Has Critical Chance stopped mattering?

ArchMikem · November 2017

Ever since ZOS nerfed the amount of Critical Chance buffs and sets provide, and now with Clockwork City released/releasing I've noticed in a lot of "pro" builds, Critical Chance takes a giant backseat while things like Damage and Max Resource get focused on. I've been playing believing that Critical Hits are what makes a DPS character, and I've always tried to at least get my own Crit chances regardless of class or attribute over 60%. But I've been seeing builds where people's Crit Chance is just down at 40-50% at most with most of the focus just pumping the Hell out of Spell/Weapon Damage as much as possible. Is this the new Meta now?

My MagSorc needs a high Crit chance cause of Power Surge, all of my healing comes from making Critical hits and since I play as a Khajiit my Crit passive doesn't affect Magicka and with the Thief Mundus being nerfed I've had to craft a Precise Staff just to get her back over 60% again. Without it I'm sitting at 58% WITH the Thief, and if I use a different Mundus like the Apprentice I don't even want to think about how low it'd be, like my healing would almost never proc.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO · November 2017

The differences between best and worst traits and mundases are less then 6% together and less then 3 separate, so the game is more about how you play then the traits and mundases.

Sixty5 · November 2017

Crit chance tends to be something you want "enough" of rather than something you stack.

The issue comes due mostly to how critical damage has been nerfed rather than chance.

If I have an ability that deals 1000 damage, 50% crit chance with with base crit multiplier of 150%, I'll deal on average 1250 damage
If I increase my crit chance by 20% that increases to 1300 damage.
However if I buff the base damage by 20% to 1200, then on average I will be hitting for 1400 damage.

This means that it tends to be far more efficient damagewise to buff base damages over crit values.

You also need to consider that Monster Sets and the like can no longer crit, meaning that it is a less efficient overall amp to damage than it used to be.

Narvuntien · November 2017

The Thief Mundus got savagely nerfed making it not worth running over the apprentice/warrior.
So now if you want crit you have to build for it, which means you will be losing some other stats.. most notably resources which are critically important now with morrowind. I am still mad about the shadow stone nerf though, that should of stayed the same, to give some advantages to high crit builds.

For PVP SD/WD have always been more important with all the Inpen.

Interesting that the crit nerf has buffed stamina DPS a lot since they can run daggers and mag builds lack crit.

WrathOfInnos · November 2017

Crit still has its place. Especially in trials where aggressive Warhorn boosts crit damage, as well as a healer using twilight remedy.

It's true that the thief stone is not good anymore, and apprentice is the best DPS mundus stone for most magicka builds (Mage if you are a pet sorc). In addition to this, precise is currently outclassed by infused. These are the main reasons that crit is lower than before on most builds.

I have found that pairing a damage set (juli, necro, etc.) with a crit set (mother's sorrow, mechanical acuity) works great if you don't mind giving up a monster helm set to allow 2 5-piece sets on a staff user.

Minno · November 2017

Narvuntien wrote: »

The Thief Mundus got savagely nerfed making it not worth running over the apprentice/warrior.
So now if you want crit you have to build for it, which means you will be losing some other stats.. most notably resources which are critically important now with morrowind. I am still mad about the shadow stone nerf though, that should of stayed the same, to give some advantages to high crit builds.

For PVP SD/WD have always been more important with all the Inpen.

Interesting that the crit nerf has buffed stamina DPS a lot since they can run daggers and mag builds lack crit.

With a caveat for crit dmg; templars+NBs are the only classes that can get 80% crit dmg without sacrifice to their SD/WD.
This means, unless the enemy is rocking 5440 impen (which can negate 80% crit dmg and below), templars and Nb's can increase their burst by adding making sure they are at 75-80% crit dmg.

For example:
- if your enemy is at 2500, a 70% crit dmg build will have a crit modifier of 1.33.
- if your enemy is at 3500, 70% crit dmg will have a modifier of 1.19. (most builds can achieve close to 3500.)
- if your enemy is at 3500, but you have 80% crit dmg, your modifier is 1.29 (just a few under the 2500 modifer for 70% builds)
- if the enemy has 4487, against 80% crit dmg, their modifier is 1.15. (defender has all impen, 67 in resistant, and trans proc)

Only way to get 5440 impen, is to have all impen, full CP resistant, and use impreg (and possibly use trans). Only way that is happening is if they give up on sustain/dmg hard. Even 4487, requires mag builds to roll trans. Most builds are at 2500; but 80% builds will be doing very hard burst on you (1.433 modifier!)

Therefore, get 3500 crit resists then stack other defenses/offenses.

Bladerunner1 · November 2017

The lower your crit percentage, the more valuable it becomes.

Builds that once ran thief and precise, but now slot infused/Nirn and Apprentice/Warrior have more to gain from slotting crit from set pieces and daggers.

Average damage is summed up this way:
Crit% x Crit modifier x base damage + (1-crit%) x base damage

The crit modifier could be 1.92 from champion points, Minor Force and Hemorrhage.

If someone had 90% crit rating and they added 10% crit rating to make it 100%:

At 90% crit they were dealing
.90 x 1.92 x base damage + .10 x 1 x base damage = 1.828 x base damage

At 100% crit they are dealing 1.92 x base damage since they always crit.

The percentage gain to DPS is (1.92-1.828)/1.828 = 5%

So adding a 10% crit buff to a huge amount like 90% gives half as much damage as the percentage buff itself.

If someone had a 50% crit chance and then added 10% to their crit rating,

The 10% crit buff adds ((.4 + .6 x 1.92) - (.5 + .5 x 1.92)) / (.5 + .5 x 1.92) = 6.3% more damage.

Khajiit is doing just fine now, sets that buff crit are doing just fine now. Other sources of crit besides mundus and precise are relatively stronger now that the crit% has dropped..

idk · November 2017

I didn't see a nerf to critical chance in gear on live servers. Two PTS ago Sos buffed everything then dialed it back some but in the end there was a slight buff.

Critical chance was stacked a little more before due to monster sets, proc sets in general, better not able to critically strike. The extra critical buffer thei already sold damage contribution that has also since been nerfed.

So in the end, how much critical we can stack hasn't been nerfed but it's value due to changes elsewhere have been. It comes down to the basic mathematical design that at some point stacking more critical is less beneficial since it would eventually reduce your base damage which would be critical bonus calculates from.

There is more such as the changes to mundus and specifically when they reduced the value from shadow on the same PTS. A higher shadow value would also make critical more attractive.

Nestor · November 2017

ArchMikem wrote: »

My MagSorc needs a high Crit chance cause of Power Surge, all of my healing comes from making Critical hits and

My main Sorcerer has a whole 49.6% Critical Chance (5 Piece Julianos and the other stuff does not help the crits). I find if I keep Surge up I don't have to worry about getting killed, other than One Shots from Bosses if I am not paying attention to the Red. This is with Power Surge. Healers even comment that they don't have to pay all that much attention to me. Which is good because I am never near the healer, the Stacking Memo got lost in the mail somewhere.

So, Crits are important, but there is a level where it's enough for Surge to do it's job.

Oreyn_Bearclaw · November 2017

Nestor wrote: »

ArchMikem wrote: »

My MagSorc needs a high Crit chance cause of Power Surge, all of my healing comes from making Critical hits and

My main Sorcerer has a whole 49.6% Critical Chance (5 Piece Julianos and the other stuff does not help the crits). I find if I keep Surge up I don't have to worry about getting killed, other than One Shots from Bosses if I am not paying attention to the Red. This is with Power Surge. Healers even comment that they don't have to pay all that much attention to me. Which is good because I am never near the healer, the Stacking Memo got lost in the mail somewhere.

So, Crits are important, but there is a level where it's enough for Surge to do it's job.

Also remember that Surge now has a global cooldown on the heal. You only get it once per second. A typical sorc in PVE is going to have 3-4 DOTS going at all times, a light weave, FP that hits 3 times, etc. If any of those crit, you get the heal. Even at 33% crit, if you have only 3 dots going, you should typically (about 70% of the time) proc surge on cooldown. At 50% crit, 3 DOTS will proc surge 87.5% of the time on cooldown. If all you do it weave FP once per second and your crit is at 50% (with no other DOTS), you will proc surge 93.75% of the time on cooldown.

In other words, if surge is your reason for stacking crit, you should rethink things. It doesnt take that much of a crit chance to reliably proc surge on its 1 second cooldown.

Danksta · November 2017

Power Surge will only heal you once per second so you don't need a high crit chance to have it essentially proc on cooldown.

Waffennacht · November 2017

If PvE Surge + Hardened even at 40% crit chance should be MORE than enough survival solo on vet Dungeons