Nerfing Crit chance was the wrong move. It should have been Crit Damage.

MindOfTheSwarm

Nerfing Crit chance as much as they have had made it more important to run sets such as Mother’s Sorrow. Killing any chance to alternatives. My move from here would be to buff the Thief Mundus. But at the same time reduce base Crit Damage down to 25%. Also, I would buff either weapon damage and spell damage bonuses on sets or buff the Warrior/Apprentice/Mage etc. This way you close the gap between base damage and Crit damage but also not making it necessary to run Crit chance sets to Crit at all. This would allow people to run sets that require a Crit to trigger an effect without being bottlenecks into running a Crit chance set.

Kwoung

Personally, my take on the matter is, until Weapon / Spell Damage come in line with crit damage, the number of viable builds / sets will continue to be low. Stacking Weapon or Spell damage should give equal results to stacking crit, and in doing so, would make a huge selection of gear sets and combinations viable. I don't feel crit needs to be nerfed, just that other ways of achieving that same level of damage be made available.

Builds with all crit, or all Spell/Weapon damage, or 1/2 & 1/2 of each builds... should all provide similar damage/healing results IMHO.

jaws343

They didn't nerf crit chance... They nerfed crit damage.

RandomKodiak

They did nerf crit chance a few patches back, around the first of the year. That being said where I do not disagree with the original post or the first response, you run into the same problem we always do with these types of ideas in that you would throw PvP into complete disarray with more weapon/spell damage, while nerfing the hell out of PvE. Until they can figure out/ decide to balance the two seperately it is going to stay weapon/spell over crit in PvP and Crit over W/S damage in PvE. As I said I have no problems making even more sets viable for more build diversity but not sure what the answer is right now. There are more viable choices than ever before right now this patch has done a lot and more would be even better just not sure how they can do it.

Vulkunne

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

Nerfing Crit chance as much as they have had made it more important to run sets such as Mother’s Sorrow. Killing any chance to alternatives. My move from here would be to buff the Thief Mundus. But at the same time reduce base Crit Damage down to 25%. Also, I would buff either weapon damage and spell damage bonuses on sets or buff the Warrior/Apprentice/Mage etc. This way you close the gap between base damage and Crit damage but also not making it necessary to run Crit chance sets to Crit at all. This would allow people to run sets that require a Crit to trigger an effect without being bottlenecks into running a Crit chance set.

Yeah it was. Its so weird trying to take a NB or Templar whose class is designed to promote Crits and then be forced to goto another dmg type (like Sharpened) because I want to use different sets. As it stands, if I want to get a decent Critical Chance I'm forced to use things like Lev or Med but if want to use something else other than these I end up with a severely sub-optimal Crit Chance and part of my Class abilities are completely wasted.

master_vanargand

Critical chance are already nerfed.
Thief nerf, dagger nerf, mid armor nerf, critical sets nerf ...
Critical chance have been nerfed many times in the past.
Do not weaken it any further.

MindOfTheSwarm

master_vanargand wrote: »

Critical chance are already nerfed.
Thief nerf, dagger nerf, mid armor nerf, critical sets nerf ...
Critical chance have been nerfed many times in the past.
Do not weaken it any further.

Did you read the post? I suggested buffing Crit Chance and nerfing Crit Damage. But only at base so Crit Damage builds can still perform at high level.

jtm1018

They also nerfed crit dmg.

MindOfTheSwarm

Kwoung wrote: »

Personally, my take on the matter is, until Weapon / Spell Damage come in line with crit damage, the number of viable builds / sets will continue to be low. Stacking Weapon or Spell damage should give equal results to stacking crit, and in doing so, would make a huge selection of gear sets and combinations viable. I don't feel crit needs to be nerfed, just that other ways of achieving that same level of damage be made available.

Builds with all crit, or all Spell/Weapon damage, or 1/2 & 1/2 of each builds... should all provide similar damage/healing results IMHO.

@Kwoung agree 90%. I still think Crit builds should have highest damage as they pay a price for not being able to build outside of it without paying a price. But the disparity is too great. Hence the suggested 25% bad Crit Damage. I think in the end Crit builds should be doing around 20% more damage than non-Crit builds. But currently they are pushing almost 100% more damage. Which is ridiculous.

MindOfTheSwarm

RandomKodiak wrote: »

They did nerf crit chance a few patches back, around the first of the year. That being said where I do not disagree with the original post or the first response, you run into the same problem we always do with these types of ideas in that you would throw PvP into complete disarray with more weapon/spell damage, while nerfing the hell out of PvE. Until they can figure out/ decide to balance the two seperately it is going to stay weapon/spell over crit in PvP and Crit over W/S damage in PvE. As I said I have no problems making even more sets viable for more build diversity but not sure what the answer is right now. There are more viable choices than ever before right now this patch has done a lot and more would be even better just not sure how they can do it.

@RandomKodiak There is a simple solution regarding your PVP concerns and that is to simply buff armor values and the Reinforced Trait on armor to offset the weapon and spell damage buffs. Also, personally I would combine Impen and Reinforced into a single Trait. Have Crit Resistance = 5% of the combined value of Spell and Physical Resistance. This would result in 2000 Crit Resistance on a 20k/20k resistance toon. Also, this would allow things like Major Resolve to buff your crit resistance passively. Since these traits are now combined you could create a new trait to replace it. Maybe shift Decisive over to armor and have it award 1 Ultimate when you take Damage. (Once per second). Might make it a useful trait if you run 7 pieces. Of course this would then mean a new trait for weapons would be required. Personally I want a conversion trait that makes a percentage of your weapon skills deal alternative damage according to enchantment glyphs.

Waseem

nerf?
we used to do trials with 12k dps, now randoms do 90k dps

come back in 2 years and players will be doing 250k dps

what nerf?

Dagoth_Rac

They should buff base critical chance. They buffed base weapon/spell damage and base stamina/magicka, but left painfully low base crit chance. It instantly made crit chance a glaring weakness on every character and every build.

MindOfTheSwarm

Waseem wrote: »

nerf?
we used to do trials with 12k dps, now randoms do 90k dps

come back in 2 years and players will be doing 250k dps

what nerf?

@Waseem The current high damage builds are all running pretty much the same sets. And all are running Mother’s Sorrow or Medusa for the most part. The nerf to Crit chance made these sets even more needed and a requirement for certain guilds. Nerfing Crit chance was a bad move. Not once in my post did I say that DPS numbers were any different or that damage numbers were nerfed. My point was that the nerf to Crit chance in past patches has pushed people in building for Crit chance more than ever before and as a result has made other options obsolete for the most part.

MindOfTheSwarm

I personally believe that players should be able to reach 50% Crit Chance under the following conditions:
Player is not wearing any sets with Crit Chance.
Player is not holding a Precise Weapon.
Player has Major Savagery/Prophecy.
Player has Thief Mundus all in Divines.

Under these circumstance a player would have 50% chance to deal 25% more Crit Damage with my suggest nerf to Crit Damage.

Players that run one set with Crit Chance and Precise weapons would then choose The Warrior or Apprentice Mundus instead as they have got most of their Crit Chance from sets.

Finally Shadow Mundus would be for people who go full Crit and have high Crit chance.

By nerfing base Crit to 25%, Crit is no longer the be all and end all of builds. Furthermore it makes Crit Resistance less of an absolute must in PVP.
On the flip side buffing Crit Chance opens up other options without it being op since Crit Damage has been nerfed.

thorwyn

None of the high DPS builds are running MS or Medusa anymore.

milllaurie

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

I personally believe that players should be able to reach 50% Crit Chance under the following conditions:
Player is not wearing any sets with Crit Chance.
Player is not holding a Precise Weapon.
Player has Major Savagery/Prophecy.
Player has Thief Mundus all in Divines.

Under these circumstance a player would have 50% chance to deal 25% more Crit Damage with my suggest nerf to Crit Damage.

Players that run one set with Crit Chance and Precise weapons would then choose The Warrior or Apprentice Mundus instead as they have got most of their Crit Chance from sets.

Finally Shadow Mundus would be for people who go full Crit and have high Crit chance.

By nerfing base Crit to 25%, Crit is no longer the be all and end all of builds. Furthermore it makes Crit Resistance less of an absolute must in PVP.
On the flip side buffing Crit Chance opens up other options without it being op since Crit Damage has been nerfed.

And that would [snip] up all the pvp balance from the core. The self heals would be insane, critical damage would be too low, nbs, templars, khajiits would be next to useless, impen trait would be not needed since the 25% would be covered by base crit resistances.
Nobody ever dies, gg.
Sure, great balance.

[edited for profanity bypass]

Succuby

HA builds do like 75k damage on some classes ... so ... .

Add them to the list of sets need upgrade pls ))

Tommy_The_Gun

The only thing that imho should be changed is that they should make some crit dmg bonus so it would also apply to crit healing. I never understood this why for example minor / major force only applies to crit damage & not healing (do we even have a crit healing buff in eso ?)

It feels inconsistent, as crit chance (and crit chance minor & major buffs) also apply to crit healing chance.

DarkPicture

Crit chance didnt get nerfs unless u speak about 2 years changes like decreased amount of crit from set bonuses.


Crit dmg got nerf.

MindOfTheSwarm

Still silly that a toon has 20% chance to Crit unless wearing Crit Chance sets.

jaws343

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

Still silly that a toon has 20% chance to Crit unless wearing Crit Chance sets.

What's silly about needing to build for a specific stat? Why should anyone who isn't building for crit chance have an abundance of it.

By that same logic, it's silly that I just don't get to the physical and spell resistance cap by just wearing any gear I want. Why should I have less than 20K resistances in light armor. Should be 32K while I wear full damage sets and nothing defensive.

Dagoth_Rac

jaws343 wrote: »

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

Still silly that a toon has 20% chance to Crit unless wearing Crit Chance sets.

What's silly about needing to build for a specific stat? Why should anyone who isn't building for crit chance have an abundance of it.

By that same logic, it's silly that I just don't get to the physical and spell resistance cap by just wearing any gear I want. Why should I have less than 20K resistances in light armor. Should be 32K while I wear full damage sets and nothing defensive.

It is silly because you have pretty viable spell/weapon damage and max magicka/stamina without trying very hard. Between base character spell/weapon damage, base CP160 gold weapon, and easily available self-buffs, everyone has 3000 to 4000 spell/weapon damage without even trying. And everyone has 30,000 to 40,000 max magicka/stamina without really trying.

So it is not a case of wanting an abundance of crit chance. More that you can get good-but-not-great spell/weapon damage without much effort, and good-but-not-great max magicka/stamina without much effort, but crit chance is not like that at all. Forget about good-but-not-great, crit chance is pitiful if you don't build for it.

It is like ZOS gave us a house with a nice floor and nice walls, but a couple of palm fronds for a roof. People would put all their effort into improving the roof. Would improvements to floor and walls be worthless? No. But the opportunity cost is too high. You simply have to put a lot of resources into getting a viable roof before anything else. That is what crit chance is like in PvE.

Vulkunne

Dagoth_Rac wrote: »

jaws343 wrote: »

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

Still silly that a toon has 20% chance to Crit unless wearing Crit Chance sets.

What's silly about needing to build for a specific stat? Why should anyone who isn't building for crit chance have an abundance of it.

By that same logic, it's silly that I just don't get to the physical and spell resistance cap by just wearing any gear I want. Why should I have less than 20K resistances in light armor. Should be 32K while I wear full damage sets and nothing defensive.

It is silly because you have pretty viable spell/weapon damage and max magicka/stamina without trying very hard. Between base character spell/weapon damage, base CP160 gold weapon, and easily available self-buffs, everyone has 3000 to 4000 spell/weapon damage without even trying. And everyone has 30,000 to 40,000 max magicka/stamina without really trying.

So it is not a case of wanting an abundance of crit chance. More that you can get good-but-not-great spell/weapon damage without much effort, and good-but-not-great max magicka/stamina without much effort, but crit chance is not like that at all. Forget about good-but-not-great, crit chance is pitiful if you don't build for it.

It is like ZOS gave us a house with a nice floor and nice walls, but a couple of palm fronds for a roof. People would put all their effort into improving the roof. Would improvements to floor and walls be worthless? No. But the opportunity cost is too high. You simply have to put a lot of resources into getting a viable roof before anything else. That is what crit chance is like in PvE.

Great analogy. Its either all there or may as well have none at all.

BXR_Lonestar

They've nerfed both crit chance by reducing it and making it harder to get crit chance above 60%, and they've nerfed crit damage by capping overall crit damage multiplier at 125%.

The problem isn't that they haven't nerfed one stat or the other. The problem is that it is still EASY to have a good blend of Weapon/Spell Damage, crit chance, AND crit multiplier such that a pure stat build (max weapon power/max mag/stam) build simply cannot compete.

I think one of the easier ways to sort this out is to further reduce crit chance and introduce a "critical chance" glyph so that if you want to be a pure crit build, you have to go with crit chance glyphs to make it work, thereby lowering overall weapon damage. That would be a first step. Then sets would have to be reworked and reclassified into crit chance sets and crit damage sets, both of which would lack weapon damage stats. The goal would be to make it so that a character that is built for crit chance/crit damage will only have TWO of the THREE primary damage stats.

Once they do this, then they can adjust weapon power/max stats sets independently so that they can make max stat builds competitive.

Until they make it far more difficult to stack all three primary damage stats, crit builds are going to always rule.

LashanW

I don't get the title. ZoS already made the right move. They put caps on crit damage instead of having it unbounded. (it's capped at 125% now)

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

The only thing that imho should be changed is that they should make some crit dmg bonus so it would also apply to crit healing. I never understood this why for example minor / major force only applies to crit damage & not healing (do we even have a crit healing buff in eso ?)

It feels inconsistent, as crit chance (and crit chance minor & major buffs) also apply to crit healing chance.

Fighting Finesse CP star, shadow mundus and a bunch of class/race passives affect crit healing values. I guess less sources of crit healing are there because of balance issues. Self heals are already very strong without speccing into any healer specific stuff.

thorwyn wrote: »

None of the high DPS builds are running MS or Medusa anymore.

Yes, there are better options such as Tzogvin or AY. They give even more crit chance than MS/Medusa.

There's a few exceptions like Kinras and Pillar of Nirn, but AY is pretty much unmatched for mag classes in melee fights. Depending on class, Kinras can be lackluster if daggers are not used (too low crit chance on staves). But AY performs slightly better if you are going for daggers anyways.

Crit chance is still pretty much the strongest PvE stat, assuming you are close to crit dmg cap. But I don't think it's a bad thing. You have to invest a lot to get there (both from DD players and support roles).
If some other stat were to be made the strongest PvE stat (either through buffing some other stat or nerfing the crits) all it will do is shift the meta. And there will always be a meta. Plus nerfing crits will cause a lot of balance issues (skills like crit surge for example).

Chilly-McFreeze

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

They've nerfed both crit chance by reducing it and making it harder to get crit chance above 60%, and they've nerfed crit damage by capping overall crit damage multiplier at 125%.

The problem isn't that they haven't nerfed one stat or the other. The problem is that it is still EASY to have a good blend of Weapon/Spell Damage, crit chance, AND crit multiplier such that a pure stat build (max weapon power/max mag/stam) build simply cannot compete.

I think one of the easier ways to sort this out is to further reduce crit chance and introduce a "critical chance" glyph so that if you want to be a pure crit build, you have to go with crit chance glyphs to make it work, thereby lowering overall weapon damage. That would be a first step. Then sets would have to be reworked and reclassified into crit chance sets and crit damage sets, both of which would lack weapon damage stats. The goal would be to make it so that a character that is built for crit chance/crit damage will only have TWO of the THREE primary damage stats.

Once they do this, then they can adjust weapon power/max stats sets independently so that they can make max stat builds competitive.

Until they make it far more difficult to stack all three primary damage stats, crit builds are going to always rule.

Hmm.. Not sure about that. Has someone the math available?

The assumption is that in PvE even with no investment in crit damage at all (no CP, passives, axes, buffs) each single 1% of crit chance equals to 0.5% increased damage on average. Before any crit damage modifiers, which are easy to gain (min Force & Fighting Finesse are nearly gifted).
That means a single line of crit chance (657 = 3%) nets at least 1.5% dmg increase. (3,75% at most, which is preferable).

How hard is it to gain an equal increase of dps/tooltip via ordinary weapon damage or max resource?
At the moment, given that crit rules supreme, it seems that the opportunity costs are not worth it.

So the question must be how we can minimize those opportunity costs without firing up the power creep while simultaneously?
Keeping in mind that many effects rely on landing a crit and taking a look how Impen effects the prevalence of crit builds in PvP the easiest way I see is to lower base crit damage and/or make it harder to increase crit dmg modifier in PvE. Up to the point that it's nearly equally viable to build into any of those stats.
Yes, that includes rebalancing crit for pvp.

Chilly-McFreeze

LashanW wrote: »

If some other stat were to be made the strongest PvE stat (either through buffing some other stat or nerfing the crits) all it will do is shift the meta. And there will always be a meta. Plus nerfing crits will cause a lot of balance issues (skills like crit surge for example).

Wasn't OP's idea to balance it to the point where building into max wpn dmg is equally viable as building into max crit? So it's not about replacing the meta but making more builds roughly equally effective.

But I totally agree on the last sentence. So it would indeed be preferable to lower crit damage instead of crit chance.

MindOfTheSwarm

Chilly-McFreeze wrote: »

LashanW wrote: »

If some other stat were to be made the strongest PvE stat (either through buffing some other stat or nerfing the crits) all it will do is shift the meta. And there will always be a meta. Plus nerfing crits will cause a lot of balance issues (skills like crit surge for example).

Wasn't OP's idea to balance it to the point where building into max wpn dmg is equally viable as building into max crit? So it's not about replacing the meta but making more builds roughly equally effective.

But I totally agree on the last sentence. So it would indeed be preferable to lower crit damage instead of crit chance.

@Chilly-McFreeze Exactly my point. Nerf Crit Damage base but buff Crit Chance through the Thief Mundus. Then buff Weapon and Spell Damage sources till the disparity is closer, say 20% more in dedicated Crit builds. After that is done, see how the increased Weapon Damage affects PVP and either buff Reinforced Trait values and bake Impen into Reinforced. Resulting in higher defences but overall lower Crit Resistance to compensate for lower base Crit Damage. Now you have a scenario where more builds are viable in endgame PVE while at the same time Crit builds can actually be viable in PVP. I could go on into more detail regarding why certain classes have to pick the same sets over others but the main point is as Chilly pointed out. Crit builds are not just meta but insanely overpowered compared to non Crit builds making 90% of all other sets obsolete.

Ippokrates

Chilly-McFreeze wrote: »

LashanW wrote: »

If some other stat were to be made the strongest PvE stat (either through buffing some other stat or nerfing the crits) all it will do is shift the meta. And there will always be a meta. Plus nerfing crits will cause a lot of balance issues (skills like crit surge for example).

Wasn't OP's idea to balance it to the point where building into max wpn dmg is equally viable as building into max crit? So it's not about replacing the meta but making more builds roughly equally effective.

But I totally agree on the last sentence. So it would indeed be preferable to lower crit damage instead of crit chance.

If you have 100% crit dmg, what is relatively easy to achieve in group content (or even solo stamina), a typical crit chance set (DGE, Tzogvin, AY) will give you around additional 15% crit chance, what would be an equivalent of 15% more dmg.

If you have a char without set bonuses, he would have around 3k w/s dmg from weapon and jewelry and 30k main resource, which mean your skills will have an equivalent of 6k dmg. A typhical dmg set will increase your dmg for around 1k (including w/s bonuses), which means that your dmg from skills should be increased by around 15-18%.

I don't know if they could make this system any more balanced ;p

Chilly-McFreeze

That's why I asked for the maths behind it.
But is 15% more "wpn dmg" equal to 15% bigger tooltips?

How do you come to 1k damage increase? According to your rule of thumb calculation that would require a set with 2x 130 dmg + 1k resources + ~640 general weapon dmg on the 5th piece. I don't see endgamers running things like that.

How does it come that meta builds prefer stacking crit if just adding weapon damage could archieve the same? Something tells me there must be an advantage on the crit side.

LashanW

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

Exactly my point. Nerf Crit Damage base but buff Crit Chance through the Thief Mundus. Then buff Weapon and Spell Damage sources till the disparity is closer, say 20% more in dedicated Crit builds. After that is done, see how the increased Weapon Damage affects PVP and either buff Reinforced Trait values and bake Impen into Reinforced. Resulting in higher defences but overall lower Crit Resistance to compensate for lower base Crit Damage. Now you have a scenario where more builds are viable in endgame PVE while at the same time Crit builds can actually be viable in PVP. I could go on into more detail regarding why certain classes have to pick the same sets over others but the main point is as Chilly pointed out. Crit builds are not just meta but insanely overpowered compared to non Crit builds making 90% of all other sets obsolete.

You speak of crit builds often and say they are OP. Can you provide an example of such builds?

Are you familiar with the concept of diminishing returns and sweet spots? It is there for all stats except crit damage (but ZoS is careful to not add too many crit dmg modifiers and now they have come to their senses and placed a cap as well). Stacking only spell damage is a dps loss, stacking only max magicka is even more of a dps loss. Same way stacking only crit chance will cause a dps loss. Afaik, running more than 1 crit chance set is not optimal in endgame PvE. ( combinations like MS + Medusa or Tzogvin + AY). Having precise trait on both daggers is not optimal.

Right now in top endgame PvE people run the following pattern for 5pc sets (for magicka builds),
[1 damage modifying set (Bahsei)] + [ 1 crit chance set OR 1 more damage modifying set (Kinras) OR 1 proc set ]

But those top endgame builds are NOT what I'd call a crit build. They incorporate all stats and optimize them to their sweet spots to roll out the highest dps. They use wpn/spell dmg enchantments on jewelries and backbar infused weapon. Bloodthirsty trait on jewelries for even more wpn/spell dmg. Max resource enchantments on body set pieces. Buff food that give the most max resource (bi-stat food or parse food) As many as major and minor wpn/spell dmg boosters as possible (Sorcery/Brutality, Courage) and unique sources like powerful assault.

Daggers with nirnhorned and charged traits: people have the option to use 2x precise here, but top tier builds don't do that. Why do you think that is?

There are also unique effects of stacking 1 stat,
Wpn/spell damage : primary scaling for damage proc sets. Affects dmg skills more strongly than max resource. Directly increases healing values (except through bloodthirsty and that one CP star)
Max magicka/stamina : Stronger damage shields / a lot more dodging, blocking and sprinting. Directly increases healing values. Also allows you to attack non-stop for longer without running out of fuel.

What are the benefits of stacking only crit chance? A lot of sets and skills that proc on crits already have hard cooldowns. Trying to go above 80-85% crit chance is completely useless unless for fun.

Btw I'm not saying what you mention in your first post was never a thing. It WAS a thing, there was a patch where ZoS only nerfed crit chance while keeping crit damage uncapped, it made crit chance undisputed number 1 stat in PvE, other stats were out the window. Magblades went nuts with 80+% crit chance AND 160+% crit dmg. But luckily ZoS came to their senses and capped crit damage.

Right now I think it's only unique damage modifiers that are a bit unbalanced. Things like Major slayer, berserk and vulnerability. And most importantly, 5pc bonus of Bahsei. That one is insane.

TL:DR
Top tier min maxed builds don't stack crit chance and crit damage. They min max all the stats to their sweet spots. That's how they parse 110k+ and burn through endgame.
Builds that focus only 1 or 2 stats don't come close to that dps. That is fine imo as there are other different benefits to stacking 1 stat. You can't make stacking any single stat equally viable for dps because of these.