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

carlos424

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?

A little (alot) exaggerated as you are comparing 3m dummy numbers to the trials atronach (fully debuffed). But I understand your point of power creep/increased dps. Don’t worry, I’m sure the nerf hammer is coming. I would expect something like a 50% cap on crit chance, or maybe lowering the crit damage cap another 5%-10% for starters.

LashanW

Chilly-McFreeze wrote: »

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.

I will respond to that as simply as I can. Keep in mind about diminishing returns and sweet spots when it comes to stats.

In PvE group content other people (support roles) can give you weapon/spell damage. They can give you increases in max resource. They can most importantly give you crit damage modifiers.
They CANNOT give you more crit chance. Only way someone else can give this to you is via minor Prophesy/Savagery.

Ippokrates

Chilly-McFreeze wrote: »

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.

Yeah, check coef on ESO skill browser.

And check sets like Clever Alchemist or Diamond Victory. They are giving around 700-800 dmg extra. Add to this 20-30% from Minor and Major Brutality/Sorcery and you have 1k.

Naftal

But people don't stack crit chance in the end game, they stack +damage done modifiers like kinras and bahsei. Sometimes Tzogvin but that's so you get a free skill slot.

MindOfTheSwarm

This is all interesting feedback but I still feel that although nerfing Crit Damsge was a good move. I still stand by my assessment that capping max Crit damage was the wrong move and instead nerfing base Crit damage was the right move. Even with a Crit damage cap, players are still motivated to reach that cap. Crit is still king in PVE. If you nerfed base Crit Damage to 25%, I don’t think there would be much need for a cap. As long as base Crit Damage is 50%, players are always going to look to hit at least 50% Crit Chance, which requires sets that push it up to that number. What I am suggesting is that 50% Crit Chance be reached easily but Crit Damage harder. Instead of the other way round which it currently is. By reducing Crit Damage to 25% and buffing Weapon/Spell Damage. A player can opt to not buff Crit Damage at all but still benefit from the occasional 25% Damage.

Example:
Magwarden have passives that encourage getting at least 50% Crit due to Passives. But that means they need to run sets that give Crit Chance. Running other sets basically means they are throwing away there passive bonus. Sure you could argue that this is price/benefit situation but trying to DPS with low Crit Chance is just not viable. You need minimum 50% Crit Chance. Why? Because Crit Damage is at base 50%. It’s just too necessary for decent damage. You can’t afford to not get Crit Chance. But by nerfing it to 25% and buffing general damage you bridge the gap making Crit Damage less of an absolute requirement which it currently is.

LashanW

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

Sure you could argue that this is price/benefit situation but trying to DPS with low Crit Chance is just not viable.

True.
At the same time, trying to dps with low wpn/spell damage is not viable. Trying with low max resource is also not viable. (try finding a top tier dps build (110k+ on raid dummy) that doesn't have 5500+ wpn/spell damage and 33000+ max resource)

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

You need minimum 50% Crit Chance. Why? Because Crit Damage is at base 50%. It’s just too necessary for decent damage. You can’t afford to not get Crit Chance. But by nerfing it to 25% and buffing general damage you bridge the gap making Crit Damage less of an absolute requirement which it currently is.

That's gonna affect PvP a lot and will require many balance changes. And all these changes are for what? So someone can also do 110k+ dps by using Siroria and maybe New moon acolyte? Give us an example of a dps build that you want to be on par with current top tier dps builds.

Btw you should read the reasoning behind those changes (devs still want crits to remain powerful in PvE).
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7433026/#Comment_7433026

master_vanargand

I'm against the Critical damage nerf.
PvE isn't all about the critical sets.
Bahsei and Relequen are not Critical sets.
Of course critical is necessary, but that is balance.

PvP has long downplayed critical.
Critical has become important in today's PvP.
But do you want a "Critical nerf"?
Do not nerf Critical anymore.

LightningWitch

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

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.

I broke your statement out so it's not a text wall, as each sentence tells a different story.

Basically, what you just said is that "Because players are running meta, we shouldn't be punished for it", which is absurd, considering not every class can benefit from the same changes.

For people complaining about balance all the time, most sure have an odd way of understanding how it works.

I mean, how ridiculous a remark that a requirement for some guilds proves most of this is hyperbole of meta, and not actual game play.

BXR_Lonestar

@ Chilly-McFreeze:

Chilly-McFreeze wrote: »

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.

I'm not sure how the math works out to be perfectly honest, but gut feeling and common sense tells me that when you can make a "well rounded" build with ~ 60% crit chance, 4.5-5k damage (weapon or spell), and cap out at the crit damage cap, your going to end up doing way more damage than a max power build, which, when receiving similar group buffs, only tops in around 7-7.5K damage, MAYBE moderately better (4-5k or so, which translates roughly into 400ish weapon/spell power) offensive stat pools, and crit chance in the low 20-30's with almost no investment into crit damage modifier.

IMO, the major issue is that you cannot currently stack enough raw damage/raw stats on a character to make it so your average damage would be equivalent to the average damage of a crit build. You get better damage overall by just reducing your raw damage and increasing your crit chance and crit multiplier. Basically, its too easy to invest in high crit chance/crit damage multiplier because you don't have to give up much in the way of raw damage to get a "good" crit chance/crit multiplier. And it is easy to sacrifice the raw damage you are giving up because running with around 7-7.5k raw damage doesn't translate into the kind of output you would expect to get.

MindOfTheSwarm

This is all good feedback and I appreciate all opinions. I am still of the mind that my proposition still holds but respect to all.

Wandering_Immigrant

Lowering base crit damage would only increase the gap between people who build into crit and people who don't, essentially rolling back the crit damage cap and giving organized groups an extra 25% differential.

You say raise base damage to compensate but crit damage is just a modifier that piggy backs off of your weapon or spell damage, so raising base damage would also raise crit damage. Crit is basically free damage in the sense that it takes the damage you would already be doing and multiplies it by a percentage. So even if someone were to somehow put together a pure weapon or spell damage build that had so much damage it was able to compete with current meta dps builds while foregoing crit, someone else would just take that same build and add crit to it and it would instantly become significantly better.

I personally don't see any of this as a problem. People who are reaching the recommended crit thresholds in their builds aren't ignoring weapon damage or penetration or max stats, so why should someone who wants to ignore one of the four major damage modifiers do comparable damage to people incorporating all four?

But for the sake of adding to the discussion, there's two ways that this sort of build choice could become a thing.

The first and easiest would be as @BXR_Lonestar suggested lowering crit chance. The reason crit is so good is because it's easy to get your chance up to a point where it becomes reliable damage. If they lowered crit chance significantly, say about halved it so that today's builds in the 60%-70% range become 30%-40% range that would give crit damage an actual chance factor and make building for crit more like a high risk high reward playstyle. This is closer to how most games I've played treat crit, where a critical hit feels like bonus damage rather than just being expected damage. Of course ESO isn't most games and such a dramatic change would cause intense uproar. And rightfully so really, there's sets and abilities that rely on landing a crit, what happens to those with such low crit chance? Plus PvP you could forget about ever bothering with crit again unless you're a stealth ganker, at least for solo PvPers anyway, it would just be too hard to get your chance high enough solo while incorporating everything else you need to survive.

The other way would be to separate crit damage from weapon damage, giving crit it's own base independent of weapon damage. I have no idea what this would look like, how it would work, where that base damage would be calculated from. I just know that doing this would mean that crits would no longer be free damage and you would have to choose between weapon damage or crit damage rather than building as much damage as you can while hitting the ideal thresholds for crits. So the example above where someone builds a pure weapon damage build that can compete and someone else comes along and improves it by simply adding crit, would no longer be possible, because a crit build and weapon damage build would be two completely different setups.

I don't believe either of those changes would be good for the game, nor do I think that any change to crit calculations is necessary. This was just for perspective's sake.

BXR_Lonestar

Wandering_Immigrant wrote: »

Lowering base crit damage would only increase the gap between people who build into crit and people who don't, essentially rolling back the crit damage cap and giving organized groups an extra 25% differential.

You say raise base damage to compensate but crit damage is just a modifier that piggy backs off of your weapon or spell damage, so raising base damage would also raise crit damage. Crit is basically free damage in the sense that it takes the damage you would already be doing and multiplies it by a percentage. So even if someone were to somehow put together a pure weapon or spell damage build that had so much damage it was able to compete with current meta dps builds while foregoing crit, someone else would just take that same build and add crit to it and it would instantly become significantly better.

I personally don't see any of this as a problem. People who are reaching the recommended crit thresholds in their builds aren't ignoring weapon damage or penetration or max stats, so why should someone who wants to ignore one of the four major damage modifiers do comparable damage to people incorporating all four?

But for the sake of adding to the discussion, there's two ways that this sort of build choice could become a thing.

The first and easiest would be as @BXR_Lonestar suggested lowering crit chance. The reason crit is so good is because it's easy to get your chance up to a point where it becomes reliable damage. If they lowered crit chance significantly, say about halved it so that today's builds in the 60%-70% range become 30%-40% range that would give crit damage an actual chance factor and make building for crit more like a high risk high reward playstyle. This is closer to how most games I've played treat crit, where a critical hit feels like bonus damage rather than just being expected damage. Of course ESO isn't most games and such a dramatic change would cause intense uproar. And rightfully so really, there's sets and abilities that rely on landing a crit, what happens to those with such low crit chance? Plus PvP you could forget about ever bothering with crit again unless you're a stealth ganker, at least for solo PvPers anyway, it would just be too hard to get your chance high enough solo while incorporating everything else you need to survive.

The other way would be to separate crit damage from weapon damage, giving crit it's own base independent of weapon damage. I have no idea what this would look like, how it would work, where that base damage would be calculated from. I just know that doing this would mean that crits would no longer be free damage and you would have to choose between weapon damage or crit damage rather than building as much damage as you can while hitting the ideal thresholds for crits. So the example above where someone builds a pure weapon damage build that can compete and someone else comes along and improves it by simply adding crit, would no longer be possible, because a crit build and weapon damage build would be two completely different setups.

I don't believe either of those changes would be good for the game, nor do I think that any change to crit calculations is necessary. This was just for perspective's sake.

My suggestion wasn't just to lower crit chance significantly. I think that is part of the recipe, but the other part of my suggestion was to make additional sources of crit chance so players had to make further choices between crit chance and base damage so that if you went for crit chance, the base weapon damage multiplier was lower such that raw stats builds could be more competitive.

As for the suggestion that ignoring crit chance/damage is ignoring an integral part of a build, I personally think if they want to increase build diversity, they need to expand the number of viable builds. I've often posted here that in addition to stacking crit chance/crit damage, stacking offensive penetration past the "cap" should also result in a raw damage multiplier such that if you ignored crit, but went raw stats/full on pen, you could achieve a similar effect.

I fully realize that a game like this is going to get narrower in terms of what builds are viable as you push towards endgame content, but I also think some the offensive "rules" we're dealing with are too rigid and restrictive at this point, and a lot could be done to open things up and make the game a little more interesting. Since the hybridization of the game, there's really only 5-6 sets that you see on ANY character now for endgame DPS, and farming for the same sets over and over and over and over for all of your characters is just getting old.