Latest status of crit vs dmg, which is better

billp_ESO

A critical hit/spell lands for 50% more dmg. So with 100% crit chance, you get 50% more damage. 50% crit means 25% more dmg, on average.

Is it better to maximize crit? or maximize straight dmg?

If my dmg is 100, 50% crit would average out to 125 dmg. If I could get dmg to over 125, it would be better to max dmg. Of course, max crit and max dmg both would be the best, but I don't think we can do that.

So is it currently better/easier to get more dmg by upping the crit chance? or by upping the max dmg stat?

Malmai

Damage would be better since its not capped but you cannot pull that much WD or SD with gear and stuff... All we can do is compensate crit for damage. Logical.

Taleof2Cities

FYI, putting on a 5-pc Mechanical Acuity crafted set means you can ignore crit in the rest of your build ... since the proc has 100% crit uptime during its duration.

There is a cooldown, however, so just be aware of it.

Milvan

VaranisArano

In PVP, as a general rule, I would prefer to build for higher damage, since most of my enemies will be wearing impenetrable gear and running critical resistance. High crit is good, but its effectiveness is blunted in a way that it isn't in PVE.

Now if its the Midyear Mayhem event or the Imperial City anniversary event and I'm confident there will be a bunch of PVEers around who don't know about the glories of the impenetrable trait, I'll definitely build for increased crit over raw damage. Why not? Finding that one squishy target with a critical Lethal Arrow? Excellent. Hitting an entire group of no-impen PVEers with an ultimate? Golden.

Alagras

According to most ppl (worth what it s worth) it used to be crit and now it s dmg. I haven t tested myself.

Just 2 things:

--I guess you meant for PvE (full-critable targets) but should precise. As Varanis said, in PvP other factors matter.

--Your "50% chance of +50% dmg = + 25% overall dmg" is correct, but bare in mind your crit modifier is probably higher than + 50% with champ points. Not sure if there s an addon to check the exact modifier.

Alagras

Malmai wrote: »

Damage would be better since its not capped but you cannot pull that much WD or SD with gear and stuff... All we can do is compensate crit for damage. Logical.

Is Crit capped? I don't understand.

Milvan wrote: »

Because OP has a choice to make and is asking wich is the most efficient...

kojou

At low numbers of max magicka and damage it is better to add more damage and max stats. There is a point where adding crit gets better because crit is a % modifier instead of a flat value.

For example:

A standard spell damage bonus would be 129 and a standard crit bonus would be 3.8%. If my crit damage was .5(50% more) then my expected increase in damage from one crit bonus would be 1.9%.

That doesn't sound like a lot, but depending on the current level of "power" of your build it could be better to add crit. As a quick calculation I use Max Magicka/10 + Spell Damage to get my relative power, so for a character with 40k Max Magicka and 2k spell damage I would expect ~6000 (I know the number to use for max magicka is really ~10.5, but 10 is easier to do in my head when I want to make a quick judgement).

129/6000 = 2.15%

So in this very simplified example 129 Spell damage is better than 3.8% crit.

We can alter this example slightly and make the character a Nightblade (10% bonus to crit damage) which makes the expected increase in damage go from 1.9% to 2.28 which means that it is now better to add crit than damage.

The calculations get a lot more complicated though when you figure in class passives, CP, Minor and Major Sorcery, Minor and Major Force, Minor Slayer, War Horn max stat buff, etc... one needs to get a spreadsheet out to measure the full extent of whether to add crit or damage. I would check the math done by Asayre et al as they have figured a lot of these equations out.

Alternatively, you can also test some possibilities on target dummies and see which combinations of item bonuses give the most DPS for your DPS rotation.