How important is +crit for warlocks

[chatstar]

and which spell lines are capable of crit?  i've never seen Negative Absolution crit, which got me curious.  In addition, can anyone tell me what the bonus dmg % is for a critical strike?  Thanks very much for information, still trying to decide what achievements Id like, and the tooltips are lacking in many ways.

[knightofround]

Crits range from 1% extra damage to 30% extra damage. I don't know about you, but negative absolution crits just about as much as any other spell for me...perhaps you're simply casting it less often compared to other spells. As far as overall dps goes, some studies have shown that a 1% increase in crit rate for sorcerers comes out to about a 0.5% overall dps increase. Just remember that crits are very spikey by nature...in a raid, its actually *unlucky* to get three unexpected crits in a row and accidently pull aggro when you normally would not.

[TheStateFish]

<cite>knightofround wrote:</cite><blockquote>Crits range from 1% extra damage to 30% extra damage. I don't know about you, but negative absolution crits just about as much as any other spell for me...perhaps you're simply casting it less often compared to other spells. As far as overall dps goes, some studies have shown that a 1% increase in crit rate for sorcerers comes out to about a 0.5% overall dps increase. Just remember that crits are very spikey by nature...in a raid, its actually *unlucky* to get three unexpected crits in a row and accidently pull aggro when you normally would not. </blockquote><p> In a raid it is very lucky to get 3 crits in a row, pending your crit %.</p><p>I have 2 sets of gear, a proc set with every damage proc I can muster, and a crit set. I am pushing 40% crits atm and with gear from Throne, EH, and Avatars that I hope to eventually get, I will have over 50% crits.</p><p>I wish I could crit every spell, and do force crit apocalypse every time they are up, including as soon as a fight starts.</p>

[knightofround]

Oh definitely, if I could get 40% crit rate and could expect stuff to crit all the time that would be a totally different scenario. But when you have a sub-20% crit rate it's somewhat of a curse because you can't hold your aggro expecting a crit, and you will sometimes get those 3 crits in a row on the pull.

[Jeger_Wulf]

<p>> studies have shown that a 1% increase in crit rate for sorcerers comes > out to about a 0.5% overall dps increase. </p><p>Perhaps I am not understanding the mechanics. </p><p>If crits are 1% to 30% more damage, and it is uniform, then the average crit is 16% damage increase. A 1% increase in crit% should boost damage by 0.16% (based on the original damage). It would then take about 6.2% crit increase to get 1% more damage.</p>

[miliskel]

how did u get 40% crit!?!?! thats uber..i have about 16% crit  with no crit gear aside moa and my animated tome pet and i would love 40% crit self buffed , with a troub i still think "OH CRAP!" when i crit coz im gonna pull aggro as i have probably crited apoc earlier with fhs+ catalyst but if i had 50% crit(with troub) i think i would do great damage quick question btw, how do i get apocalypse to crit for 4k ticks? done it once when speced agi wis with no crit items or anything out of sheer luck but now ive got crit spec i cant get more than 3k ticks

[Sydias]

<p>For maximum crits in a near perfect scenario I was able to get 16% from AAs, 2% from set bonus, 2.9% from book pet, 8% from bard DKTM buff, 2% from MoA which totals to 30.9% crits.  I know there is a lot more crit gear out there as well that I don't have yet, and I now have a potion that adds to crit chance.  With this setup I was critting a LOT and after testing out Agi/Wis, I'm going back to my crits.  Oh.. the bard also gave me 8% casting speed bonus.  Wheeeeee, bard ftw.  <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p><p>EDIT:  4K apolcalypse.. I have yet to do it, but I know dispatch being active makes a HUGE difference.  With just a high crit I can crack 3K, but I have yet to time get it worked out with the brigand to get dispatch in there too as we always have a different brigand.</p>

[Araxes]

Just as an example for purposes of illustration, the non-melee (appears to include idle time) output of a Labs run : <img src="http://img455.imageshack.us/img455/9842/critsgc8.gif" border="0"> 410 Hits, 354 Crits, Max hit = 3700, Avg Hit = 2350 Int was buffed around 800 IIRC and unfortunately I don't recall my group makeup as I was shuffled a bit between the MT and DPS groups.  My spec is STR / WIS which is how I get the high hits on Rift, Absolution, and so forth.  I have hit ~4800 on ticks with Apocalypse, on some occassions (couldn't locate the parses for that, so I went with this one as it was most recent in my mind. Which is why I say this is for example only.

[miliskel]

i swear our brigand has dispatch ap2 becuase when i catalyst apoc afterwards i simply get 3k nukes whereas in a pickup raid i managed to get 4k and would looove to do that again, after a few attempts i tried my debuff at start of the fight and not much difference really - about 200 more damage so i use that as first thing (precasting netherous and corrupt gift ofc) but havent broke the 4k mark since that pickup =/

[MugnMo]

<cite>knightofround wrote:</cite><blockquote>Crits range from 1% extra damage to 30% extra damage.  As far as overall dps goes, some studies have shown that a 1% increase in crit rate for sorcerers comes out to about a 0.5% overall dps increase. </blockquote><p>The first part of this is not correct when referring to spell damage.  A crit hit will be between the max damage + 1 and max damage * 1.3 (note this does not factor in debuffs etc).  A little more detail, the crit mechanics work as follows, you cast a spell and it is going to do X damage.  If it crits it will do X * 1.3 damage, unless that value is less than the max value of the spell then it is forced to max damage + 1.  This makes the As an example, lets take a spell that does 500 - 1000 damage.  You cast it and the non-crit hit would be 600, however you critted so this hit becomes 600 * 1.3 = 780 which is still less than 1000, so the final hit ends up being 1001 damage.   If you cast and the non crit hit would have been 800, the crit damage would be 800 * 1.3 = 1040.  Finally, if you cast and the non crit hit would have been 1000, the crit damage would be 1000 * 1.3 = 1300.</p><p>This mechanic is what makes a 1% increase in crit account for a 0.5% increase in overall DPS, but that number fluctuates based on the range of damage.  If you had a spell that has a range of 0-1000, the average non-crit hit would be 500, and the average crit hit would be 1036.  Thus for that spell, a 1% crit chance would result in a 1.01% increase in overall damage.  For a fixed damage spell, such as ice flames, that does 500 damage, the average non-crit hit would be 500, and the average crit hit would be 650.  For that spell, a 1% crit chance would result in a 0.3% increase in overall damage.</p><p>On average, the second part above is correct for a warlock but does not hold true for all classes. (a 1% increase in crit rate is about a 0.5% increase in overall DPS).</p>