~35% crit - buffed or not?

[Acrolepsia]

Im honestly confused about this. People say the soft cap is around 35%, and that some stats affects its DRs differently (for instance the AIM crit bonus)

 

Is the buff affected by the soft cap? Could I have 35% and get buffed for 40%~ and suffer no DRs?

[HileyQuiggley]

35% Buffed.

 

Im at 2437 Aim buffed right now. Early on if you can manage 30% Crit unbuffed and leave your crit at that. Increasing your Aim as you get better gear from there only increases your Crit a little more each time. So I used to be at 30% Crit unbuffed and its around 33.4% unbuffed now. Aim/Pwr is your main stats for dps anyway.

 

Aim>Pwr>Accuracy>Crit>Surge

 

Aim first only if you use Ironsights. Must have 100% Accuracy for many of your skills to be worthwhile, FA from CoF or using Assault and HS/HiB/FA ect. Crit at my current gear I only need about 250 which is very easy to get and about the same with Surge.

 

Edit: Using Assault you might be better off going for 35% Crit UNBUFFED but no more. Since alot of skills and bonuses work off Crit in the Assault tree. I play Gunnery in both PvE and PvP so I dont need this as much.

Edited August 13, 2012 by HileyQuiggley

[DariusCalera]

Im honestly confused about this. People say the soft cap is around 35%, and that some stats affects its DRs differently (for instance the AIM crit bonus)

 

Is the buff affected by the soft cap? Could I have 35% and get buffed for 40%~ and suffer no DRs?

 

Depends on the buff.

 

Any buff that affects your base stats, i.e. Aim, will be affected by Diminishing Returns.

 

However, if it is a buff like the Smuggler's that adds a flat +5% increase to critical chance then it is not affected by DR.

 

So, in short, yes, you could have 35% crit and get buffed by a Smuggler and then have 40% with no DRs.

 

Also, your stat priority should go:

 

Aim>Accuracy>Crit>Surge>Power.

 

To put it simply, you get more dps per point of the first 4 than you do with power. Once you get those to where you want them, then start stacking power.

Edited August 13, 2012 by DariusCalera

[ArchangelLBC]

So a few things in this thread I think are a bit misleading.

 

 

First of all there isn't a real soft cap on crit in the way people are thinking. There is a soft cap on the amount of increased crit chance you get from aim (and cunning for tech crit chance), a soft cap on the amount of increased crit chance you get from crit rating, and a hard cap on the amount of increased crit chance you get from buffs, 1% from Companion Buff, 5% from Smuggler Buff, 3% from Talents (and whatever other crit buffs I'm missing). (Ok technically there are hardcaps for all three based on the maximum amount of attainable aim, cunning, and crit rating).

 

Off the top of my head I don't know the true softcaps for each, but I do know that simply having a 30% unbuffed critical chance doesn't mean you've hit the softcap. I currently have about 34.09% crit chance unbuffed and am not really going far out of my way to get that. Removing an enhancement with crit on it still has a noticeable effect (like 1% for taking away 41 crit). The question is slightly more complicated than simply talking about "soft caps".

 

The reason we used to talk about 35% buffed was because Cell Charger used to be tied directly to critical hits. This has changed now, so our only interest in crit is in the way they increase our damage. Based on maths that have been done by LagunaD for Sentinels, the difference between changing all your crit rating to power and vice versa leads to a negligible differece no matter how you swing it. I honestly think the same applies to us, but I like crits and like to maintain as close to 40% as I can without making significant sacrifices to crit rating. Remember we don't have any real auto crit abilities and our only talented boost to crit chance is pretty minor.

 

Secondly I see a lot of Aim > stat > another stat > yet a third stat, and in my opinion that is pretty equally misleading.

 

The only time there is a reasonable question of taking any of these stats over all of the others is in Augments, and there I feel you should always take Aim. So Aim > * is fine, but once you stop talking about Augments the stat priority is pretty silly.

 

In general Aim competes with nothing but endurance. Although you can choose Aim heavy or secondary stat heavy mods (crit or power), the trade off is always worth it because you're trading 8-15 Aim for 29-30 Power or Crit and that's a tradeoff that's completely worth it in my opinion.

 

Power and Crit compete only with each other in both mods and enhancements. Trying to talk about stacking accuracy over power is pretty silly because the stats are never really in competition in any serious way at endgame. Similarly accuracy and surge compete only with each other.

 

So we have Aim, Crit Rating vs Power, Accuracy vs Surge (vs Alacrity technically, but please don't).

 

Now there are some very smart people on other parts of this forum (I've already mentioned LagunaD) who have done some indepth analysis on expected damage returns and what not, though to my knowledge none has been done for Commando specifically (though my knowledge is by no means exhaustive). But basically you have a gearing strategy to shoot for.

 

For myself I say you should get 100% ranged accuracy or as close as you can get (I'm at 99.89%), and then stack surge as much and as often as possible.

 

I try to shoot for 35% Critical chance or as close as possible pre-Lucky Shots (again I'm at 34.09% before smuggler buff), and then stack power as much and as often as possible. This figure has more wiggle room in my opinion (some prefer to get close to 30% unbuffed), and I am absolutely positive that there is some sort of optimal amount which I am too lazy to do the analysis for, though the analysis others have done for other classes leads me to believe it just doesn't matter all that much.

Edited August 14, 2012 by ArchangelLBC

[Boufsa]

HI

 

Gunnery commando PVE Guide

 

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