Do you stack power or crit rating?

[Hethrir]

Which one do you stack when using mods and why? I have been stacking crit but it seems the power pods are easier to come by.

[Shumdaddy]

I have been treating crit and power as a one for one trade off. I think the value of crit is going to be highly dependent on your surge rating (mine is near 0). Not sure if this helps but I haven't seen any solid math breaking done the priority listing.

[Hethrir]

I have been treating crit and power as a one for one trade off. I think the value of crit is going to be highly dependent on your surge rating (mine is near 0). Not sure if this helps but I haven't seen any solid math breaking done the priority listing.

 

I am in the same situation. However, I figured it is better to go with one or the other. I just randomly chose crit.

[AlkalineKitten]

Right now I stack crit, because it's more understandable to me. Procs in Balance tree and all.

 

Not saying it's the best, but without understanding Power, I see Crit just seems to offer more to my Balance and Infil play.

[insanelf]

I play a Kinetic Hybrid shadow in PvP and I rely mainly on Power since crits are a bit unreliable and Kinetic Projects are 100% guranteed crits.

 

It highly depends on your build. For Balance Crit is definately the way to go, for Inf prolly too.

[darkov]

At higher levels a lot of Shadow gear is either Defense/Absorption or Crit/Surge from what I've seen. It probably suggests what the developers had in mind and Sage gear tends to be Power/Alacrity which is nearly useless on a Kinetic or Infiltrator Shadow (Alacrity does almost nothing for us).

[Maxxacre]

I'm not the type to crunch numbers or anything. I generally let the theorycrafters do their work with that. But I PvP a lot, and I observe what works and what doesn't. I've been playing in Infiltration spec, and from the start I've generally been stacking crit. Lately, I've been forced to sacrifice some of that crit... or actually a lot of that crit... in favor of power due to certain gear upgrades. I notice that I do a lot more damage a lot more consistently in PvP. I am not 100% sure which is better... but I'm starting to lean more towards the viability of Power than I once was.

[Neodeity]

I too stack crit, as with many other shadows on this forum. However, I have noticed that with the gear I have come across, +crit rating is often accompanied by a high +endurance and low +willpower, which I prefer to have the opposite. Maybe it's just the gear I've seen, but if this is the case for all pieces of gear, I can't imagine why the dev's thought a tanking shadow would want +crit rather than power.

[Forkrul]

I prefer crit+surge, especially now that I get more and more surge around lvl40.

[Doss-]

yo dawg, you want crit

 

http://www.torhead.com/ability/1yLcK5

Edited December 31, 2011 by Doss-

[bubrig]

At 50 in pvp I notice the majority of my burst damage as Infiltration is Project + Breach, I stack crit/surge right now but I wonder if stacking power would make my burst go up. A force potency project + breach almost always leaves my target in spinning strike range.

[darkov]

Ideally you'd want Surge and Power for a Force Potency Project, but I think the stats are mutually exclusive on mods. Though I guess you could mix your gear up.

 

Power affects bonus damage for all your abilities, Surge affects the size of a critical hit and Critical increase the chance of a critical hit. If you have a 100% chance to crit, like Force Potency, then Surge is what you want.

 

If you're relying more on your saber attacks, then you probably want Power, I don't know how Infiltration works though, Kinetic is very Project / Critical focused.

[Brantleydude]

Guys y'all are making it more complicated then it needs to be. Crits will hit higher than if you have power but power is a sure hit. More power more base damage. With Crits you'll hit higher than someone with power but it won't be consistent. It all depends on what you prefer if you like consistent damage buff power of you like those big power hits go crit

Simple as that.

[Forkrul]

Guys y'all are making it more complicated then it needs to be. Crits will hit higher than if you have power but power is a sure hit. More power more base damage. With Crits you'll hit higher than someone with power but it won't be consistent. It all depends on what you prefer if you like consistent damage buff power of you like those big power hits go crit

Simple as that.

Not quite, for pve purposes one will be objectively better point for point (though not for all values as they might scale differently and the scaling is not linear but variant on all 3 variables). For example once you get to 100% crit there is no further point in stacking it, or there might be a point where the overall damage increase from adding 1 power is higher than 1 crit or surge, etc.

 

But there is no way to solve this without having a combat log to parse so we will only have guesswork to go on until BW get its head out of its arse and adds a combatlog.

[kkwZero]

crits proc stuff and result in even more damage. stack crit, especialy as infiltration.

shadows are critters

Edited January 1, 2012 by kkwZero

[dandamanno]

I have a level 34 Shadow infiltrator and my critical rating is about 21% right now. Crit multiplier is around 54%. So the math for overall damage increase is around:

 

(.21*.54) = 11.3% increase in long term damage.

 

With 9% melee crit chance bonus from balance tree:

 

(.30*.54) = 16.2% increase in long term damage

 

Now this does not include the bonus for Shadow strike which I beleive right now is an extra 30% magnitude so shadow strike is around:

 

.30*.84 = 25.2% increase overall long term damage damage.

 

If we only use SS when the proc is up then we probably use it around 30% of our rotation (maybe) so:

 

(16.2%*70%) +(25.2%*30%) = 11.3%+7.6%= 18.9% increase in overall long term damage from crits. Using force Breach and Project brings this number down a bit I am trying to keep this somewhat simple.

 

So basically if I can get an increase in damage to my base skills from power that is equal or greater to 18.9% I would take power because it is more consistant and doesn't rely so much on the RNG. Right now I have 33 power rating and it gives me around 7.6 point increase to base damage. This is around .23 damage per power point, so to get to 18.9% increase in base damage for a skill that hits for 285 (my double strike average damage)I would need around 235 power rating. Which seems really high and probably not attainable at level 34.

 

BUT that is if I bring my crit rating to 0% chance in doing so, which of course would not happen as we have a base of at least 5% and willpower brings crit chance up also so it would most likely be a minimum crit chance of around 12% at all times, even with stacking power.

 

Also later in infiltrator there is a bonus to project critical magnitude as well. This will be another reason stacked in favour of crit chance.

 

TL;DR Shadow Infiltrator seems to be set up for crits although my guess is that because of diminishing returns you would want to have a blend of both crit chance and power. Or at later levels when surge comes into play dropping power for surge rating when the diminishing returns on crit chance become to painfull. Right now they are not too bad.