Guild Wars 2

Is there any point taking critical damage past 100%?

More damage from crit hits?

crit damage doesnt have a cap so yes stack it as high as it will go

ionix.9054:

Is there any point taking critical damage past 100%?

Same point as it is taking it past 50%

Crit dmg base multiplier is 1.5, with an additional 50% crit dmg it is 2.0, at 100% it is 2.5 and so on.

1% crit dmg yields more damage on your crits than 10 power does, while 10 power increases your raw damage across the board. Crit dmg is also consistent, it always increases your critical damage, while the effect of adding power is lower the more power you have. 30 power at 3000atk gives you 3% more dmg while 30 power at 1500 gives you 6% more dmg. (correct me if I’m wrong)

OK thanks everyone

@Ghostwolf.9863
It doesn’t matter if you have 10 power of 100000 power, additional 30 power will give you the same damage increase. It would be a case if there were diminishing returns of stats, but there aren’t any.

And yes, as a glass cannon ganker thief you want to have as much crit damage as possible for your backstab and heartseeker to kill your enemies before electrons travel to their screens to show the entire tragedy.

Ghostwolf.9863:

ionix.9054:

Is there any point taking critical damage past 100%?

Same point as it is taking it past 50%

Crit dmg base multiplier is 1.5, with an additional 50% crit dmg it is 2.0, at 100% it is 2.5 and so on.

1% crit dmg yields more damage on your crits than 10 power does, while 10 power increases your raw damage across the board. Crit dmg is also consistent, it always increases your critical damage, while the effect of adding power is lower the more power you have. 30 power at 3000atk gives you 3% more dmg while 30 power at 1500 gives you 6% more dmg. (correct me if I’m wrong)

Okay I will correct you. Crit dmg also has DR. Going from 0 to 10% is a 6.7% increase on crits while going from 100% to 110% is only a 4% increase on crits only. (So at 70% crit rate, a total DPS increase of 5.1% and 3.4% respectively)

30 power at 3000 power is only 1% dmg increase, so to achieve the same results for 3500 attack using power you would need about 125 power to achieve +5% DPS increase.

The moral of this story is: static +dmg% traits/runes/sigils and procs are way better than power/crit gear.

Edit:: the exception are bloodlust sigils, which produce a rather huge +250 power at max stacks, which is a 10% increase at 3500 attack, vs sigil of force that is 5% or slightly less. The tradeoff being you have to get and maintain them. Fire/air sigils still outperform them both by a large margin

Edit2:: fixed thanks wish

Dagins.5163:

@Ghostwolf.9863
It doesn’t matter if you have 10 power of 100000 power, additional 30 power will give you the same damage increase. It would be a case if there were diminishing returns of stats, but there aren’t any.

And yes, as a glass cannon ganker thief you want to have as much crit damage as possible for your backstab and heartseeker to kill your enemies before electrons travel to their screens to show their tragedy.

It does matter when min maxing to produce the highest overall damage, you don’t want to spec too far into something that produces a proportionately smaller return when the slot could go elsewhere

@ens
Well formulated, thanks.

Though, I’ve never heard about dimishing returns on critical dmg alone, besides it’s more costly statwise in some slots and better off converted into alternative stats.
Do you have any source on this? Would be helpful.

Power first, then crits.
Someone did that math, but it’s enough to consider that +Power feeds damage and thus will also feed crit bonus damage.

The compromise isn’t in Power vs. Crit, but in Crit vs Survival.

Straigth math doesn’t win in PvP, because this is not sustain war. If you have a strategy to hit your target hard with multiple crits, then back off and do it again, you will find ‘assassin’ stats much better than berserker DESPITE FACT that math tells you otherwise.

Why? Because if you are smart, you would notice your ,,pesky heartseeker" failed to crit, and you can react to it by withdrawing to regenerate energy and repeat it. ‘Assassin’ stats gives you much lower chance of failure than ‘berserker’, even if they produce less total damage output. If it wasn’t true, nobody would ever spec into ‘hidden killer’ instead of ‘executioner’, but some people do this.

Ghostwolf.9863:

@ens
Well formulated, thanks.

Though, I’ve never heard about dimishing returns on critical dmg alone, besides it’s more costly statwise in some slots and better off converted into alternative stats.
Do you have any source on this? Would be helpful.

No source needed. Crit dmg is not a % increase, it is a multiplier. Going from 2.5 to 2.6 is a smaller percent increase than going from 1.5 to 1.6

DR is not ‘programmed’ into gw2 as it is in some games (where your stats literally translate into smaller values in the damage formula, in gw2 stats are used directly), it only exists as a facet of large numbers being influenced less by increases.

Edit: here is the formula for reference
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage

Dagins.5163:

…
And yes, as a glass cannon ganker thief you want to have as much crit damage as possible for your backstab and heartseeker to kill your enemies before electrons travel to their screens to show the entire tragedy.

OP NERF THIEVES NOW PLEASE, NERF THE SPEED OF THEIR ELECTRONS

sorry that made laugh lol… before electrons travel to their screens… lol

Ugh on the topic of crit damage and criting in general..

Anyone tried using assassin (prec/power/crit dmg) gear? How viable is it to try to max your crit chance (more so than power) along with crit damage… I guess where I’m getting this idea is the rogue archetype in other games sometimes get associated with “unstable damage” but the highest damage possible as well as lowest, through only relaying on some form of a crit stat (be it dex, agility, or crit itself). You get the effect of sometimes hitting for peanuts and sometimes hitting like a train (and the gap is noticeably large). Like zerker gives you more power and less crit chance, so the gap isn’t as huge as it could be. mmm It may as well be a backstabbing zerker… it’s kind hard to pin an example…. if you ever experienced it in other games you would know what i mean…

It depends on the setup, though hidden killer is generally suboptimal unless you run very low crit chance (if you don’t get them to 50% hp, just retreat as you said). Traditional glass thieves get a lot of their damage in pvp from sources other than backstab simply because once executioner is active it is impossible to out DPS even their auto attack. I do believe Valkyrie stats with hidden killer/sleight of hand to be the superior WvW build, but some people just gotta go glass I guess.

As for which type of glass cannon armor is better? I would tend to agree with you for the same reason… You only need to get them to half health and they are doomed. Assassins does this job better. Though don’t neglect power TOO much, since it still is the most important stat numerically speaking.

The problem with your math is that you’re using the context of ‘total dps’ to negate a linear damage increase.
1 power provides x bonus damage.
(1000 damage + x) versus (3000 damage + x) does not change the value of x, but the percentage of total dps gain diminishes to 1/3 of the former.
However, this only means that total dps reaches an inevitable plateau, and not that the value of stats diminish.

My 2c

From a PvP perspective (WvW and sPvP), burst potential is the most important aspect of a burst build.

In WvW, with full Zerker + x/30/x/x/x build, you’ll start with around 65% crit chance. When you burst, you’ll generally have Fury because of Thrill of the Crime, so your crit chance becomes 85%.

Add in 5% extra crit chance from over 90% HP and 7% extra from side/back, you can see that most of the extra crit chance from Assassin’s will be redundant during your burst rotation, where it matters the most.

The extra crit chance comes with a loss in Power, which significantly reduces the potential damage output of your burst (since your crit chance is essentially maxed out anyways during your burst rotation), so it’s almost always a better idea to go with Zerkers instead.

If we’re talking about PvE, sustained damage might matter a bit more, in which case you can make a case for Assassins providing a more predictable and manageable DPS rate.

Zero Day.2594:

Dagins.5163:

…
And yes, as a glass cannon ganker thief you want to have as much crit damage as possible for your backstab and heartseeker to kill your enemies before electrons travel to their screens to show the entire tragedy.

OP NERF THIEVES NOW PLEASE, NERF THE SPEED OF THEIR ELECTRONS

sorry that made laugh lol… before electrons travel to their screens… lol

Ugh on the topic of crit damage and criting in general..

Anyone tried using assassin (prec/power/crit dmg) gear? How viable is it to try to max your crit chance (more so than power) along with crit damage… I guess where I’m getting this idea is the rogue archetype in other games sometimes get associated with “unstable damage” but the highest damage possible as well as lowest, through only relaying on some form of a crit stat (be it dex, agility, or crit itself). You get the effect of sometimes hitting for peanuts and sometimes hitting like a train (and the gap is noticeably large). Like zerker gives you more power and less crit chance, so the gap isn’t as huge as it could be. mmm It may as well be a backstabbing zerker… it’s kind hard to pin an example…. if you ever experienced it in other games you would know what i mean…

you can achieve 100% crit chance in full berserkers with food and perception stacks

edit: thats solo crit chance, in a group setting you end up well over 100%

:P thanks, admittedly outside of CoF p1 farming, i havent used zerker backstab/“perma-stealth” in WvW… since i don’t roam, i try to stay with the zerg, where i feel only the shortbow can do anything :/
PvP wise, p/d condi build….

ens.9854:

30 power at 3000 attack is only 1% dmg increase

Im going to assume you know the difference and you simply mistyped or didnt pay attention. 30 power at 3000 attack is about a
2030/2000= 1.015
1.5% damage increase, since attack is never used, ever, for anything.

ionix.9054:

Is there any point taking critical damage past 100%?

It depends on your other stats. You should go with whatever adds the best damage increase, if thats what youre going for. Depending on your Power, Precision and Critical Hit Damage, any one of them could be best to add at any point.

wish.1027:

Power increase:
(oldpower + addedpower) / (oldpower) =1.XXYYYY
XX.YYY%= %damage increase

Crit damage increase:
(1.5 + oldcritdamage + addedcritdamage) / (1.5 + oldcritdamage) =1.XXYYY
XX.YYY * .critrate = %damage increase

Precision increase:
21 precision = +1% Crit chance at level 80.
Added Precision / 21 = X.YYY
X = addedcritchance
(1 + ((.5 + critdamage) * (oldcritchance + addedcritchance))) / (1 + (.5 + critdamage) * oldcritchance) =1.XXYYY
XX.YYY= %damage increase

These are the formulas for determining damage increases gained from adding power or precision or crit damage to your build.

Simply plug in your stats, and use the one that spits out the biggest number.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Building-a-better-D-D-thief/page/3#post2615780