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Do we still need crit?
ggunch
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users Posts: 30
Hello everyone I am returning to the game after almost a year away and I have a question about CW's. I am getting close to level 60 and started looking at the T1, and T2 gear and noticed none of it has crit on it. So my question is with Eye of the Storm is crit a stat that we stack anymore or do we replace it with something else now?
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Overpowered 60 CW ~ Thaumaturge 14.5k
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~ GF Buffs were great we are much better, please fix the bugs now... Thank you!
and also the featured satirical comedic adventure "A Call for Heroes".
I have around 3700 crit from my shadow weaver and my ioun stone (capped on armor pen so all I can really get is crit as a third stat). Not getting crit is kind of silly because what else are you gonna get? Regeneration and deflection are very bad stats for a CM so...
Power. . . .
There are TWO places additional crit is actually very important.
One... a Renegade Spec Spellstorm with Phantasmal Destruction and Nightmare Wizardry. Phantasmal Destruction relies on Combat Advantage, but critting even outside of Eye of the Storm will increase your damage to an enormous Degree IF you specced those specific feats.
Two... Master of Flame Paragon path. Critical Conflagration and a LOT of the Master of Flame powers benefit more from a good 3000+ Crit score. As an Example, with a high gear score, you can crit upwards of 13k with Fanning the Flame. Which will then tick for the next 6 seconds going down in damage each time (ex.. 13k first hit, 12k second tick, 11k third tick etc).
Both of those two specific choices in Wizard will dictate a higher crit score.
Anything over 1500, for any CW is a waste. You aim for 2000+ arm pen, take what crit you get off of gear, and then enchant for power.
I've always run about 2000 + even as spellstorm.
But I'd agree Power is important. Even with a 2500 crit score I'm still running 7500 power on top of that. But even then, 300 power only gives me about 2% more damage. Thats with Ioun Stone in.
On the current MoF build I'm running I'm running a 2500 Crit, which gives me a 36% Crit rate, but when I put on my Black Ice gear I'm looking at a 3000+ Crit score I'm looking at almost a 39% crit rate its like 38.7 or so. Which has been surprisingly better than I thought in the Kessel Skirmishes.
Admittedly with a Wood Elf I get bonus Crit rate not affected by Diminishing returns.
But that's as an MoF... where you do not have Eye of the Storm to guarantee you crits. Spellstorms if they're not running the Renegade path they can easily go without bonus crit score as its not as needed for them.
I'm also running 6k~ power and 3600 recovery along with 700 something combat advantage bonus and 2100 armor pen. It's just that I refuse to get vizier gear because I find it really awful and not worth it over shadow weaver. I'm also renegade spec.
Could I dissuade you of that? High Vizier's set effect is a 10% DR debuff per stack on all mobs hit by the control power - it's enormous. That, and its stats are better than Shadow Weaver's - the Regeneration is awesome, as it makes it so that you pretty much don't have to seek out other sources of Regeneration.
Yeah that's kind of what I'm running. Well higher power, but the rest of its right in line. I'm at 2100 armor pen too. Admittedly I'm running 900 Combat Advantage bonus as I also run Nightmare Wizardry from Renegade in my build even though its mostly a Thaum build, and same recovery you are.
I assume you're doing a Renegade build. I remember giving a Spellstorm Renegade Hybrid a whirl on Preview to see how it shook out and I was like... wow... those seriously powered up. My Sudden Storm was critting for like 30k which was higher than my Shards. And nightmare wizardry was going off like crazy. The only reason I swapped over to MoF was because the mobs in IWD had so much health it was crazy. So I figured a 60k DoT was a little better than a 30k burst given the enormous health of the Mobs in the 3-5 and 6-10 man HEs, even though that 30k Burst was a lot faster when clearing 2-3 man HEs, it would just cut through them like butter at that gear score.
And I don't regret that one bit. This MoF has been spectacular in IWD.
Course I suppose we should mind the fact the both of us are playing in some pretty ungodly gear scores so the average joe CW isn't going to be near that capable with either one of the two.... and won't be able to come close to that.
I should probably have looked into the Shadow Gear once I picked up the MoF, I had the Champion and the HV. But now with the Black Ice Gear I can achieve the same levels, so I don't need the Shadow on top of it.
I suppose the damage you are talking about is with group buffs and the likes because that's a lot higher than what I get solo. That or you are running a perfect vorpal (I run greater plaguefire). I'm still "just" at 15k GS.
As for Orodalf, just no. Regen is a garbage stat that I don't want to get on my gear. 10% damage increase from high vizier? I prefer my 18% crit severity to everyone + 600ish lifesteal along with actually useful stats. The only good thing about high vizier is the amount of power it gives. Everything else about it suck.
Regen is absolutely not a garbage stat. Regeneration to soft cap -> huge healing ticks. It's not a 10% damage increase, it's 30% (three stacks) for everyone targeting the mobs in question. Everyone uses it for a reason.
they use it because they don't know better.
And it is NOT a 30% damage increase.
Actually it is. Each encounter spell reduces an enemies damage mitigation by 10%, and it caps at 30%. That means 30% more damage from all sources. Even better, some spells, like steal time, hit multiple times and each hit "counts" as a separate encounter spell. That means it is an instant 30% damage buff both to the spell itself, every subsequent spell and to your entire team when attacking those enemies.
18% more crit severity is peanuts compared to that.
High Vizier is not used just because people don't know any better. It's used because people have parsed runs, crunched the numbers and figured out that High Vizier blows the other CW sets out of the water.
CRAZY MIKE - 14.6k PvE CW
Backbone - 16.7k PvP HR
[SIGPIC]http://i59.tinypic.com/s3hts7.png[/SIGPIC]
Naw I am starting to see why MoFs wear that.
I just used the full set of Corrupted Black Ice Gear yesterday, I finally just splurged and used AD to speed up the process, With that and other gear I'm at a almost a good 40% crit rate with a Wood Elf. I'm critting so much I feel like a Spellstorm, and I kept my 7500 power too.
This stuff works surprisingly well. I can easily see why someone would use Shadow Weaver now especially if you use Vorpal.
I just wish I didn't look like some kind of evil porcupine overlord while wearing it.
Its not that I dont like the look of BI gear, its that every class looks darn similiar really. So nothing unique, just created skin mods for every class from what set give or take it looks like.
Problem with BI gear, is the constant need to go back to IWD to get more BI. What happens if new mods open up, and BI still a good option but no one wants to run back there every other day !
Even as a MoF, you'll be doing a lot more for your group with the HV set than anything else. But if you're just interested in YOUR DPS and topping the Paingiver chart, then that's fine.
But you should still feel bad.
Where did you get that Idea?
Did you REALLY think the other classes are any help.... or ever have been in clearing mass mobs?
Only GWFs are, and they are limited in what they can do.
I learned a long time ago. When it comes to Mass Mobs... you're on your own.
Plus, it's really easy to get to 2000 crit rating with just jewelery, an Ioun, and the bottom tier crit boons. Honestly you could probably put even more into crit without much trouble, but past a certain point you want more power. That point is somewhere between 2k-3k crit rating, but keep in mind past around 1800 or 2000 diminishing returns kick in hard.
So basically you'll lose out on a disproportionate amount of power by going higher than 2k crit rating as far as an actual percentage increase. Just food for thought.
EDIT:
Also forgot to mention that the bonus from Shadow Weaver is subject to diminishing returns, whereas the HV set is not. HV set does not stack with another HV set, but given target caps are usually set at 5 it's probably still ideal unless you have three CW at which point one set of SW might be slightly more favorable. (Except, again, diminishing returns mean's it's much less effective as all CW will be near their cap on lifesteal if they are competent. The actual damage bonus from increased critical damage is also deceptively small.)
BlackberryCheesecake CW
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
CheeseCake House
It's not a CD, it's diminishing returns. Lifesteal diminishes EXTREMELY hard after about 10%. Stacking additional lifesteal isn't doing anything. You're not going to notice much of a difference, even with the stacking buff from Shadow Weaver.
And the Critical Severity isn't much of a damage boost. Even at the max of 18%, you're looking at about a 3-5% damage increase, versus a 30% damage increase for the group.
Last time I checked, 30%>3%
The only thing I lost with the Corrupted was Recovery and it doesn't seem to be making any actual difference. I've gained a good 5% Crit, another 200 ArP which put me at the full 24%, and maintained my current power rating. Shockingly my Defense is now at 1700, and lifesteal is at 1200.
I also have never seen this 30% materialize with HV outside of boss battles.
In Mass Mobs I'm always doing all the damage anyway because no one else can assist much (outside of GWFs). As near as I can figure it the only way you will see that is if you're running a full mage group.
While its true I have seen that most mages have no clue how to even use HV so they don't use the correct encounter powers with it, the flipped side is, I also don't see its 30% materializing the way some claim in group damage either.
When researching T2 sets, I (and presumably others) found more than one instance of a mention of an ICD mechanic which limits the SW debuff to a MAX (best-case scenario) uptime of 50%. This result was reportedly demonstrated through log parsing, rather than guess work. I personally have not done any testing so I can't speak on the subject directly, but if you'd like links for reference I can dig around. Let me know!
Some of these guides/posts/discussions are likely quite old (it has been discussed many times spanning last year to present), but to the best of my knowledge the way it works hasn't changed. It is commonly understood that there's currently no reason to think that the SW debuff can be more helpful (survivability/party DPS/speed of clear) -- perhaps even without an ICD -- in PvE over that of HV.
Having said all that, I'm still wearing a 2/2 T1 combo as I have yet to acquire any T2 set. I am running a renegade build and was at ~40% crit (plus EoTS) before my latest overhaul. After seeing the figures for diminishing returns on crit, I began to tweak my build for efficiency as dictated by my available AD. Since moving the bulk of my excess crit points into power and recovery while stacking for ArP (to the ~24% softcap mark), I realize that "maybe not the best use of points" was a significant understatement. I'm now running just under 1800 crit. I haven't noticed any significant reduction in the quantity of critical hits, likely due to a combination of boosting stats that more directly influence DPS in my build (Pow>Rec>Arp) as well as EoTS and the renegade feats (CA bonuses from Nightmare Wizardry et al) doing their respective jobs. My crits aren't just (seemingly) as frequent, but ALL hits, including critical hits, are much larger.
It is indeed the case. Shadow Weaver has an unstated internal cooldown on it's effect. I don't recall the exact numbers, I think it's in the ballpark of 30 seconds up and 30 seconds down, but it might have been one minute.
You can easily see this Internal Cooldown when beating on target dummies for a minute or two straight.
In all fairness, I did not know that about the set until it was pointed out to me on a thread very much like this one. HV is, in fact, the only CW set worth wearing in PvE by a huge margin until there's enough overlap to debuff all enemies.
(Also, remember that HV builds an instant three stacks of debuffs on every target hit by Steal Time and Oppressive Force. If you'll recall, Oppressive Force has no target cap and benefits from another debuff located in the Thaum tree. This is why you see mages spam OF on groups and out damage the rest of the team by double herding up half a map. You will not achieve that wearing SW.)
Wear HV along with crit aux items and boons. Easy peasy for a MoF, probably just as nice for Thaum.