Guild Wars 2

Hi, I’ve tried looking through the forums about how crit damage scales with the ranger. Bear in mind that most of my playtime is in WvW, open field fighting (can’t stand zergs) with the rest spent in SPvP tournaments as a bunker ranger (so it doesn’t affect me there as that’s not my job). All I have seen however are back and forth anecdotal statements regarding it’s impact or lack thereof.

My personal anecdotal remark is that I have stacked myself to 79% crit damage (replacing P/V/T gear) and yet… I dunno, I just don’t see much of a difference at all. Weapon wise I often run with a greatsword/SB though I swap to sword/axe/horn/torch/LB on whims and for testing. Though I run a power based skirmisher for my small-man group, and my primary goal is that of spreading CC/Immobilizes for our thieves and mesmers to nuke (usually running with 2 thieves, 1 mesmer and 1 ‘other’ besides myself) via hound/wolf knockdowns, aoe fear/immobilize, muddy terrain immobilize, entangle immobilize, etc, I try to eek out some damage as best I can.

Disregarding the clunky and terrible pet AI and the issues within it (first AOE that hits the ground insta-kills the pet, or the pet won’t catch any competent player who moves instead of stands still unless immobilized first, 2 second cast time -lolwtf?) I’m just not seeing much of a damage increase at all for stacking crit damage.

Also disregard the terrible game design of having 40% of our damage come from a pet with the myriad of issues that plague it (imo they should be there for utility, and damage itself should come from the player).

Since this is just anecdotal I’m looking for solid testing and math, I trust math and research. Has anyone done the research and obtained solid numbers regarding the benefit of crit damage for rangers? I’m trying to decide if I’d be better off just running more P/T/Pr gear instead, or perhaps throwing in P/V/Cnd in it’s place to get the most bang for my buck (without rerolling the class, yes I know I’d be better off on a thief, mesmer, engi or ele for roaming).

Thanks in advance,
Confused and dismayed ranger #39857983

Braxxus.2904:

See, with the pet taking a huge chunk of the damage that we’re allotted (35-40% from repeated tests from various players here in the ranger forums) I’m trying to figure out how that translates to our return from crit damage. Since pets don’t scale with our stats as well it seems like the return for the investment into crit damage may not be the optimal route to go.

A couple of us hashed out different ways to calculate the optimal mix of pow, pre, and crit_dam.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Offensive-Stats/first#post1303564

My method assumes a fixed crit_dam, and will tell you whether adding pow or pre is better – just plug your stats into the bolded formula. Only two variables (pow and pre) because I didn’t feel like teaching others how to do partial differential equations.

Saweth’s method will give a more general solution, but you’ll need to program it into a computer. And I don’t think he was entirely sure it was correct (I didn’t feel like unraveling the loops in his algorithm with the formatting stripped out by the forum).

The pet doesn’t matter because the pet has its own stats (hit k and you can see). Its damage won’t go up or down based on the ranger’s pow, pre, or crit_dam stats. If you want to throw your BM trait into the mix, then the pet matters. But at that point you’re getting into “which build is better?” rather than “which equipment is better?”

This what your after? (Scroll down to the table)
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical_hit

Just as a bit of an fyi (I’m sure you already know this) but in terms of raw damage, critical damage scales as follows: 0 = 150% damage on crit. 50 =200% damage on crit. 100 = 250% damage on crit. That said, at 80 it requires 21 points in precision for 1% crit chance.

Indoles.1467:

This what your after? (Scroll down to the table)
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical_hit

Just as a bit of an fyi (I’m sure you already know this) but in terms of raw damage, critical damage scales as follows: 0 = 150% damage on crit. 50 =200% damage on crit. 100 = 250% damage on crit. That said, at 80 it requires 21 points in precision for 1% crit chance.

Well…. no, not exactly.

See, with the pet taking a huge chunk of the damage that we’re allotted (35-40% from repeated tests from various players here in the ranger forums) I’m trying to figure out how that translates to our return from crit damage. Since pets don’t scale with our stats as well it seems like the return for the investment into crit damage may not be the optimal route to go.

Tonight I sucked it up and dropped all my zerker accs and jewels and threw on some knights accs with carrion jewels, condi runes in my armor and crafted a knights GS and carrion shortbow and even with only 1007 condi damage, with 2.1k power and 40% crit chance with only the base 20% crit damage from trait bonuses that I was dropping people much much faster and contributing towards downing people’s hp into spike range for our two thieves much better.

More anecdotal, but that’s how it seemed instead of going direct damage with 80% crit damage and only the 200 condi damage from traits.

I noticed no damage number decrease from my pets (when they actually hit) and even my maul and other GS attacks still seemed to be hitting just as hard with direct damage as before, while having far better bleed damage.

Well yeah, many of our skills scale poorly with power and therefore don’t see significant results from a small power increase, but I don’t understand how you don’t see a difference in crit damage from 80% to 20%. Yes, pets share none of our stats, so our armor plays no role in their performance, so building more defensive with condi damage is very popular for fairly obvious reasons.

It seems to me you already answered your own question, no?

Indoles.1467:

It seems to me you already answered your own question, no?

Anecdotally. Like I said I was hoping someone has actually done real testing and has solid math about the issue instead because even if it feels ‘off’ I’d prefer to go with the math than anecdotal experience. Math is truth and can be trusted. However I guess there may not be such data yet as there is for warriors, guards or thieves to go on.