How much are criticals worth, actually ?

[b0rsuk]

A typical Cornac starts with 10 Cunning, each point of Cunning increases Critical Hit chance by 0.3. So a basic Cornac has a chance of 3%. Below I calculate the damage multiplier thanks to criticals:

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0.97 * 1.0 + 0.03 * 1.50 = 1.015

Your damage is increased 1.015 times due to those criticals. It follows that +1% critical is worth (1.015 - 1.000) / 3 = 0.005 increase ( +0.5% damage: +10% critical would be +5% damage) .

What if you max Cunning ? You start with 10, you can increse by +50 naturally, this is (50 * 0.3) = extra +15% criticals.

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(0.97 - 0.15) * 1.0 + (0.03 + 0.15) * 1.50 = 1.09

Your damage is increased by 9%, and compared to starting Cornac the difference is.090 - 1.015 = 0.075 (a bit over 7% more damage than 10 Cuning character).

So maybe Precise Strikes are worth more ? Many characters max Precise Strikes! Critical is increased by

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(4 + talent_level * Dex / 25)%.

Which means with 5/5 and 60 Dex you're getting extra

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4 + 5 * 60 / 25 =  16%

That's right, you're getting +16% criticals. +1% more than pure Cunning, and you're paying 5 class points and 20 stamina for it. If you somehow get your Dex to 100, which is not that hard but relies on finding the right orange items, your increase is now +24% critical. But wait, I'm not finished ! I haven't forgotten about the -10% attack speed. The total damage is

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(0.97 - 0.16) * 1.0 + (0.03 + 0.16) * 1.50 * 0.9 = 1.0665

and compared to starting Cornac character it's +0.015 (+1.5%, with 100 Dexterity it's +5.5%), and monsters double act every 10 turns if I understand mechanics correctly. Moral of the story ? Precise Strikes do very little to increase damage by themselves. True to their name, they are mostly about extra Accuracy. To truly benefit from them, you need some synergy with criticals, like stronger criticals, cripple on critical, Arcane Destruction, or Bloodthirst. Naturally, Precise Strikes are a good choice for characters who are going to boost Dexterity anyway. But you're not doing anything terribly wrong by maxing Cunning on a Bulwark or Berserker. It boosts your Cunning/Dirty Fighting and Cunning/Survival. Evasion for Berserker and extra stuns and 8 turn/45%+ Cripple for Bulwark are very useful.

If you have simple 1.5x damage criticals, don't bother maximizing critical chance, especially if you have guaranteed criticals with attacks like Death Blow or Assault. Take critical multiplier instead.

[Zonk]

There's also the (recently added?)crit shrug off chance, which if I understand it right completely neutralized what would otherwise be a critical(rather than simply reducing crit %).
So...in practice +critical would be even less useful?

[HousePet]

Its all about the synergies.
Also as a critical hit does more damage than a normal hit in one shot, it is more effective vs flat damage reductions.

[0player]

You can find equip for +crit chance +crit multiplier pretty easily, so you might be taking some terms out of equation.

[b0rsuk]

Sure you can do that, but why would you ?


+10% critical chance is equivalent to +5% damage. Higher +chance items are very rare, actually I can't remember seeing one. Keep in mind that simple +5% damage will benefit your criticals as well.

Critical multiplier is another story: +40% critical mult. is relatively common, on the yellow gauntlets, or merchant artifacts, etc. There are talents which let reliably trigger criticals, such as Death Blow and Assault. Weapons at tier3 are about equal to shield in terms of raw damage. So assault's damage is about 1 + (2 * 1.5) = 4x damage, more less. With a +40% item, it becomes 4.8x. The shield can crit, too.
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Here's a rule of thumb:
- if you have talents or items that trigger on criticals, consider +critical chance items.
- if you have talents or items which always crit, consider +critical multiplier items.
- if you have a lot of both, that's okay

Otherwise, they're probably not worth bothering, unless you have nothing better.

[SageAcrin]

Death Blow and Assault are the only auto-critical skills, off the top of my head; Normal physicals make up the majority of a two-hander's damage(or spamming the rather low damage Sunders, if you prefer). Since every critical is double damage with a simple high end Warmaking or Dakthun's, well, it adds up later in the game. Death Blow doesn't represent very much of your damage from any point of view, due to the cooldown being a decent length. Still, it's a good point, even here.

Sword/Shield is definitely a spot where you do have a very good point here. Assault's 6CD and blocking consumes turns to give you counterstrikes, so a surprising amount of the time(A full third, potentially) of the time, your damage is Assault. It's damage efficient and good defensively to play like this, and critmod matters far, far more for sword/shield than crit rate(crit rate isn't useless, as Shield Pummel is a great talent, but nonetheless.).

Generally speaking, the best thing to do here is to pay attention to balance. Just boosting damage% to the exclusion of criticals is a poor plan as well-sacrificing a few pieces of equipment for higher criticals can represent more of an overall bonus, due to relative returns.

This is hard to just use words to describe, so a simple example;

If you have +50% physical damage, no critical rate and no critmod at all, and you have the choice between 5% more physical damage, or +30% critmod and 10% physical crit rate, the latter represents an 8% gain in damage(10% chance of 1.8x damage), while the former represents 3.3%~(assuming the attack is fully physical). Toss an auto-crit skill in the mix and it matters even more than the raw damage% bonus.

+5% to a damage type isn't always +5% to damage-because you've been stacking more damage bonuses before it. Just to the base damage. Extreme example, but always worth thinking of.

So yeah, I really agree with the basic premise here, but it's worth noting that just ignoring crits entirely isn't the answer, because they represent different multipliers.

Think about your damage! Don't mindlessly stack one kind or the other of damage bonus; Try to keep them balanced out. It works well.

[EatThisShoe]

I don't agree with your conclusions here. Crit chance and crit multiplier are synergistic. If you have one without the other then they are weak. But if you have crit multiplier then crit chance becomes better, and vice versa. If you just look at crit chance in a vacuum then you are looking at crits in the worst scenario possible. You don't need procs or auto-crits to make crits good, you just need to have more than base multiplier.

If you take crits without multiplier, or crit multiplier without crits either one will be weaker. If you use that baseline weakness to justify not taking crits, then you wont get enough of either to make them powerful. It's a self fulfilling prophecy.

Also in general you benefit from diversifying your damage bonuses. For example imagine that you have 100% crit chance, and through gear you are trading proportionately between +100% damage, and +150% crit multiplier. Either bonus alone will double your damage. The optimal mix however is in between, at +50% damage and +75% crit multiplier you would gain 1.5 * 1.5 = 2.25 times as much damage. Stacking more bonus damage on an already high value will yield less return marginally as well. If you already have +100% elemental damage, then adding another +10%, will also only raise your damage by 5%.

So ultimately the relative strength of each stat (crit chance, crit multiplier, and damage bonus) depends on the values of the others. As you increase your damage bonus, the relative value of increasing crit stats increases because they multiply together, while the marginal value of more damage bonus decreases. As you raise crit multiplier the relative value of crit chance increases, and vice versa. And as your average crit damage increases, the value of bonus elemental damage% increases, while the marginal benefit of more crit stats decreases.