Formulas regarding potency crit bonus crit and mod.

[Nikelo]

<p>Formulas to my understanding are as follows.</p><p>Lets say you have a spell that does exactly 1000 damage, you have 75% potency and 65% crit bonus 125% crit chance and 1100 mod.</p><p>Figure in the potency first: 1000 x .75 = 1750</p><p>Base crit amount is 1.3 x the top end damage of your spell, ascertain your crit bonus: 1.3 x .65 = 2.145</p><p>Apply crit bonus = 1750 x 2.145 = 3753.75</p><p>Apply ability mod = 3753.75 + 1100 = 4853.75</p><p>Seems all easy enough to do.  Now here is the problem, why is potency the priority over crit bonus when if you swap your 75% potency and 65% crit bonus you get this...</p><p>1000 x .65 = 1650</p><p>1650 x 2.275 = 3753.75</p><p>3753.75 + 1100 =  4853.75</p><p>Same # indicating that potency and crit bonus both equally effect DPS output.  Someone please enlighten me to my errors.</p>

[Xalmat]

<p>Your formula is flawed.</p><p>Crit Bonus is figured as the base crit bonus of your spell type (for hostile spells, 1.5) plus any spell-related crit bonuses (like from Strike of the Magi). Also, ability mod is applied <em>after </em>Potency, but <em>before</em> Crit Damage formulas, and is also affected by the ability mod cap.</p><p>So using your example of 1000 base damage, 75% potency, 65% crit bonus, 1100 ability mod.</p><p>1000 x 1.75 = 1750 base damage.</p><p>Ability mod cap is base damage / 2 = 1750 damage / 2 = 875 ability mod.</p><p>875 + 1750 = 2625 damage</p><p>Multiply that by your crit bonus of 1.5 + .65 => 2.15 x 2625 = 5643.75</p><p>Or to put it in the terms of a formula:</p><p>Actual_Damage = (Base_Damage x (1 + Potency_Bonus + Specific_Spell_Potency_Bonus**) + Ability_Mod*) x (1 + Spell_Type_Bonus*** + Crit_Bonus + Specific_Spell_Crit_Bonus**)</p><p>* Ability_Mod can never exceed (Base_Damage x (1 + Potency_Bonus + Specific_Spell_Potency_Bonus)) / 2</p><p>** Specific_Spell_Potency_Bonus and  Specific_Spell_Crit_Bonus is figured on a spell-by-spell basis. Some spells will utilize this, some won't.</p><p>*** Spell_Type_Bonus varies from class to class and from spell-type to spell-type. For Necros, Hostile Spell Damage and Hate Adjustments have a bonus of 0.5, Melee Damage and Heal Bonus is 0.3.</p><p>Actual_Damage = (1000 x (1 + 0.75) + 875) x (1 + .5 + .65 + 0) = (1000 x 1.75 + 875) x (2.15) = (1750 + 875) x (2.15) = 2625 x 2.15 = 5643.75</p><p>The reason Potency is more valuable than Crit Bonus is two reasons: It increases your base damage whether you crit or not (there will be fights where you aren't at 100% or higher crit chance due to debuffs), and it increases your ability mod cap (the higher your Potency, the higher your ability mod cap).</p><p>So to use the above example, if you reverse Crit Bonus and Potency, you get this;</p><p>Actual_Damage = (1000 x (1 + 0.65) + 825) x (1 + .5 + .75) = (1650 + 825) x (2.25) = 2475 x 2.25 = 5568.75</p><p>5568.75 is not as large as 5643.75</p><p>Also if you want to get technical, Crit Damage is always Normal_Damage x Crit_Bonus, <em>unless</em> the result is less than Max_Damage+1. So if you have a spell that does 500-1000 base damage and a crit bonus of 1.5, your crits will normalize to 1001-1500 (since 500 x 1.5 is less than 1001), with a tendency to hit for 1001 (thus significantly increasing your average damage). But if you have a spell that does 750-1000 damage and a crit bonus of 1.5, your crits will range from 1125-1500.</p><p>The actual math behind figuring out your <em>average </em>crit damage is actually very, very messy when you have to deal with Max_Damage+1 calculations.</p>