Power vs Critical Rating for Sawbones

[Azaranth]

I dunno, diagnostic scan is a terribly weak heal crit or no crit. I understand the point is to recover energy, but it really seems like a waste of casting. I was wondering whether or not to stack crit or power myself so I googled and found the trooper thread and followed it here, but it seems like the temptation to stack crit is pretty alluring for everyone.

 

It's not that unusual for my tank to take a spike in damage where I have to drop UWM twice, (followed by the two free Emergency Medpacks). Chasing that with a channel or two of Diagnostic Scan helps quite a bit, believe it or not.

 

As far as alacrity goes, does it reduce the global CD?[/Quote]

 

No.

 

At lvl 30 I already see alacrity on some of my gear and while I love spamming instant medpack, I could see the usefulness of it for throwing out more HoTs or those quick save heals when you haven't got upper hand ready. The ability to store more than two stacks of upper hand would be nice ( certainly not broken at all... really)![/Quote]

 

Yeah, our gear tends to have a fair amount of Alacrity on it. The community currently sees it as a fairly inefficient stat, but we'll see. Bioware clearly thinks (or at one point thought) that Alacrity was a key stat for Scoundrels and Operatives.

 

If you want my 2 cents (and most people don't ), I think the community is undervaluing Alacrity. It's natural for folks to think like WoW Resto Druids, but our HoTs aren't nearly as effective as theirs are. Slow-Release Medpack is a nice way to mitigate some incoming damage on the tank, but it's a giant pain-in-the-arse to keep up on a majority of the party. The return on the time investement (1.5 second GCD) for casting SRMP is actually fairly poor, and I really think that when the isht hits the fan, we end up turning to Underworld Medicine (with staggered Emergency Medpacks).

 

A little Alacrity can go a long way, and I do think there's a point where Alacrity will be able to burst your way through some damage spikes in a way that +power couldn't. Yes, there's energy consequences to deal with afterward, but that's why we have Cool Head and Diagnostic Scan to recover.

 

Speaking of Diagnostic Scan, the channel time is also boosted by Alacrity, meaning faster ticks and, statistically, higher energy return. In a way, Alacrity actually does give us slight energy regeneration boost via Diagnostic Scan, although I realize getting 4 energy over 2.6 seconds doesn't feel much different than getting 4 energy over 3 seconds. Something to think about though...

 

Best stat? Probably not. I just think it'll end up being better than we give it credit for. To put it another way, I'm not going to go out of my way to avoid it, when it comes naturally on almost all of our late-game gear.

Edited January 4, 2012 by Azaranth

[thegreebler]

put on 113 power relic WH

 

Went into WZ. Critted for 3.9k vs my usual 2.5k.

 

Power doesnt just make it more overall. It adds to the BASE amount which is used after the crit calc.

 

So... lets say I crit... (power(bonus dmg) + weapon dmg) x crit chance x wepdmg= dmg + surge% multiple.

 

however there are certain minimums. I wont let my entire crit% fall below 33% just because that sounds like a greebly number:)

[Daiyukie]

Stats and How the Work

 

Graphs illustrating Diminishing Returns at the bottom of the post are especially helpful.

[GHoppa]

 

If you want my 2 cents (and most people don't ), I think the community is undervaluing Alacrity. ...

 

A little Alacrity can go a long way ...

 

but that's why we have Cool Head and Diagnostic Scan to recover ...

 

Speaking of Diagnostic Scan, the channel time is also boosted by Alacrity, meaning faster ticks and, statistically, higher energy return ...

 

Best stat? Probably not. I just think it'll end up being better than we give it credit for. ...

 

Quoted the most important parts out of this post. Some very valuble information there, at least for end game healing, its been to long since i leveled up.

 

There is ALOT to be said for an UWM cast time of 1.67 secs, and a KP cast time of 1.3 secs.

 

Sometimes energy usage is not a factor, you just need to keep people up.

 

Also, there is absolutely nothing stopping you from inserting your own little pause between casts to recover energy. Just dont be a mindless heal bot spamming heals and wondering why you have no energy. Faster heals when you want it is never a bad thing.

 

Back on topic, one thing to remember as a sawbones is our 'Accomplished Sawbones' talent. It adds 30% surge to UWM, KP, and KC. This means, if your casting those heals alot, the crit chance stat wieght will be alot higher for us than other classes. So having a high crit chance stat can be very important depending on playstyle, and also possibly the reason why our WH gear gives us crit rating over 400 iirc...

[Daiyukie]

It's not that unusual for my tank to take a spike in damage where I have to drop UWM twice, (followed by the two free Emergency Medpacks). Chasing that with a channel or two of Diagnostic Scan helps quite a bit, believe it or not.

 

And yet simply cycling UWM -> EMP UWM -> EMP will yield better burst heals to counter the spike and be more energy efficient.

[LagunaD]

I've just done a spreadsheet with an exact calculation of the stat weights for each ability.

 

The basic method is to write out the expected (average) heal or damage output of each ability in terms of the basic stats, then take the derivative of that formula with respect to each stat. All bonuses, etc from talents are included. All DR is included, and the exact, known formulas are used for everything.

 

I work out the relative increase in each ability's output from each stat, then multiply them by the amount of healing done by the corresponding ability in a recent flashpoint or operation parse to get an overall weight. This automatically incorporates my healing rotation and ability selection. The weight for each stat is then how much one point would increase my total healing in the parsed "template" run, relative to one point of Cunning.

 

Of course, the stat weights will depend on your current stats, but I found two things that surprised me (I switched my Scoundrel to healing only about a month ago, so what's news to me may be old news to others...)

 

1) Yes, Critical Rating is very good. I'm at 2304 Cunning, 547 Power, and 194 Critical Rating with buffs and stim, and Critical Rating is still about 18% better than Power and about 8% better than Cunning, at that point (I was favoring Power on my gear before I did the math, and I've only partially completed regearing). It would appear that moving about 100 more Power to Critical Rating would balance them out as far as their weights. That would correspond to 38-39% Tech Critical Chance with buffs, given my current stat budget.

 

2) The second thing that surprised me is how good Kolto Pack gets with high crit and the set bonus. With my optimized "target stats", In terms of average healing, it is only about 150 points (~3%) worse than Underworld Medicine, and it costs 25% less and casts significantly faster. Thanks to significantly more and bigger crits, Kolto Pack also has about twice the average output of Emergency Medpack.

 

Alacrity is very good for the cast-time abilities; the spreadsheet thinks 75% Surge/12.5% Alacrity is about balanced with my gear and ability selection. I generally don't have resource issues, so I think a moderate amount of Alacrity seems like a good idea.

Edited July 22, 2012 by LagunaD

[GHoppa]

LagunaD,

 

It is somewhat re-assuring to know that the things i have been saying and doing for the last little while are also confirmed by someone else who knows the math better than i am. A few questions and comments though:

 

1.) As for your critical stat weight, when calculating did you include the 30% surge stat bonus increase for your UWM, KP and KC heals?

 

2.) I have known about kolto pack for a long time, its a beast heal, and probably the most undervalued heal in the scoundrels toolbox for a very long time. Hopefully your comments will help to spread the word.

 

3.) Same comment stands for Alacrity as it does for KP. Alacirty shouldn't be ignored. Take it people! It's value gets better and better when all of your other stats get better too, as it helps all your stats do their jobs faster!

 

4.) Getting cunning up that high, is that using all PvE gear? I can't seem to get mine up that high, but i PvP mostly and aren't really aware of the maximum stats gained from PvE gear, especially the tier 2 gear.

 

Cheers

Edited July 22, 2012 by GHoppa

[LagunaD]

It is somewhat re-assuring to know that the things i have been saying and doing for the last little while are also confirmed by someone else who knows the math better than i am. A few questions and comments though:

 

1.) As for your critical stat weight, when calculating did you include the 30% surge stat bonus increase for your UWM, KP and KC heals?

 

Yes.

 

4.) Getting cunning up that high, is that using all PvE gear? I can't seem to get mine up that high, but i PvP mostly and aren't really aware of the maximum stats gained from PvE gear, especially the tier 2 gear.

 

Yes, all PvE gear, including orange bracers+belt with Rakata item mods, and 14x Cunning augments. As indicated, the numbers I quoted also included a +104 Cunning/+43 Power stim. I am still missing 3 BH/Campaign armor pieces.

[LagunaD]

So, I've been playing around with my spreadsheet some more.

 

Using the magic of Excel, I can graph the %change in my total healing (using a "template" from an actual flashpoint or operation logfile that encapsulates how much healing in a typical run comes from each ability, as described above).

 

I made a graph that shows the %change as I change Power into Critical Rating, or Critical Rating into Power (keeping the same total of the two, and all other stats fixed). The result is kind of surprising.

 

Here is the graph: http://sdrv.ms/NtiTre

 

The horizontal axis is the change in my Power (and the negative of the change in my crit). So at the left edge, I have ALL Critical Rating and no Power, while at the right edge I have ALL Power and no Critical Rating. Zero on the horizontal axis (one of the two points where the curve crosses it) corresponds to my current build.

 

The vertical axis shows the %change in my healing output. The "optimal" balance of Crit and Power would be the highest point on the curve. The curve shows that changing Power into Critical Rating can gain me only 0.1% compared to my current setup. What is surprising is the relatively small change in healing output even for extreme builds (no Power, or no Critical Rating). Basically, whatever I did with those stats, it would not change my overall healing output by much more than 2%. And there is a wide range of values around my current build where changes of 100 points or so either way make essentially no difference (a small fraction of 1%).

 

Basically, the graph shows that the stat system (at least for Sawbones) is "idiot proof". Even if you have no idea whether Power or Critical Rating is better, you can't gimp yourself by much more than 2%. It simply doesn't matter much.

 

I find that rather remarkable.

Edited July 24, 2012 by LagunaD

[Saafire-Goon]

The one problem I see is that while power is a stand alone stat, crit is not. For crit to perform well it requires surge. Off you were so heavily invested in power, you probably had little surge. And depending on how to converted over to crit, if you did it at a 1:1 ratio then you still had basically no surge. Which will hamper your crit like a hairless tauntaun on Hoth.

 

Without complete stat comparisons its not a good compare. It's like saying a tank is worthless because their dps isn't in the top tier.

 

When I get on I can compare my stats but I have about 75power and 484 crit rating. With a surge bonus of approx. 75%.It may turn out to be still equivalent but I would honestly be surprised. I also have over 12% alacrity, and in the heat of things wish I had more.

[Daiyukie]

The one problem I see is that while power is a stand alone stat, crit is not. For crit to perform well it requires surge. Off you were so heavily invested in power, you probably had little surge. And depending on how to converted over to crit, if you did it at a 1:1 ratio then you still had basically no surge. Which will hamper your crit like a hairless tauntaun on Hoth.

 

Without complete stat comparisons its not a good compare. It's like saying a tank is worthless because their dps isn't in the top tier.

 

When I get on I can compare my stats but I have about 75power and 484 crit rating. With a surge bonus of approx. 75%.It may turn out to be still equivalent but I would honestly be surprised. I also have over 12% alacrity, and in the heat of things wish I had more.

What? Power comes with Surge on WH enhancements (the ones you want are on Field Tech Boots).

[LagunaD]

You would have to try pretty hard not to get 75+% Surge at level 50.

 

And 484 Critical Rating/75 Power is very unbalanced. Something like a 3:2 or 5:3 ratio (favoring Power) is likely to be much closer to optimal.

Edited July 31, 2012 by LagunaD

[Daiyukie]

When I get on I can compare my stats but I have about 75power and 484 crit rating. With a surge bonus of approx. 75%.It may turn out to be still equivalent but I would honestly be surprised. I also have over 12% alacrity, and in the heat of things wish I had more.

 

Furthermore, do you mean literally 75 Power or +75 bonus damage? Because that's a huge difference.

[Grimspiller]

I am a PvP Sawbones so what I may say might not pertain to PvE considering PvE has much more inflated stats.

 

However I am quite certain numbers that are in my environment the threshold for crit vs power is 37% crit.

 

You can spreadsheet,graph, and theory craft all you want but for my research I just use Diagnostic Scan.

It has a base heal and crit that doesn't fluctuate so it is very easy to tell when your heals are increasing or lowering while min/maxing.

 

When i ran with 40% crit my base DS heal was 387 with 2 UHs

When I started to change mods from crit to power keeping my surge the same my base DS heal went up to 408 with 2 UHs.

 

I can honestly say I did not see any difference in my crit rate dropping 40% to 37%

3% more chances to crit vs a +21 base healing on all casts hardly seemed worth stacking crit any higher.

 

Like I said above this is all with PvP relations. Im sure things are different with PvE..Considering you have all pure stats and no expertise. However since you have all that cunning that gives crit as a bonus..I hardly think crit is your 3rd most important stat to min/max with on modding..i bet if you use DS as a test tool that you will get these results

 

Cunning>Power>Surge>Crit(cause PvE it should come naturally with high cunning to need too many mods to boost it)>Alacrity

 

I won't be doing PvE anytime soon to back this up.

 

If you want to see my research about Sawbones PvP it is here:

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=516686

 

~Morehots of the guild Watchmen

Canderous Ordo

Republic

[LagunaD]

You can spreadsheet,graph, and theory craft all you want but for my research I just use Diagnostic Scan.

 

So your hope is to disprove mathematics then?

 

It has a base heal and crit that doesn't fluctuate so it is very easy to tell when your heals are increasing or lowering while min/maxing.

 

It also has no critical bonus healing from talents (unlike the abilities that do most of our healing), and a very high critical chance bonus from talents.

 

When i ran with 40% crit my base DS heal was 387 with 2 UHs

When I started to change mods from crit to power keeping my surge the same my base DS heal went up to 408 with 2 UHs.

 

I can honestly say I did not see any difference in my crit rate dropping 40% to 37%

 

Are you claiming that a 3% increase in critical chance does not, in fact, increase your critical chance by 3%? It would take thousands of casts of establish that. How many thousands of casts did you tabulate at each value of critical rating?

 

All you are really proving is that Power increases the tooltip and Critical Rating doesn't. If you ignore the increased rate of criticals, obviously Power will look better.

 

3% more chances to crit vs a +21 base healing on all casts hardly seemed worth stacking crit any higher.

 

You do realize that Diagnostic Scan is unique, in that it is ONLY based on your bonus healing, and that every other heal has a very large base value which is independent of your bonus healing, right?

 

Obviously, if 3% of a critical heal's extra healing is more than about 21, it is certainly "worth it".

 

My Kolto Pack lands for around 2.8K without a crit, and crits for about twice that.

 

3% of that difference is 84, and 84 >> 21.

Edited August 6, 2012 by LagunaD

[Grimspiller]

Breakdown going off 1550 Cunning

 

1 Cunning = .14 Heal Base

 

1 Power/Tech Power= .17 Heal Base

 

162 Cunning = 1% crit

 

So with the above:

 

162 cunning is +23 heal base with a 1% crit increase.

 

162 power is a +28 heal base

 

So Power gives you +5 per unit.

 

spec 1 with 1000 cunning and 500 power would have a +225 heal coefficient /6.17% crit

 

spec 2 with 800 cunning and 700 power would have a + 231 heal coefficient /4.93% crit

 

spec 1----- 5 heals(base amount on any ability) =1199

 

spec 2-----5 heals(base amount on any ability) =1211

(crit was factored in)

 

 

This proves that power is a good thing..after 1550 cunning. For PvP..but the kicker is you got to get the juicy amount of crit before you can stack power..its the reason that crit and power isnt on the same mod O.o

 

So if your wondering how much crit you should have..you have to get done getting your cunning..but 37% crit you will start hitting diminishing returns FAST..so thats why in my previous post..i said crit will be a lesser priority to min/max at end game gear

Edited August 7, 2012 by Grimspiller

[Grimspiller]

Im tired..i will do a breakdown later thats better.

 

The Cunning base is correct

The Power base is correct

I will update later and do a table with crit multipliers on both to get to the bottom of all this

 

Till then

 

take (cunning x .14 + Power x.17) X your Crit% should = a general base heal per ability

 

experiment changing your power # and crit% and see what you get

Edited August 7, 2012 by Grimspiller

[Grimspiller]

Deleted Edited August 7, 2012 by Grimspiller

[Grimspiller]

My Kolto Pack lands for around 2.8K without a crit, and crits for about twice that.

 

3% of that difference is 84, and 84 >> 21

 

the +21 was off DS which i said I went from its base 387 to 408..that equals over a 5% increase to the base..

 

so 2.8k with a 5% increase =140 not 21

 

84<140

 

So that in mind

100 kolto packs @ 2.8k with 40% crit and 50% surge= 336,000

100 kolto packs @ 2.8k (with 5% increase due to power) with 37% crit and 50% surge=348,390

 

my math is right..check it if you want

Edited August 7, 2012 by Grimspiller

[LagunaD]

the +21 was off DS which i said I went from its base 387 to 408..that equals over a 5% increase to the base..

 

so 2.8k with a 5% increase =140 not 21

 

84<140

 

So that in mind

100 kolto packs @ 2.8k with 40% crit and 50% surge= 336,000

100 kolto packs @ 2.8k (with 5% increase due to power) with 37% crit and 50% surge=348,390

 

my math is right..check it if you want

 

No, your math is wrong.

 

Kolto Pack's healing is not proportional to your bonus healing; it has a large base value which doesn't scale at all. That is true of every other healing ability too, except for Diagnostic Scan.

 

So a 5% increase in bonus healing does not result in a 5% larger heal for any ability, except Diagnostic Scan.

 

All the relevant formulas are known, even if you apparently don't know them yourself.

[Grimspiller]

Lol..my guildmates warned me about the forums. I was just trying to share some love. You go ahead and stack crit all you want..

 

We will agree to disagree.

 

Morehots the Scoundrel

The guild Watchmen of Canderous Ordo

Republic

 

Oh and btw..my example last post was off a heal number YOU gave me..and sorry sir..changing 3% of your crit to all Power DOES add 5% heal to whatever number you pew pew out..

 

Or maybe its all random...

yea..

Edited August 7, 2012 by Grimspiller

[LagunaD]

Lol..my guildmates warned me about the forums. I was just trying to share some love. You go ahead and stack crit all you want..

 

We will agree to disagree.

 

Math is not a matter of opinion.

 

You came into the thread saying, "I don't believe in math, I just use Diagnostic Scan to make all my stat decisions. Oh, and 3% Critical Chance doesn't make any difference."

 

I tried to explain why that doesn't lead to the correct answer, and then you had a tantrum.

 

Oh and btw..my example last post was off a heal number YOU gave me..and sorry sir..changing 3% of your crit to all Power DOES add 5% heal to whatever number you pew pew out..

 

Or maybe its all random...

yea..

 

Of course it's not random, there is a fully known formula for all abilities. And the formula dictates that critical rating is superior to power up to around 39-40% critical chance (buffed). If you had read the thread, you would see that I even posted a graph showing that.

 

Here's an updated version of the graph, showing that currently, if I changed any of my 319 Critical Rating into Power, or any of 543 Power into Critical Rating, my overall healing would decrease:

 

http://sdrv.ms/RAC0Rv

[Grimspiller]

So you went against my original post saying that I noticed more healing thru power than crit at 37%...

 

But you admit that crit has drastic loss after 39-40% and you should go power...

 

just wow...

 

Did it ever occur that a FULL time healer might know a little live experience on the matter and not just a simulated graph..

 

I do admire your passion on these forums about advancing our class and I won't post anymore about this subject.

 

We have more things we can tackle in the future

 

~Morehots

[LagunaD]

So you went against my original post saying that I noticed more healing thru power than crit at 37%...

 

But you admit that crit has drastic loss after 39-40% and you should go power...

 

just wow...

 

I don't think you've understood the graph, and I never said or implied any such thing.

 

What the graph actually shows is that moving 250 points between Power and Critical Rating in either direction results in a 1% difference in total healing. I don't think most people would consider that "a drastic loss". Nevertheless, relatively high levels (>300) of critical rating are optimal, as the graph shows.

 

Did it ever occur that a FULL time healer might know a little live experience on the matter and not just a simulated graph..

 

What you said was that you use Diagnostic Scan to determine your stat priorities, and that 3% critical chance makes no difference to your healing output:

 

You can spreadsheet,graph, and theory craft all you want but for my research I just use Diagnostic Scan.

[...]

I can honestly say I did not see any difference in my crit rate dropping 40% to 37%

 

There is nothing "simulated" about the graph. It is based on the exact amount that each ability heals, according to player stats and the actual data used by the game itself. Combat logs from real flashpoint and operations runs (rather than non-quantitative anecdotal claims) are to weight each ability's importance, as I explained earlier in the thread.

 

I do admire your passion on these forums about advancing our class and I won't post anymore about this subject.

 

Thanks for the compliment, and nothing personal, this is just math. Your original post suggested that a careful calculation was wrong based on a superficial and demonstrably incorrect argument, so I explained how it was incorrect.