet and look while it's active.

One last thing, you can raise his much damage a critical strike does from 150% with the shadow munchies stone (I think) and champion point passives. Hope this helps.

Peel_Ya_Cap_517

MrDerrikk wrote: »

Peel_Ya_Cap_517 wrote: »

lolo_01b16_ESO wrote: »

Well, weapon crit displays the chance to do a critical hit with a stamina based skill. A critical hit usually does 50% extra damage. If you are a nb, a Templar, use the shadow mundus, put champion points in increased critical damage or use one of the temporary buffs (aggressive warhorn, beast trap) you can increase the extra damage, and if your opponent uses armour or champion points to reduce critical damage, you'll do less extra damage.

Wait, does it not also increase the chance of a critical light or heavy weapon attack??

Weapon Crit increases the crit chance of all weapons other than staves, which scale off Spell Crit.

Omg.. I have to redo my champion points then lol.. I'VE BEEN LIVING A LIE!

MrDerrikk

Peel_Ya_Cap_517 wrote: »

Omg.. I have to redo my champion points then lol.. I'VE BEEN LIVING A LIE!

For some reason I read that as being very sarcastic :P I actually had this with my sorc; I had put 30 points into Ritual on my Destro Sorc before I realised that it was a pointless endeavour

Peel_Ya_Cap_517

MrDerrikk wrote: »

Peel_Ya_Cap_517 wrote: »

Omg.. I have to redo my champion points then lol.. I'VE BEEN LIVING A LIE!

For some reason I read that as being very sarcastic :P I actually had this with my sorc; I had put 30 points into Ritual on my Destro Sorc before I realised that it was a pointless endeavour

No, I was being quite serious lol. I just redid my champ points to get that 12% weapon crit.. Now I need to set them back. Oh well, glad I learned

Thanks all!

Scyantific

HebrewHatchet wrote: »

A critical strike hits for 150% damage. Weapon critical applied to weapon based attacks, spell critical applies to spell based attacks.

If you have weapon crit of 50%, it means half of your weapon based attacks will cause 150% damage.

There is a conversion factor for when crit is measured in points and I don't know what it is. Let's say, for example that the conversion rate is 40 points of crit are equivalent to 1% crit then a potion that grants 400 weapon crit for some amount of time would raise the chance of any weapon based attack being a critical strike by 10% for that period of time.

If you'd like to know exactly how much it raises your critical strike chance, then pop a potion and open your character sheet and look while it's active.

One last thing, you can raise his much damage a critical strike does from 150% with the shadow munchies stone (I think) and champion point passives. Hope this helps.

Keep in mind that this is in theory. Crits are, like most other stuff in this game, a roll of the RNG.

HebrewHatchet

Yes, that's how probabilities work. Given an infinite number of attacks, the number of critical hits converges to half of the total number. I don't think that needs to be said every time. Everybody should basically know how probabilities work

UltimaJoe777

The Weapon Critical and Spell Critical %s listed in your Character Menu are your chances of scoring a Critical Hit with any and every attack you execute capable of critting. When a Critical Hit is delivered you do more damage than normal. I believe the base is 2x damage but there are ways to further boost Critical Damage.

bryanhaas

HebrewHatchet wrote: »

A critical strike hits for 150% damage. Weapon critical applied to weapon based attacks, spell critical applies to spell based attacks.

If you have weapon crit of 50%, it means half of your weapon based attacks will cause 150% damage.

There is a conversion factor for when crit is measured in points and I don't know what it is. Let's say, for example that the conversion rate is 40 points of crit are equivalent to 1% crit then a potion that grants 400 weapon crit for some amount of time would raise the chance of any weapon based attack being a critical strike by 10% for that period of time.

If you'd like to know exactly how much it raises your critical strike chance, then pop a potion and open your character sheet and look while it's active.

One last thing, you can raise his much damage a critical strike does from 150% with the shadow munchies stone (I think) and champion point passives. Hope this helps.

Little bit of thread necromancy here

So crit is based on weapon or spell damage (depending on which you are going for). So if spell damage is 2000 and you have a 20 percent damage increase for crits then 2000*1.5*1.2 = 3,600 damage when a crit p.r.o.c.'s. Would you say that is accurate?

DurzoBlint13

I don't know what those guys were talking about but your Crit chance is the chance you have to proc a crit hit anytime you attack. A Crit attack will deal 50% (base) more damage. The higher you Crit chance=the more likely you are to proc a crit hit
However, your weapon critical rating can increase the amount of bonus damage you do. The higher your weapon crit rating=the more bonus damage you can do.
Someone please correct me if I have the wrong numbers in here:
any regular crit attack does 150% of your normal damage of the attack. You can raise that up if you increase your crit rating. I believe it caps at 200% of your base damage. So if your light attack does 200 damage, your normal crit for that attack will do 300 damage. But then you can increase it up to 400 damage with the right gear and passives.
Crit Rush is the only GARANTEED crit that I know of, although I have seen Nightblades that have over 100% crit chance with the right buffs going

firewatch

A sneak attack is also a guaranteed crit. It is included in the sneak attack bonus.

DurzoBlint13

firewatch wrote: »

A sneak attack is also a guaranteed crit. It is included in the sneak attack bonus.

Ok, thanks. I don't use Nightblades so I did not know that. Don't you guys get a 50% increase to your crit chance when you are in stealth too?

Kelleton

DurzoBlint13 wrote: »

firewatch wrote: »

A sneak attack is also a guaranteed crit. It is included in the sneak attack bonus.

Ok, thanks. I don't use Nightblades so I did not know that. Don't you guys get a 50% increase to your crit chance when you are in stealth too?

kinda pointless to get a crit chance increase on 100% yeah?

When you hit from stealth you will knock your opponent unbalanced as well as crit them...this is for all classes.

Nightblades get additional weapon damage from stealth.

Zerok

DurzoBlint13 wrote: »

I don't know what those guys were talking about but your Crit chance is the chance you have to proc a crit hit anytime you attack. A Crit attack will deal 50% (base) more damage. The higher you Crit chance=the more likely you are to proc a crit hit
However, your weapon critical rating can increase the amount of bonus damage you do. The higher your weapon crit rating=the more bonus damage you can do.
Someone please correct me if I have the wrong numbers in here:
any regular crit attack does 150% of your normal damage of the attack. You can raise that up if you increase your crit rating. I believe it caps at 200% of your base damage. So if your light attack does 200 damage, your normal crit for that attack will do 300 damage. But then you can increase it up to 400 damage with the right gear and passives.
Crit Rush is the only GARANTEED crit that I know of, although I have seen Nightblades that have over 100% crit chance with the right buffs going

I don't think that's right...

My understanding is that weapon critical rating translates into actual critical hit %. Basically, it adds up all your weapon critical ratings and divide them by your base weapon damage. This translates into a percentage that is added to your critical hit %.

I'm pretty sure the only ways to increase your critical hit damage are with the Shadow mundus stone and the precise strikes champion passive.