Sength and power for sentinel

[Bu-jin]

For either Combat or Watchman, Strength and Power are within about 5% of each other in overall DPS effect, but Strength is always better for any currently attainable gear level.

 

In addition to the critical bonus, Strength is buffed twice (+5% to the stat from Consular buff, then +5% to the resulting damage bonus from the Knight buff), while Power is only buffed once. So in terms of the damage bonus alone, the numbers to compare are 0.2415/Power vs. 0.2205/Strength. But the bigger your damage bonus (and thus, the bigger your base damage), the more valuable critical chance becomes.

 

DR on the critical bonus from primary stats is very minor. At 2000 Strength, you are still getting about 2/3's of the raw Critical Bonus (i.e. compared to no DR).

 

I have run a full simulation of days of combat, but you can see how Strength makes up the difference in damage bonus by doing a fairly simple calculation.

 

Suppose, with your current stats, with buffs, an ability does tooltip damage X and has a damage bonus coefficient of 1.5 (this is approximately the value for abilities like Blade Rush and Blade Storm). And suppose you have a choice of 14x (+16 Power) or (+16 Strength) augments (+224 of either stat).

 

With +224 Power, the base damage of the ability (including the Knight buff) will be about X+81

 

With +224 Strength, the base damage of the ability (including the Knight and Consular buffs) will be X+74

 

Lets suppose you have a 33% Critical Chance, and a 75% Critical Multiplier bonus (a number of key abilities gain added critical damage from talents, which makes Strength's critical bonus even better, but we will ignore that).

 

With Power, the expected damage of the ability is then (X +81)*(1+0.33*0.75) = (X + 81)*1.25 = 1.25*X + 101

 

With Strength, assuming you have around 2K Strength, 224 Strength will increase your critical chance by about 1.2%. So the expected damage is (X + 74) * (1+0.342*0.75) = 1.2565*X + 93.

 

The difference (Strength - Power) is then:

 

0.0065*X - 8

 

So strength will win (i.e. the difference will be positive) when:

 

0.0065 * X > 8, or when X > 1230

 

At level 50, abilities that matter have a base tooltip damage > 1200; hence, for those abilities, Strength beats Power.

 

Power benefits from a high coefficient, but abilities with a high coefficient also have high tooltip damage.

 

Master Strike, for instance, has a coefficient of around 3 (rather than the 1.5 I assumed above), so the damage difference (Strength - Power) in that case is:

 

0.0065*X - 16

 

But X is several thousand for Master Strike, and Strength still wins.

 

I have a question about accuracy. Im rolling with about 95.9 percent accuracy on my sentinel watchmen. My special attacks accuracy is at 100 percent. I have been doing fine with damage in warzones and do not notice myself missing that much. Is it bad that my regular accuracy is not 100 percent? I was told with watchmen that it doesn't matter much as long as my specials accuracy is at 100 percent because our damage mostly comes from specials.

[LagunaD]

I thought the crit that you get from strength has a cap where diminishing return hits?

 

Diminishing returns "hits" starting with the first point of strength. All DR in this game is continous, there is no point at which any stat *suddenly* becomes much worse due to DR. At 2000 Strength, you are still getting about 2/3's of the baseline critical bonus from the primary stat.

 

I apologize if I'm making this more difficult to understand. I agree with your post too about making it too complicated. How do you know when your strength has enhanced your character with enough crit where it would be better to switch to power?

 

There is no way to know without doing a calculation or simulation. But I have done calculations, and a simulation, and they both show that Power is never superior to Strength at level 50 for any gear level attainable now or in the near future.

 

The 1 Power ~ 0.95 Strength equivalence is quite stable over gear levels from blue crafted gear to full Campaign.

[DarkkLoki]

Pardon my ignorance, but I am still a little confused here. If power has the higher coefficient, how is it not better? Is it just the slight crit buff and that double buff you get from counselars that makes Strength better overall? Edited July 10, 2012 by DarkkLoki

[Sarezar]

Pardon my ignorance, but I am still a little confused here. If power has the higher coefficient, how is it not better? Is it just the slight crit buff and that double buff you get from counselars that makes Strength better overall?

 

Even without the double buff, strength is always better than power mathematically. That little extra crit, plus the dmg you get from Strrength will always be better than the damage Power gives - this is for the current state of the game and only as theoretical maths.

 

The double buff and the fact that crit 'weapon damage' attacks can't be shielded in PvP make strength even better.

[spaggz]

So if your crit is at the dr, will the bonus crit be fueling the dr or is the bonus not affect by the returns? Another question are there any mods enhancments that fuel power and crit?

Right now ive been stacking on the black hole boots for the power that is in them but the surge is getting to high and doing so has brought my crit to 0. The only crit % i have is from my 2100 str but my power is over a 1000.

[Krozis]

I always read these 'which stat is better to stack' threads and the answers are always similar....

 

While it appears true that your primary stat (in this case strength) is the way to go, I have experimented with this at AskMrRobot.com's character builder.

 

What I find interesting is if I build a character with tons of Strength, then even add pure strength Augments, AND make sure ALL the class buffs are on, I noticed Power still gives me better damage!

 

All I can figure out is Mr.Robot is wrong, or the double buff from class buffs to Strength is still inferior to simply adding power for raw damage.

 

Like I said, I make a pure Strength based character, I make a tiny swap of a mod, or a piece of armour which lowers Strength, but adds more power, and it works out to give me more damage, and more bonus damage.

 

^This is the one thing that confuses me. *IF* what I'm seeing is true, and you are only concerned with pure, raw damage, and bonus damage, Power is still king. (Even with class bufffs)

 

Can anyone else confirm this?

[LiveandDieinLA]

Yeah its true. str gives less damage than power. Power gives you .23 damage per point, str gives you .21damage per point with the consular buff.

 

The only classes where adding primary is always the way to go are the classes that get a 9% bonus to their primary stat due to skill points. for those classes (Vanguard, scoundrel) their primary stat gives them .228 damage per point. Still less than power, but close enough to not really matter.

[Funick]

I'm glad several people have come to the correct conclusion that str always beats power for highest average damage while trading the stats 1 for 1 such as in augments (in mods the trade off is closer to 2 to 1 and the power is then much better)

 

I thought I would just add the ballpark of when power finally beats main stat due to main stat's DR (ignoring that crits also bypass shield):

 

without any consular buff or main stat % increase spec points... Main stat is better until ~3500 main stat.

 

if you have consular buff (5% more main stat) but no spec for main stat... Main stat is better until ~6000 main stat(before buffs)

 

if you have consular buff and spec for additional 9% main stat (14% total)... Main stat is better until ~10000 main stat(before buffs or spec) (sent can not get this)

 

Of course if you have auto-crits the auto crits will average higher damage with power but everything else will suffer. Power will also give you bigger max numbers but as you will crit less often you do lose out on average unless it's an auto-crit.

 

The amounts of main stat necessary for power to be better on average is much higher than any amount that's obtainable with current gear.

 

Only sentinel spec I would consider power augments is focus, it has by far the largest portion of its damage from autocrit compared to the other specs and bigger sweeps also makes for great epeen shots. of course having slash or force exhaustion crit more helps a lot so there is a trade off.

[Krozis]

Yeah its true. str gives less damage than power. Power gives you .23 damage per point, str gives you .21damage per point with the consular buff.

 

The only classes where adding primary is always the way to go are the classes that get a 9% bonus to their primary stat due to skill points. for those classes (Vanguard, scoundrel) their primary stat gives them .228 damage per point. Still less than power, but close enough to not really matter.

 

Ok, that's the nugget I was hoping to find out. Thanks for clearing that up!

[Mr_Fuzzle]

These threads are fun, everyone disagrees and people hear what they want to hear despite any evidence to the contrary. From what I can tell from all this evidence you guys present is that Power augs are better in terms of damage output but on the other hand Might augs are better in terms of damage output. So very conclusive.

 

Enough ranting, due to the near equivalence of the damage bonuses from Strength and Power post consular buff and the slight crit boost from the Strength augs, IMO Might augs are the better choice. But that's what this comes down to, a choice between these two augs.

[Aurojiin]

Ok, that's the nugget I was hoping to find out. Thanks for clearing that up!

Earlier in this thread, LagunaD went to considerable effort to clearly explain why Strength was superior to Power in terms of actual net DPS.

 

Strength adds crit chance. More crit chance improves your DPS. On a 1:1 point basis, Strength will improve your DPS by more than Power. If "raw" damage is your goal, Strength is better.

 

Your character sheet damage figures reflect some elements of your base damage, and are nowhere near your final DPS output.

 

Enough ranting, due to the near equivalence of the damage bonuses from Strength and Power post consular buff and the slight crit boost from the Strength augs, IMO Might augs are the better choice. But that's what this comes down to, a choice between these two augs.

It's been quantifiably proven that Strength augments are better than Power; it's just that there's a lot of people on this forum whose comprehension is significantly weaker than they think it is.

Edited July 19, 2012 by Aurojiin

[ICSWOR]

I always read these 'which stat is better to stack' threads and the answers are always similar....

 

While it appears true that your primary stat (in this case strength) is the way to go, I have experimented with this at AskMrRobot.com's character builder.

 

What I find interesting is if I build a character with tons of Strength, then even add pure strength Augments, AND make sure ALL the class buffs are on, I noticed Power still gives me better damage!

 

All I can figure out is Mr.Robot is wrong, or the double buff from class buffs to Strength is still inferior to simply adding power for raw damage.

 

Like I said, I make a pure Strength based character, I make a tiny swap of a mod, or a piece of armour which lowers Strength, but adds more power, and it works out to give me more damage, and more bonus damage.

 

^This is the one thing that confuses me. *IF* what I'm seeing is true, and you are only concerned with pure, raw damage, and bonus damage, Power is still king. (Even with class bufffs)

 

Can anyone else confirm this?

 

Ask Mr. Robot is not wrong those are the correct numbers for damage. BUT you need to look at the crit chance. That changes with str augs, it goes up. So you have to manually add the additional damage that the increased crit gives you. You can use this formula

 

(MH damage * crit * surge) + MH damage = NEW MH damage

 

Now compare NEW MH damage with the one with power using the same formula. ASK MR robot doesn't do this calculation for you thats why when you just look at damage it "looks" like power is better. Make sure your buffs are clicked as well(valor,might).

Edited July 19, 2012 by ICSWOR

[Krozis]

Earlier in this thread, LagunaD went to considerable effort to clearly explain why Strength was superior to Power in terms of actual net DPS.

 

It's been quantifiably proven that Strength augments are better than Power; it's just that there's a lot of people on this forum whose comprehension is significantly weaker than they think it is.

 

Ironlcally, you've misunderstood me.

 

I understand strength is 'better' better because you get a crit chance on it.

 

My question was specifically dealing with the people who are saying your primary stat (strength in this case) is even better if you have a few multipliers. That is to say if your build gave you +9% to primary stats. And then you have your class buffs. Since those stack, people are saying it makes the primary stat even better to go with.

 

What stumps me is I was making pure strength builds at MrRobot. (Not with sentinel specifically) And using the bulid bonus ( 9% stat bonus), and had the class buffs on.

 

Yet, if I take out ALL strength Augments, and replace them with Power augments, my Damage, and Bonus Damage goes up.

 

Yes, I know I am losing some crit. That's not the point.

 

I thought the additional bonuses multiplying my primary stat would -negate- the paltry damage bonus that power gives me because it doesn't benefit from the stat multiplying that Strength does.

 

I hope that makes sense. But again, it's moot if all you're chasing is crit.

 

So my goal here was to figure out if these 'additional' multipliers of your primary stat (thanks to class buffs + build multipliers in the skill trees) made power even less attractive purely from a base damage perspective. According to Mr.Robot, it does not.

[thebadnick]

Iam playing a sentinel focus spec and i put power augments and noticed a higher damage than with my strenght augments. As im in focus tree i got a 100% crit rate on force sweep and i hit 6k crits average on it. So go for power if you are in this case.

I got a 600+ points bonus damage

 

6.7k best hit on this game (after 1.3) and 800K + dmg. I don't think i could did it with high strenght and low power.

 

http://img83.xooimage.com/files/4/e/a/812k-362cd57.jpg

 

So IMO for my spec power > strenght

Edited July 20, 2012 by thebadnick

[LiveandDieinLA]

I'm glad several people have come to the correct conclusion that str always beats power for highest average damage while trading the stats 1 for 1 such as in augments (in mods the trade off is closer to 2 to 1 and the power is then much better)

 

I thought I would just add the ballpark of when power finally beats main stat due to main stat's DR (ignoring that crits also bypass shield):

 

without any consular buff or main stat % increase spec points... Main stat is better until ~3500 main stat.

 

if you have consular buff (5% more main stat) but no spec for main stat... Main stat is better until ~6000 main stat(before buffs)

 

if you have consular buff and spec for additional 9% main stat (14% total)... Main stat is better until ~10000 main stat(before buffs or spec) (sent can not get this)

 

Of course if you have auto-crits the auto crits will average higher damage with power but everything else will suffer. Power will also give you bigger max numbers but as you will crit less often you do lose out on average unless it's an auto-crit.

 

The amounts of main stat necessary for power to be better on average is much higher than any amount that's obtainable with current gear.

 

Only sentinel spec I would consider power augments is focus, it has by far the largest portion of its damage from autocrit compared to the other specs and bigger sweeps also makes for great epeen shots. of course having slash or force exhaustion crit more helps a lot so there is a trade off.

 

Power beats main stat the second that you, as a theory crafter, get your crit to your desired level. Anyone who wants to optimize their stats needs to decide where they want that number to be, and to stack power once they reach that number.

 

For example, I have a gear set where I went for 30% crit. I ended up with 30.06% crit chance, 97% accuracy, 78% surge, and a base main hand damage topping out at 1082. I had to use a few str augs to get the little amount of crit, and went straight power after i reached my desired number.

 

Crit is just a chance, and having 5 more out of every 100 attacks i do crit won't net me more damage than having 5-10% more damage on every attack, and 8.9 to 17.8 % more damage on the attacks that I do crit. (that's the % higher base damage multiplied by the crit multiplier)

 

On top of that ever spec for sent has an autocrit ability. Focus has force sweep, combat has bladestorm, and watchman has both the 15% crit bonus on burns with 5 stacks of juyo and the zen auto-crit mechanism. What this means is that, since regardless of one's crit rating a certain number of crits will always occur, the potential damage bonus you get from having that 5% extra crit chance is even further diminished.

 

 

Its not a mateer of which is better, but a matter of how much of each should you stack.

Edited July 20, 2012 by LiveandDieinLA

[Aurojiin]

My question was specifically dealing with the people who are saying your primary stat (strength in this case) is even better if you have a few multipliers. That is to say if your build gave you +9% to primary stats. And then you have your class buffs. Since those stack, people are saying it makes the primary stat even better to go with.

 

So my goal here was to figure out if these 'additional' multipliers of your primary stat (thanks to class buffs + build multipliers in the skill trees) made power even less attractive purely from a base damage perspective. According to Mr.Robot, it does not.

I understand what you're saying now, but it's kind of an irrelevant point. Your mainstat improves DPS more than Power because of the added crit chance, which we're agreed upon. If you have talents that multiply your mainstat, that increases the benefit of it (more bonus damage, closing the deficit versus Power, and more crit chance). Ergo, your mainstat becomes "even better", just as people say.

[Funick]

Power beats main stat the second that you, as a theory crafter, get your crit to your desired level. Anyone who wants to optimize their stats needs to decide where they want that number to be, and to stack power once they reach that number.

 

For example, I have a gear set where I went for 30% crit. I ended up with 30.06% crit chance, 97% accuracy, 78% surge, and a base main hand damage topping out at 1082. I had to use a few str augs to get the little amount of crit, and went straight power after i reached my desired number.

 

Crit is just a chance, and having 5 more out of every 100 attacks i do crit won't net me more damage than having 5-10% more damage on every attack, and 8.9 to 17.8 % more damage on the attacks that I do crit. (that's the % higher base damage multiplied by the crit multiplier)

 

On top of that ever spec for sent has an autocrit ability. Focus has force sweep, combat has bladestorm, and watchman has both the 15% crit bonus on burns with 5 stacks of juyo and the zen auto-crit mechanism. What this means is that, since regardless of one's crit rating a certain number of crits will always occur, the potential damage bonus you get from having that 5% extra crit chance is even further diminished.

 

 

Its not a mateer of which is better, but a matter of how much of each should you stack.

 

setting an arbitrary crit chance does not lead to optimal average damage over time especially when you have 2 stats contributing independently to your crit chance, stacking too much of one too little of other can give you your arbitrary crit chance but in a very suboptimal way for example. crit vs power and main stat vs power have solutions for optimal amounts as the optimal is optimal regardless of opponent (well technically when calculating out whole rotations defensive stats can indirectly scew thing a little bit but not many stack defensive stats significantly and those that do are the last target you want to attack) . You are right its a question of how much to stack, my post was simply saying that unless you have 6k main stat you are better off stacking main stat than power (when the option is 1 for 1 such as augments and since the DR is independent it doesn't matter what your total crit % chance is the main stat simply wins unless you break 100% crit chance)

 

acc vs surge is a bit more complicated because it varies based pretty directly on the defense chance of your opponent and missing can stop roots or dots from being applied which may be pretty important.

 

if I can increase my average damage over time by slightly decreasing my base damage but slightly increasing my crit I will especially since that gives extra heals in watchman (zen isn't always up) and it makes master strike and blade rush more consistently devastating in combat, not to mention help all your white damage bypass shields.

 

you can try to account for the auto crits especially in combat... simply solve for average damage of the abilities of your favorite burst rotations and remember that blade storm has 100% crit chance. adjust stats until an optimal set of stats for your damage rotations is found. don't forget to factor in chance of procs and their crit/non-crit damage

 

with watchman you can do a few rotations and try to factor in how often you expect to use zen(varies based on how often you are attacked) and you have to worry about how your burns ignore armor but the rest of your attacks don't. unfortunately extra heals don't get easily factored in.

 

focus you can try to work out single target but between sweep and zen slash the total damage you get in wz varies too much on how many people are getting hit to say a whole lot. In focus go ahead and do what you want sweeps make up enough of your damage I can understand the choice in power augments if you go that way, str of course helps all your filler attacks more though.

 

with formulas from sith warrior you can easily solve for average damage of your abilities

http://mmo-mechanics.com/swtor/forums/thread-364.html

 

as for my pvp gear in combat (recently switched to combat so my acc is jacked up a bit)

main hand topping 1104

crit 31.85%

acc 102.34% so 96.34% without spec./stance.

surge 77.95%

 

with full buffs

 

acc is actually the only stat I'm ok with just choosing an arbitrary amount to go for since the amount needed varies based on opponent and cool downs in use. although its not hard to calculate how much the acc vs surge helps against sets of opponents with varying defense chances. down the line if I continue playing combat a lot I may swap some acc gear for extra surge but the extra acc does help land my roots on tanks(as well as kill tanks) which is kind of important so might just go lazy route claiming better utility which is why im running combat rather than watchman or focus in the first place.

[LiveandDieinLA]

setting an arbitrary crit chance does not lead to optimal average damage over time especially when you have 2 stats contributing independently to your crit chance, stacking too much of one too little of other can give you your arbitrary crit chance but in a very suboptimal way for example. crit vs power and main stat vs power have solutions for optimal amounts as the optimal is optimal regardless of opponent (well technically when calculating out whole rotations defensive stats can indirectly scew thing a little bit but not many stack defensive stats significantly and those that do are the last target you want to attack) . You are right its a question of how much to stack, my post was simply saying that unless you have 6k main stat you are better off stacking main stat than power (when the option is 1 for 1 such as augments and since the DR is independent it doesn't matter what your total crit % chance is the main stat simply wins unless you break 100% crit chance)

 

acc vs surge is a bit more complicated because it varies based pretty directly on the defense chance of your opponent and missing can stop roots or dots from being applied which may be pretty important.

 

if I can increase my average damage over time by slightly decreasing my base damage but slightly increasing my crit I will especially since that gives extra heals in watchman (zen isn't always up) and it makes master strike and blade rush more consistently devastating in combat, not to mention help all your white damage bypass shields.

 

you can try to account for the auto crits especially in combat... simply solve for average damage of the abilities of your favorite burst rotations and remember that blade storm has 100% crit chance. adjust stats until an optimal set of stats for your damage rotations is found. don't forget to factor in chance of procs and their crit/non-crit damage

 

with watchman you can do a few rotations and try to factor in how often you expect to use zen(varies based on how often you are attacked) and you have to worry about how your burns ignore armor but the rest of your attacks don't. unfortunately extra heals don't get easily factored in.

 

focus you can try to work out single target but between sweep and zen slash the total damage you get in wz varies too much on how many people are getting hit to say a whole lot. In focus go ahead and do what you want sweeps make up enough of your damage I can understand the choice in power augments if you go that way, str of course helps all your filler attacks more though.

 

with formulas from sith warrior you can easily solve for average damage of your abilities

http://mmo-mechanics.com/swtor/forums/thread-364.html

 

as for my pvp gear in combat (recently switched to combat so my acc is jacked up a bit)

main hand topping 1104

crit 31.85%

acc 102.34% so 96.34% without spec./stance.

surge 77.95%

 

with full buffs

 

acc is actually the only stat I'm ok with just choosing an arbitrary amount to go for since the amount needed varies based on opponent and cool downs in use. although its not hard to calculate how much the acc vs surge helps against sets of opponents with varying defense chances. down the line if I continue playing combat a lot I may swap some acc gear for extra surge but the extra acc does help land my roots on tanks(as well as kill tanks) which is kind of important so might just go lazy route claiming better utility which is why im running combat rather than watchman or focus in the first place.

 

Funik what server do you play on? If you are willing I'd love the opportunity to meet up with your main character so that I could inspect you and check out how you optimized your gear. Hit me up with a private message and Ill make a toon on that server and get it to the fleet so I can have a look.

[LagunaD]

I've made a spreadsheet which calculates the exact expected damage for every ability, using the known formulas for DR and ability coefficients. Since I can calculate the expected damage for every ability for any set of stats, I can also calculate by what percentage the damage changes when I change stats.

 

I combine this with parser data from actual flashpoint and operations (i.e. how much of my total damage comes from each ability, over many typical fights) to determine how much changing a stat will change my total damage.

 

I made a graph showing what happens if I change Power into Strength or vice-versa, keeping the total (Power + Strength) and all other stats constant:

 

http://sdrv.ms/LLToAn

 

My Sentinel has 1932 Strength and 609 Power, unbuffed. The far left of the curve corresponds to changing ALL my Power into Strength. The far right of the curve corresponds to changing ALL my Strength into Power (which is impossible in practice, but considered for purposes of illustration). The graph shows the percentage change in my expected damage (the maximum value on the graph is thus +1%, and the minimum value is -4.5%). The point where the curve crosses the horizontal axis is my actual, current build.

 

As you can see, I would gain by converting every point of Power into Strength, if that were possible. I currently have 14 Strength augments; the graph shows that replacing one or more of those with Power augments would reduce my damage output. Strength is better for my current build, and it still be better even if I had 609 more Strength and 609 less Power.

 

The other interesting thing about the graph is that it shows how unimportant the choice between Strength and Power actually is. Changing 609 Power into Strength (if possible) would increase my damage output by less than 0.5%. Changing all my Strength augments into Power would likewise make only a -0.2% difference or so.

 

This is for a Combat Sentinel, with an approximately equal mix of Rakata/BH gear, but everything I have seen indicates that it's a general feature.

 

I made a similar graph for trading off Power and Critical Rating:

 

http://sdrv.ms/O5PSlk

 

That curve is a bit more interesting, because it has a turnover point. Currently, I have 609 Power and 228 Critical Rating. The curve shows that the "optimal" build would be to have around 720 Power and 117 Critical Rating. But the difference between my current build and "optimal" is again only 0.2% in damage output. So the Power vs. Critical Rating decision is also fairly inconsequential.

 

If I had ALL Power (837) and zero Critical Rating, my damage would be about 0.1% lower. And if I had ALL Critical Rating (837) and zero Power, my damage would be about 7.5% lower. Any realistic, sane build will be negligibly worse than optimal. Changing 150 Power into Critical Rating would result in only 1% lower damage output than "optimal" (and remember, I am already 110 points of Power *below* optimal).

 

It appears that the Strength vs. Power and Power vs. Critical Rating trade-offs are both essentially "idiot-proof". That is, it is hard to gimp your damage by even 1% by choosing the wrong stats.

Edited July 24, 2012 by LagunaD

[Samoth_Nomad]

^that is very interesting!

I will say, for me, in practice, I seem to do slightly higher dmg using all power augments(my crit is still 33%-buffed). At 30%+ crit, the added crit gain you get from strength is quite small.

[LagunaD]

^that is very interesting!

I will say, for me, in practice, I seem to do slightly higher dmg using all power augments(my crit is still 33%-buffed). At 30%+ crit, the added crit gain you get from strength is quite small.

 

What is your basis for believing you "do slightly higher dmg using all power augments"? It is mathematically impossible. The average damage that each of your abilities do is based on a formula, all elements of which are known exactly, and the formula dictates that Strength is better than Power (precisely because of the "small" gain in critical chance from Strength). To ignore that is to fundamentally misunderstand the math.

 

Also, the above shows that the difference is too small to measure by any feasible amount of careful testing in actual combat. To measure a 0.1% difference in two quantities requires that the quantities themselves be known to even greater precision.

[Samoth_Nomad]

My experience is from parsing identical attack rotations on a combat dummy. It is not "mathematically impossible" to surpass crit with power for one reason.

I have 33% crit. Every attack is a random roll using a RNG. Every attack has a 1 in 3 chance of criting. It does not mean 1 out of 3 attacks WILL crit. Just like the crafting RE, I can have long strings of non-critical attacks or strings of constant crits. I feel like you're basing your math under the assumption that we are guaranteed critical hits based on our crit rating, when in fact, we are not. We can effectively lower the sides of the dice, so to speak, but we are certainly not assured the dice will always land on the side we want. And this where actual gameplay parts ways with theory. On my parses, I "generally" get more dmg from adding power and I believe this is because in real gameplay increasing my crit from 33% to 36% does not effectively reduce the "sides of the dice" enough to make a noticeable difference. I understand your math, but I just disagree on how accurate it is off the paper, due to RNG. The fact is, strength only increases my crit a miniscule amount and provides less raw damage. I'll stick to my power augs for now.

[Arkerus]

I've made a spreadsheet which calculates the exact expected damage for every ability, using the known formulas for DR and ability coefficients. Since I can calculate the expected damage for every ability for any set of stats, I can also calculate by what percentage the damage changes when I change stats.

 

I combine this with parser data from actual flashpoint and operations (i.e. how much of my total damage comes from each ability, over many typical fights) to determine how much changing a stat will change my total damage.

 

I made a graph showing what happens if I change Power into Strength or vice-versa, keeping the total (Power + Strength) and all other stats constant:

 

http://sdrv.ms/LLToAn

 

My Sentinel has 1932 Strength and 609 Power, unbuffed. The far left of the curve corresponds to changing ALL my Power into Strength. The far right of the curve corresponds to changing ALL my Strength into Power (which is impossible in practice, but considered for purposes of illustration). The graph shows the percentage change in my expected damage (the maximum value on the graph is thus +1%, and the minimum value is -4.5%). The point where the curve crosses the horizontal axis is my actual, current build.

 

As you can see, I would gain by converting every point of Power into Strength, if that were possible. I currently have 14 Strength augments; the graph shows that replacing one or more of those with Power augments would reduce my damage output. Strength is better for my current build, and it still be better even if I had 609 more Strength and 609 less Power.

 

The other interesting thing about the graph is that it shows how unimportant the choice between Strength and Power actually is. Changing 609 Power into Strength (if possible) would increase my damage output by less than 0.5%. Changing all my Strength augments into Power would likewise make only a -0.2% difference or so.

 

This is for a Combat Sentinel, with an approximately equal mix of Rakata/BH gear, but everything I have seen indicates that it's a general feature.

 

I made a similar graph for trading off Power and Critical Rating:

 

http://sdrv.ms/O5PSlk

 

That curve is a bit more interesting, because it has a turnover point. Currently, I have 609 Power and 228 Critical Rating. The curve shows that the "optimal" build would be to have around 720 Power and 117 Critical Rating. But the difference between my current build and "optimal" is again only 0.2% in damage output. So the Power vs. Critical Rating decision is also fairly inconsequential.

 

If I had ALL Power (837) and zero Critical Rating, my damage would be about 0.1% lower. And if I had ALL Critical Rating (837) and zero Power, my damage would be about 7.5% lower. Any realistic, sane build will be negligibly worse than optimal. Changing 150 Power into Critical Rating would result in only 1% lower damage output than "optimal" (and remember, I am already 110 points of Power *below* optimal).

 

It appears that the Strength vs. Power and Power vs. Critical Rating trade-offs are both essentially "idiot-proof". That is, it is hard to gimp your damage by even 1% by choosing the wrong stats.

 

That was really interesting. Thank you.

 

What I got put of it was that padding yourself with your main stat is a safe thing to do as it will always give you competitive improvements.

[LagunaD]

I have 33% crit. Every attack is a random roll using a RNG. Every attack has a 1 in 3 chance of criting. It does not mean 1 out of 3 attacks WILL crit. Just like the crafting RE, I can have long strings of non-critical attacks or strings of constant crits. I feel like you're basing your math under the assumption that we are guaranteed critical hits based on our crit rating, when in fact, we are not. We can effectively lower the sides of the dice, so to speak, but we are certainly not assured the dice will always land on the side we want. And this where actual gameplay parts ways with theory. On my parses, I "generally" get more dmg from adding power and I believe this is because in real gameplay increasing my crit from 33% to 36% does not effectively reduce the "sides of the dice" enough to make a noticeable difference. I understand your math, but I just disagree on how accurate it is off the paper, due to RNG.

 

Then you don't understand the math, or what an average means. In a sufficiently large number of attacks, the RNG makes zero difference to your average damage, which is higher with Strength.

[SalBasss]

My experience is from parsing identical attack rotations on a combat dummy.

<snip>

 

Just curious - how many parses did you do? Were the rest of your stats absolutely identical when you tested strength vs. power?