There's no hard cap on weapon critical. But it's beneficial to have at least 60% especially for group content where there are various buffs that buff your critical damage.

By default you have 10% weapon critical
Perfect Strike passive from the Apprentice CP constellation adds 12%
Major Savagery (slotting Hunter, Flames or Oblivion, casting Green Lotus or Biting Jabs or drinking a weapon power potion) gives you 2191=10% weapon critical
Minor Savagery (have a NB in that hits a critical activates Hemorrhage passive) gives you 657=3% weapon critical
Dexterity medium armor passive gives you 328=1.5% weapon critical per piece (7.5% with 5p, 10.5% with 7p)
Precise 1H and 2H weapons give 3.5% and 7% spell and weapon critical respectively
1-4p set piece Weapon Critical bonuses are by default 833=3.8%
5p Leviathan set piece bonus is 1924=8.8%
Khajiit racial passive Carnage gives another 8%

By default your critical damage is 50% skill tool tip damage, so when you score a critical hit you will do 50% more damage
Putting points in Precise Strikes gives you up to 25% to your critical damage (realistically you will put about 56 for a 20% bonus)
Minor Force gives you 10% bonus to your critical damage - gained by Having Rearming Trap active, being linked to someone by Stalwart Guard or activating a synergy from someone using Twilight Remedy Set)
Major Force gives you 30% bonus to your critical damage - only gained from Aggressive Warhorn skill for 9.5s, almost impossible to get full up time on this even in a well coordinated group with 4 warhorns.
Templar Piercing Spear passive gives you 10% critical while you have an Aedric Spear skill slotted
Shadow mundus gives you 9% (13.7% with 7p divines) to your critical hit but it's not efficient to use it following the HotR changes - it used to give 11%.

So theoretically your critical multiplier can be as high as 1+50%*(1+25%+10%+10%+15%)=1.8 for a Templar and 1.75 for other classes. Realistically that needs to be toned down a bit. A realistic value with 56 CP in Precise Strikes 80% minor force and 60% major force up times is 1+50%*(1+20%+10%+10%*80%+15%*60%) = 1.74 for Templar and 1.69 for other classes which is achievable in a group. That means you will do 1.69x tool tip damage when you score a critical strike. Even when playing solo and not using trap your critical multiplier is still 1.6 from Precise Strikes CP alone or 1.65 for Templar. So your damage will scale quite strongly with your critical.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

Asardes wrote: »

There's no hard cap on weapon critical. But it's beneficial to have at least 60% especially for group content where there are various buffs that buff your critical damage.

By default you have 10% weapon critical
Perfect Strike passive from the Apprentice CP constellation adds 12%
Major Savagery (slotting Hunter, Flames or Oblivion, casting Green Lotus or Biting Jabs or drinking a weapon power potion) gives you 2191=10% weapon critical
Minor Savagery (have a NB in that hits a critical activates Hemorrhage passive) gives you 657=3% weapon critical
Dexterity medium armor passive gives you 328=1.5% weapon critical per piece (7.5% with 5p, 10.5% with 7p)
Precise 1H and 2H weapons give 3.5% and 7% spell and weapon critical respectively
1-4p set piece Weapon Critical bonuses are by default 833=3.8%
5p Leviathan set piece bonus is 1924=8.8%
Khajiit racial passive Carnage gives another 8%

By default your critical damage is 50% skill tool tip damage, so when you score a critical hit you will do 50% more damage
Putting points in Precise Strikes gives you up to 25% to your critical damage (realistically you will put about 56 for a 20% bonus)
Minor Force gives you 10% bonus to your critical damage - gained by Having Rearming Trap active, being linked to someone by Stalwart Guard or activating a synergy from someone using Twilight Remedy Set)
Major Force gives you 30% bonus to your critical damage - only gained from Aggressive Warhorn skill for 9.5s, almost impossible to get full up time on this even in a well coordinated group with 4 warhorns.
Templar Piercing Spear passive gives you 10% critical while you have an Aedric Spear skill slotted
Shadow mundus gives you 9% (13.7% with 7p divines) to your critical hit but it's not efficient to use it following the HotR changes - it used to give 11%.

So theoretically your critical multiplier can be as high as 1+50%*(1+25%+10%+10%+30%)=1.88 for a Templar and 1.83% for other classes. Realistically that needs to be toned down a bit. A realistic value with 56 CP in Precise Strikes 80% minor force and 60% major force up times is 1+50%*(1+20%+10%+10%*80%+30%*60%) = 1.81 for Templar and 1.76 for other classes which is achievable in a group. That means you will do 1.76x tool tip damage when you score a critical strike. Even when playing solo and not using trap your critical multiplier is still 1.6 from Elfborn CP alone or 1.65 for Templar. So your damage will scale quite strongly with your critical.

Warhorn is not 30% of your crit hit damage anymore, it is a flat 15% more crit hit damage.

Damn, 2nd time in 3 weeks when I get tricked by outdated external sources and end up writing factually wrong stuff. I don't even remember when they halved it to 15%. I knew they made it additive instead of multiplicative at some point but it had stayed 30%, and that was the nerf many people complained about. It seems odd, since for other buffs Minor is always about 1/3 of major. I will correct it, thanks for the tip.

OP, those who are telling you that crit loses its efficiency are making things up.

A good thing to do when comparing setups is to calculate the Effective Weapon Power (or Ability Metric).

Effective Weapon Power = ((Stamina/10.5) + Weapon Damage) * (1 + Weapon Crit * Critical Hit Damage) * (1 + CP Physical Damage Done) * Attack Physical Mitigation * (1 + Target Damage Taken) * (1 + Damage Done)

So the first part is easy.

The second part is 1 + Weapon Crit * Critical Hit Damage. Critical Hit Damage is basically 50% + Precise Strikes + Minor Force + Major Force + Shadow * (number of Divines) + Passives (such as Hemorrhage or Piercing Spear).

The third part is basically your points into Mighty.

The fourth part is Attacker Physical Mitigation. So this is very simple: (Your Penetration + Target Armor Debuffs)/18200
Your penetration is pretty straight forward, things like Lover mundus, Two Fanged, Spriggan, Kra'gh, Sharpened and CP into Piercing. Target Armor Debuffs are also pretty simple: Night Mother's Gaze, Sunderflame, Alkosh, Crusher enchant, Major Fracture and Minor Fracture. Don't confuse the two things though, they are different, one is a self buff (penetration) one is a debuffs (duh). 18.2K is the total amount of Armor of a boss.

The 5th part is Minor Vulnerability (Concussion/Infallible Aether) and Off-Balance for stamina players.

The final part is all your % bonuses to damage done. Minor Berserk, Minor Slayer, Major Slayer, etc.

Or you could just do it the easy way and go here: http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildEditor and let the website do it for you.

Asardes wrote: »

Izaki wrote: »

Asardes wrote: »

There's no hard cap on weapon critical. But it's beneficial to have at least 60% especially for group content where there are various buffs that buff your critical damage.

By default you have 10% weapon critical
Perfect Strike passive from the Apprentice CP constellation adds 12%
Major Savagery (slotting Hunter, Flames or Oblivion, casting Green Lotus or Biting Jabs or drinking a weapon power potion) gives you 2191=10% weapon critical
Minor Savagery (have a NB in that hits a critical activates Hemorrhage passive) gives you 657=3% weapon critical
Dexterity medium armor passive gives you 328=1.5% weapon critical per piece (7.5% with 5p, 10.5% with 7p)
Precise 1H and 2H weapons give 3.5% and 7% spell and weapon critical respectively
1-4p set piece Weapon Critical bonuses are by default 833=3.8%
5p Leviathan set piece bonus is 1924=8.8%
Khajiit racial passive Carnage gives another 8%

By default your critical damage is 50% skill tool tip damage, so when you score a critical hit you will do 50% more damage
Putting points in Precise Strikes gives you up to 25% to your critical damage (realistically you will put about 56 for a 20% bonus)
Minor Force gives you 10% bonus to your critical damage - gained by Having Rearming Trap active, being linked to someone by Stalwart Guard or activating a synergy from someone using Twilight Remedy Set)
Major Force gives you 30% bonus to your critical damage - only gained from Aggressive Warhorn skill for 9.5s, almost impossible to get full up time on this even in a well coordinated group with 4 warhorns.
Templar Piercing Spear passive gives you 10% critical while you have an Aedric Spear skill slotted
Shadow mundus gives you 9% (13.7% with 7p divines) to your critical hit but it's not efficient to use it following the HotR changes - it used to give 11%.

So theoretically your critical multiplier can be as high as 1+50%*(1+25%+10%+10%+15%)=1.8 for a Templar and 1.75 for other classes. Realistically that needs to be toned down a bit. A realistic value with 56 CP in Precise Strikes 80% minor force and 60% major force up times is 1+50%*(1+20%+10%+10%*80%+15%*60%) = 1.74 for Templar and 1.69 for other classes which is achievable in a group. That means you will do 1.69x tool tip damage when you score a critical strike. Even when playing solo and not using trap your critical multiplier is still 1.6 from Precise Strikes CP alone or 1.65 for Templar. So your damage will scale quite strongly with your critical.

@Asardes

Nightblades also have the critical hit passive by the way.

Another thing: the 50% "base" critical damage isn't multiplicative but additive with other sources.

Crit Modifier = 50% + Elfborn/Precise Strikes + Shadow * (number of Divines) + Minor Force + Major Force + Passives

So a Templar or Nightblade with 56 CP in Precise Strikes and 100% Minor Force uptime (easily achievable) will have a total of 80% critical hit damage, or a crit hit modifier of 1.8. This is called the Crit Modifier. Its all additive. So the maximum would be: 50% + 25% (Precise Strikes) + 10% (Minor Force) + 15% (Major Force) + 13.7% (Shadow) + 10% (Hemorrhage or Piercing Spear) = 123.7% (on a Nightblade or Templar). This means you have a modifier of 2.237. So your Crit/Non Crit would be equal to this value.

The Critical Multiplier however, is something different entirely. Its 1 + CHD * CHC. (Crit Hit Damage * Crit Hit Chance). It is used to determine the average damage for an ability depending on your crit chance and crit damage, by doing Tooltip * Crit Hit Multiplier. So a Nightblade whose Surprise Attack tooltip is 10000 with 80% critical hit damage will expect his Surprise Attack to do on average of 18000.

I always assumed the % multiplier applied only to the 50% critical bonus granted by a critical hit, and were additive to each other. I must have misunderstood the tool tips.

Another interesting thing: I wasn't aware that 100% minor force was actually achievable, since I assumed it's only active for the 6s the trap is active, once it had clamped onto something. That's why I was considering the 1.5s reset time as downtime for the buff too.

I'm relatively new to DD builds, only about 6 weeks or so so I'm still struggling with the maths, since the tool tips are not always clear. I'm actually glad when people clarify things for me this way.

Yeah, everything is additive nowadays. All the % modifiers are additive with each other in their own category. So Crit Hit Damage are all additive amongst themselves. All Damage Done bonuses are additive amongst themselves (Minor Slayer, Minor Berserk, CP, Major Slayer, etc.)

Basically, the Minor Force on trap lasts for 8 seconds and triggers when the Trap triggers. So you put Rearming Trap down. 1.5 seconds later the DoT starts ticking for 6 seconds and this is when Minor Force is applied lasting for 8 seconds. When the Trap is rearming, you have a 1.5 sec downtime on the DoT, the Minor Force however keeps going and is reapplied as soon as the second Trap is triggered. So basically, you get 16 seconds of Minor Force with Rearming Trap and most rotations last for 12 seconds thus making the uptime 100%

Its no problem, your best bet for understanding everything is Sorcerer Arithmagic and PvE Damage Calculation posts by @Asayre over on Tamriel Foundry.