Stats theories

[DrHalux]

So I have a few questions on stats and figured who better to help answer them than my lovely fellow sents.

 

So let's just ignore discussion of strength since I feel that should be our most obvious primary stat to stack. The question I am wondering is whether to stack crit or power. I play the watchmen spec (love me some dots), so focusing on that spec mostly.

 

My first thought was to stack crit since (including our dots) we are nearly constantly ticking dmg. But I read in a few places on these forums that ability "insight" under the focus tree will work for OS and Cauterize. This leads me to believe that our DoT dmg gets its critical chance from our "force crit %" instead of our "melee crit %" (anyone verify that?).

 

Also, if specced for it, a watchman sent can get their zen off fairly regularly. With these two thoughts in mind i am now wondering if power > crit. I guess my thoughts on this subject is that, if DoTs tick as force dmg and are affected by force crit %, then power is better since it makes our actually melee attacks hit harder. And we can have pretty decent force crit % when using insight ability and a few armor mods.

 

It would be great to hear my fellow sents thoughts/opinions on this topic: power > crit or crit > power.

 

What are you stacking? Is it working? Is this for pvp or pve? What spec are you?

[Ainianu]

for watchman i would personally get some crit, but dont overdo it, some surge and then focus on Power mainly. Power relic also for sure.

 

It is debatable where the cutoff should be, about 500 points on Crit is where diminishing returns becomes too much really, but for watchman even going that high is a little too much really.

 

If i had to make a rough guess (with no numbers to really back this up) id aim for somewhere around 200-300 crit and somewhere a bit less on surge perhaps

[SteveGarbage]

Ah the old power/crit debate again. My answer is and still remains with power.

 

The main reason I prefer to stack power over crit or surge is because there are no diminishing returns. That makes a huge impact.

 

In Watchman you may think that crit is a good idea because of the burn crit heals. But the long and short of it is, you get auto-crits from Zen. You're not going to be stacking a ton of stats anyway until you're in later levels, anyway. And once you max out the Watchman tree, I'd suggest starting in Combat where you nab Defensive Forms. That essentially doubles your Centering gain ensuring more Zen and more auto-crits on your burns. So stacking crit doesn't seem to make much sense because the main skills you want to crit will do so automatically through Zen.

 

It's nice to get a little extra crit chance with all of your other skills, but your bread and butter are Cauterize and Overload Saber and those are covered by Zen. Also, remember that your Strength contributes to your crit score too.

 

You're focused on your burns and because of Zen, your focus should be Power>Surge>Crit.

[darthtoph]

There's more to it than Zen. The trick is to figure out the fine line between critical melee hits and non-critical melee hits. What is strongest, a flat melee damage gain that hardly crits at all or slightly weaker melee damage that crits more often, thus harder?

 

A Sentinel bud of mine /w me earlier tonight and wanted to know why I haven't modified my BM gear even though I have replaced all mods with 61 STR ones and accuracy enhancements but one with power/crit/surge - he was upset that I haven't stacked more power/surge taken from the Scoundrel gear. I told him, I need my crit too. I don't care that he has 30 points worth of melee damage higher than me although I'm close to 1800 STR and he has way less, I crit more often and it's needed too.

 

As it is right now, I'm gimping myself with some accuracy, but that's cause I'm having fun crafting Rakata gear with augment slots, the only thing left to do ingame - I wanna hit 1900 STR and see what it can do. I'll probably grab another power/surge enhancement once I'm done although accuracy has it benefits too. Yet it doesn't change the fact that stacking power alone won't do you much good just as stacking crit alone won't do you any good. Is power and its linear gain to prefer over crit and DR? Yes, but it doesn't change the fact you need both to be on top. Both complement each other and that's the way it should be.

 

Edit: Another thing to consider is that power works in mysterious ways and does not have the same affect to abilities across the board. While an X amount of additional power can make an ability do 50 more damage another ability might only see a 10 damage increase. This is where I would like a combat log but by the look of things I'll probably be playing GW2 before we see one.

Edited February 25, 2012 by darthtoph

[KilllerRock]

I pretty much cap surge (which isn't hard) as mines at +297 surge rating. After that its Power and then crit.

 

I think im sitting at +390 bonus damage, 27% crit, and 75.2% crit multiplier and 11.85% expertise buff in my full set of pvp gear. (self buff/power stim included)

 

And im Watchman spec and pvp gear so yes this is for pvp.

Edited February 24, 2012 by KilllerRock

[DrHalux]

So I agree with the "fine line" approach as far as trying to balance having crit and power. I am still trying to decide where that fine line is. With the DR on surge and crit, I am wondering if anyone has suggestions as to where those two stats should sit before losing there effectiveness due to DR.

 

I have read that surge around 300 and a crit of about 25% seems to be the "go to" answer. Also, when talking about crit % are we talking about the melee crit or the focus crit? Because if DoTs tick as focus dmg then it would lead me to believe that we are referring to focus crit (which can be easier to get to 25% with the insight ability)

[Vodrin]

So I agree with the "fine line" approach as far as trying to balance having crit and power. I am still trying to decide where that fine line is. With the DR on surge and crit, I am wondering if anyone has suggestions as to where those two stats should sit before losing there effectiveness due to DR.

 

I have read that surge around 300 and a crit of about 25% seems to be the "go to" answer. Also, when talking about crit % are we talking about the melee crit or the focus crit? Because if DoTs tick as focus dmg then it would lead me to believe that we are referring to focus crit (which can be easier to get to 25% with the insight ability)

 

Talent affects do not respect diminishing returns, so that should not factor in on your decision of how much crit to stack.

 

If it were not for the DR setup with crit stats, there would be no debate, and you would stack crit and surge as high as you could.

 

DR makes it so that stacking crit above a certain point (27% or so seems to be the cutoff) gives you very poor return on points invested, and the same is true of surge (you really see it drop off now after you get to 65%). Power still has a linear return with no DR threshold. So the best setups will be ones that stack crit and surge until you hit the more severe part of the DR curves, then stack power after that.

 

There are numerous websites out there where players have plotted the DR curves for crit and surge after the more recent updates. It's easy to look these up and see the point at which you should start stacking power.

[darthtoph]

I've settled with 27% and 75% for now as buff takes you beyond 30% anyway, seems to do the trick for me. Edited February 25, 2012 by darthtoph

[slowantics]

for surge anythign above 225 is a waste.

smugglers have gear with power and surge mods. ive been stripping those