Theif vs Shadow

Bandit1215

So on my stamsorc, after getting a purple vo necklace I now have 5 vo, 5 nmg and 2 veli and have a question about my mundus choice. With expert hunter slotted, I have 81% critical chance as an orc and my gear IS NOT all divines and golded out. My question is, is there a point where the critical chance is so high, shadow is better than theif?

ArchMikem

75% minimum without the Thief. If it's any lower then you should just keep it as your Mundus. Honestly the Shadow is only good to have if you're running a Twice Born Star set, so you can have the Thief and Shadow both, but when it comes to just one, the extra crit damage Shadow gives you is negligible and nearly identical if you were to get the Warrior/Apprentice stones to up your base damage, however it's worthless if your crit chance is lowered and thus you're hitting with crits less often.

Mic1007

Are your Weapons Precise? I can't imagine how it got to 81 otherwise.

Thief should never be dropped though. More Crits = More DPS.

DocFrost72

The answers I've got say 70-75% crit is when you switch to shadow

Sigma957

Yes go for shadow as it will increase your crit damage therefore increase your dps since your crit is so high.

Yinmaigao

DocFrost72 wrote: »

The answers I've got say 70-75% crit is when you switch to shadow

That is 70-75% WITHOUT the thief. If you drop below 70% critical, you are better off keeping the thief.

wachtung

Why not both?

Panth141

The rule of thumb (courtesy of Asayre) is:

If - without a mundus - your critical multiplier is >10% higher than your critical chance, then use thief; otherwise shadow.

You can do the maths to calculate your critical multiplier, or just divide a crit by a non-crit on the same enemy without any changes (buffs/debuffs/bow damage increase passives etc.)

Bobby_V_Rockit

Edit: nevermind

Sneaky-Snurr

Yes, OP. Switch to Shadow mundus.
You'll definitely see an increase in DPS. I don't have to explain why as others here have done so.
I'm just here to say "yes, guy. Shadow mundus is good now for you".

Bobby_V_Rockit

Sneaky-Snurr wrote: »

Yes, OP. Switch to Shadow mundus.
You'll definitely see an increase in DPS. I don't have to explain why as others here have done so.
I'm just here to say "yes, guy. Shadow mundus is good now for you".

Really? Even after the crit nerf?

getemshauna

Bobby_V_Rockit wrote: »

Sneaky-Snurr wrote: »

Yes, OP. Switch to Shadow mundus.
You'll definitely see an increase in DPS. I don't have to explain why as others here have done so.
I'm just here to say "yes, guy. Shadow mundus is good now for you".

Really? Even after the crit nerf?

I guess you have 50% of major force all the time so it directly touches you?

Asardes

I have a Khajiit NB and the critical chance with thief mundus is 83% in blue training gear, with 1L/5M/1H armor. Once I will be changing to his competitive gear, meaning divine trait, everything golded, that will increase to probably to more than 90%. I'm also thinking of replacing thief with shadow. Is it also worth getting higher stats by going 1L/5M/1H or 6M/1H and losing 1-3% critical chance on top of that and still be optimal?

Stannum

No. The only point to Use shadow is when you crit rate is pretty high and you need burst (and it's still question of random luck). In long fights thief will give you more overall DPS (until you crit chance is <100%).
Any ammount X% of crit chance rises you overall dmg at least on X/2 % (more with CP in crit dmg and buffs like trap and aggressive horn), it does not depend on whether you rise you crit chance from 10% to 10+X% or from 80% to 80+X% (until 100%) the bonus to overall DPS will be the same.
As for burst question when your crit chance (without mundus) is 80+ % you have good chances to have 3-4 crits in a row, if that case shadow mundus will be better but if you have hundreds of attacks in a row lower crit chance makes your overall DPS lower, so thief is preferable.

Stannum

Simple maths added:
For base mundus (no divines)
Thief = 10% crit rate
Shadow = 12% crit bonus

Thief dmg = (cr+0.1)*1.5
Shadow = cr*(1.5+0.12)
Ok lets learn what base cr (crit rate) should be where shadow > thief
cr*(1.5+0.12) > (cr+0.1)*1.5
cr*1.5 + cr*0.12 > cr*1.5 + 1.5*0.1
cr*0.12 > 1.5*0.1
cr > 1.25

So thief is allways preferable untill 100% base crit rate (Really somewhat lower as you cannot add crit rate more then 100%, but do not think it would be lower then 95% base crit rate and too lazy to make futher calculations)

mocap

TBS FTW )

idk

mocap wrote: »

TBS FTW )

Not anymore. With the nerf to warhorn it became less efficient. From what I was seeing when the changes was being made magika builds with Juliano is outperforming TBS so Hundings would probably do the same. iirc.

Toc de Malsvi

Giles.floydub17_ESO wrote: »

mocap wrote: »

TBS FTW )

Not anymore. With the nerf to warhorn it became less efficient. From what I was seeing when the changes was being made magika builds with Juliano is outperforming TBS so Hundings would probably do the same. iirc.

The reason behind not using Hundings has more to do with DW VMA weapons and the effect they have on weapon damage scaling. The more you have of one individual stat the less worthwhile that stat becomes. SPC and other weapon damage buffs only slightly dilute the value of Hundings. The 2000 weapon damage to DOT effects though, significantly dilutes the value of additional weapon damage. At that point you get significantly more out of more crit/crit damage or stamina.

If you are not using VMA DW than by all means Hundings is a great set.

idk

Toc de Malsvi wrote: »

Giles.floydub17_ESO wrote: »

mocap wrote: »

TBS FTW )

Not anymore. With the nerf to warhorn it became less efficient. From what I was seeing when the changes was being made magika builds with Juliano is outperforming TBS so Hundings would probably do the same. iirc.

The reason behind not using Hundings has more to do with DW VMA weapons and the effect they have on weapon damage scaling. The more you have of one individual stat the less worthwhile that stat becomes. SPC and other weapon damage buffs only slightly dilute the value of Hundings. The 2000 weapon damage to DOT effects though, significantly dilutes the value of additional weapon damage. At that point you get significantly more out of more crit/crit damage or stamina.

If you are not using VMA DW than by all means Hundings is a great set.

Sounds like TFS would be much better then, though not crafted but easy enough to get since it drops well in normal.

Toc de Malsvi

Stannum wrote: »

Simple maths added:
For base mundus (no divines)
Thief = 10% crit rate
Shadow = 12% crit bonus

Thief dmg = (cr+0.1)*1.5
Shadow = cr*(1.5+0.12)
Ok lets learn what base cr (crit rate) should be where shadow > thief
cr*(1.5+0.12) > (cr+0.1)*1.5
cr*1.5 + cr*0.12 > cr*1.5 + 1.5*0.1
cr*0.12 > 1.5*0.1
cr > 1.25

So thief is allways preferable untill 100% base crit rate (Really somewhat lower as you cannot add crit rate more then 100%, but do not think it would be lower then 95% base crit rate and too lazy to make futher calculations)

Not quite, that calculation is not considering the actual benefit to damage from critical hits and while it seems nifty it isn't really accurate. While it is true that Crit chance is always better than Critical damage when only looking at critical hits, it isn't true when you consider that for overall damage your non crit damage for Shadow will be significantly higher than your non crit damage for Thief.

And it is mathematically easily proven. Provided you ignore CP and Major Force, those are the real factors that change how effective Critical chance versus Critical damage really is.

Say for simplicity you have 100 hits for 100 base damage, your base critical is 50% and your base critical damage is 1.5.

For thief(which should actually be 11% base):
61% or 61 hits for 150 damage, and 39 hits for 100 damage such that:
61*150+39*100=13050

For Shadow:
50% or 50 hits for 162 damage, and 50 hits for 100 damage such that:
50*162+50*100=13100

As you can see Shadow is better here, albeit slightly. What makes Thief better is the addition of champion points and Major and Minor Force. Without those Shadow would be better at a much lower critical chance than most people would think.

I played around with the numbers a bit and without taking into consideration CP, and Major Force, while counting 100% uptime on Minor Force. Shadow is better than Thief at 56% crit for Sorc's and DK's, and at 65% crit for NB's and Templar's. This is an overly simplistic look into critical chance versus critical damage.

Stannum

Toc de Malsvi wrote: »

Stannum wrote: »

Simple maths added:
For base mundus (no divines)
Thief = 10% crit rate
Shadow = 12% crit bonus

Thief dmg = (cr+0.1)*1.5
Shadow = cr*(1.5+0.12)
Ok lets learn what base cr (crit rate) should be where shadow > thief
cr*(1.5+0.12) > (cr+0.1)*1.5
cr*1.5 + cr*0.12 > cr*1.5 + 1.5*0.1
cr*0.12 > 1.5*0.1
cr > 1.25

So thief is allways preferable untill 100% base crit rate (Really somewhat lower as you cannot add crit rate more then 100%, but do not think it would be lower then 95% base crit rate and too lazy to make futher calculations)

Not quite, that calculation is not considering the actual benefit to damage from critical hits and while it seems nifty it isn't really accurate. While it is true that Crit chance is always better than Critical damage when only looking at critical hits, it isn't true when you consider that for overall damage your non crit damage for Shadow will be significantly higher than your non crit damage for Thief.

And it is mathematically easily proven. Provided you ignore CP and Major Force, those are the real factors that change how effective Critical chance versus Critical damage really is.

Say for simplicity you have 100 hits for 100 base damage, your base critical is 50% and your base critical damage is 1.5.

For thief(which should actually be 11% base):
61% or 61 hits for 150 damage, and 39 hits for 100 damage such that:
61*150+39*100=13050

For Shadow:
50% or 50 hits for 162 damage, and 50 hits for 100 damage such that:
50*162+50*100=13100

As you can see Shadow is better here, albeit slightly. What makes Thief better is the addition of champion points and Major and Minor Force. Without those Shadow would be better at a much lower critical chance than most people would think.

I played around with the numbers a bit and without taking into consideration CP, and Major Force, while counting 100% uptime on Minor Force. Shadow is better than Thief at 56% crit for Sorc's and DK's, and at 65% crit for NB's and Templar's. This is an overly simplistic look into critical chance versus critical damage.

Yep my fault
forgot about non-crit dmg
cr*(1.5+0.12) + 1-cr > (cr+0.11)*1.5 + 1-(cr+0.11)
cr*1.5 + cr*0.12 + 1 > cr*1.5 + 1.5*0.11 + 0.89
cr*0.12 > 1.5*0.11 - 0.11
cr > 0.458(3)

Rev Rielle

The take home message is that in combat you want them roughly similar percentages.

A chance of 70% crit with a bonus to damage of 70% (0.49% increase in damage) is better than 60% and 80% (0.48% increase in damage), or 50% & 90% (0.45% increase in damage), etc etc. Keep that in mind and you can't go wrong. Even these numbers here show just how small the drop off in bonus damage is as the difference between crit chance and crit damage grows.

Any further complexity of the calculation is simply not needed (nor will have any benefit) for 99.9% of us.

Toc de Malsvi

Giles.floydub17_ESO wrote: »

Toc de Malsvi wrote: »

Giles.floydub17_ESO wrote: »

mocap wrote: »

TBS FTW )

Not anymore. With the nerf to warhorn it became less efficient. From what I was seeing when the changes was being made magika builds with Juliano is outperforming TBS so Hundings would probably do the same. iirc.

The reason behind not using Hundings has more to do with DW VMA weapons and the effect they have on weapon damage scaling. The more you have of one individual stat the less worthwhile that stat becomes. SPC and other weapon damage buffs only slightly dilute the value of Hundings. The 2000 weapon damage to DOT effects though, significantly dilutes the value of additional weapon damage. At that point you get significantly more out of more crit/crit damage or stamina.

If you are not using VMA DW than by all means Hundings is a great set.

Sounds like TFS would be much better then, though not crafted but easy enough to get since it drops well in normal.

Giles.floydub17_ESO wrote: »

Toc de Malsvi wrote: »

Giles.floydub17_ESO wrote: »

mocap wrote: »

TBS FTW )

Not anymore. With the nerf to warhorn it became less efficient. From what I was seeing when the changes was being made magika builds with Juliano is outperforming TBS so Hundings would probably do the same. iirc.

The reason behind not using Hundings has more to do with DW VMA weapons and the effect they have on weapon damage scaling. The more you have of one individual stat the less worthwhile that stat becomes. SPC and other weapon damage buffs only slightly dilute the value of Hundings. The 2000 weapon damage to DOT effects though, significantly dilutes the value of additional weapon damage. At that point you get significantly more out of more crit/crit damage or stamina.

If you are not using VMA DW than by all means Hundings is a great set.

Sounds like TFS would be much better then, though not crafted but easy enough to get since it drops well in normal.

It should be.

Olupajmibanan

Panth141 wrote: »

The rule of thumb (courtesy of Asayre) is:

If - without a mundus - your critical multiplier is >10% higher than your critical chance, then use thief; otherwise shadow.

You can do the maths to calculate your critical multiplier, or just divide a crit by a non-crit on the same enemy without any changes (buffs/debuffs/bow damage increase passives etc.)

This, asayre did an excellent job in explaining game mechanics.

OP said that his crit is 81% and I assume it's with thief already. Depending on how many divines pieces he has, let's say 5 now, his crit chance without thief would be 66%.
So if his crit damage is 76% or less, then he is better going with the Shadow.
Or in other words, if your Precise Strikes CP gives you 17% or more, you'd rather stick with the Thief.