Optimal Critical Hit Percentage.

Didz

Having established how critical hits work I want to determine if there is an optimal percentage one should aim for when planning your build.

I've already done the mandatory Google search to explore the question and so far the best advice I've found is contained in this thread.

It suggests that the optimum is about 60%, but the reason for this is that investing any more of you build resources into Critical Damage would have a detrimental effect on overall damage output. I thought I'd ask the question again rather than resurrecting that thread simply because its over a year old and we have had multiple updates since the last posting.

My assumptions at this point are:

• There is no point in investing more than 100% Weapon Critical/Spell Critical (although I believe theoretically its possible to achieve 125%)
• There is no diminishing return on investment in either Weapon or Spell Critical. (You get the proc chance you paid for, and the damage bonus is fixed.)
• +219 Weapon/Spell Critical Damage = +1% Weapon/Spell Critical.
• A Critical Hit always delivers +50% to base damage, or +62% with 'The Shadow' Mundus, +plus any Divines bonus.
• Therefore, +2% to the Critical Hit chance should add about +1% of your base damage to your DPS.

The argument seems to be that having achieved +60% Critical Hit, any further investment begins to eat into your potential to increase your base damage output and so it becomes counter-productive. e.g. as the crit bonus is a percentage of your base damage a low base damage reduces the value of a critical hit.

Is this still the general opinion or have recent changes to combat mechanic's altered that view?

Reorx_Holybeard

The authoritative study is @Asayre's post on TF in the Mundus: Apprentice, Mage, Thief and Shadow section.

This may be a "bit" math heavy for some people but when deciding whether to go with Thief or Shadow for your character the tipping point is given by:

CritDamage = 12 * Critical / 11

So for classes which have a base CritDamage of 50% this point is 46% Critical and for classes with a base of 60% CritDamage this is 55%. Note that if you are near this tipping point then the difference between Thief and Shadow is going to be very small.

Bonzodog01

I was going to ask how effective a high crit build is now. I currently have a Magplar with 71% spell crit (was 74% but reduced it slightly to add mag recovery with morrowind changes), but her overall DPS seems to be on the low side - she has 32K magicka, and spell damage of 2070. When her crits do sucessfully fire, bosses can drop very fast, but if they don't then it becomes a stretched out and painful battle.

Didz

I thought all Classes were +50% for CritDamage unless they have taken 'The Shadow' mundus that adds +12%.

Lexxypwns

Didz wrote: »

I thought all Classes were +50% for CritDamage unless they have taken 'The Shadow' mundus that adds +12%.

NB and Templar have Passives that allow a native 1.6 CHD modifier. There is also precise/elf born CP stars

Didz

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Didz wrote: »

I thought all Classes were +50% for CritDamage unless they have taken 'The Shadow' mundus that adds +12%.

NB and Templar have Passives that allow a native 1.6 CHD modifier. There is also precise/elf born CP stars

Ah! Right. Sorry I misunderstood Reorx_Holybeard's comment to mean that there was a different base% which was class dependant. It is I suppose but only through appropriate skill selection.

Shadowshire

@Reorx_Holybeard : Thank-you for the hyperlink.

Reorx_Holybeard wrote: »

.... This may be a "bit" math heavy for some people but when deciding whether to go with Thief or Shadow for your character the tipping point is given by:

CritDamage = 12 * Critical / 11

So for classes which have a base CritDamage of 50% this point is 46% Critical and for classes with a base of 60% CritDamage this is 55%. Note that if you are near this tipping point then the difference between Thief and Shadow is going to be very small.

Should a player choose the Thief until the "tipping point" is reached, then switch to the Shadow? Or vice-versa?

How does a player discover or determine the "base CritDamage" for each class?

All I know is what I see on the list of numbers shown on the "paper doll" (which is displayed to the left side of the screen while I access the "bag" storage, AKA the Inventory UI).

Note: I assume that operations are performed left to right in the order given in the formula, so the attacker's chance of a Critical Hit is multiplied by 12 and the outcome is divided by 11 to obtain the CritDamage (which is a percentage). I suppose that the initial damage of the attack is then increased by the CritDamage percentage. So a damage amount of 1200 with a Critical Hit chance of 55.5% would be: 1200 * 1.6055 = 1926.6 total damage from the attack.

lauykanson

Bonzodog01 wrote: »

I was going to ask how effective a high crit build is now. I currently have a Magplar with 71% spell crit (was 74% but reduced it slightly to add mag recovery with morrowind changes), but her overall DPS seems to be on the low side - she has 32K magicka, and spell damage of 2070. When her crits do sucessfully fire, bosses can drop very fast, but if they don't then it becomes a stretched out and painful battle.

Ur spell dmg is ok ish but max magicka is way too low assuming if u are at cp 300 or above. For a magplar with blue food buff u should be sitting at around 42-43k magicka meanwhile maintaining more or less 60% crit rating. Since skill effectiveness scales with max magicka and u also get a larger stat pool theres no reason to not built for higher max stat.

Reorx_Holybeard

Shadowshire wrote: »

@Reorx_Holybeard : Thank-you for the hyperlink.

Reorx_Holybeard wrote: »

.... This may be a "bit" math heavy for some people but when deciding whether to go with Thief or Shadow for your character the tipping point is given by:

CritDamage = 12 * Critical / 11

So for classes which have a base CritDamage of 50% this point is 46% Critical and for classes with a base of 60% CritDamage this is 55%. Note that if you are near this tipping point then the difference between Thief and Shadow is going to be very small.

Should a player choose the Thief until the "tipping point" is reached, then switch to the Shadow? Or vice-versa?

How does a player discover or determine the "base CritDamage" for each class?

All I know is what I see on the list of numbers shown on the "paper doll" (which is displayed to the left side of the screen while I access the "bag" storage, AKA the Inventory UI).

Note: I assume that operations are performed left to right in the order given in the formula, so the attacker's chance of a Critical Hit is multiplied by 12 and the outcome is divided by 11 to obtain the CritDamage (which is a percentage). I suppose that the initial damage of the attack is then increased by the CritDamage percentage. So a damage amount of 1200 with a Critical Hit chance of 55.5% would be: 1200 * 1.6055 = 1926.6 total damage from the attack.

Templars and Nightblades have a base CritDamage of 60% and everyone else is 50% if I remember correctly. The crit damage from CP is then added on top of this.

So yes, if you are under this tipping point choose Thief and Shadow otherwise. The formula for computing your critical damage is just:

Dmg from Critical Hit =  Dmg * (1 + CritDamage)

So in your example a normal attack of 1200 would hit for 1866 (1200 * 1.555). Note that the tipping point formula is only for determining the point where Shadow is better than Thief...it does not represent a general relationship between the 2 stats.

Rev Rielle

As others have shown many times over the year (and basic maths will tell you too) basically keep your critical chance and critical damage as similar as possible. That is until you can't improve damage anymore, then you can still improve chance if you want.

But even if they're not within 10% of eachother, the drop-off is very minor, so don't worry about it too much. e.g. 50% x 50% = 25%. 40% x 60% = 24%. 30% x 70% = 21%. It doesn't need to be over complicated anymore than that for 99.9% of us.