The great Debate.

[Scotfo]

TL;DR: Been kicking this around in my head for a few days and had to spew forth my 2 cents of theory crafting, I wouldn't blame you for smiling, nodding, telling me I'm a good boy and completely ignoring me.

 

I wouldn't do this at all. You address some very real factors and have some great points here. The only thing I would add to your over-all analysis is factoring in how valuable Crit is. Seeing as how the value of Surge is directly related to how often you Crit, it seems that the value of either stat is intermingled with each other. In other words: If there is sufficient reason to be stacking crit then the value of stacking Surge goes up as well.

 

On one hand we have power which provides a flat damage increase to all our attacks. On the other we have Surge which relies on your Crit chance and all the RNG goodness that comes along with it. Then we also have the few ammo regeneration talents which are proc'd off of crits; namely: "Cell Charger" for Gunnery and "Adrenaline Fueled" in Assault. All of these factor into the actually value of these stats (as in: if these talents make stacking Crit a priority, then the value of Surge goes up).

 

If I had to wager an educated guess I would say that since Power directly increases all damage, including the base damage amplified by Surge; and because the two Crit based talents don't appear (key word here being "appear", as in "not proven") to provide a significant source of ammo regeneration, that stacking crit will be less of a priority over stacking power. I would place my bet on power coming out ahead on fights that require sustained DPS. This is all speculation of course.

Edited January 8, 2012 by Scotfo
Typos and Grammar!

[ArchangelLBC]

Well see there I don't know, but then the point of my analysis is to make the ammo regenerations, and even the crit bonuses to demo round and full auto, a moot point by trying to find the tipping point when the added crit rating will statistically match or eclipse the damage added from power, all other things being equal.

 

Seeing as how the value of Surge is directly related to how often you Crit, it seems that the value of either stat is intermingled with each other. In other words: If there is sufficient reason to be stacking crit then the value of stacking Surge goes up as well.

 

 

I agree with this completely but then one of the biggest souces of crit rating are enhancements and for the most part alot of the enhancements I've seen have a version with crit and surge and a version with power and surge with the crit and power being the same basic amount, so stacking surge and crit isn't much of a problem. At 47 I have 33.24% crit rate and 75% critical multiplier so it's definitely possible to stack both, but again for the ease of a priori comparison I would be assuming both commandos have an equal amount of surge rating.

 

If I had to wager an educated guess I would say that since Power directly increases all damage, including the base damage amplified by Surge; and because the two Crit based talents don't appear (key word here being "appear", as in "not proven") to provide a significant source of ammo regeneration, that stacking crit will be less of a priority over stacking power. I would place my bet on power coming out ahead on fights that require sustained DPS. This is all speculation of course.

 

As long as we're speculating, I'll take that bet. Shall we wager 1 credit? If a winner can ever be determined the loser could simply create a character on the winner's server get one credit and mail it to the winner. =)

 

Anyway the ammo regeneration skill, along with the damage increase full auto and demo round get when they crit, are the big elephant in the room I've been ignoring because while my gut says crit is better for just those reasons, any theoretical analysis I do I want to try and favor power as much as possible specifically because of my bias.

 

But looking at those abilities they are pretty powerful. With cast times being what they are, a grav round or full auto which crits is essentially free, so those abilities do in fact change the landscape significantly assuming the crits by themselves are keeping you relatively close to the damage being done by a power stacked commando. Obviously the more you crit, the more significant they become. The only issue becomes, as you said, all the RNG goodness but obviously the more you crit you stack the less the RNG hates you.

 

From pure subjective experience its usually kind of feast or famine, but basically when you're getting a nice streak of crits hammer shot is completely removed from your rotation because there's just no need to spare your ammo waiting for regeneration. This does require a much more situational rotation though because when you don't crit obviously you need Hammer Shot back in there to keep regeneration up, but when you are criting you don't want to Hammer Shot because of the loss of damage. Basically though Cell Charger makes Demo Round cost 1 cell, and makes Grav Round and Full Auto essentially free, and since at 47 I can already get almost a 1/3rd crit rate statistically that will make full auto always free which given curtain of fire is a very good thing. Of course "statistically free" and actually free are two different things and if its possible (which I don't know yet) I'd prefer to get up to 50% crit rate at least just to be sure (this would also go a long way to making Grav round statistically free).

 

From a sustained DPS perspective then its still somewhat an open question, but there's no denying that with enough crit to make cell charger significant, you should do a lot more damage in longer fights if only from not having to worry about hammer shot, nevermind the essentially 30% added onto surge from deadly cannon for Full Auto and Demo Round when they crit.

 

 

At the end of the day though its a matter of how much extra damage x amount of power is giving. The idea about taking off all your equipment and looking at tooltips isn't a bad one. I put on an empty orange assault cannon the other day just to see if I preferred the look over my current one and I noticed that while full auto and charged bolt damaged dropped as expected, Gravity Round was still listing essentially the same damage (the cannon in question had a native addition to tech power). I didn't check HiB or Demo round though but I suspect HiB would change while Demo Round wouldn't (it comes up as yellow damage on my screen making me think its the same damage as Grav Round but I didn't actually check the tooltip so will confirm that next time I'm in game for funsies).

 

The other big thing to keep in mind is that we're never dealing with trooper one who has 250 bonus damage and trooper two who has 33% crit rate as if they had none of the other stat in question. I still have something like 215 bonus damage, and I'm pretty sure even a trooper with almost no crit can get up to 25% crit rate without really trying because AIM is so very very good (and with the exception of augments you never have to choose between AIM and Crit/Surge =D).

 

 

So really if there's any troopers out there who have stacked power/crit if you could give your level, your overall stats and your gear (or at least your +crit or +power) along with tooltip listings that could help us a lot and then no one would have to go out and either get a second set of gear to compare or start subbing in and out mods, either of which could get pretty expensive.

 

 

edit: Also I just wanna say that I love that quote. One of my favorite books from one of my favorite authors.

Edited January 9, 2012 by ArchangelLBC

[EthicsGradient]

You can find a lot of the theory craft on the sith warrior.com forums already fyi.

[ArchangelLBC]

Thanks for the heads up! Got a specific link? Haven't been there.

[StevenStarkill]

From a sustained DPS perspective then its still somewhat an open question, but there's no denying that with enough crit to make cell charger significant, you should do a lot more damage in longer fights if only from not having to worry about hammer shot, nevermind the essentially 30% added onto surge from deadly cannon for Full Auto and Demo Round when they crit.

 

I think you made the argument for crit over power in your final statement there. Full Auto and Demo crit really hard because of that talent, and you fire Full Auto pretty darn frequently. But they need to crit in the first place to make use of that talent. I guess it's still all speculation, but I'm definitely going for a crit build first at lvl 50. Crits are more fun anyway.

[EthicsGradient]

Thanks for the heads up! Got a specific link? Haven't been there.

 

These threads:

http://sithwarrior.com/forums/Thread-Arsenal-Mercenary-Gunnery-Commando-DPS-Compendium

http://sithwarrior.com/forums/Thread-SWTOR-formula-list

 

Particularly the discussion later in the first thread as more people got in-game.

[LordKivlov]

If anyone was curious, the reason only our helmet and gloves have surge on them is because it hits diminishing returns very very very very quickly. Having it on more than 2 items is wasting stat points that would get more benefit from power, accuracy, or if your crit isn't at soft cap yet, crit.

[Daeson]

So after playing around with gear an upgrades, I've noticed two things.

Using rak stims.

 

at passive 38% crit and 86% surge.

 

the 550 surge adreal, pushed me to 99.30 surge, with a max demo round crit for 4.6k, with the odd 5.2k every now and then.

 

Now, using the 550 power one, I get the same 4.6k demo crit, with the same 5.2k extream high, but also, FA crits above the 2.7k, toping out at 2.9.

[tylersavesworld]

So having 100-105 accuracy is very important right?

 

Basically 1100 aim, 80 accuracy is worse than 1000 aim, 105 accuracy, even though one totals 1180 and the other totals 1105?

[lnknprk]

So having 100-105 accuracy is very important right?

 

Basically 1100 aim, 80 accuracy is worse than 1000 aim, 105 accuracy, even though one totals 1180 and the other totals 1105?

 

That's the general idea. Stats don't matter if you can't hit the target. Damage stats are to accuracy as surge it to crit. You can't get the effect of surge if you don't crit. You can't get the effect of the damage if you miss. When calculating stat importance you want to elimate miss as a chance. It's kind of hard to calculate what's better with there being a chance to miss in the equation.

 

I think now that I have almost all Champion gear I think it's time to sit down and actually figure out where I need to make mod changes. This thread is helping a lot with that.

[Scotfo]

As long as we're speculating, I'll take that bet. Shall we wager 1 credit? If a winner can ever be determined the loser could simply create a character on the winner's server get one credit and mail it to the winner. =)

 

Sounds like a bet! Though I have to admit to something: I completely forgot that Grav Round would be included under the effects of Cell Charger. I had a bit of a brain fart and was only considering the instant-cast rounds for some reason. You are completely correct though, it is called Grav "Rounds" and should fall into that category. That would make the talent considerably more attractive. I would still lean towards Power being the stronger stat though. Simply due to power generally being the stronger stat vs crit in virtually every MMO to date(for PvE). Usually due to the constant and reliable damage provided by power trumping the chance based mechanics of crit. This is just an anecdotal observation though, and by no means any kind of proof that this will be the case in SWTOR. I look forward to finding out though.

 

These threads:

http://sithwarrior.com/forums/Thread-Arsenal-Mercenary-Gunnery-Commando-DPS-Compendium

http://sithwarrior.com/forums/Thread-SWTOR-formula-list

 

Particularly the discussion later in the first thread as more people got in-game.

 

Thanks for the reference and the links to the page. Interesting stuff!

[Pokeytehpenguin]

Because of the internal cool down on cell charger, I would guess that, if crit is even > power, it would drop in value as you go above the %50 crit (buffed) mark.

[LordKivlov]

PvE set bonus (15% crit on grav rounds) makes crit an unattractive stat to stack once you've broken 30% as it suffers from DR more than power does. This makes the whole argument a lot more one sided, IMHO.

 

This isn't like WoW, you won't be pulling crazy huge crit rates. The highest I've managed to get in mostly t2/t3 gear is 40% when I go CM or AS because of the extra 3% from not using APCell (I'm pretty sure that's the buffed value too). You want reliable damage after you break the 33% crit rate because once cell charger procs, it begins the 3 second timer which won't happen till your 3rd hit anyways. Apply the PvE bonus to that 33% and now you're rolling in critical chance and if you try to stack crit, you're lacking the oomph that other commandos will have if they balance their stats better.

Edited January 11, 2012 by LordKivlov

[Daeson]

Bumping to get this back up.

 

On stacking crit becoming futile, I will continue to disagree, reaching 45% now im getting to the point that I rarely don't crit,also remember each crit is rolled on its own, not as a set, 33% means every attack as a 1/3 chance to crit.

 

The biggest pain that I can see is that hit takes up so many gear slots, more so then any other MMO I've played, even in wow, you needed one or two really big hit items and you were pretty much set, here, I half or more of my gear has hit on it, still only 99.5% If our dps is ever truly going to start scaling in a meaningful way, they need to re-think how hit chance work and how much of the stat we actully need, I'v had to pass on alot of the T3 raid armor mods ect because if i put them any where, I lose to much crit or too much surge. I'd love to replace the crit/acc ones with power/crit, but its just not feasible.