Guild Wars 2

in building your thief, what is the MINIMUM desirable crit damage?

obviously i dont want to have a glass-cannon thief.

im open to mixing and matching different types of armors

Crits start off being 150% the standard damage.

If you invest 30 points into the Critical Strikes tree you can bump it up to 180% the standard damage.

That alone is a pretty hefty increase. You can push it higher if you itemize for Crit damage (with Berserker items for example) if you like.

However the kicker is that the base damage all scales with Power. It’s far more effective to increase your Power than it is to boost your Critical Strikes Damage directly.

Say you have an attack that deals 1000 base damage.

A Crit would deal 180% damage, ergo 1800 damage.

You could invest into boosting this Critical Strike damage to 2000 if you added an additional 20% Critical Strikes Damage.

However you could also boost Power, increasing the base damage from 1000 to 1200.

A Crit would henceforth deal 21kittenage, a little more than the increase in Critical Strike Damage brought you. And not only that, high Power also increases the damage of your non-critical hits.

Now I haven’t done the maths and I don’t know if a 20% increase in Power levels equates to a 20% increase in critical Strikes damage regarding the item budget but on a principle level Power > all.

All I know is with my short bow signit 25 stack of presission + pressision signit I am at 80% crit chance and my hits are hitting in the 2-4k+ with my daggers. And I have about 12k health. It gets the job done quickly + with the swiftness skill 2-4k damage over a 5 second boost I’m throwing out over 20k. I have the 5% conversion into vitality which helps. I haven’t made me exotics earrings kneckless yet which will be made soon. My attack and presission and help will be receiving a nice boost from what it is at. Now.

Dee Jay.2460:

Crits start off being 150% the standard damage.

If you invest 30 points into the Critical Strikes tree you can bump it up to 180% the standard damage.

That alone is a pretty hefty increase. You can push it higher if you itemize for Crit damage (with Berserker items for example) if you like.

However the kicker is that the base damage all scales with Power. It’s far more effective to increase your Power than it is to boost your Critical Strikes Damage directly.

Say you have an attack that deals 1000 base damage.

A Crit would deal 180% damage, ergo 1800 damage.

You could invest into boosting this Critical Strike damage to 2000 if you added an additional 20% Critical Strikes Damage.

However you could also boost Power, increasing the base damage from 1000 to 1200.

A Crit would henceforth deal 21kittenage, a little more than the increase in Critical Strike Damage brought you. And not only that, high Power also increases the damage of your non-critical hits.

Now I haven’t done the maths and I don’t know if a 20% increase in Power levels equates to a 20% increase in critical Strikes damage regarding the item budget but on a principle level Power > all.

I haven’t done the math myself, but I’d be surprised if this was entirely true. I think that crit damage bonuses do more for your critical hits than straight power does. It’s more based on the combination of stats you use. With a low critical hit percentage, you’re better off focusing on power, if you’re focusing on precision and have a high crit chance, you’re better off focusing on crit damage than you are on power. I’d be curious if anyone has actually done the math though.

but guys in your stats as of now, what is your current crit damage %?

I’m running Valkyrie gear with Beryl gems and Accessories for Power, Vitality and Crit Dmg%. IIRC I have approximately 48% crit damage from gear not including full Critical Strike tree. I don’t gear precision but I’m running Hidden Killer for 100% crit from stealth. I’m seeing 4.5K to 7k standard backstabs in PvE on lvl 80 mobs. This is only really effective if you’re running a stealth>backstab setup with D/D or D/P though as my Precision is not real high. I’m right under 16K hps.

Hope this helps,

Blood~

thanks blood for giving me precise answer,

so going valkyrie will sacrifice alot of precision,

Yes, valkyrie does sacrifice a lot of precision (i am running a build similar to Blood) my base crit damage is 102% (max critical strike tree and a mix of valkyrie gear with beserker weapons and jewels) with a crit rate of 29%. However in combat i generally have 117% crit damage (from food and rune of rage) as i tend to have fury active most of the time, boosting my crit chance to 49%. This combined with over 2k power, i do a lot of damage, and my backstabs hurt. I also have about 15.5k hp and a small amount of toughness for extra survivability.

Einlanzer.1627:

Dee Jay.2460:

Crits start off being 150% the standard damage.

If you invest 30 points into the Critical Strikes tree you can bump it up to 180% the standard damage.

That alone is a pretty hefty increase. You can push it higher if you itemize for Crit damage (with Berserker items for example) if you like.

However the kicker is that the base damage all scales with Power. It’s far more effective to increase your Power than it is to boost your Critical Strikes Damage directly.

Say you have an attack that deals 1000 base damage.

A Crit would deal 180% damage, ergo 1800 damage.

You could invest into boosting this Critical Strike damage to 2000 if you added an additional 20% Critical Strikes Damage.

However you could also boost Power, increasing the base damage from 1000 to 1200.

A Crit would henceforth deal 21kittenage, a little more than the increase in Critical Strike Damage brought you. And not only that, high Power also increases the damage of your non-critical hits.

Now I haven’t done the maths and I don’t know if a 20% increase in Power levels equates to a 20% increase in critical Strikes damage regarding the item budget but on a principle level Power > all.

I haven’t done the math myself, but I’d be surprised if this was entirely true. I think that crit damage bonuses do more for your critical hits than straight power does. It’s more based on the combination of stats you use. With a low critical hit percentage, you’re better off focusing on power, if you’re focusing on precision and have a high crit chance, you’re better off focusing on crit damage than you are on power. I’d be curious if anyone has actually done the math though.

Someone else did the maths for it on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/115mln/power_vs_precision_vs_critical_damage_what_do_we/

It too encouraged me to reconsider some of my gear choices. Previously I valued Precision more than any other stat as I wanted a high crit-chance since I don’t use the guaranteed Backstab-crit trait.

I ended up with some odd mix of Karma gear, crafted Valkyrie gear as well as some odd Dungeon items. All equipped with runes of Lyssa for the extra Precision and because it’s nice to have all the boons up during Daggerstorm.

Anyway, I’ve reconsidered and am now trying to get Power, Vitality, Toughness gear for my armor while probably rolling with Berserkers gear for the Accessories and weapons. It should provide me with a decent amount of survivability for PvE while maintaining the ability to burst in WvW. If my crit-chance ends up lower than 40% however I might have to drop Executioner after all.

Grimm,you wanna know how you really calculate the optimal mix (or sweet spot)? read this carefully, its much easier than that reddit thingie…
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Skill-Coefficients-for-all-the-Thief-weapons/first#post467096

Oldgrimm.8521:

but guys in your stats as of now, what is your current crit damage %?

My armor is level 80 Valkyrie exotics slotted with the Superior Rune of the Scholar set. My daggers are level 80 Berserker exotics with Superior Sigil of Air and Superior Sigil of Accuracy. My accessories are level 80 Beryl Valkyrie exotics slotted with exquisite beryl gems.

At base stats (no buffs) I’m sitting at approximately 3.4k power, 25% crit chance, 100 crit damage, and 17k health. With 25 stacks of my Superior Sigil of Accuracy and my traits constantly proccing the fury boon, I’m usually capped at 55%-ish crit chance in combat. My highest backstab after the recent change to Assassin’s Signet was 10k on a downed warrior, although my backstabs normally range from 7k-9k so that warrior might’ve been undergeared or underleveled, I don’t know.

So yeah, that’s my stuff, hope I added something helpful for you.

I’m around 41-44, depending what armor I get. I had upgrades on my weapons that allowed my to get up to 55% tho. Lvl 80 tho. When I was like lvl 20-40, I got around 20-28%

thanks for all the output

im still 73

but im theory crafting my stats,

it seems that to be able to reach 100 crit damage, we have less crit chances as far as i can comprehend on your given base stat

i tried to use the computations given, and i dont know if it is a good combination
e.g. thebase stat that i came up with, 80 crit damage, 50 crit chance