Thread: The usefulness of crit

Hello yet again. I'm getting close to the cap and am planning out my gear for when I hit cap. I kind of like fire more than lightning so I'm going to build a fire stone and bag and a healing stone and bag (just need 1 more WSoC...so glad that making dedicated LI's like this for the RK means I can avoid the Major Leg. lottery entirely). I'm planning on blowing some medallions on the Draigoch set right away, then hopefully getting a ToO run in and getting the healing set first. This seems to be the way to go since the Draigoch set has a 5-piece fire bonus and lots of (healing-useless) finesse, plus apparently the 3 and 5-piece ToO fire set bonuses don't even work anyway. Correct me if I'm wrong about this info.

So that brings me to the thread title...how useful/useless is crit for a fire/healing RK? It seems like HoT/DoT ticks can't crit, but initial applications can and I think I remember reading that Smouldering Wrath can crit now. So, how important should crit be in my build vs. mastery? How much finesse do I need (champ seems to be roughly 4k to be almost 100% effective, with more than that largely wasted except in the Moors)? Was gonna go for the Limlight jewels, the Great River crafted neck for healing and the finesse Orthanc teal barter neck for fire DPS. Probably going to use both LG sets with the Mender's bauble, unless the crit on the sage one (both the clicky and the pocket crit rating) would be more useful. Should I bother getting the Great River crafted bracelets, or would I be better off just trying to get the teal ones from RoF (will, morale and power I think?) or maybe the Foundry ones?

My understanding of the fire line is that it seems to be that finesse is more important. Crit is great as it will mean some attacks will do more damage but as you stated the DoTs don't crit. Also look for pieces that give the most will and ICPR possible so you can do more damage and last longer in long fights. I'm not sure about healing stats as i have never been a healing RK.

WoF, FR dot and MF/DF can crit. Smouldering Wrath though is still not critting (ZC did not follow through on his promise, sadly).

The logic I use for jewellery and relics for crit vs. offence is as follows.

Since fire attacks do not have crit. multiplier, 1% crit = 1% extra chance to double the dmg. This means 1% crit roughly equals 1% offence (roughly because I am not accounting for devastate chance). If you look at rating though, I am not sure because DR is quite a puzzle.

If you are planning to trait fire I would ignore icpr, I have not had power issues what so ever and I do not use the -battle attuned power cost legacy. A fully geared RK will have a 9-10k power pool, couple that with SM 10% of your power pool heal every 2m (1.30m if you use the legacy), it is fairly difficult to get rid of it.

1% crit is worth 2% outgoing damage if you're looking at the ratings. For fire, you definitely would not want to focus on crit (whereas you do with lightning). The 3 piece orthanc fire set is far and away your best bet, and the 5 piece draigoch set bonus is essentially useless now. The 5 piece bonus on the orthanc fire set is underwhelming, you'd be better off going 4 fire and 2 healing for the extra set bonus. The 5 piece healing orthanc set is great and definitely worth picking up.

You want your tactical mastery around 26.5k-27k for healing, assuming buffs will take you to cap (somewhere between 27.5 and 28k mastery). From there you should tailor your jewellery towards morale/vit and crit. Critical rating is still useful while healing, for sure.

I find crit specially useful when healing. Even if we have got some spike damage healing thanks to EftA, we won´t have it always up, and a critted MV will help dealing with such damage. Once OFE is up, i tend to go with around 21% crit and it´s quite noticeable the number of crits you get in a fight.

Plus, nothing better to depress your minstrel mate than bragging about your EftA crits in raidchat .

Originally Posted by Gylve

Hello yet again. I'm getting close to the cap and am planning out my gear for when I hit cap. I kind of like fire more than lightning so I'm going to build a fire stone and bag and a healing stone and bag (just need 1 more WSoC...so glad that making dedicated LI's like this for the RK means I can avoid the Major Leg. lottery entirely). I'm planning on blowing some medallions on the Draigoch set right away, then hopefully getting a ToO run in and getting the healing set first. This seems to be the way to go since the Draigoch set has a 5-piece fire bonus and lots of (healing-useless) finesse, plus apparently the 3 and 5-piece ToO fire set bonuses don't even work anyway. Correct me if I'm wrong about this info.

So that brings me to the thread title...how useful/useless is crit for a fire/healing RK? It seems like HoT/DoT ticks can't crit, but initial applications can and I think I remember reading that Smouldering Wrath can crit now. So, how important should crit be in my build vs. mastery? How much finesse do I need (champ seems to be roughly 4k to be almost 100% effective, with more than that largely wasted except in the Moors)? Was gonna go for the Limlight jewels, the Great River crafted neck for healing and the finesse Orthanc teal barter neck for fire DPS. Probably going to use both LG sets with the Mender's bauble, unless the crit on the sage one (both the clicky and the pocket crit rating) would be more useful. Should I bother getting the Great River crafted bracelets, or would I be better off just trying to get the teal ones from RoF (will, morale and power I think?) or maybe the Foundry ones?

The short answer:
Fire DoT ticks CAN and DO crit (but not devastate), so moar crit is moar gooder.

The long answer:
When traited for fire, the gear will often have Will/Tactical Offense, and then a choice between either Vitality/Morale OR Fate/Crit rating. So you end up having to balance between your crit rating and your survivability. From the work I've seen so far, fire damage isn't quite matching up to par with lightning, and low crit ratings on fire-oriented gear is probably to blame.

Finesse is important for fire, but you don't need much (presently). I have found that, without any special Finesse bonuses, I am rarely (if ever) resisted. And contrary to popular belief, finesse is equally important for lightning because, all else equal, lightning skills have the same chance to be resisted as fire skills. But, like I said, "a little dab'll do ya." 4-5k is plenty for PvE. Don't stress it; you'll get that from armor alone.

The 3 set bonus for the ToO fire set DOES work, it just doesn't work on 1 skill. Admittedly, 1 very important skill. But it works for FR and Writ of Fire, which is pretty good. That extra DoT tick is probably most important for FR, because FR actually reaches the last DoT tick. 1 extra DoT tick on MF or WoF won't break the bank, especially considering most rotations that I've seen don't let MF or WoF expire anyway (they end up being refreshed before the last tick actually ticks). I've actually been recommending 3 ToO Fire/3 Moors, although I haven't had an opportunity to test it (I don't get into the moors much).

The Anduin/Limlight Rep jewelry is the best there is for casters. I haven't decided on necklaces or bracelets yet, but only because I haven't paid attention to them in a while. I think I'm wearing the crafted necklace and skraid bracelets, but not sure. I haven't seen the RoF bracelets drop yet.

Originally Posted by LotroWiki

Autoattack critical hits deal approximately 1.25 times weapon max damage.
Skill use critical hits deal approximately 1.5 times skill max damage.

Autoattack devastating critical hits deal approximately 1.5 times weapon max damage.
Skill use devastating critical hits deal approximately 2.0 times skill max damage.

But we have to take into consideration that a critical hit automaticly uses the max damage of a skill. Meaning a skill with a tooltip range of 500-600 will crit with 600x1,5 (=900).

Furthermore 1% Crit equal +0,5% damage, not +0,5% tactical mastery
So let´s assume you have 100% base damage + 100% from tactical mastery + 15% fire damage +15% fire damage over time (will count that like normal +fire damage to make the calculation easier) + 20% Writ of Fire/Essence of Flame damage
so let´s assume your total outgoing damage is 230% of your base damage. Now we have to increase our outgoing damage by 0,5% that 231,15. That means +1,15% Tactical Mastery = +0,5% outgoing damage

And now we are still assuming that our normal hits do always hit for the max tooltip damage like crits/devs (which they don´t), we haven´t thought about dev crits (which are increased by critical rating too) and we haven´t used the increase from our LI´s Tactical Damage Rating in the calculation above. All those 3 effects increase the value of critical rating

So we are more likely somewhere between 1% Critical Rating = 1,5-2% Tactical Mastery in a Fire/Healing build. In a Lightning build Critical Rating is far more valueable, though it´s harder to calculate and I haven´t bothered with the numbers yet.

I believe someone (was it Alad?) posted a Excel sheet where you add all your Crit Multipliers etc. and it calculates how effective a x% increase in Offence/Crit chance/Dev chance/Crit mag/Dev mag is. I just can´t find it

That interesting, I had no idea their system was set up that complicated.

Do you think you can find that sheet?

Originally Posted by PerfectApproach

The 3 set bonus for the ToO fire set DOES work, it just doesn't work on 1 skill. Admittedly, 1 very important skill. But it works for FR and Writ of Fire, which is pretty good. That extra DoT tick is probably most important for FR, because FR actually reaches the last DoT tick. 1 extra DoT tick on MF or WoF won't break the bank, especially considering most rotations that I've seen don't let MF or WoF expire anyway (they end up being refreshed before the last tick actually ticks).

This is very true.

What one should remember is that the only skill that is actually boosted, DPS wise, by the 3-set bonus is FR. Why? Neither MF nor WoF stack (well... WoF tiers up but it doesn't stack with itself) while the afterburn of FR do stack (and you get 10% extra afterburn damage for each active effect). The main benefit on WoF is that you don't have to refresh it as often, e.g. using Scathing Mockery every 20 seconds will not only refresh WoF on three targets, it will make them tier up as well.

Very good info all around, thanks guys! I did notice HoT's critting on ticks yesterday. Keeping in mind that I'll probably use the Mender's Bauble (I'll get the Sage one at some point for use with lightning) I'll probably go for the Great River bracelets to make up some crit that's sort of lacking on the LG rep jewels I'll be using. I have a truckload of medallions but only enough seals to get 1-ish sets, so I'll probably get the Draigoch stuff right at 75, then 5 pieces of healing, followed by 4 pieces of fire ToO to phase out the Draigoch set for DPS. Sounds like a plan!

(I'd like to do 3 Fire ToO/3 fire moors but I'm not crazy about the comms grind...)

If you're going hybrid with the moors fire set, it's better to do 4 orthanc/2 moors and hotswap the third moors piece in every 45s for SW. That way you get the extra 4 piece orthanc bonus for the rest of your rotation.

As for healing, finesse is useless. The damage you'll do is negligible and if you're building for finesse, you're losing other stats. As long as you're over 7k morale unbuffed, you should be fine. I used to stack over 8k but I've been dropping that to pick up more crit rating, and I think it's been working a lot better.

While healing and fire don't have any crit mult. like lightning does, the fact that every tick of every HoT and DoT can crit (supposedly :P) means that sheer number of pulses will benefit from a higher crit rating. I use the Limlight Sage's 3 piece all the time since I feel that +5% crit chance > -15% induction just because of the number of HoT pulses on everyone.

Originally Posted by Nokor

That interesting, I had no idea their system was set up that complicated.

Do you think you can find that sheet?

I´ll do my best, when I find it, I´ll let you know

Originally Posted by Chris91

I´ll do my best, when I find it, I´ll let you know

I'm interested too, as I may use it as part of my RK model.

This is not the Excel sheet I remebered, but still a good summary

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.p...light=critical

Have a nice read:-P

So I thought I'd save a few people the trouble of reading the entire thread through. Though I highly reccomend it if you are in serious doubt on relics or jewellery.


[Fore fire spec. only (M=0,5, N=1) at 15% crit. (C), 5% dev. (V) and 100% offence (F)]

You can roughly compare your result but not at high differences. I would estimate +/- 5% offence value and +/- 2% crit. value. If you compare lower the effect on dmg will be higher than my results, if you compare higher the effect on dmg. will be lower than my results.

CRIT.

R=(k*M)/x

x=1+C*M+V*N
=1+0,15*0,5+0,05*1=1,125

We want to increase crit by 1% (0,01) to find your effective damage as a result (R)
<=>
R=(0,01*0,5)/1,125=0,00444

DEV.
Here I assume every 1% crit. adds 1/3% dev. chance (it is in fact less, but close enough)
additional dev. (v) = 1/3%
R=(v*N)/x=(1/3*2)/1.125=0,002963

Total crit. effect
DEV. + Crit. = 0,0074
<=>
1% crit. = 0,74% dmg.

---

Offence
Here I want to increase dmg. by 1% (f) as well in order to make a comparison afterwards (ie. the substitution rate of offence vs. crit.)

R=f/(1+F)
=0.01/(1+1)=0,005
<=>
1% offence = 0,05% dmg.

---

The Substitution rate

1% crit. =1,48% offence
or
1% offence = 0,68% crit.
---

Lightning Knobs (READ!)
If you want to compare to your lightning RK (assuming you've spent all your LI point in the crit. multiplier), then you should add 0,55 to you M value (crit. magnitude) and the same to your N value (Dev. magnitude). Because you have 30% critical magnitude from your LI and 25% from traits. If you've chosen the +7,5% dev. magnitude relics then it's a further 0,075 per relic for a total of 0,15 to your N value.

Notes
As previously mentioned, quite a lot of the fire skills are seemingly bugged so that crit. and dev. chances are not activated. So in order to calculate the exact Substitution Rate you would need to use CA to calculate the amount of damage that originates from those "bugged sources" and then decrease the crit. chance appropriately.

Originally Posted by Nokor

Good stuff

Nice post, +rep
And don't forget that Fate increases your M and N values, too.

Originally Posted by Chris91

But we have to take into consideration that a critical hit automaticly uses the max damage of a skill. Meaning a skill with a tooltip range of 500-600 will crit with 600x1,5 (=900).

HUmm that´s not true. On heals, im often checking different numbers on crits on the same person (whos not receiving more buffs). Same about DPS skills, you get different numbers on the same mob with same buffs/debuffs. So it´s 1.5 times a number between the damage/healing numbers of the skill.

[I added a note's section]

Bradegor you should read the whole of Chris' comment, as he says "which they don't". He is merely making an assumption on the basis of Turbine's own critical multiplier description.

Originally Posted by Bradegor

HUmm that´s not true. On heals, im often checking different numbers on crits on the same person (whos not receiving more buffs). Same about DPS skills, you get different numbers on the same mob with same buffs/debuffs. So it´s 1.5 times a number between the damage/healing numbers of the skill.

I checked it once with CA on the Galtrev Training Dummys and it worked. I always got the same number for my crits/devs (no Harsh Debate traited)

Though it could be that either heals or over time effects (hots/dots) don´t work correctly. I haven´t checked that yet

DPS crits with same buffs should be the same. Heals do not work like this, however, go cast 100 MVs on yourself with no buffs (don't trait MV either, or the bonus mastery will skew your results.)