What does a Critical Hit do?

Zama666

Does it just double my damage?
Should I try to increase my crit or weapon/spell damage when it comes to choosing Mundus stones?
Tanks,
Z

Dagoth_Rac

By default it is 1.5x normal damage. But there are lots of skills and passives and sets and CP and mundus that can raise that. And in PvP, other players can use "critical resistance" to reduce the damage multiplier of critical hits.

Ippokrates

Zama666 wrote: »

Does it just double my damage?
Should I try to increase my crit or weapon/spell damage when it comes to choosing Mundus stones?
Tanks,
Z

You need to carefully balance between dmg, penetration, crit chance & crit dmg.

So choince of mundus depends on sets you are using, weapon traits, race and class skills.

But if you are going to make a choice between thief & shadow, a breaking point would around 70% crit chance. If you have less, choose thief, if more: shadow.

ResidentContrarian

No idea I am only interested in breaching 8K ticks on radiating mutagen in PvP. That's the only criticals I build around or care about

Zama666

So Hunding's Rage
adds 1314 critical on the 5 piece set which somehow translate to increasing my percentage to cri
Plus it adds 300 damage, so upon criting, it would be 450?

Amerises

Short answer: yes.

Damage from attacks and skills scale with damage motifier (either stat (stam or mag) or damage base damage (weapon or spell damage)). But in your scenario where you do 300 damage and then you crit, without any other modifiers, 450 would be your damage. Each percentage point for critical is 219 rating, but everyone starts with a base of 10%. You can increase your crit damage to up to 145+%. As you can imagine, crit damage, crit chance, and damage motifier are all balanced so if you have 2 really high and 1 with almost no bonus, your damage will remain small. If you really want to get into it even more, resistance and penetration become the fourth corner of the square for overall damage (more area, more damage).

Dagoth_Rac

Zama666 wrote: »

So Hunding's Rage
adds 1314 critical on the 5 piece set which somehow translate to increasing my percentage to cri
Plus it adds 300 damage, so upon criting, it would be 450?

It does not add 300 damage. It adds 300 "weapon damage". That is a stat that is part of the formula for damage done, but is not flat damage. Depending on the damage skill used and a bunch of other stuff (like max stamina and penetration, etc), it will vary. 300 weapon damage might add 50 actual damage to a cheap, fast attack, but thousands of damage to an expensive, slower attack or to an ultimate.

You might be better off thinking of "weapon damage" stat as "strength" or "physical power" or something like that. To convey that it makes stamina-based attacks hit harder, but does not correlate exactly to damage done.

Ippokrates

Dagoth_Rac wrote: »

Zama666 wrote: »

So Hunding's Rage
adds 1314 critical on the 5 piece set which somehow translate to increasing my percentage to cri
Plus it adds 300 damage, so upon criting, it would be 450?

It does not add 300 damage. It adds 300 "weapon damage". That is a stat that is part of the formula for damage done, but is not flat damage. Depending on the damage skill used and a bunch of other stuff (like max stamina and penetration, etc), it will vary. 300 weapon damage might add 50 actual damage to a cheap, fast attack, but thousands of damage to an expensive, slower attack or to an ultimate.

You might be better off thinking of "weapon damage" stat as "strength" or "physical power" or something like that. To convey that it makes stamina-based attacks hit harder, but does not correlate exactly to damage done.

Totally agree with that.

The best way to check how w/s dmg will influence your skill or LA/HA dmg is to use UESP page: ESO skill browser & ESO Build Editor.

And of course there is always Combat Metrics & Dummy

Septimus_Magna

Zama666 wrote: »

Does it just double my damage?
Should I try to increase my crit or weapon/spell damage when it comes to choosing Mundus stones?
Tanks,
Z

In general increasing weapon crit is a great way to boost your damage (and healing) output.

You cannot go wrong with the Thief mundus but if you're not getting a lot of group buffs/debuffs the Lover will often increase your damage more. Benefit of the Thief is that it also affects your healing which can be useful.

While playing a damage dealer you pick either stamina or magicka, the skill tooltip damage is determined by the max magicka/stamina and your current spell/weapon damage.

You lose damage because enemies have resistance, your spell/physical penetration counter this. Group members can debuff enemies with minor/major breach so their resistances are lowered to help you increase your damage.

You can further increase damage by increasing your crit chance and crit damage. Group members also can use buffs like Aggressive Warhorn to increase your crit damage.

Rule of thumb, try to reach the penetration cap and invest the rest into critical chance.

Zama666

Amerises wrote: »

Short answer: yes.

Damage from attacks and skills scale with damage motifier (either stat (stam or mag) or damage base damage (weapon or spell damage)). But in your scenario where you do 300 damage and then you crit, without any other modifiers, 450 would be your damage. Each percentage point for critical is 219 rating, but everyone starts with a base of 10%. You can increase your crit damage to up to 145+%. As you can imagine, crit damage, crit chance, and damage motifier are all balanced so if you have 2 really high and 1 with almost no bonus, your damage will remain small. If you really want to get into it even more, resistance and penetration become the fourth corner of the square for overall damage (more area, more damage).

Mehrune Dagon this made my head hurt!
Tanks for the response!

Z