Still Confused : Crit/Surge vs Power

[Scnicker]

Good day ladies and gents,

 

I've just leveled my Sentinel to Lvl 50 and will begin getting mods/armor.

 

I've scoured through the entire net, and still couldn't find a straight answer on whether I should get crit/surge or power. I have a Watchman Build.

 

My friend who played a marauder says go for power, but I am still confused. Help me out guys!

[LightHawkRX]

As a Watchmen, I believe most people say go for power because with Zen you will get auto-crits off burns regardless.

[Funick]

to maximize damage you need crit surge and power, working out the very best set is non-trivial but I'd say you probably want at least a 75% crit multiplier and crit rate over 30% and then as much power as you can get.

 

working out how crit/surge effects average damage is easy but power improves different abilities at different rates (although at least they are all linear) . crit and surge are both subject to diminishing returns which is why i just suggest certain amounts to aim for and then max power.

[JoseSilva]

Funick said it all. You want crit chance at 30% or a little more. Crit multiplier max 75% and power as much as possible. Power is really a great boost in dps.

[PantsOn]

I don't know where people are getting the 30% to crit number from. You're not aiming for a hard % to crit when you build a good Sentinel. You stack accuracy till you have a hard 98%. After that, you want to get your crit rating to about 300 (the DR gets pretty bad beyond that point) and surge rating to about 275. After that, you start stacking power.

 

Your crit will slowly creep up as you gain strength with better gear (although the gains here get really small due to the Str DR). I think I'm at about 28% to crit with Blackhole implants and pants and the rest Rakata (I did have to replace some Rakata enhancements with ones that had crit and surge on them).

Edited May 2, 2012 by PantsOn

[Zouxx]

Is it ~300 crit rating with or without the smuggler buff?

[PantsOn]

Is it ~300 crit rating with or without the smuggler buff?

 

Smuggler buff adds a hard 5% to crit chance, it doesn't affect your critical rating.

[bliapis]

1str = 1pwr?

[PantsOn]

1str = 1pwr?

 

No. Strength diminishes (both in terms of added bonus damage and in terms of crit).

 

Power never diminishes and is affected by your skill coefficients. 1 power will always equal ~0.23 damage, whether you have 1 power or 10,000.

[-Yui-]

1str = 1pwr?

 

Not exactly, but unless you're looking to absolutely min/max your gear, both mean the same thing. Even at high levels of strength, the dr is minimal enough that there's less than 0.05 points of damage difference between one point of strength and one point of power.

 

In regards to the OP, my personal rule of thumb has always been getting accuracy to ~95%, get 300 surge, 300 crit and stack the rest in power.

Edited May 3, 2012 by -Yui-

[-Jodea-]

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This is my current POWER set up of Watchman or Focus:

 

100% Hit

73.5% crit multiplier

25% Crit

Power Power and yes more power.

 

I have tested a crit based suit for both Watchman and Focus, power far exceeds the total damage output possible.

[Scnicker]

Thanks for the answers everyone!

 

It appears that no one is certain of which way is to go, so I'll try to find the middle. However, The Black Hole set suggests I hoard crit, but I really don't want to give up on my 2 +41 power green-black crystals .

[PantsOn]

Thanks for the answers everyone!

 

It appears that no one is certain of which way is to go, so I'll try to find the middle. However, The Black Hole set suggests I hoard crit, but I really don't want to give up on my 2 +41 power green-black crystals .

 

What do you mean no one is certain? Get your strength to 1500. Secondary stats for Watchman are as follows:

Priority #1: 98% accuracy

Priority #2: 275 surge rating

Priority #3: 300 crit rating

Priority #4: POWER POWER POWER

Edited May 3, 2012 by PantsOn

[Wuzan]

1. Where are you getting an accuracy number of 98?

 

2. You can get surge to 330ish and then DR's hit, not 275.

[PantsOn]

1. Where are you getting an accuracy number of 98?

 

2. You can get surge to 330ish and then DR's hit, not 275.

 

1. The DR's hit way sooner, you just have to decide at what point investing more into a single stat makes it worth less than investing into a different stat at the same cost.

 

2. All these numbers were established a long time ago on these forums with the original source being sithwarrior.com (which has since become mmo-mechanics).

Edited May 3, 2012 by PantsOn

[DukeGaGa]

I don't know where people are getting the 30% to crit number from. You're not aiming for a hard % to crit when you build a good Sentinel. You stack accuracy till you have a hard 98%. After that, you want to get your crit rating to about 300 (the DR gets pretty bad beyond that point) and surge rating to about 275. After that, you start stacking power.

 

Your crit will slowly creep up as you gain strength with better gear (although the gains here get really small due to the Str DR). I think I'm at about 28% to crit with Blackhole implants and pants and the rest Rakata (I did have to replace some Rakata enhancements with ones that had crit and surge on them).

 

I'm not sure I understand that 98% accuracy thing, can you explain it? Cause from what I see, I need to have at least 100% accuracy.

[recsa]

I'm not sure I understand that 98% accuracy thing, can you explain it? Cause from what I see, I need to have at least 100% accuracy.

 

People looking at 98% accuracy is spending 2 points in Steadfast talent, this way you can free 2-3 accuracy mods and replace them with power/crit/surge and still hit the needed 100% accuracy.

 

Does it worth not being able to pick Master Focus/Defensive Roll?? thats up to you

[Reinholt]

Ok here is the simple stat priority.

 

Crit isn't valuable in Watchman because of Zen, someone said that it is true.

 

STR doesn't diminish anymore in bonus DMG, I am at over 2k STR and still haven't hit a DR. STR gives a small amount of crit in exchange for not giving as much as Power per point, since you aren't stacking crit, with the Smuggler buff you will hit about 28% crit in full BiS. There are enhancements you want to get, Adept give Power/Surge, aim for those after you hit Accuracy cap, you get 1% Accuracy from companions and 3% from Talents, always take the talents because you can't get Power/Surge or STR talents and you want to maximize your points.

 

So given those factors you need four pieces give or take a number or two, to hit the Accuracy 100% level. That means Deft Mods in everything, low endurance, high STR and Power. Then Adept in your enhancements, low endurance high Power and Surge.

 

I am seeing a lot of people being very wrong about Accuracy, if you go below 100% melee, you miss a hell of a lot, check logs if you don't believe me.

 

Stacking crit would only be viable in full BiS from NiM Denova, but again you would sacrifice power so it wouldn't be worth it in my opinion, as always for proof, or more Q&A feel free to PM me here or bug me on my stream, I will have DPS logs open for viewers during Denova so you can see anything you want and ask there.

[Spungey]

1. Strength always gives .2 bonus damage to force and melee..I'm at 1804 Strength at the moment and haven't hit a DR. The critical chance you gain from Strength does get reduced as you go up higher.

 

2. anywhere from 25%-30% melee critical chance is good. Force will be 40% with Juyo, maybe more for those who spec into Insight.

 

3. anywhere from 70-75% critical multiplier is fine. Your already getting 30% Critical Damage on burns, when thats most of our damage.

 

4. Stack POWER...Power gives .23 bonus damage.

 

5. Accuracy in watchman spec should be 98%+ for melee. Despite what some think, having over 100% accuracy doesn't give you armor penetration. It just reduces there chance to deflect, parry, dodge or resist an attack.

Edited May 8, 2012 by Spungey

[GaryCartel]

Power and surge

[andrew_b_gross]

I really wish people would stop repeating the 98% accuracy number. Now that we have damage logs and test dummies, we know that number is wrong. Whether it's always been wrong, or whether something changed in 1.2 at the same time as they added the logs and dummies, is (I think) unknown.

 

The correct number is 100%, because raid bosses have 10% (not 8% as previously thought) resistance/dodge/whatever.

 

This isn't something people should be arguing about, because it's very easy to go wail on the Mark V training dummy and then upload your log to one of the bazillion parsers that are available. If you have 100% accuracy, you will see misses from Strike and from your attacks that use the offhand weapon (since offhand weapon accuracy is much lower than your total accuracy), but you will not see any misses from any of your other powers. If you then do the same thing with 98% accuracy, you will see misses from attacks that just use the mainhand.

[andrew_b_gross]

I still have yet to see confirmation that Power has no diminishing returns after the 1.2 patch. They made a reallybig deal of the fact that they were changing the underlying combat formulas specifically because some stats had diminishing returns and other stats didn't. One would expect that as a result of this, Power would now have diminishing returns.

[Reinholt]

I still have yet to see confirmation that Power has no diminishing returns after the 1.2 patch. They made a reallybig deal of the fact that they were changing the underlying combat formulas specifically because some stats had diminishing returns and other stats didn't. One would expect that as a result of this, Power would now have diminishing returns.

 

I haven't seen anything saying it diminishes so don't assume at this point in time imo.

[DukeGaGa]

People looking at 98% accuracy is spending 2 points in Steadfast talent, this way you can free 2-3 accuracy mods and replace them with power/crit/surge and still hit the needed 100% accuracy.

 

Does it worth not being able to pick Master Focus/Defensive Roll?? thats up to you

 

Thanks for you post, that's what I do exactly, I stack up to 98% and use that two extra points to get 2% accuracy.

[iakona]

Thanks for you post, that's what I do exactly, I stack up to 98% and use that two extra points to get 2% accuracy.

 

(NOTE: the following only applies to Watchman spec Sentinels)

 

With the new Tier 2 (lvl 61) gear, you're wasting skill points if you do that. Spend those 2 points on Master Focus or Insight for more DPS. You get 10 pieces of gear that make you choose between 57 accuracy or 57 surge, so you get a total of 570 points to split between the two. Splitting it evenly between the two is ideal, as 285 rating will give you 99.89% melee accuracy and 75.82% critical multiplier (with the 1% companion bonus for each). The crit multiplier increase from surge rating caps at +30% with diminishing returns the whole way, so the benefit falls off significantly if you're near 300 surge rating.

 

As for crit rating, you don't need more than around 150 with the new Tier 2 gear. For reference, with this gear and a Rakata Might Stim, I do over 1700 DPS on the Operations Training Target MK-5, without using adrenals or Inspiration: http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/character/487bb168-3c21-442c-a126-5b84a5da26f9