Crtical on sentinel

[oofalong]

I did 10 parses each, with 3 different setups:

Oofalong would probably say...

 

Because you asked for it "...that this is still too low a sample number to mathematically prove anything..."

 

A higher crit rating does not allow for higher damage per ability, but it may allow for a higher average or expected damage. (Although I do not think it does since 2.0.) To better understand this, let me explain where the variance in damage comes from.

 

The primary source of variation in an abilities' damage is the upper and lower bound of your hilt damage. For a 72 hilt they are 754 and 503, respectively. You should see these numbers on your MH & OH. Presumably, every number in this range is equally likely. These are then multiplied by a unique coefficient for each ability to determine the hilts' contribution to damage. Generally speaking your your hilts account for only 20% of the damage of your attacks. (There is another source of variance in some abilities and it accounts for the remaining ~20%, but I am ignoring it for now.)

 

Next, about two-thirds of the damage comes from your bonus damage. Again the bonus damage listed is multiplied by a unique coefficient - different from before. Every time you remove a point of Power or Strength your Bonus Damage is reduced, which means the maximum damage you can expect from a regular hit or a critical hit is less.

 

Still, when you remove a point of Power and replace it with a point of Crit, you are reducing the max and min, but you are inviting more volatility. This volatility can sometimes appear to be your friend via over-indexing crit rates that provide higher than expected damage. Balancing crit, power and surge is a complex problem.

 

TL;DR - Reducing bonus damage and adding to crit chance absolutely decreases the overall maximum amount of damage you can see from an attack.

 

This is different than the relative value of crit chance vs bonus damage and there is no TL;DR version of this topic.