Guild Wars 2

So you have like 50% crit and have 10% extra crit damage.

Way to make 40% of that crit worthless in the long run without 200% damage crits.

High Crit -> AT LEAST 50% extra crit damage or precision gets scaled down in the long run direct damage calculation.

Long Run Damage = P * (1 + C * (0.5 + D)

P = Power
C = crit rate (%)
D = crit damage (%)

I don’t mind that ANet included this tradeoff, which does not exist in other MMOs I’ve played (they just hold your hand and give you 200% damage crits nowadays or at the very least had a mandatory talent you had to take back in the day if you wanted to even think about doing top tier DPS) because I know how to do math, but I sadface whenever I read about all these builds that stack might, power and lots of precision and blah blah blah while totally neglecting their crit damage modifier, which (obviously) modifies crit, which modifies power, which is further modified by might.

It’s like being 2’ tall as a teenager and thinking you can grow enough in the time you have to be a 6’6" professional basketball player. It just ain’t going to happen.

If you are going to DPS, get your crits to 200% damage or go home.

Well, but Crits aren’t used solely for damage. Some classes has traits that gives vigor/healing on crit. I personally play a condition ranger, and I carry the “bleed on crit” trait. For me, I want as high crit rate as possible but don’t really care about crit damage.

This is only relevant for direct damage.

You know, real damage and stuff.

4 of the 8 classes intergrate Crit Damage in with Percision in their Trait tree. This increases your base Crit Damage from 50% to 80%.

As a crit based Thief I run with ~80% Crit Chance (100% when I pop Fury) and ~150% Crit Damage. This seems to be a pretty good starting point, but I do plan on trying to raise it to ~200% as I get better gear.

My guardian grants might to nearby allies on crit.
Giving boons to allies heals me.
I like crit. But I’m not really built for dealing damage.

The logic in the top post would lead to the conclusion that you really should stack as much power as possible because it’s a multiplier on both crit and regular hits.

Nonlinear.9823:

So you have like 50% crit and have 10% extra crit damage.

Way to make 40% of that crit worthless in the long run without 200% damage crits.

High Crit -> AT LEAST 50% extra crit damage or precision gets scaled down in the long run direct damage calculation.

Long Run Damage = P * (1 + C * (0.5 + D)

P = Power
C = crit rate (%)
D = crit damage (%)

I don’t mind that ANet included this tradeoff, which does not exist in other MMOs I’ve played (they just hold your hand and give you 200% damage crits nowadays or at the very least had a mandatory talent you had to take back in the day if you wanted to even think about doing top tier DPS) because I know how to do math, but I sadface whenever I read about all these builds that stack might, power and lots of precision and blah blah blah while totally neglecting their crit damage modifier, which (obviously) modifies crit, which modifies power, which is further modified by might.

It’s like being 2’ tall as a teenager and thinking you can grow enough in the time you have to be a 6’6" professional basketball player. It just ain’t going to happen.

If you are going to DPS, get your crits to 200% damage or go home.

I noticed this as well, the other thing that bothers me greatly is they want people to play a balanced game but then nerf the hell out of some of the classes while leaving others untouched. The classes they nerf are those that need extra damage to survive who need to kill fast because they have no defense even with extra toughness. (ahem all of the adventurer classes and mesmers.)

So they make it impossible to play anything other then glass cannons because if you do than fighting a single mob becomes a long drawn out 8 hour shift per mob because you can’t do enough damage even with crits to kill anything effectively. Whatever happened to having high enough crits and doing enough prep before attacking to take something out in three shots?

Oh wait I forgot only two classes can do that now and they both wear heavy armor. Right.

(talking from a pve standpoint because I hate pvp of all kinds.)

Kindread.9481:

4 of the 8 classes intergrate Crit Damage in with Percision in their Trait tree. This increases your base Crit Damage from 50% to 80%.

It increases it from 150% to 180%, the 30% means D = 0.3, so 0.5 + D means your crit modifier is only 80% and in the long run only 80% of your precision is being applied to your long term damage.

As a crit based Thief I run with ~80% Crit Chance (100% when I pop Fury) and ~150% Crit Damage. This seems to be a pretty good starting point, but I do plan on trying to raise it to ~200% as I get better gear.

A good starting point is 200% damage crits (at least 50% from traits/gear) as it is in every other game that calculates crit damage this way. Less than that and your crit rate will contribute less than 1% damage per each point of crit to your overall damage. At exactly 200% crit damage each % of crit will icnrease your long run damage an equivalent amount. Anything more than 200% and you get slightly higher than 1% damage for every 1% of crit.

In those games they just give you the extra 50% and cap it at that but in GW2 it is up to the players to do so by trading off other stats and it is uncapped.

With no extra crit damage you only get half your crit % towards your long term damage. At 30% from spec you get 0.8% increase in direct damage for every 1% of crit.

Nonlinear.9823:

This is only relevant for direct damage.

You know, real damage and stuff.

Oh I understand. I guess my point was I can understand the decision to make crit rate impact pure damage less than crit damage, because crit rate can contribute to a number of other things not related to damage. (Buffs, conditions, etc…)

mulch.2586:

My guardian grants might to nearby allies on crit.
Giving boons to allies heals me.
I like crit. But I’m not really built for dealing damage.

The logic in the top post would lead to the conclusion that you really should stack as much power as possible because it’s a multiplier on both crit and regular hits.

It’s true, power scales the best and even better the more crit and crit damage you have because of the way they influence each other when calculating damage. You can plug in the numbers, change them up, compare the two and the % difference will translate to how long it takes to kill something. It can be tested on golems. It’s a classic synergy that exists in every MMO (and most RPGs in general) that I’ve played.

In those other games, though, you are either handed 200% crits or have some other way to get to that threshold without having to juggle your main stats as well.

It’s actually a brutal tradeoff and seems to be overlooked by many.

The difference is not trivial. If you have 50% crit and +50% extra crit damage (200% crits), you will do 50% more direct damage over the long run due to crit, a 5% crit increase is the same thing as a 5% damage increase except you’ll get more procs from on crit stuff.

If you have +0% extra crit damage (150% crits) you will only do half that, 25% more damage over the long run due to crit. Anything in between 0% and 50% scales long run damage from crit/precision DOWN over the long run. Yes, having less than 50% crit damage as a direct damage dealer will decrease the contribution you get to long run damage due to crit/precision. Not until this number (D) is at or above 50% will precision increase overall damage more than 1:1, 50% = 1:1, < 50% = 1:<1.

Condition damage also gets 0 benefit from crit, and chances are high that in order to get high crit and high condition damage you have low crit damage, maybe 10%-30% from spec so all that crit that is getting you procs but is also also scaling down your long run direct damage by 20% to 40% over the long run. Condition damage has a lot of ground to make up if it wants to close that gap. Meanwhile crit damage influences crit, crit influences power and power influences direct damage while condition damage only influences itself.

Ursan.7846:

Nonlinear.9823:

This is only relevant for direct damage.

You know, real damage and stuff.

Oh I understand. I guess my point was I can understand the decision to make crit rate impact pure damage less than crit damage, because crit rate can contribute to a number of other things not related to damage. (Buffs, conditions, etc…)

True. But with high crit damage you can still get the procs and do more damage at the same time. It’s not really about procs since you can still proc, it’s more about what you give up when you trade long term direct damage (usually crit damage) for healing/defense/survivability or condition damage.

I look at a lot of builds and plug the values in and sometimes I’ll find direct damage builds where people totally ignore their crit modifier and end up trading up to 30% or 40% of their long run damage for things like gimmicky 1-2k heals (that scale worse than anything else in the game and/or have long CDs, lock your skill bar, etc.) or vitality/toughness or 80% crit rates because they ignore crit damage and use those other stats in their build. They still have high crit and get lots of stacks and proc lots of stuff but overall it still scales rather poorly due to that stupid crit modifier buried in the factor that they ignored/don’t understand.

Ursan.7846:

Well, but Crits aren’t used solely for damage. Some classes has traits that gives vigor/healing on crit. I personally play a condition ranger, and I carry the “bleed on crit” trait. For me, I want as high crit rate as possible but don’t really care about crit damage.

Yea, I used to run this two, but it’s only a 1 second bleed. You’re better off with something else in the 1st tier of Skirmishing, like the 30% crit damage or movement speed for pets.

Sigils, abilities on crit.

Nuff said. Rune of fire FTW.

This is largely related to PvE and mostly in response to support builds (e.g. warrior shout builds, ele heal builds) that also claim they do good DPS.

Many of them like to give up over 15% of their long term damage and lock their bar to shouts for <2k heals. I saw an ele build the other day that gave up 40% damage for three ~2k heals all on 10+ seconds CDs.

Nonlinear.9823:

Ursan.7846:

Nonlinear.9823:

This is only relevant for direct damage.

You know, real damage and stuff.

Oh I understand. I guess my point was I can understand the decision to make crit rate impact pure damage less than crit damage, because crit rate can contribute to a number of other things not related to damage. (Buffs, conditions, etc…)

True. But with high crit damage you can still get the procs and do more damage at the same time. It’s not really about procs since you can still proc, it’s more about what you give up when you trade long term damage (usually crit damage) for healing/defense/survivability or condition damage.

I look at a lot of builds and plug the values in and sometimes I’ll find direct damage builds where people totally ignore their crit modifier and end up trading up to 30% or 40% of their long run damage for things like gimmicky 1-2k heals or vitality/toughness because they ignore crit damage and use those other stats in their build. They still have high crit and get lots of stacks and proc lots of stuff but overall it still scales rather poorly due to that stupid crit modifier buried in the factor that they ignored/don’t understand.

It’s a very good point. But like I said, crit rate isn’t only related to damage though. Some players actually don’t really care about damage, but are more worried about critting frequently to activate certain effects. So if an equivalent amount of crit dmg and precision contributed the same amount to pure damage, there would be no reason (or very few reason) to get crit damage.

….So I guess I’m agreeing with you. Yea, Crit Dmg (after power) is the stat to go instead of precision for damage, but I can understand why Anet made it so precision is weaker (in terms of damage)

Dahkeus.8243:

Yea, I used to run this two, but it’s only a 1 second bleed. You’re better off with something else in the 1st tier of Skirmishing, like the 30% crit damage or movement speed for pets.

Thanks for the suggestion. I didn’t know it was only a 1s bleed. But I mainly use Devourers as pets, and mainly use them as a source for quickness. So the speed/might/crit damage really isn’t too useful for me. So I end up choosing the least suckiest trait…(First World Ranger problems)

Zoul.1087:

Sigils, abilities on crit.

Nuff said. Rune of fire FTW.

Yeah, and? With more crit damage you will have equal if not more crit, so you still have high crit and still use sigils and do those things.

Nonlinear.9823:

Zoul.1087:

Sigils, abilities on crit.

Nuff said. Rune of fire FTW.

Yeah, and? With more crit damage you will have equal if not more crit, so you still have high crit and still use sigils and do those things.

Yeah I like not having to revive a player each time they are hit too. If you are 100% crit and power you aren’t very effective when you are dead 90% of the time.

I am saying glass cannons don’t work so well. If that is what you are suggesting please don’t.

Where did you get the formulas?

dimentox.6019:

Where did you get the formulas?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical_hit

Ursan.7846:

Nonlinear.9823:

Ursan.7846:

Nonlinear.9823:

This is only relevant for direct damage.

You know, real damage and stuff.

Oh I understand. I guess my point was I can understand the decision to make crit rate impact pure damage less than crit damage, because crit rate can contribute to a number of other things not related to damage. (Buffs, conditions, etc…)

True. But with high crit damage you can still get the procs and do more damage at the same time. It’s not really about procs since you can still proc, it’s more about what you give up when you trade long term damage (usually crit damage) for healing/defense/survivability or condition damage.

I look at a lot of builds and plug the values in and sometimes I’ll find direct damage builds where people totally ignore their crit modifier and end up trading up to 30% or 40% of their long run damage for things like gimmicky 1-2k heals or vitality/toughness because they ignore crit damage and use those other stats in their build. They still have high crit and get lots of stacks and proc lots of stuff but overall it still scales rather poorly due to that stupid crit modifier buried in the factor that they ignored/don’t understand.

It’s a very good point. But like I said, crit rate isn’t only related to damage though. Some players actually don’t really care about damage, but are more worried about critting frequently to activate certain effects. So if an equivalent amount of crit dmg and precision contributed the same amount to pure damage, there would be no reason (or very few reason) to get crit damage.

….So I guess I’m agreeing with you. Yea, Crit Dmg (after power) is the stat to go instead of precision for damage, but I can understand why Anet made it so precision is weaker (in terms of damage)

Dahkeus.8243:

Yea, I used to run this two, but it’s only a 1 second bleed. You’re better off with something else in the 1st tier of Skirmishing, like the 30% crit damage or movement speed for pets.

Thanks for the suggestion. I didn’t know it was only a 1s bleed. But I mainly use Devourers as pets, and mainly use them as a source for quickness. So the speed/might/crit damage really isn’t too useful for me. So I end up choosing the least suckiest trait…(First World Ranger problems)

The thing is, regardless of whehter or not crit is related to damage in someone’s build, there is usually a gimmicky substitute for crit damage in their spec too, usually some sort of paltry healing. They ignore the crit modifier they sacrificed to get it and then point to something else in the build like healing or might stacks, sigils and procs, etc. which actually makes my argument stronger because, again, power/might scales better the more crit and crit damage you have and you aren’t giving up any crit, just ditching the extra gimmick. When you take the extra gimmick at the expense of prowess you are doing it at the expense of getting more benefit from anything based on power and crit, not just precision and crit damage itself. It’s a trap.

You can wear soldier, knight, carrion, clerics, armor (or trinkets) and get your crit damage to 50% with traits/trinkets/weapons (or armor) to start making precision pay off at least 1:1 in the long run while still being able to support, it’s when people try and shoehorn another gimmick like more +healing (or they stack a LOT of healing) they typically sacrifice their crit damage because they still want to proc/sigil/etc. and when you do the math the decrease in damage for the extra gimmick is like 10% or more, deck yourself out in 100% cleric/karma healing gear and it’s an easy 40% damage reduction compared to focusing on damage stats.

Personally when I spec for condition damage I try to minimize crit as much as possible because my crit damage is typically 10% or 0% so im only getting 50%-60% benefit from any precision towards my long term direct damage, I feel like I am being punished by stacking crit with less than 100% modifier.

I guess I do not understand your issue here …

Critical Hits do an additional .5 damage per point of damage you would normally do. So if you normally hit for 1000 damage, you would crit for 1500 damage without ANY +Crit Damage gear ot traits.

When you add in the passive bonus you get from the trait tree it increases that amount by an additional 30%, bringing your 1000 damage hit up to 1800 damage on crit.

I do agree that 200% +Crit Damage is a good amount to aim for (higher if you can manage it with your build) I am not sure why you feel anything less is a substantial damage loss. Prehaps I am not fulling understanding what you are calling “Long Run Damage”.

Zoul.1087:

Nonlinear.9823:

Zoul.1087:

Sigils, abilities on crit.

Nuff said. Rune of fire FTW.

Yeah, and? With more crit damage you will have equal if not more crit, so you still have high crit and still use sigils and do those things.

Yeah I like not having to revive a player each time they are hit too. If you are 100% crit and power you aren’t very effective when you are dead 90% of the time.

I am saying glass cannons don’t work so well. If that is what you are suggesting please don’t.

I don’t know? Tell them to L2P? I’ve done most dungeons as 30/30/0/0/10 GC elemenatlist (low hp/light armor) with ~51% crit and over 60% crit damage and find that choosing the rights skills before the encounter and filling keeping your endurance filled goes a lot farther than vitality and toughness. Easy to avoid a lot of stuff at 1200 range. Don’t need vitality if you remove the burn or your glyph’s CD/regen can beat it, don’t need toughness if you spec/food for endurance and save your dodges for when they are most needed and strafe otherwise.

@Nonlinear.

I think our core disagreement lies in our opinions on the usefulness of these “gimmicks” as you call them. I think some of these gimmicks (vigor on crit and aoe on crit for me personally) is very very useful, and worth sacrificing damage (and even pure survivability in terms of hp/toughness).

But I do agree with you in essence. In a vacuum, when looked at from a pure DPS perspective, Power → crit damage → precision is the order of importance stat-wise.

Crit chance depends on precision. Naked precision is 916 and gets you 4% crit chance. It’s approximately 20 precision for +1% crit chance.

On direct damage you either crit or don’t crit.
On a normal hit your damage is proportional to your power.
On a crit, your damage is proportional to your power times (1.5 + crit %)

So you can build up a damage formula with these as factors and get the gradient to see how changes in your stats affect your damage. But no one likes calculus, so…

In your formula you have power x (crit chance) x (1.5 + crit damage) (and a bunch of other things not relevant to this thread) as the part for critical damage

You also have power x (1-crit chance) for normal direct damage

When you have the product of three variables, this is similar to computing the volume of an object.

If you remember your basic maths, when you calculate the rate of change of volumes and things like that — if you’re going to max the volume (in this case, crit damage) and you have constraints (such as a limited amount of plywood, or in our case a fixed amount of stats that can be added from gear and traits), the inevitable solution is you want equal allotment to the variables. (hold the thought that power is in both parts of the damage equation for now)

In the case of GW2, going all valkyrie (which has power vit and crit) would be a bad idea, even tho you have huge crit bonus damage, you may never get to see it. Similarly, going all precision wouldn’t be good if it taxed your power and crit damage.

Finding the exact values will differ for each build, and then is further complicated by consumables, boons, and non-damage but relevant aspects (such as my guardian crits give boons which gives self-heal).

Saying someone needs 200% crit damage is not mathematically responsible unless you also take into context how many stats points were put into power and precision vs how many in toughness and vitality (not to mention condition builds, but that’s irrelevant here cuz conditions never crit anyway).

I think better counsel is that if you’re deciding between Knights and Valkyrie, you should prob’ly take a mixture of them. If you end up with 50% crit and 200% bonus damage, great! But if you’re more defensive or relying on Karma armor or dungeon gear, maybe you end up with 40% crit rate and 190% crit damage, and feel comfortable that way, too.

Nonlinear.9823:

Zoul.1087:

Nonlinear.9823:

Zoul.1087:

Sigils, abilities on crit.

Nuff said. Rune of fire FTW.

Yeah, and? With more crit damage you will have equal if not more crit, so you still have high crit and still use sigils and do those things.

Yeah I like not having to revive a player each time they are hit too. If you are 100% crit and power you aren’t very effective when you are dead 90% of the time.

I am saying glass cannons don’t work so well. If that is what you are suggesting please don’t.

I don’t know? Tell them to L2P? I’ve done most dungeons as 30/30/0/0/10 GC elemenatlist (low hp/light armor) with ~51% crit and over 60% crit damage and find that choosing the rights skills before the encounter and filling keeping your endurance filled goes a lot farther than vitality and toughness. Easy to avoid a lot of stuff at 1200 range. Don’t need vitality if you remove the burn or your glyph’s CD/regen can beat it, don’t need toughness if you spec/food for endurance and save your dodges for when they are most needed and strafe otherwise.

Glass cannon ele is different from glass cannon guardian, warrior, and thief. Your best weapons are usually melee.

Melee should NEVER build glass cannons.

Zoul.1087:

dimentox.6019:

Where did you get the formulas?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical_hit

Several people in this thread should take a look at the table a the bottom of that page.

Kindread.9481:

I guess I do not understand your issue here …

Critical Hits do an additional .5 damage per point of damage you would normally do. So if you normally hit for 1000 damage, you would crit for 1500 damage without ANY +Crit Damage gear ot traits.

When you add in the passive bonus you get from the trait tree it increases that amount by an additional 30%, bringing your 1000 damage hit up to 1800 damage on crit.

I do agree that 200% +Crit Damage is a good amount to aim for (higher if you can manage it with your build) I am not sure why you feel anything less is a substantial damage loss. Prehaps I am not fulling understanding what you are calling “Long Run Damage”.

It’s about damage scaling and maxing your direct damage, glass cannon or not. You don’t need to be GC to have 50% crit rate and do 15%-20% more damage by not stacking as many poorer scaling stats.

At less than +50% crit damage your precision effectively gets scaled DOWN as it contributes to your DPS over the long term.

As for long term damage it’s simple. When you hit something with an attack, you either crit or you don’t. If you crit you will do:

P * (1.50 + D)

Damage, where P = power and D = crit damage % (as a , 1.5 -> 150)

You will do this X% of the time (i.e. over the long run), where X% is your crit rate, C.

P * (1.50 + D) * C

The other 100% – C or 1.0 – C of the time (i.e. over the long run) you will do a normal hit for basically whatever your power is.

If you assume that you’ll be doing the same dungeons, etc. in either spec then everything else basically factors out (same weapons, same enemies, etc.) and that’s what the difference in stats boils down to.

Simply add them together:

Long Term Damage = Regular hits + Critical Hits
Long Term Damage = P * (1.0 – C) + P * (1.5 + D) * C

Factor…

Long Term Damage = P * (1.0 + C * (0.5 + D))

It should make sense if you think about it. 0% crit and your long term damage is basically a measure of power.

There are some interesting things to note, like how well power scales, the relationship between power, crit and crit damage. The way D makes (0.5 + D) less than or greater than 1.0 if D is 50% (0.5). This is what irks me. That less than 50% and C is scaled DOWN over the long run.

It is not a trivial trade off. I don’t mind that it is a stat but it is a brutal trade off if you are stacking precision and sacrificing power.

Naqaj.6219:

Zoul.1087:

dimentox.6019:

Where did you get the formulas?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical_hit

Several people in this thread should take a look at the table a the bottom of that page.

haha that is the first time I’ve ever seen that page I just sat down and derived on my own a few weeks ago because I wanted to compare different gear setups to see what the tradeoff in damage was. thanks for posting that.

Nonlinear.9823:

It is not a trivial trade off. I don’t mind that it is a stat but it is a brutal trade off if you are stacking precision and sacrificing power.

Due to how precision and critdmg are budgeted on items, precision is actually more efficient than critdmg.
You’re getting really cought up on the idea that your damage is scaling down while under 100% critdamage, but that’s only how it appears because of how you’ve resolved your damage formula.
10% crit chance is budgeted equally to 16% crit damage. If you look at the table linked above, you’ll notice that damage scales up faster on the crit chance axis.

Nonlinear.9823:

Kindread.9481:

I guess I do not understand your issue here …

Critical Hits do an additional .5 damage per point of damage you would normally do. So if you normally hit for 1000 damage, you would crit for 1500 damage without ANY +Crit Damage gear ot traits.

When you add in the passive bonus you get from the trait tree it increases that amount by an additional 30%, bringing your 1000 damage hit up to 1800 damage on crit.

I do agree that 200% +Crit Damage is a good amount to aim for (higher if you can manage it with your build) I am not sure why you feel anything less is a substantial damage loss. Prehaps I am not fulling understanding what you are calling “Long Run Damage”.

It’s about damage scaling and maxing your direct damage, glass cannon or not. You don’t need to be GC to have 50% crit rate and do 15%-20% more damage by not stacking as many poorer scaling stats.

At less than +50% crit damage your precision effectively gets scaled DOWN as it contributes to your DPS over the long term.

As for long term damage it’s simple. When you hit something with an attack, you either crit or you don’t. If you crit you will do:

P * (1.50 + D)

Damage, where P = power and D = crit damage % (as a , 1.5 -> 150)

You will do this X% of the time (i.e. over the long run), where X% is your crit rate, C.

P * (1.50 + D) * C

The other 100% – C or 1.0 – C of the time (i.e. over the long run) you will do a normal hit for basically whatever your power is.

If you assume that you’ll be doing the same dungeons, etc. in either spec then everything else basically factors out (same weapons, same enemies, etc.) and that’s what the difference in stats boils down to.

Simply add them together:

Long Term Damage = Regular hits + Critical Hits
Long Term Damage = P * (1.0 – C) + P * (1.5 + D) * C

Factor…

Long Term Damage = P * (1.0 + C * (0.5 + D))

It should make sense if you think about it. 0% crit and your long term damage is basically a measure of power.

There are some interesting things to note, like how well power scales, the relationship between power, crit and crit damage. The way D makes (0.5 + D) less than or greater than 1.0 if D is 50% (0.5). This is what irks me. That less than 50% and C is scaled DOWN over the long run.

It is not a trivial trade off. I don’t mind that it is a stat but it is a brutal trade off if you are stacking precision and sacrificing power.

To the extent I think I understand your conclusions, I think you’re mistaking the significance.

Formula has (bunches of things omitted for simplicity)
Damage = P + PC(1/2 +D). Noting that C is always less than 1 and D + 1/2 is likely somewhere from .8 to 1.2, the dominating factor is Power.

But of course most of our gear choices have power in them, so power is going to work itself out by ANet’s itemization.

I’m going to take this time and say stellar post.
It just indeed crying like the most of the GD forums.
But there’s math behind this.

Also your only applying this equation in a normal linear environment. For example I play a mesmer my clones take my crit.

When they crit they cause bleeding. I want consistent crits so i can get 25 stacks of bleeding. i deal about 103 damage a stack.

103×25 is nearly 2.5k dps.
Not including other things that i get on crit like vigor which has no internal cd so i can constantly dodge.

I understand the trade of huge but there is a reason for it.

Also just to add most boss fights and pvp fight arent stationary burst will come into play more so then not.

Which crit helps you with.

There are very few fights in game where you stand there wailing away for 3-5mins on end.

According to the Wiki page on Critial Hits (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical_hit) The table that lays out what % of damage you increase by for every 5% of Crit Chance, and Crit Damage.

As you say, you do not have to be a GC to reach 50% crit chance, but according to the chart listed on the Wiki page, 50% crit chance, with ZERO Crit Damage still increases your Long Run Damage by 25%.

If you increase your Crit Damage to 30 (availiable through traits) and still have 50% crit chance you then increase your Long Run Damage by 40%.

At 100% Crit Damage (through traits and gear, not including base) and run at 50% crit chance you increase your Long Run Damage by 75%.

@5% Crit Chance every 5% Crit Damage increases your Long Run Damage by .25%
@10% Crit Chance every 5% Crit Damage increases your Long Run Damage by .5%
@15% Crit Chance every 5% Crit Damage increases your Long Run Damage by .8%
@20% Crit Chance every 5% Crit Damage increases your Long Run Damage by 1.0%
@25% Crit Chance every 5% Crit Damage increases your Long Run Damage by 1.3%
@30% Crit Chance every 5% Crit Damage increases your Long Run Damage by 1.5%
@35% Crit Chance every 5% Crit Damage increases your Long Run Damage by 1.8%
@40% Crit Chance every 5% Crit Damage increases your Long Run Damage by 2.0%
@45% Crit Chance every 5% Crit Damage increases your Long Run Damage by 2.3%
@50% Crit Chance every 5% Crit Damage increases your Long Run Damage by 2.5%

So at 50% Crit Chance:
0% Crit Damage = 25% Long Run Damage
25% Crit Damage = 37.5% Long Run Damage
50% Crit Damage = 50% Long Run Damage
75% Crit Damage = 62.5% Long Run Damage
100% Crit Damage = 75% Long Run Damage

I am still not sure how this is not scaling well. Please do not misunderstand me, I am still a pretty new player and just want to fully understand this process.

Genesis.5169:

There are very few fight in game where you stand there wailing away for 3-5mins on end.

Ha, it sure feels that way sometimes!!

Kindread.9481:

According to the Wiki page on Critial Hits (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical_hit) The table that lays out what % of damage you increase by for every 5% of Crit Chance, and Crit Damage.

As you say, you do not have to be a GC to reach 50% crit chance, but according to the chart listed on the Wiki page, 50% crit chance, with ZERO Crit Damage still increases your Long Run Damage by 25%.

If you increase your Crit Damage to 30 (availiable through traits) and still have 50% crit chance you then increase your Long Run Damage by 40%.

At 100% Crit Damage (through traits and gear, not including base) and run at 50% crit chance you increase your Long Run Damage by 75%.

@5% Crit Chance every 5% Crit Damage increases your Long Run Damage by .25%
@10% Crit Chance every 5% Crit Damage increases your Long Run Damage by .5%
@15% Crit Chance every 5% Crit Damage increases your Long Run Damage by .8%
@20% Crit Chance every 5% Crit Damage increases your Long Run Damage by 1.0%
@25% Crit Chance every 5% Crit Damage increases your Long Run Damage by 1.3%
@30% Crit Chance every 5% Crit Damage increases your Long Run Damage by 1.5%
@35% Crit Chance every 5% Crit Damage increases your Long Run Damage by 1.8%
@40% Crit Chance every 5% Crit Damage increases your Long Run Damage by 2.0%
@45% Crit Chance every 5% Crit Damage increases your Long Run Damage by 2.3%
@50% Crit Chance every 5% Crit Damage increases your Long Run Damage by 2.5%

So at 50% Crit Chance:
0% Crit Damage = 25% Long Run Damage
25% Crit Damage = 37.5% Long Run Damage
50% Crit Damage = 50% Long Run Damage
75% Crit Damage = 62.5% Long Run Damage
100% Crit Damage = 75% Long Run Damage

I am still not sure how this is not scaling well. Please do not misunderstand me, I am still a pretty new player and just want to fully understand this process.

yes, 50% rate with 0% crit damage increases it by 25%, 50% crit damage increase it by 50%, i.e. your crit rate.

P * (1 + C * (0.5 + D))

D is crit damage. Set it to 0 and it inscreases damage by HALF (50%) of your crit rate. If it is 0.5 or more (i.e. 50% or more) then you get 100% of your crit rate added to your long term damage.

You have three damage stats for direct damage. If you want to maximize your DPS, then you probably want to get the most you can out of your damage stats, in this case power, crit and crit damage. If you have less than 50% crit damage then you are getting a less than 1:1 increase in damage for each percentage of crit. 50% is easy to get, any less and your precision gets less bang for the buck which means your power gets less bang for the buck which is damage.

Why would anyone trying to max their direct damage, or at least do efficient damage, not want at least a 1:1 return on their their damage stats and damage BOONS? Paltry healing? procs that you’ll get anyway?

mulch.2586:

Nonlinear.9823:

Kindread.9481:

I guess I do not understand your issue here …

Critical Hits do an additional .5 damage per point of damage you would normally do. So if you normally hit for 1000 damage, you would crit for 1500 damage without ANY +Crit Damage gear ot traits.

When you add in the passive bonus you get from the trait tree it increases that amount by an additional 30%, bringing your 1000 damage hit up to 1800 damage on crit.

I do agree that 200% +Crit Damage is a good amount to aim for (higher if you can manage it with your build) I am not sure why you feel anything less is a substantial damage loss. Prehaps I am not fulling understanding what you are calling “Long Run Damage”.

It’s about damage scaling and maxing your direct damage, glass cannon or not. You don’t need to be GC to have 50% crit rate and do 15%-20% more damage by not stacking as many poorer scaling stats.

At less than +50% crit damage your precision effectively gets scaled DOWN as it contributes to your DPS over the long term.

As for long term damage it’s simple. When you hit something with an attack, you either crit or you don’t. If you crit you will do:

P * (1.50 + D)

Damage, where P = power and D = crit damage % (as a , 1.5 -> 150)

You will do this X% of the time (i.e. over the long run), where X% is your crit rate, C.

P * (1.50 + D) * C

The other 100% – C or 1.0 – C of the time (i.e. over the long run) you will do a normal hit for basically whatever your power is.

If you assume that you’ll be doing the same dungeons, etc. in either spec then everything else basically factors out (same weapons, same enemies, etc.) and that’s what the difference in stats boils down to.

Simply add them together:

Long Term Damage = Regular hits + Critical Hits
Long Term Damage = P * (1.0 – C) + P * (1.5 + D) * C

Factor…

Long Term Damage = P * (1.0 + C * (0.5 + D))

It should make sense if you think about it. 0% crit and your long term damage is basically a measure of power.

There are some interesting things to note, like how well power scales, the relationship between power, crit and crit damage. The way D makes (0.5 + D) less than or greater than 1.0 if D is 50% (0.5). This is what irks me. That less than 50% and C is scaled DOWN over the long run.

It is not a trivial trade off. I don’t mind that it is a stat but it is a brutal trade off if you are stacking precision and sacrificing power.

To the extent I think I understand your conclusions, I think you’re mistaking the significance.

Formula has (bunches of things omitted for simplicity)
Damage = P + PC(1/2 +D). Noting that C is always less than 1 and D + 1/2 is likely somewhere from .8 to 1.2, the dominating factor is Power.

But of course most of our gear choices have power in them, so power is going to work itself out by ANet’s itemization.

Yes. You always get a 1:>1 return on damage for every point of power, it is the best scaling damage stat and only scales better the more crit and crit damage you have. That’s what the formula says and that’s the truth. Math doesn’t lie. This is easily confirmed on golems.

My point is that if you are trying to do good direct damage and you have less than 50% crit damage then you are doing it wrong. If you want to do direct damage DPS that 200% crit damage threshold should be a top priority. Otherwise you are not getting a 1:1 benefit from your precision, not getting a 1:1 on your three most important direct damage stats. If your goal is DD why would you want anything less than a 1:1 return on your most important stats?

To be honest I had no idea that you had to invest in crit damage as well, or it didn’t make enough impact. I had no idea what the base crit damage modifier was in this game, and you say its 150%? Or is it like Diablo III as to where if you don’t invest at all it doesn’t even exist until you do.

Most of the stats in this game are confusing to me. My only high level character is a Charr Guardian at 80, and currently the only thing I was going to focus on was condition damage. Yet, I have no idea how all of that even works. So the reason for my damage being at most 2.5k with an exotic GS is cause I have no clue what’s going on. I get mixed signals from this game that seems to indicate its an MMO- ARPG that doesn’t want me to grind for loot with the ideal stats I might need. And also wants me to focus on survivability over damage due to their fights being supposedly highly mobile in nature (meaning don’t stand in one place for too long).

So I think my main issue isn’t the math (of which I usually don’t care much about) but the overall direction the game seems to clumsily guide me towards regarding its combat system.

I don’t understand really.

Precision usually comes with power on items. So you’re shouldn’t be sacrificing raw damage for crit.
And if you just ignore crit completely and go for pure power it will give lower dps.

endless.1376:

And also wants me to focus on survivability over damage due to their fights being supposedly highly mobile in nature (meaning don’t stand in one place for too long).

Actually, it’s the other way around.
Since we have a lot of ways to avoid damage you should focus on damage to kill faster. Well, this is from PvE viewpoint.

I have about a 55% crit chance before my sigil of accuracy kicks in, and about.. 10% crit damage myself, and I honestly can’t see the point in putting more into crit damage.

My high crit feeds into an insane (90% usually) vigor uptime, and constant self heals through blood sigils (which damage the target on proc as well according to tests). Meanwhile, I have a massive toughness pool, so said heals feed into survivability, while I still dodge around alot.

As a mesmer, said dodges generate more clones, which I then detonate with mind wrack, or feed into chipping CC immunity or still more damage immunity. And the increased damage resistance lets me fight in melee constantly, where I am more likely to take damage, which is healed, while taking advantage of the AoE of melee (3x chance to proc the heal makes it very likely in group fights.)

Were I to go crit damage, I would not be able to stay in melee as long, as my armor would be less than half of what it is now, which would significantly lower the value of health from each heal I trigger. My shatters would also be less reliable.

Likewise, condition damage builds love precision for earth sigils, but hate crit damage, as it works off of power.

So in other words, everything that isn’t power, precision, and critical damage is a useless gimmick. Glad you cleared that up for me.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go kill a few “glass cannon” thieves.