Let's Discuss Medium v. Light

Everest_Lionheart

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

yoo_mr_white wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

Septimus_Magna wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

Septimus_Magna wrote: »

Simply put LA offers penetration and critical chance, MA offers weapon dmg and critical dmg.

Without looking at the values the most useful stat lines in the game are penetration (up to the pen cap) and critical chance.
In order for MA to win the values have to be high enough to compensate for the less effective stat lines.
Comparing it to Mundus values gives a good indication but there's a reason basically everyone runs the Thief.

Its nice that mixing gear weights becomes more beneficial for DDs but my overall feeling is that stam is losing out because its missing penetration and crit chance.

I don’t believe Stam will really be missing Crit Chance compared to Mag. Daggers alone more than make up the 5% difference from Armor passives (6-1 vs 1-6 light/medium means 5% gap). Bows also get 6% crit as a passive. Sets give Stam more crit, starting with trial sets: Relequen giving 6% weapon crit, while Bahsei only gives 3% Spell Crit and Siroria gives none. Bahsei/Rele are typically paired with a front bar crit set, and in this role AY outperforms Medusa or Mother’s Sorrow by about 5% crit chance.

For further evidence that the armor changes help balance Crit Chance across Stamina and Magicka, we can look at one interesting and extreme example. Hypothetically, let’s say two generic classes (nothing with crit bonuses like Nightblade or Necro) want to build maximum crit chance next patch. The Magicka build would wear Medusa + Sorrow + Kilt + Slimecraw and hit 95.3% crit chance with daggers (giving up all useful weapon skills). The Stamina build would wear Advancing Yokeda + Tzogvin’s + Kilt + Slimecraw and hit the exact same 95.3% crit chance with daggers.

Now if they wanted to play ranged then the Magicka build would drop to 87.8% with a staff and the Stamina build would be at 93.8% with a bow. Additionally the Stamina build in all cases would keep more crit on back bar, since the 11% crit on AY’s 5pc carries over for 5s, while the 4% crit on Medusa’s 5pc is lost immediately.

Note: I could have used Dragonguard Elite for the comparison since it gives 1.5% more crit than Tzogvin, allowing up to 96.8% crit, but Tzog seemed more fair because it gives Minor Force like Medusa. Medusa is also a heavy set that must be front barred, which mirrors Advancing Yokeda’s weight and build restrictions.

Thank you for the detailed explanation, are the values you mention from the PTS?
I would have expected that its difficult to reach 95% weapon crit now that the MA passives dont give crit chance.

If so, things are looking really good for stam DDs because pen will be less of an issue with the new set COR and the changes to Alkosh.

@Septimus_Magna Yep, that’s all after the removal of crit chance from Medium Armor. Those are front bar values only, back bar would likely be a bow or 2h with Infused trait. And it assumes you have Minor Savagery. The crit sets also have a ramp up time to get to full stacks, somewhere around 10s.

I wouldn’t really recommend building 95% crit because it’s better to use Shadow mundus over Thief when crit is that high, and a slayer set instead of a 2nd crit set. Nirnhoned main hand would outperform double precise. Still, it’s possible if you choose (and Nightblades with 3 Assassination skills can still hit 100% crit on front bar). Here’s the full breakdown if you’re interested.

10% Base Crit
12% Major Savagery (potions)
6% Minor Savagery (NB ally)
1.5% CP Passive
1% One piece Light Armor
5.7% Harpooner’s Kilt
3.5% Slimecraw
17% Advancing Yokeda
14% Tzogvin’s
7.2% Precise weapons
7.5% Dual daggers
9.9% Thief Mundus

95.3% Total

So with the two highest crit sets in the game and thief mundus yes you are at 95.3 crit that's over kill completely and to include that in your calculation just seems disingenuous. Who wears double crit sets like that? Who wears double precise daggers? I am very curious to see what AY and Tzogivn hits on a dummy, I would bet good money it's lower than what people hit with ay/rele. If people are so concerned about mag being behind with crit thanks to their sets why don't the devs make better crit sets for mag? Make a ranged version of ay.

Right, that’s why I said not to use a build like that. It’s not intended to be meta. I specifically recommended a slayer set (like Rele) and Nirnhoned main hand. The point was that if Mag or Stam wanted to build full crit, Stamina could still do it as well or better than Magicka, even with no crit chance from Medium Armor. And for Magicka DPS the combination of two crit sets (Sorrow + Medusa) with Thief and Precise has been very popular the last several months (personally I never liked it over Siroria). Comparing Magicka crit chance using two crit sets to Stamina DPS with one crit set would certainly skew the results.

Going all in for crit gives you consistency which people seem to prefer over raw damage especially when going all in for crit you still hit within 1-3K of a more traditional mix of one crit and one dmg set. Oddly enough though you can stack 2 damage sets on a mag toon and perform within that same 1-3K margin. I’ve been playing with DV + Siroria lately and the performance has actually impressed me. I’m still inclined to go with Medusa and Siroria most of the time for the extra skill slot, but double damage sets are interesting provided you can manage to keep up all the conditions.

yoo_mr_white

StytchFingal wrote: »

yoo_mr_white wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

Septimus_Magna wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

Septimus_Magna wrote: »

Simply put LA offers penetration and critical chance, MA offers weapon dmg and critical dmg.

Without looking at the values the most useful stat lines in the game are penetration (up to the pen cap) and critical chance.
In order for MA to win the values have to be high enough to compensate for the less effective stat lines.
Comparing it to Mundus values gives a good indication but there's a reason basically everyone runs the Thief.

Its nice that mixing gear weights becomes more beneficial for DDs but my overall feeling is that stam is losing out because its missing penetration and crit chance.

I don’t believe Stam will really be missing Crit Chance compared to Mag. Daggers alone more than make up the 5% difference from Armor passives (6-1 vs 1-6 light/medium means 5% gap). Bows also get 6% crit as a passive. Sets give Stam more crit, starting with trial sets: Relequen giving 6% weapon crit, while Bahsei only gives 3% Spell Crit and Siroria gives none. Bahsei/Rele are typically paired with a front bar crit set, and in this role AY outperforms Medusa or Mother’s Sorrow by about 5% crit chance.

For further evidence that the armor changes help balance Crit Chance across Stamina and Magicka, we can look at one interesting and extreme example. Hypothetically, let’s say two generic classes (nothing with crit bonuses like Nightblade or Necro) want to build maximum crit chance next patch. The Magicka build would wear Medusa + Sorrow + Kilt + Slimecraw and hit 95.3% crit chance with daggers (giving up all useful weapon skills). The Stamina build would wear Advancing Yokeda + Tzogvin’s + Kilt + Slimecraw and hit the exact same 95.3% crit chance with daggers.

Now if they wanted to play ranged then the Magicka build would drop to 87.8% with a staff and the Stamina build would be at 93.8% with a bow. Additionally the Stamina build in all cases would keep more crit on back bar, since the 11% crit on AY’s 5pc carries over for 5s, while the 4% crit on Medusa’s 5pc is lost immediately.

Note: I could have used Dragonguard Elite for the comparison since it gives 1.5% more crit than Tzogvin, allowing up to 96.8% crit, but Tzog seemed more fair because it gives Minor Force like Medusa. Medusa is also a heavy set that must be front barred, which mirrors Advancing Yokeda’s weight and build restrictions.

Thank you for the detailed explanation, are the values you mention from the PTS?
I would have expected that its difficult to reach 95% weapon crit now that the MA passives dont give crit chance.

If so, things are looking really good for stam DDs because pen will be less of an issue with the new set COR and the changes to Alkosh.

@Septimus_Magna Yep, that’s all after the removal of crit chance from Medium Armor. Those are front bar values only, back bar would likely be a bow or 2h with Infused trait. And it assumes you have Minor Savagery. The crit sets also have a ramp up time to get to full stacks, somewhere around 10s.

I wouldn’t really recommend building 95% crit because it’s better to use Shadow mundus over Thief when crit is that high, and a slayer set instead of a 2nd crit set. Nirnhoned main hand would outperform double precise. Still, it’s possible if you choose (and Nightblades with 3 Assassination skills can still hit 100% crit on front bar). Here’s the full breakdown if you’re interested.

10% Base Crit
12% Major Savagery (potions)
6% Minor Savagery (NB ally)
1.5% CP Passive
1% One piece Light Armor
5.7% Harpooner’s Kilt
3.5% Slimecraw
17% Advancing Yokeda
14% Tzogvin’s
7.2% Precise weapons
7.5% Dual daggers
9.9% Thief Mundus

95.3% Total

So with the two highest crit sets in the game and thief mundus yes you are at 95.3 crit that's over kill completely and to include that in your calculation just seems disingenuous. Who wears double crit sets like that? Who wears double precise daggers? I am very curious to see what AY and Tzogivn hits on a dummy, I would bet good money it's lower than what people hit with ay/rele. If people are so concerned about mag being behind with crit thanks to their sets why don't the devs make better crit sets for mag? Make a ranged version of ay.

In reality when your in solo play you will lose about 30% of that crit give or take building for penetration. You won't be running double precise daggers and slimecraw here.

Maybe read all of what you quoted?

Fair enough, but it seems the more elegant solution is to give mag better crit sets no? Stam already sacrifices crit for pen in organized groups. Why make them have to stack crit chance and pen now?

Stam was already forced into Rele why take it further now and force them to run a crit set with it too? Diamonds victory and kinras are bad sets now to pair with rele.

I'm not trying to attack anyone here I just want to challenge the status quo in order to maybe get some meaningful discussion. Like yes I get Medusa and mother's sorrow gives less crit than ay and tzogvins but maybe rework the sets so they give crit chance instead of sell/wep crit?

Plus tbh tzogvins and ay are a lot harder to use than Medusa and mother's sorrow. And on Stam unless your bow / bow it's (won't be using ay here anyways obviously) your gonna have a really hard time keeping stacks up in a trial fight.

But hey maybe the crit damage makes up for that? But I'm skeptical considering Stam will have a lower crit rating now. But I don't know the math as well as I could so I'm sure someone with more knowledge could prove me wrong.

WrathOfInnos

I’d be all for giving Mag some better crit sets

Something that works on a single bar would be amazing. We’ve been asking for Mag AY for years. After Tzogvin released we wanted a Mag version of that, and instead got an updated Medusa . It still gives crit and minor force, but its a heavy armor set, only affects the active bar, has 1% less crit chance and is missing a stat line like the Physical Penetration on Tzog.

A crit ranged weapon would also be nice. Maybe 6% Spell Crit on Frost or Lightning Staff (like the bow passive) so Inferno isn’t the universal meta.