Crit vs Power for a Sentinel

[DocShockV]

Hey guys,

 

I'm trying to gear up my sentinel for high level PvE stff, and I'm wondering which stats I should be focusing on. Obviously I'm using Endurance and Strength for my base stats, but has anyone run the numbers on whether crit or power gets you higher DPS?

 

Also, should I be building surge or accuracy as my final stat? I'm assuming I should take surge if I'm building crit, but should I be using accuracy if I build power?

 

Thanks

[Vegathegreat]

str > hit 100% > power > surge > crit (watchmen spec)

[SirGiLLam]

str > hit 100% > power > surge > crit (watchmen spec)

 

Hard to say for sure, but your order doesn't make sense.

Crit and surge work together, so stacking the parent group first is priority. So crit then surge.

 

My build is Str - crit - surge, then if possible I add power.

I want my DOTS to crit for alot, then with the surge they crit for more dmg.

[Crabbok]

Hard to say for sure, but your order doesn't make sense.

Crit and surge work together, so stacking the parent group first is priority. So crit then surge.

 

 

Not always. Some sentinels have abilities that guarantee the new hit will crit. If you factor in abilities like those, then surge > crit

[andrew_b_gross]

Hard to say for sure, but your order doesn't make sense.

Crit and surge work together, so stacking the parent group first is priority. So crit then surge.

 

My build is Str - crit - surge, then if possible I add power.

I want my DOTS to crit for alot, then with the surge they crit for more dmg.

 

That's just not true. It's completely dependent on the scaling factors used and the abilties/skills at play. There's no inherant reason why you would need/want to make sure you crit more often before upping the average damage per crit.

 

As a simple hypothetical example, let's say you have two choices:

 

A) 50% no-crit for 100 damage, 50% crit for 300 damage.

B) 100% crit for 175 damage.

 

In case (A), you're only critting 50% of the time, but you're averaging 200 damage per attack; in the (B), you may be critting 100% of the time, but you're only averaging 175 damage per attack.

[neocoma]

And I thought there are no real choices about gear

[RamzaBehoulve]

That's just not true. It's completely dependent on the scaling factors used and the abilties/skills at play. There's no inherant reason why you would need/want to make sure you crit more often before upping the average damage per crit.

 

Because there are talents already giving 30%+ critical damage to some skills, so you want to crit as much as you can on those.

Edited January 5, 2012 by RamzaBehoulve

[Moldrany]

Not always. Some sentinels have abilities that guarantee the new hit will crit. If you factor in abilities like those, then surge > crit

 

imo for combat:

 

str > power > surge > crit

[andrew_b_gross]

Because there are talents already giving 30%+ critical damage to some skills, so you want to crit as much as you can on those.

 

So you're saying you would turn down a skill that let you do an extra 10,000 points of damage every time you crit, in favor of taking a skill that would let you crit an extra .0001% of the time?

 

If not, then you agree with me that it depends on the scaling factors and the particular mix of equipment, abilities, and skills that are at play, and is something that needs to be worked out via math, rather than being an automatic "always take higher chance of critting in preference to taking more damage per crit".

[Zaerion_H]

what do you think about a defense,surge-crit based gear for watchman? since watchman can pop up zen very frequently you dont really need to much crit at all , and when you pop up your zen with the surge it will be a damage party on the burning objective due to the 100% crit chance on burns.

 

And defese in think is quite good since you have your saber guard wich gives you 50% and trascendence wich gives you a 10% , that means that you can start a figth with 50% saber guard + 10% trascendence ( you burn your valorus call to get 30 centering) and + like around 10 % from your gear , you can have like 70% chance to parry any incoming atack during 10 seconds, what do you think about it?.

[RamzaBehoulve]

So you're saying you would turn down a skill that let you do an extra 10,000 points of damage every time you crit, in favor of taking a skill that would let you crit an extra .0001% of the time?

 

If not, then you agree with me that it depends on the scaling factors and the particular mix of equipment, abilities, and skills that are at play, and is something that needs to be worked out via math, rather than being an automatic "always take higher chance of critting in preference to taking more damage per crit".

 

Your example makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. It's like asking if I'd rather take a Formula One or an old Toyota for a speed contest.

 

Some abilities are activated upon crits such as Watchman healing as well. Some others already have a huge boost to damage from a crit, but you need to crit. It's obvious you need some amount of crit chance before you go for surge. Why do you think crit is easier to get than surge?

 

Power also does not increase offhand hits damage while they can indeed crit.

 

Therefore, with what we already know STR > 100% hit > Crit (probably around 30%) > Surge > Power at least for Watchman. Stacking crit also allows you to use something else than Zen all the time.

 

If you want to do the maths model, go ahead, it's not hard, but I'm fairly certain it will be the same chart until they fix offhand scaling.

Edited January 6, 2012 by RamzaBehoulve

[StyxzieWaterz]

Your example makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. It's like asking if I'd rather take a Formula One or an old Toyota for a speed contest.

 

Some abilities are activated upon crits such as Watchman healing as well. Some others already have a huge boost to damage from a crit, but you need to crit. It's obvious you need some amount of crit chance before you go for surge. Why do you think crit is easier to get than surge?

 

Power also does not increase offhand hits damage while they can indeed crit.

 

Therefore, with what we already know STR > 100% hit > Crit (probably around 30%) > Surge > Power at least for Watchman. Stacking crit also allows you to use something else than Zen all the time.

 

If you want to do the maths model, go ahead, it's not hard, but I'm fairly certain it will be the same chart until they fix offhand scaling.

 

i highly doubt you would out dps a str>110%hit>pwr>surge>crit watchman sent with your stat prio, but until we can parse no one will know. just imo

[letsid]

Just a little question why 110% ?

[OrmEmber]

Just a little question why 110% ?

 

Accuracy over 100% reduces the target's defense. In other words you will do damage that bypasses their armor.

Edited January 6, 2012 by OrmEmber

[Riddickcz]

imo for combat:

 

str > power > surge > crit

 

^^ this..only not just for combat, but for whole Sentinel.

[SteveGarbage]

what do you think about a defense,surge-crit based gear for watchman? since watchman can pop up zen very frequently you dont really need to much crit at all , and when you pop up your zen with the surge it will be a damage party on the burning objective due to the 100% crit chance on burns.

 

I think you misunderstand the tooltip of Zen. I'm not 100 percent sure that it functions this way, but the skill says with Juyo form that Zen increased critical chance BY 100 percent.

 

That's different than increasing critical chance TO 100 percent.

 

A increase of 100 percent means that your chance to critical will double. So if you have a 15 percent chance to crit, using Zen will make that 30 percent, not 100 percent.

 

Again, I'm not sure if that's actually how it functions, it could just be poor use of language. But I'll have to pop open my stat sheet and pay attention this afternoon while I'm playing to check that.

[MBirkhofer]

Accuracy over 100% reduces the target's defense. In other words you will do damage that bypasses their armor.

 

incorrect. Huge misconception repeated by many, including myself at one point in beta. (not sure if I misread, or if the tooltip itself was worded differently.) Even now, having defense tab, and defense as a specific stat is very confusing.

 

Defense is parry/deflect. Not armor.

Exact npc raid boss parry rates, don't know. Equal level players have 5% parry/deflect naturally.

(0% resist vs force/tech attacks)

+defense skill, and some active skills such as sabreward and transcendence give additional evade/deflect.

 

I don't think anyone knows what exactly is a "special" attack and what is a "normal" attack for the 90% vs 100% hit rate for attacks themselves. Force attacks at least are obvious.

Edited January 6, 2012 by MBirkhofer

[Crabbok]

In terms of accuracy over 100% I believe it's like this:

 

100% accuracy simply means that you will not "Miss". The enemy can still deflect your attack. Accuracy above 100% essentially lets your attacks be less likely to be deflected. I was told that for pvp you want to be about 215% Accuracy to hit all the time.

[Lomerell]

Hey guys,

 

I'm trying to gear up my sentinel for high level PvE stff, and I'm wondering which stats I should be focusing on. Obviously I'm using Endurance and Strength for my base stats, but has anyone run the numbers on whether crit or power gets you higher DPS?

 

Also, should I be building surge or accuracy as my final stat? I'm assuming I should take surge if I'm building crit, but should I be using accuracy if I build power?

 

Thanks

 

Combat Sentinel.

 

STR > Crit > Surge. I have too many talents for accuracy to worry much about it, and Power just seems weak compared to hard-hitting crits. Since I have so many attacks, I want them to hit as hard as possible, and with talents to boost crit chances of something like Blade Storm, surge is more natural than Power and has better synergy with crit.

 

The only thing I wonder if I'm ignoring is alacrity (haste). When I have spare gear, I'll try some haste builds, but Sentinel is so spastic already that I'd prefer "slower" harder hits if I can make it viable. (So far, no trouble...level 48.)

Edited January 6, 2012 by Lomerell

[MBirkhofer]

spell haste has almost zero effect on sentinels.

Master strike isn't even effected for some reason.

 

so, basically stasis, and only stasis.

Edited January 6, 2012 by MBirkhofer

[OrmEmber]

incorrect. Huge misconception repeated by many, including myself at one point in beta. (not sure if I misread, or if the tooltip itself was worded differently.) Even now, having defense tab, and defense as a specific stat is very confusing.

 

Defense is parry/deflect. Not armor.

Exact npc raid boss parry rates, don't know. Equal level players have 5% parry/deflect naturally.

(0% resist vs force/tech attacks)

+defense skill, and some active skills such as sabreward and transcendence give additional evade/deflect.

 

I don't think anyone knows what exactly is a "special" attack and what is a "normal" attack for the 90% vs 100% hit rate for attacks themselves. Force attacks at least are obvious.

 

Oh I see. An easy mistake to make it would seem.

[Psybin]

Combat Sentinel.

 

STR > Crit > Surge. I have too many talents for accuracy to worry much about it, and Power just seems weak compared to hard-hitting crits. Since I have so many attacks, I want them to hit as hard as possible, and with talents to boost crit chances of something like Blade Storm, surge is more natural than Power and has better synergy with crit.

 

The only thing I wonder if I'm ignoring is alacrity (haste). When I have spare gear, I'll try some haste builds, but Sentinel is so spastic already that I'd prefer "slower" harder hits if I can make it viable. (So far, no trouble...level 48.)

That's a bit missleading... Extra power will mean when you do crit, you crit harder...

So yes power does very much have synergy with crit and surge.. It's like a chain.

 

As pointed out above it all depends on scaling factors. For example, those relics with the use that increases crit and surge by X amount for Y seconds. Both surge and crit are increased by the same numeric value, but when I pop mine, my crit increases by 5% and my crit damage bonus increases by 16%...

So it is simply missleading to say "I think crit is better because I like to hit harder more often" without seeing what those values actually do.

 

I am also leading towards:

 

Strength > hit cap > power > surge > crit.

 

Purely hypothesis tho.

Edited January 6, 2012 by Psybin

[Zackath]

Well, coming from someone that played a fury warrior 7 years and been raiding quite a bit, usually you go for your primary stat first (str) then you want all your abilities to hit the target because a miss is a TOTAL LOSS OF DPS (same goes for a dodge or a parry).

 

Therefore we should start, as a sentinel, to build with STR (the obvious one since it gives power + crit) then you go ACCURARY (you do NOT want to MISS anything or ''not often'').

 

Those are the stats you should be focusing on, then.. when you hit the cap for miss dodge and parry (yes you can cap the accuracy rating until you can't be dodged or parried anymore seen this in a ''hint'' on a loading screen, I believe they don't tell us bull ****) you want to increase the damage even more.

 

How to and what is the best way to do it?

 

Well, raw power is always the best way to go at first because going for crit is basing your dps on RNG, even if you get 50% crit chance you could still NOT CRIT for 10 hit in a row... same goes when you flip a coin you could get tail 20 times in a row it's all a matter of ''LUCK'' and from my personnal experience, basing your dps on luck isn't recommended.

 

So you maybe guessed it right the best thing to go for after crit would be POWER.

Then crit and then surge (while surge being last because it need a CRIT to actually be effective: it increase your crit damage modifier).

 

Althought I am not too sure at this point if raw POWER scale good enough to out class the crit stat but if it doesnt i'd recommend going crit even tho it is RNG based, sometimes a stat may look better ''logically'' but doesnt scale too well. I doubt it is the case for power so here we go, we got our stat priority!

 

 

STR>AR(accuracy rating)>POWER>CRIT>SURGE

 

 

On a side note I think alacrity which increase your channeling speed would/could also be considered as it make our Master strike hit faster, therefore increasing our dps slightly.. but I doubt it would boost it significantly so nevermind that stat since all our other stat in the stat priority share a better synergie. Also I heard SURGE is the best stat endgame however I can hardly see why.. since it need a crit, like stated before, to be efficient.

[MBirkhofer]

Alacrity does not effect master strike.

It effects stasis and only stasis. Also, asks the question why you would want your stun to last shorter.

 

 

 

Surge is best up to about 150-200 surge rating. At which point the diminishing returns on rating gain, really hurts it. Crit and power will be bigger gains point for point.

Crit is pretty valuable all around, until a bout 300-400 crit rating, where its diminishing returns becomes significant.

Thus, above the 300 crit, and 150 surge rating values, power now becomes more valuable.

Prior to those, surge/crit are good.

 

Value of +acc. Can not tell without a combat log.

[BlakLanner]

My experience on a PvP Combat sentinel is STR > Acc (105%) > Surge > Crit > Power. Combat sentinels can force crit on our heaviest attack and frontloading damage to it is a massive boost. The amount of power you have to load up on to see a real difference in your attacks is much higher than what you need for surge.