Just an idea for balancing on crit, wards, block

Sascha

Just an idea that came into my head, take it with a grain of salt, but maybe some variation of it might work.

Wards are really powerful on a high magicka build, so much so that many builds just can't get through them. Further more the fact that they don't crit is especially harsh on stam builds. Khajiit are also adversly affected by crit mitigation in PvP, between wards and high amounts of impen.

What if Crit functioned a bit differently on Warded or blocking targets; for example when hitting a warded target or blocking target, crit % becomes bypass %, each hit has a chance to deal 50% non-crit damage bypassing wards and block. Crit would be desirable in pvp again, while wards and perma blocking would take a hit as you could occasionally deal reduced damage through them.

Beardimus

100% no.

Crit is vital in PvP already, its the only way to get high burst.

And wards have a huge amount of counters, and stamina characters have huge pools to break CC which again is the main tool of PvP.

Sascha

Funny, everyone always tells me crit is useless in pvp.

Chilly-McFreeze

If crit were useless people wouldn't have to run impen.

Sascha

Isn't it because of full impen that crit is not as useful? I could be going off of outdated information. I've been told that in general impen is so powerful that unless your playing a Nightblade most of your extra crit damage is negated by armor, making it hit for only a little more than non-crits.

Sascha

I never said crit was useless, I've just been told not to build for it (because I like having good crit usually) since much of it is mitigated by armor, and so many players are using wards which don't crit at all.

Berenhir

Sascha wrote: »

I never said crit was useless, I've just been told not to build for it (because I like having good crit usually) since much of it is mitigated by armor, and so many players are using wards which don't crit at all.

The point about crit builds in PvP is that they can be countered very effectively. A high crit build usually tends to lack base damage or penetration, so a high resistance troll build will negate most of your critical damage and then go on and mitigate most of your (lower) non critical damage. A shieldstacking sorc will negate your build completely as long as his shields are up, and so will destro/resto nightblades and blazing shield templars.

Crit builds tend to be squishy, so any build that can live (shield/block) through your burst for several seconds will be a threat to you as others might chime in and pin you down, even if you keep the opponent pressured. This made high crit builds not as effective as they wished to be, especially during the heavy armor and shield stackers phase of PvP in the last months/year.

However, drawing the conclusion that critical damage is useless is woefully wrong. A good amount of critical chance amplifies your self healing as well as your burst damage once an opponent drops his defense. And to be honest, there are very very few players out there that really counter a crit build by critical resistance.

The average advice is to build for a bit over 2k crit resist in PvP (aka "full impen"), meaning a reduction of your critical modifier by about 0.3. As a nightblade, your modifier is situated around 1.6 (low crit) - 2.0 (high crit) in CP campaigns.
So even a "full impen" build will take 30 to 70% more damage when you crit on them and all your healing will be effectively doubled on a high crit build.
The only thing really working against high crit builds all the time (shields might get bursted down after some time) is the new impregnable armor set in full impen and points into resistant. This will counter high crit builds completely (and that's why it is the new fotm set for PvP

I can only advice to never rely on what you are being told by others, as long as they cannot provide balanced reasoning as to why their specific advice is given. And double check everything people tell you.

Sascha

Thank you @Berenhir , that is a much more thorough explanation of the reasoning than I've gotten previously.

I suppose you can also carry around multiple sets/weapon-types and swap out some crit for base damage as needed >:3