I don't know where this idea of 'fluff' damage came from. It's irrelevant. It's mostly wrong with the exception of single dot application attacks. AOE damage puts pressure on the whole team, which then allows you to rotate primary targets nearly at will. Smash like lethality is so effective because its single target output is nearly unrivaled and the collateral damage is going to force healers to stop playing hotdot/aoetop-off. A good team will never lose a healer to carnage/mm because the tank will switch guard and the healers will switch focus. You will not kill a healer through guard being propped up by another healer. Furthermore you are only doing single target so you can't switch off to a riper target after the tank has guarded your focus target. Unless you are the god team of CC, which doesn't exist, 4 single targets will get you no kills in a ranked game. It's a sad truth, but if you can get away with running carnage and MM you would've won no matter what you played because your team is just better. I'm fairly sure the notion of padded dmg/fluff dmg is in large part a mechanism of defense for fragile egos. Somebody gets outdmgd and instead of analyzing their own play they attribute the extra damage to a flaw in the outdmgers playstyle. They did more damage so it must be wrong. It's all fluff. Makes sense, right? Not really. In most cases they outdamaged you because they were more relevant to the team. How many times do you accuse healers of overhealing? That doesn't mean there aren't instances of damage padding/fluff, but for the majority of cases I've seen the good player 'fluff' wins far more games than the single target apologist's 'focused' damage.

Without the 30% surge for railshot you don't hit that hard. Needless to say we won that game because I was able to put so much pressure on multiple healers. Honestly, I really like the way they handled deception/infiltration buffing and a similar reset on explosive fuel would go a long way. The burst is there; it's just tied to a 2 min CD. Energy rebounders feels necessary but then you run the risk of overbuffing the tank spec and losing any reason whatsoever to go advanced proto.

Send Zatori or Terethyn a tell when you transfer over. Assuming transfers are smooth and without bugs we'll be doing ranked that Tuesday night.

So after about 50 more parses that I am not going to be sharing I found 164 crit rating to parse the highest burst (2503) and the highest average sustained over a thirty minute period (2402). It seems everyone in this thread was wrong including me. I got the optimization I wanted for warzones, thanks all.

Guess what is even less qualifying. Nothing. Anyway, done with this thread. By all means though continue your enlightened discussion in my absence.

This is simply more misinformation. The crit half-life (point at which 1 crit gives half as much as its initial value) is at exactly 1012. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=615111It's a pretty linear progression on DR until that point. My in game experience tells me power is best. My parses tell me power is best. All evidence to the contrary thus far has been nitpicking or hearsay. I don't even know why I'm arguing with people who make up facts like crit has heavy DR after 300. Where do you get this stuff?

Crit parses for me are inferior to power both for burst and sustained. If anyone else wants to try parsing short/long encounters that would be nice. Here's the original post. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=648682

You only need one point in the followthrough reset skill and you can lose the two points in cull crit chance to pick up the 9% cunning. Build plays better that way.

I can't tell if you are just outright lying (really the results could have been manipulated? come on, you have to be a better human being then that)now or you are just ignorant. It was pvp gear on the Mk-5 level 55 pvp dummy. That's it. And now we can fast forward to the part where I ignore you and you attempt to further twist my words in a futile attempt to disguise the fact that you will never be able to refute my claim much less post a parse. Gosh, winning a forum argument is fun!

Uh, my results are better. Qualitatively and quantitatively better. They are more rigorous. They are more transparent and they have links to the actual logs. Moreover they are demonstrably reproducible. I don't even know how you parse 2k damage in min/maxed power gear. Beyond that I could inundate you with screenshots of one mil damage/one mil protection games or any manner of carried normal warzone with any class that shows I know what I'm doing. But that really doesn't have a place in this argument and I'd prefer you keep your attention focused on the numbers.

I never claimed to be neutral. I obviously had a position on the issue that I thought was well informed by math. I parsed and was prepared to change my view based on the resulting data. The data was in line with my expectations so I didn't change my view. I'm still not neutral. Open minded is not the same as neutral. Use words correctly. Why is that random parse you linked random? It has no link to parsed data or a data log. It under performs on both gear sets. Eagerly awaiting your parses.

This is the gist of what you told me when I mentioned stacking full power to be superior. In what sense this could be considered neutral or open minded I don't know. So I've now parsed it. Can you show me a link to a parse that performs at the same level? Because a random parse of a guy hitting 2k dps with full power and 2.2k dps with extra crit is hardly convincing stuff. I've clearly demonstrated neither of those numbers is acceptable for either stat allotment. Just let the snare thing go, you had a crazy idea and it stayed crazy.

Main body.

Actually this is not a correct analysis based on anything I posted. You can see the substantial dps spike increase on the power parses (characterized by large 6 second humps) where I popped force potency or reset the CD on force potency. The DPS for power during that phase is undeniably higher than its counterpart crit. This is what leads to my confusion with the desire for crit. If power is bursting higher (a good portion of that is on demand burst) and sustaining higher why would you want crit? Edit: Looking forward to those parses.

Come on, you can't possibly have kept a straight face when you typed this nonsense unless you have some brilliant methodology for tying snares into crit. I would look forward to that, otherwise I can't say I'm surprised that the parses bore out my expectation. It would've been nice to be wrong because it would mean more optimization for me. Maybe you should be a little less hostile and a little more open minded.

Parses posted, if you want to see specific logs I'll go ahead and link the ones you want to see. The poster you linked before though was clearly under performing based on the parses I did.

So I was called a troll today for claiming that having zero crit was the ideal for an infiltration shadow and essentially told to put my money where my mouth was and parse it to prove it. This despite an inability of the power detractors to substantiate their magical 25% crit claims. So here it is, almost full min/maxed conqueror (full power) versus almost full min/maxed conqueror (sprinkle crit). Stats are as follows: Strength: 155 Endurance: 2619 Willpower: 2207 Expertise: 2018 Crit: 17.76% 0 Crit : 24.76% (380) Power: 1444 Power: 1064 Surge: 432 (72.16%) Accuracy: 0 (94.00%) Alacrity: 192 (2.71%) I did one shorter parse and two three minute parses for each itemization. Specs were the same. Links to the parse breakdown for crit. This one had 24.76% crit or 380 crit rating which is exactly 380 less power than the power build. It was directly one for one. Parse 1- http://www.fryingtime.com/?filename=crit3min1.txt DPS- 2211 Parse 2- http://www.fryingtime.com/?filename=combatlogcrit23min.txt DPS- 2238 Parse 3- http://www.fryingtime.com/?filename=shortcritparse.txt DPS- 2401 Now add 380 power and drop 380 crit for the following. Parse 1- http://www.fryingtime.com/?filename=longparsepower.txt DPS- 2313 Parse 2- http://www.fryingtime.com/?filename=longparsepower2.txt DPS- 2275 Parse 3- http://www.fryingtime.com/?filename=shortpowerparse.txt DPS- 2374 The data is clearly favoring power in sustained encounters by anywhere from 50-100 dps. It has significantly higher spikes than the crit parses reaching near 10k dps at certain points. Further crit burst tests revealed the strong dps on the short parse to be a bit of an anomaly, but I figured I'd post the highest one and the lowest power one. They are very comparable on the short burst phase parse though. Sustain and episodic spikes are where power clearly takes it away. This leads me to the conclusion that running any amount of crit is inferior to extra power in pvp.

Sent some PMs out.

Uh that isn't useful data. He doesn't even have the parses posted so I can't tell what he's doing. I'll update this thread later today with more definitive info. Swapping all power augs for all crit augs should tell me definitively either way. I'll post the logs so you can look over APM, rotation, etc...

Link please?

Unfortunately for you, just shouting loudly at someone that they are wrong without backing up your claims will not stop me from posting. I'll ask again, do you have anything to support your claim that any amount of crit beats power? Or why 25%? This is not trolling, I'm asking for reasons beyond vague shadows need crit rubbish. And FP is auto crit for the purposes of any damage calculation because you will use all three charges every time whether or not they come when you want them to.

Power is the definition of spiking. Crit gives you both a lower average and lower spikes. How is this hard to comprehend?

That spreadsheet was for the BALANCE sage spec which does not have auto crits beyond potency. Guess what class does have auto crits all the time from force potency. Shadow!

How did you wind up at 25%? Why is that -the- number. There's been lots of math and theorycrafting that has determined crit to be largely useless for any class. If you know something I don't, please share. Otherwise saying 25% crit feels good to me therefore it is the best is not even remotely empirical.

It's not an opinion when the math supports it. Look at any of the PvE parses and builds. Here's a decent thread on the topic http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=616760. Conclusion: power wins in sustained damage and power wins in burst damage.