Crit vs. Non-crit Builds : Do non-crit builds need a buff?

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Phrazz wrote:

Emberwake... -max resi... You talk about elemental builds, which - in my eyes - isn't the problem. Elemental Overload fixes a lot of those problems for casters, as do WED on every gear slot, Heralds and APS scaling for attack based builds. The real problem, is physical scaling, mainly attack based builds, without crit. And Emberwake has some interesting synergies, but one, two, three or even four uniques will not "fix" something.

How long is it since you made a 1H non-crit physical Duelist or Marauder? How's your damage?

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sidtherat wrote:

well.. ive made DW and 1h RT builds with normal gear and i reach respectable damage (like 50k tooltip) - surely enough to cruise yellow maps and do red maps

issue? it costs so many nodes that i barely have 5k life with a left-side of the tree build. it is garbage value/passive-cost ratio. crit builds are cheaper 'per dps' than non crit just because entire game screams 'play crit' + ggg did a great job making crit builds have all the toys you need: free flask charges? free status aliments? stuff like Heralds - non crit builds have serious issues triggering this stuff - there go your auto-curses etc etc

cool, i can play crit. but can we remove left part of the tree and call it a day? otherwise it is 'you can play whatever you want, but only the 'special ones' play non-crit' (note: there ARE some left side builds that are non crit - summoners, RF, Explosive Arrow or people with 450pdps 1handers + obvious double dip idiocy)

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Tsokushin wrote:

Well this thread has exploded since last I saw it.

I've read nearly all the replies and here are some further thoughts.

Crit nerf?: It's been argued that crit needs a nerf. Perhaps it does, but not by means of nerfing damage. It does require people to walk the line in stacking crit and multiplier, so to lessen the rewards in damage would be counterproductive to player choice.

One part I can agree with is the separation of crit and status ailments. This should bring a lot more parity into builds utilizing status ailments. The only potential problem from this is current baseline for status effects is far too low. Taking this option might necessitate buffing status effect chance nodes from 5% to 7-10% each.

The thing that can be done though is probably a further reduction in defenses for doing so. Consider life builds attempting to amass crit. Nigh impossible to hit good % without losing lots of life. ES builds don't really have this struggle as a good portion of the crit tree is within vicinity of CI and such. But, I don't want to get into discussion of ES vs Life.

The only problem here is I haven't yet thought of a way to do this in such a balanced manner that can affect CI and leave life in a usable state. The best possible solution requires the least amount of changes and coding for the sake of keeping PoE stable, but all current ideas point towards reworking that section of the tree.

This problem isn't confined simply to Inquisitor or Assassin, although they both excel at it. Any archetype can reach excellent levels of crit.

Crit vs non-crit: Crit has undeniably higher damage than non-crit builds. For all of you bringing up non-crit builds involving double dipping, poison, currently overtuned abilities, the topic of how game-breakingingly powerful those builds are has been discussed elsewhere numerous times.

It's best to treat these builds almost like pre-nerf voltaxic. If GGG cares about quality, these builds will not retain their current strength and will unavoidably nerfed.

Melee: Melee damage (discounting already completely broken double dipping) is the most evident of crit vs non-crit disparity. Much of this thread has already discussed the problems of running 1h+shield when it comes to dps. Crit builds accomplish far more than non-crit in this regard.

This problem, however, is also present in weapon types as well, with axes (outside of Fleshrippers and lower tier variants) and maces being the largest losers overall. Lowest crit chance, and either no or undesirable implicit modifiers. The only way to efficiently boost damage for these particular weapons is going going the non-crit route, but again, less damage than a crit build with swords.

Buffing Non-crit: Rather than attempting to nerf crit, or adjust ascendancies, I'd like to shift focus onto just what ideas would work to make non-crit builds more effective, particularly melee builds.

So far, the easiest and most pain free idea I have is to rework Resolute Technique into an analog of Elemental Overload. Ideally, it should read something like this:

Resolute Technique:Increases Accuracy by 200. 20-40% more Physical Damage for 8 seconds if you've dealt a critical strike recently. You have no Critical Strike Multiplier.

I'd argue against any further damage as melee does have in its favor lots of blanket increases to damage unlike elemental damages. If you disagree, please state why.

Elemental Overload can also be moved up from 40% to 50%.

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Aim_Deep wrote:

Two words: double dipping

for now non crit build can exceed crit. of course you can do both at same time but it's less efficient than focused builds.

For example poison non crit build I play with a shit load of general damage multipliers the Minotaur gets maybe 2 swings off if he's lucky. Much better than say the 100% crit cospri discharger I played last season.