Choranth's questions - thread 1 - critical chance and severity

choranth

Welcome everyone.
Dazed by the really different opinions on builds out there, I'm trying to get a grasp of how the various feats and skills of a GWF work togheter, to engineer my DPS PVE build myself.

My first question is about the 4th column of heroic feats. You get there with 15 points already spent and the first two options, a 3% critical chance increase and a +15% critical severity are both really intriguing and visibly sinergistic.
Unless you're a human, you need to make a choice. I've seen people go 3/2/0, I've seen people go 2/3/0 and I've seen people go 3/0/0, spending their points in another column. (I'm not going to discuss the option of putting points in the third option).

I was wondering, is there a better thing to do? Is it always better to raise one or another? Do I need to reach some sort of equilibrium between the two? What moves this equilibrium point?

So I tought: "I'd like to see the math behind damage calculation", but while Pokemon and Diablo II formulaic knowledge is easily trackable on the Internet, I've found nothing on this game yet.
Maybe it's not ok to discuss those things on the forums and I never noticed. Feel free to tell me and I will cancel this thread myself.



So this is how I suppose damage gets calculated in this game.
There's a random roll to determine the base damage of the weapon, giving a result between the values statted on the weapon's description. Then various variables including Power, feats, boons and powers get factored in with some unknown formula, giving out the Pre-critical Damage.
A second random number is rolled and it's compared with a percentile Critical Chance value, that's influenced by Critical Chance (the stat that gets directly pumped by enchantments) according to some formula.

I have no idea if the 1/2/3% boost Weapon Master gives is a percentage of the existing Critical Chance or if it's a flat +3%: Suppose I have a 10% crit chance before the feat. Do I get 0.10+(0.10*0.03)=10.3% CritChance or do I get 0.10+0.03=13% Crit Chance?

Then if the hit is a critical, the Pre-critical Damage gets multiplied by Critical Severity to get Total Damage (some damage like Come and Get It appears to be dealt as a separate instance of damage, to stay true to the "fixed amount of extra damage" tooltip)
Again, how is this calculated?

I hear that the Vorpal Enchantment works on a critical severity percentage, that is If my CP is 80% (yeah I'm an half-orc) and Vorpal gives me let's say +100% (I don't even know if this exists, it'ss just a convenient number) I'll get 0.8+(0.8*1) and not 180%
Is it the same thing for Devastating Critical? Or does it affect the basic critical severity, making it a 95% that's later multiplied by Vorpal?

Of course 80%*115% is way lower than 95%*100%, thus in the first case losing one point of Devastating Critical hurts less.



I'm interested in knowing the math behind these two values (and confirmation on Vorpal working the way I described.
To answer this question you need to have done your math. Having tested your GWF in a specific way to discover which formula holds true is ok. Linking a different thread where the math has been done is ok. Bringing uncomfutable evidence of things going one way or another is ok. Opinions and impressions are NOT OK. Please don't bother answering if unsure.)

stoxforum1

So quickly, weapon master adds the % / stack. In your example you would get the 13%. I would say most GWFs have over 30% normally, so with 5 stacks of weapon master this would be 37.5%.

Crit severity (non vorpal): Your normal severity is 100, your critical severity is 75, then you get bonus from feats. So I'll run the numbers for 2/3 and 3/3 as best I can here, 2/3 in that feat will give you 185/175 or a 5.71% increase on critical hits, 3/3 will give you 190/175 or 8.57% increase on critical hits. My suggestion is while deep gash is bugged and this is the majority of a GWF's damage, that you go with 3/3.

Crit severity (perfect vorpal): Your normal severity is 100, your critical severity is 75, 50 from perfect vorpal, then you get bonus from feats. So I'll run the numbers for 2/3 and 3/3 as best I can here, 2/3 in that feat will give you 235/225 or a 4.44% increase on critical hits, 3/3 will give you 240/225 or 6.67% increase on critical hits. My suggestion is while deep gash is bugged and this is the majority of a GWF's damage, that you go with 3/3.

rapo818

choranth wrote: »

I have no idea if the 1/2/3% boost Weapon Master gives is a percentage of the existing Critical Chance or if it's a flat +3%: Suppose I have a 10% crit chance before the feat. Do I get 0.10+(0.10*0.03)=10.3% CritChance or do I get 0.10+0.03=13% Crit Chance?

...

I hear that the Vorpal Enchantment works on a critical severity percentage, that is If my CP is 80% (yeah I'm an half-orc) and Vorpal gives me let's say +100% (I don't even know if this exists, it'ss just a convenient number) I'll get 0.8+(0.8*1) and not 180%
Is it the same thing for Devastating Critical? Or does it affect the basic critical severity, making it a 95% that's later multiplied by Vorpal?
[/COLOR]

Weapon Master gives you flat +3%

Vorpal critical severity and Devastating Critical are additive, which mean you will reach, in your case, (75+5+50+15) = 145% critical severity with a perfect vorpal and Devastating Critical 3/3

So basically, if you've a low crit%, 1% crit is better than 5% critical severity, so going 3/3 Weapon Master and 2/3 Devastating Critical is the best option.
If you've a high crit chance, 2/3 Weapon Master 3/3 devastating Critical is better.

Use this formula :
average dmg = (dmg*critchance*critseverity +dmg*(100-critchance))/100

But don't forget deep gash, which increase your crit weighting

choranth

@stoxforum. I think you confused the Weapon Mastery feat with the Weapon Master class feature.
Since you say all bonus are flat percentages on base damage, it doesn't really matter how much in percentage the damage from Devastating Critical is. What counts is that +5% flat percentage over the damage my weapon does on a non-critical.

So, is it better to add a 5% damage on a 1% less critical or is it better to crit for 5% less but crit 1% more often? I should be able to find Rapo818's equation solution and find out which is the minimal crit chance that makes increasing critical severity more convenient.

@rapo818 my crit chance stat is over the soft cap so I'm actually switching my plans from ancient rings +power/+crit/+recovery to +power/+ArmorPen/+Lifesteal ones. And maybe I'll change my boons as well with the next respec.

charononus

There are many ways to build up crit chance, gear, boons, stats, etc. The only ways to build crit severity are feats, dancing blade active bonus, vorpal, and half orc. From that standpoint I'd say to go crit severity everytime as you can make up the crit chance elsewhere.

hulksmashtrolol

stox calculations are correct and you should always go crit severity.