Crit Chance and Critical Mitigation in Velious

[Umub]

<p>I am trying to make sure I understand how Crit Chance and Critical Mitigation work in Velious so I gear my toons appropriately.  So my understanding is...</p><ol><li>Critical Mitigation does NOT reduce the Mobs chance to critically hit but instead reduces the damage when they do critically hit. So in ACT even if you have 200% critical mitigation you will still see critical hits from the Mob to your toon but the incoming damage should be less that it would oherwise have been.</li><li>Mobs now have a Critical resistance (or mitigation?) that reduces their chance of being hit critically by your toon. So if they have a 20% critical resistance your toon will need a 120% crit chance to hit them critically each time. So again, in ACT if my crit chance is high enough I should see 100% crits from my toon against the mob. If I don't then I need more crit chance.</li></ol><p>Are these two statements correct?</p><p>Also, has anyone worked out even a rough estimate about what critical mitigation % and crit chance % you need in various instances and overland zones? I did a very simple test 2 boxing in <span >Tower of Frozen Shadow and with 102% crit chance I was criting 68% of the time. Suggesting to me that I need 140% crit chance for that zone. (That wasn't against a named by the way.) I only have 38% critical mitigation on my SK and he was taking some pretty heavy spike damage. So I would guess that I need higher than 40% critical mitigation as well.</span></p>

[Gungo]

<p>You need the following crit chance in velious to crit 100%:</p><p><strong>Estimated Crit Numbers:</strong> Heroic ToFS Zones - 150% Crit Heroic Kraytoc Zones - 150% Crit Heroic KD Zones - 200% Crit ToFS x2 - 170% crit Kraytocs E-180% crit H-200% crit Hall of Legends E-200% crit H-230% crit Foundations of Stone E-200% crit H-230% crit There are two x4 contested named Soren the Vindicator - 300% crit Tantor XII- 230%+(guess since i couldnt find the info)</p>

[Banditman]

<p>What would be BETTER is if SOE did what they said they would do and put the buffs on the mobs so you could inspect them and see first hand.</p>

[Horgana]

<p><cite>Banditman wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>What would be BETTER is if SOE did what they said they would do and put the buffs on the mobs so you could inspect them and see first hand.</p></blockquote><p>I zoned into Iceshard Keep and the first mob there does have the buff on.</p>

[Nevao]

<p><cite>Horgana@Butcherblock wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Banditman wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>What would be BETTER is if SOE did what they said they would do and put the buffs on the mobs so you could inspect them and see first hand.</p></blockquote><p>I zoned into Iceshard Keep and the first mob there does have the buff on.</p></blockquote><p>It seems to be rather hit and miss. I saw it in KD Heroric mobs when I peaked into it, but did not see it on the Easy Mode Fortress of Rime raid mobs.</p>

[Banditman]

<p>Every single mob should have it.  It shouldn't be hit and miss.  If the mob has no crit avoidance fine, TELL ME.  If it has 250%, fine, TELL ME.</p>

[bmg]

<p>I've been killing 90^Ancient Shardwurms. At 122% crit chance I frequenctly fail to crit. At 152% crit chance I seem to crit 100%. It's obviously not just heroics and instances where we need more crit chance than we might normally expect.</p>

[Lethe5683]

<p><cite>Umub wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><ol><li>Critical Mitigation does NOT reduce the Mobs chance to critically hit but instead reduces the damage when they do critically hit. So in ACT even if you have 200% critical mitigation you will still see critical hits from the Mob to your toon but the incoming damage should be less that it would oherwise have been.</li></ol></blockquote><p>No, if for example a mob has a crit bonus amount of 50% and you have 50% crit mit or greater it will not show up as a critical hit, otherwise you are correct.</p>

[Banditman]

<p><cite>Lethe5683 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Umub wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><ol><li>Critical Mitigation does NOT reduce the Mobs chance to critically hit but instead reduces the damage when they do critically hit. So in ACT even if you have 200% critical mitigation you will still see critical hits from the Mob to your toon but the incoming damage should be less that it would oherwise have been.</li></ol></blockquote><p>No, if for example a mob has a crit bonus amount of 50% and you have 50% crit mit or greater it will not show up as a critical hit, otherwise you are correct.</p></blockquote><p>See, you guys are rubbing up against a real question here.</p><p>So, yes, if I have more Crit Mit than a mob has Crit Bonus, I don't see crits against me.  However!</p><p>That doesn't mean he didn't crit!</p><p>Remember, a Crit, by definition, cannot be less than the upper end of damage + 1.  When we completely offset a mobs Crit with Crit Mit, that doesn't mean he isn't crit'ing on us.  He could still very easily be hitting us for max + 1.  But we have no idea.  We simply know we got hit, and that it wasn't reported as a Crit.</p><p>That doesn't mean it was a "normal" (min to max) hit.</p><p>Technically, a mob could still Crit 100% of the time, hitting for Max + 1, but not be reported as Crit.  We have no way to tell.</p>

[tomdykins]

<p>---stupid question---</p>

[Nebbeny]

I found that in the kraytoc spire heroic zone, we needed roughly 200% crit chance. Personally what i want to know is, do people casting beneficial spells that can crit get penalized twice, by the zone and then by the mob if it casts that beneficial crit chance decrease?

[Lethe5683]

<p><cite>Banditman wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Technically, a mob could still Crit 100% of the time, hitting for Max + 1, but not be reported as Crit.  We have no way to tell.</p></blockquote><p>It does still technically crit 100% of the time, it used to show that when they first added crit mit.  Now you can only really tell if it's critting if it hits you consistently for the same damage.</p>

[Umub]

<p>Thanks for the information. It's very hepful.</p><p>Just a quick follow-up. So I understand now that ACT should not be showing a Crit if my Crit Mit is high enough. As I recall (I need to run the test again tonight if I have time), I was being critted 50% of the time on the Captain ToFS first floor  (not exactly a named, but tougher than the other trash) even though my Crit Mit was 38%. Does that sounds right? So in the first floor of the easiest heroic instance I need 90% crit mit?</p><p>If that's the way it is, so be it. But it just seems a little high to me.</p>

[Lethe5683]

<p><cite>Umub wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Thanks for the information. It's very hepful.</p><p>Just a quick follow-up. So I understand now that ACT should not be showing a Crit if my Crit Mit is high enough. As I recall (I need to run the test again tonight if I have time), I was being critted 50% of the time on the Captain ToFS first floor  (not exactly a named, but tougher than the other trash) even though my Crit Mit was 38%. Does that sounds right? So in the first floor of the easiest heroic instance I need 90% crit mit?</p><p>If that's the way it is, so be it. But it just seems a little high to me.</p></blockquote><p>No it doesn't work like that, if its crit bonus is higher than your crit mit at all it will always crit.  The only reason you were critted 50% of the time is the mob must not have a 100% crit chance.</p>

[Belgareth]

<p><cite>Umub wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Thanks for the information. It's very hepful.</p><p>Just a quick follow-up. So I understand now that ACT should not be showing a Crit if my Crit Mit is high enough. As I recall (I need to run the test again tonight if I have time), I was being critted 50% of the time on the Captain ToFS first floor  (not exactly a named, but tougher than the other trash) even though my Crit Mit was 38%. Does that sounds right? So in the first floor of the easiest heroic instance I need 90% crit mit?</p><p>If that's the way it is, so be it. But it just seems a little high to me.</p></blockquote><p>in the last xpac you only saw crit mit on raid gear, but in this one you see it on most of tha gear (all of it i think actually) and it's not a small ammount either so getting up to 90% isnt really that unreasonable once you get geared up from this xpac.</p><p>The diffrence that your gonna see is that people with raid gear are gonna have a easyer time gettin tha new gear because they already have quite a bit of crit mit.</p><p>Theres also buffs out there that can help boost your crit mit aswell. (well, atleast 1 that i know of from wardens)</p>

[Banditman]

<p>This is what I was trying to point out earlier in the thread.</p><p>Crit Mit is *not* the same thing as Crit Avoidance.</p><p>Critical Mitigation actually does *nothing* to prevent a mob from crit'ing you.  What it does do is reduce the portion of the damage that is critical.  Here is an example.</p><p>Tank has 50% Crit Mit and 70% physical mitigation.  I am not going to get in to avoidance right now, just assume the mob doesn't miss.  Mob has a 50% Crit Chance, and his Crit Bonus (the amount a critical increases his damage) is 80%.  The mob does 50 - 100 points of damage per swing (using small numbers to keep math simple).</p><p>Five swings from this mob might look like this (raw data, mitigation, crit mit, etc not considered)</p><p>1 - 75 points of damage, no crit</p><p>2 - 90 points of damage, crit</p><p>3 - 52 points of damage, crit</p><p>4 - 70 points of damage,no crit</p><p>5 - 83 points of damage, non crit</p><p>So, the first swing does not crit, so Crit Mit is meaningless.  The only factor is the tank mitigation.  The next two swings crit, so this is where it gets interesting.</p><p>Now, the first thing that happens is that the swing is processed by the server for a critical hit.  That formula is damage + (damage x crit bonus).  This is also subject to a minimum of max damage + 1.  With zero crit mit, these swings look like this:</p><p>Swing 2 - 90 + (90 x .<img src="/smilies/b2eb59423fbf5fa39342041237025880.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> = 162.  (90 normal, 72 critical)</p><p>Swing 3 - 52 + (52 x .<img src="/smilies/b2eb59423fbf5fa39342041237025880.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> = 94.  Since this is less than the maximum swing of 100 + 1, this is increased to 101.</p><p>However, with Crit Mit, those swings look entirely different.</p><p>Swing 2 would work like this:  First and foremost, this swing is a critical, what changes is the amount of the critical.  Crit Mit is applied against the Crit Bonus of the mob, not his crit chance.  Nothing about Crit Mit affects the *chance* for a mob to crit.  Swing 2 - 90 + (90 x (.8 - .5)) = 117.  (90 normal, 27 critical)</p><p>See how the Crit Mit reduced the critical portion of the damage?  It went from 72 to 27.</p><p>Here's the really trick part, Swing 3.  I am also having to guess here, because I am not SURE how this works.  That's the question I was posing above.</p><p>What I *think* happens, is this.  Swing 3 - 52 + (52 x (.8 - .5)) = 68.  (52 normal, 16 critical).  But wait!  Critical is subject to a minimum strike of Max + 1.  So in this case, the swing is increased to 101.  In this case, my Crit Mit did *NOTHING*.</p><p>This is speculation, I don't *know* this is how it works for low damage crits.  This is how I *think* it works based on the best available information.  It needs to be clarified by a developer who knows, if there is one these days.</p>

[Umub]

<p><cite>Lethe5683 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Umub wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Thanks for the information. It's very hepful.</p><p>Just a quick follow-up. So I understand now that ACT should not be showing a Crit if my Crit Mit is high enough. As I recall (I need to run the test again tonight if I have time), I was being critted 50% of the time on the Captain ToFS first floor  (not exactly a named, but tougher than the other trash) even though my Crit Mit was 38%. Does that sounds right? So in the first floor of the easiest heroic instance I need 90% crit mit?</p><p>If that's the way it is, so be it. But it just seems a little high to me.</p></blockquote><p>No it doesn't work like that, if its crit bonus is higher than your crit mit at all it will always crit.  The only reason you were critted 50% of the time is the mob must not have a 100% crit chance.</p></blockquote><p>Ahh. Thanks. Now that makes sense.</p>

[Umub]

<p>So Banditman, if your guess is right on Swing 3 shouldn't we see large number of hits from the same mob doing exactly the same damage on a tank with high crit mit? In other words, the max damage +1 value should show up much more often statistically. By the way, here is what Xelgad says:</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span ><strong>Critical Mitigation</strong>: Critical Mitigation reduces the amount of damage from incoming critical hits. It has no cap but cannot reduce a Critical Hit to be weaker than a non-critical hit.</span></p><p>Which doesn't really answer the question but to me implies that a critical hit CAN be fully mitigated with Crit Mit back to being equal to a non-Critical hit but not lower. And it seems wrong that a lower hit would actually do more damage than a higher hit because the max damage +1 was applied and not reversed in some way on the lower hit while the crit bonus on the higher hit was fully mitigated by crit mit.</p>

[metalhed]

<p>From reading this post <a href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=471667">http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=471667</a></p><p><span style="color: #999999;">What is the cap on Critical Mitigation?</span></p><ul><li><span style="color: #999999;">100% currently. </span></li><li><span style="color: #ff0000;">It works by lowering the attacker's multiplier, so a 2.5 multiplier would be lowered to 1.5. This can never go below normal damage.</span></li></ul><p>So would this mean if a mob reads 125% Crit Bonus( 1.25 multiplier ) , I would need 25% Crit Mit to reduce the mob's crit bonus to 1.0 ?  (Which is as low as a Crit Mutiplier can go )</p>

[LardLord]

<p><cite>metalhed wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>So would this mean if a mob reads 125% Crit Bonus( 1.25 multiplier ) , I would need 25% Crit Mit to reduce the mob's crit bonus to 1.0 ?  (Which is as low as a Crit Mutiplier can go )</p></blockquote><p>If you see a mob has a buff giving it 125% crit bonus, then it has a multiplier of 2.25, and you need at least 125 crit mit to completely negate his crits.  I'm not certain that there isn't a base crit multiplier that the crit bonus adds to (like how players have a base crit multiplier of 1.2-1.5 depending on class), but I think/hope you simply need as much crit mit as the mob has crit bonus.</p>

[Glenolas]

<p><cite>Banditman wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>This is what I was trying to point out earlier in the thread.</p><p>Crit Mit is *not* the same thing as Crit Avoidance.</p><p>Critical Mitigation actually does *nothing* to prevent a mob from crit'ing you.  What it does do is reduce the portion of the damage that is critical.  Here is an example.</p></blockquote><p> Extending along your logic tree, and assuming the CB on the mob buff symbol is the mob's TOTAL CB, then I think the below methods help yeild the answer to your last question.</p><p>1) We basically are told nothing about the mob's crit chance, nor about it's  damage range.   However, if your crit mit vs crit damage theory holds up, ACT will tease out some of it.</p><p>On mobs where my tank crit mit far exceeds the mob's crit bonus, ACT still show it getting plenty of crits  on me.  Using only large samples of hits ( to eliminate small sample quirks) ACT is indicating a good guess at the mob's crit chance.   If ACT says I get critted 45% of the time on MOB X even though my crit mit far exceeds it's crit bonus, I can safely assume it's crit chance is around 45%  +/- sampling error.   It's crit chance cannot be changed by us.</p><p>2) It's max hit should be +1 more than the high end of it's damage range, since I mitigate ALL the bonus damage it would get from the hit.</p><p>3) If the low damage crits always shifted up to Max+1, the the hit distribution count would be skewed, otherwise would be evenly distributed over the range.  I.e. the median and the mean would be close to each other, in the latter case, and far apart in the former.    So you can tease out the answer to your last remaining question with a little work.</p>

[Banditman]

<p>You can't really work out it's damage range since that involves mitigation which is ALSO obfuscated completely.  The numbers ACT sees are post mitigation and you'd need pre-mitigation numbers to begin to derive a damage spread.</p>

[Glenolas]

<p><cite>Banditman wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>You can't really work out it's damage range since that involves mitigation which is ALSO obfuscated completely.  The numbers ACT sees are post mitigation and you'd need pre-mitigation numbers to begin to derive a damage spread.</p></blockquote><p>1.  Skip the damage range, since you'll also have a problem finding the low end number anyway (it might not occur in the fight at all), and damage range isn't particularly useful for anything other than projecting onto another player's mitigation, to determine if the squishies are going to be oneshotted at their level of HP.  </p><p>However, think on the median (half lie above, half lie below) vs the average (total divided by count) of the hits.  That  should answer the question of whether low damage crits are raised to Max +1.   I'd guess they are, by the way.</p><p>If I get around to it, I'll look at a few parses of melee hits on the tank on long fights and see what they say.</p><p>2. You know the mitigation of the tank in percent during the measurement, so should be able to back it out to yeild the true value of the hits recorded.   Even if it's not an absolutely correct final number,  it's relatively correct, meaning you can then compute forward to some other mitigation of other players.   I think mitigation is the only derater on the hit.   Avoidance only comes into play in determining if the swing landed.  </p><p>3.  You don't have to know the mitigation to determing if the low damage crits are raised to MAX + 1 anyway.  Mitigation is just a factor.   The distribution is what you are after, and that's factor independent.</p>

[Banditman]

<p>No, you don't know the true mitigation.  You never have.  It's a (*@$ *(@#$)(@.  Level of gear matters, level of mobs, level of player.  The number you see in the UI is a myth.  This was acknowledged by development and has never been corrected.</p>