Goblin Squad Member
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Critical Hits: Got to sometimes feel like, oh my god, life’s so good.
What happens when I crit?
Nothing. By default, critical hits have no inherent effect; you must slot feats with "on critical" effects in order to gain any benefit whatsoever from successful crits.
OK, what are these "on critical" feats?
There are only 3 types:
1) The longbow attack "Impact Critical Shot" has a knockdown and knockback effect on crit.
2) The wizard role feature "Evoker" applies a bunch of effects on crit: a DOT, a will defense debuff, a base attack debuff, a perception debuff, and a slow.
3) The Critical Reactive feats offer a variety of on-crit effects and are the primary method for most players to exploit crits.
* Deafening Critical: debuffs base attack and perception
* Exhausting Critical: reduces max stamina and stamina regen
* Sickening Critical: applies a stackable DOT and debuffs Reflex
* Staggering Critical: applies a slow
* Stunning Critical: percentage chance for a 2 second stun.
If you're not slotting any of those feats then your criticals do exactly nothing.
Should I even bother?
Probably, but not necessarily. If you're built as a pure caster, the critical reactives are the only reactive feats you have access to; you may as well choose 2 and slot them. If you're a fighter or rogue, you have access to role-specific reactives you may like better, but even so, if you choose not to slot any critical reactives then every crit you inflict is an opportunity missed. You'll have to decide for yourself if the benefit of doubling up on role reactives justifies the lost potential of all your crits.
Note that the value of "improved critical" (and to a lesser extent "precise") on the attacks you choose to slot is negated if your crits don't do anything, so keep your attack repertoire in mind as you think about this.
OK then, I want to crit hard and often! How do I crit more?
The full math is boring and nerdy; here's the short version.
In order to have any chance to crit your attack roll must equal or exceed the target's defense; partial hits can never crit. So you want to improve your base attack bonus and your category attack bonus, you want to train into and use T2 or T3 weapons and attacks, and you want to use attacks with the Precise modifier.
Some attacks have the Improved Critical modifier. This will obviously improve your chance of rolling a crit, but ONLY if you successfully landed a full hit; when given a choice, you should generally prefer Precise over Improved Crit.
You'll also crit more often versus opponents with weak defenses versus your offense type (reflex, will, or fortitude; all weapon attacks are reflex), and opponents with lower tier armor. In addition, there's a crit chance reduction based on armor weight class: you'll crit more often versus opponents in robes than those in plate.
Crit chance is normalized for attack speed, so you have a better chance to get a crit with one slow attack than one fast attack.
I'm a big nerd.
That's not a question, but fine, here's the math.
Whenever you make an attack, you add a random result from 1-200 (curved based on tier) to your attack bonuses (from Base Attack, specific Attack, and effects) and compare against the target's Defense (which is a sum of Base Defense from armor, specific defense, and effects).If the result is less than the target's defense, the margin of failure is converted into reduced damage.
If the result is equal to or greater than the target's defense, we then check for a crit:
* Find the margin of success (e.g., you needed to hit 80 and got 90, so your MoS is 10).
* Add that to improved critical (if your feat has Improved Critical +20, you're now up to 30).
* Subtract the target's crit resistance (only from armor right now; 4 for light, 16 for medium, and 32 for heavy; so if the target's in medium, that 30 crit chance goes back down to 14).We then take the square root of that number and multiply by the attack speed to get the crit percentage chance. 14 has a root of 3.74, so if you had that on a 2.3 speed attack your final crit chance would be approximately 8.6%.
I'm apparently not that big a nerd.
Still not a question. OK, here's a real world example.
An attacker using a T1 Longbow and Overdraw versus an opponent in Pot Plate+2 with Unbreakable 4.
First, let's figure out the total attack value:
* he's got a T1 weapon so we'll take the low roll from 3d200. Let's say we got the median T1 roll of 42.
* he's trained up Base Attack and Ranged Attack to a total of +30.
* Overdraw has Precise +10.
His total attack value is 82. This is versus Reflex as with all physical attacks.
Now the defense value:
* all T1 armor has a base defense of 50.
* he gets an extra 3 points of reflex from his armor feat matching 3 keywords on his armor.
* he has Reflex Bonus 2 trained, for +8 more.
* he has Lightning Reflexes 2 slotted, for a final +4.
His total defense value is 65.
82 >= 65, so the attack will do full damage and we have a chance to crit. Hurray! Now we do the crit roll.
* Margin of Success is 82-65 = 17
* Overdraw has Improved Crit 30
* Heavy armor has crit resistance of 32
* Net margin is 17 + 30 - 32 = 15 points.
* Square root of 15 is 3.87.
* Attack speed of Overdraw is 3.5
So your final chance to crit this attack is 13.55%.
Dude, you must be like the smartest orc ever.
You really don't get this "question" thing, do you.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Great write-up. I'm not surprised, Guurzak, as you're probably the best PvPer from Golgotha that I've fought so far.
One thing I'd add is that landing a crit on someone becomes vastly easier if you can debuff the defense value that you're hitting. Bows and spears have easy ways to knock someone's Reflex defense down quite a bit, for example. Follow up with an attack that targets Reflex and you're almost sure to land a crit effect from your reactives.
