Critical Weakness

I noticed critcal weakness used to say increased damage on critical hits, but now says increased critical multiplier... What's the difference? Is it just adding 1.5x the multiplier % to the existing multipler percentage? If so, that is a ridiculously huge nerf to critical weakness.

I don't recall a dev ever mentioning that the increased damage on critical weakness would be changed to me added critical multiplier... how does it work?

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Last edited by Xapti on Jan 3, 2012, 11:00:00 PM
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taekvideo wrote:
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Xapti wrote:
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taekvideo wrote:

Both this and the elemental weakness curses are quite overpowered. We're talking about curses that can literally double your dps.
While I agree it's rather overpowered compared to vulnerability (or projectile weakness— which should be removed from the game), the skills —namely elemental weakness— do no increase DPS by 100% against most enemies. It will only increase it by 50% on most monsters, and up to 100% on [non-aura] resistant ones.
Critical weakness is also very difficult or impossible to get to 100% increased damage (without using legacy gear), and would be even harder with the change to it. You'd need 5% (or less) chance to crit, and 770% (or more) critical multiplier.

That said, I would certainly agree they are are overpowered compared to vulnerability.

However, if someone has 15% chance to crit, and 427% multiplier, they'll only get 56%/66% (depending on the present or the future) damage increase from critical weakness, which isn't any real benefit. That would kinda suck to invest quite a bit into getting good criticals but not get much or any benefit over elemental weakness.


As for crit weakness, I made a spreadsheet awhile ago... if you're an endgame witch with good crit chance/multiplier already (15% seems awfully low for an endgame witch...) then you'll easily be in the neighborhood of 100% increase in damage.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ArO-yQpYvaqkdHJ2dTZXbTRJNDJxYVZKZWpyUFQ1WGc
(using 69% increased critical damage multiplier from the curse)

Your numbers agreed with mine (aside from the fact that I used 1.68 multiplier for whatever reason) — so I don't really see what you were trying to prove. Like I thought I said, I agree they are/were too strong.

Because very high critical multipliers are hard to obtain now, it is impossible to get really high overall damage gains with critical weakness — my point was that critical weakness is weaker than elemental weakness.
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Last edited by Xapti on Jan 3, 2012, 11:14:19 PM
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Xapti wrote:
I noticed critcal weakness used to say increased damage on critical hits, but now says increased critical multiplier... What's the difference? Is it just adding 1.5x the multiplier % to the existing multipler percentage? If so, that is a ridiculously huge nerf to critical weakness.

I don't recall a dev ever mentioning that the increased damage on critical weakness would be changed to me added critical multiplier... how does it work?

I believe it was always affecting the multiplier, the description was just misleading, and was fixed up for 0.9.5 with the stat description redo.
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Mark_GGG wrote:
I believe it was always affecting the multiplier, the description was just misleading, and was fixed up for 0.9.5 with the stat description redo.


If that's the case, then I'd say this skill was always terribly underpowered.

You'd have to fail at math to think this skill is balanced compared to vulnerability or elemental weakness— at least in a DPS sense.

The DPS boost in [roughly/conservativey] the best possible scenario (5% critical chance (yeah right! completely unrealistic), 4.5 critical multiplier) is only 54.6% AT LEVEL 20 (assuming it's still +69% multiplier at lvl 20, and still actually adds 150% of that 69% (103.5%) for whatever messed up reason— Was that a bug that was fixed, or no?])

For someone who specializes in critical attacks, they would have a much much higher critical chance, let's say 33.8% chance, and hence get REDUCED benefit of using this curse compared to if they had a lower critical chance. The DPS increase would be only 33.6%.

For someone who doesn't spec into crits at all, the skill would give only 26.0% increased DPS.

All this said, I realize crits give a small benefit aside from damage (if you're critting with a large % of elemental damage, otherwise it's insignificant), but not only does elemental weakness increase those effects MORE than critical weakness (additional chance to burn/freeze/shock), it still wouldn't make up for the lower DPS compared to elemental weakness even if elemental weakness didn't have the additional freeze/shock/burn chance.
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Last edited by Xapti on Jan 5, 2012, 11:26:33 PM
Is it me or is there some miscommunication going on here?

As Mark described it, this curse multiplies the actual multiplier like this:

If you have a 500% damage multiplier, it will multiply the part above 100%, or the +400% by let's say 1.66; giving you a final multiplier of +664% or 764% of the regular hit damage.
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konfeta wrote:
Is it me or is there some miscommunication going on here?

As Mark described it, this curse multiplies the actual multiplier like this:

If you have a 500% damage multiplier, it will multiply the part above 100%, or the +400% by let's say 1.66; giving you a final multiplier of +664% or 764% of the regular hit damage.
I remembering seeing that, but I took what he said here as trumping it, which was dumb. I suppose he misunderstood what I said.

I was asking if the curse added 50-69% (times 1.5)to the critical multiplier, not multiplied the critical multiplier by 1.5-1.69.

It's confusing because increased critical multiplier mods just multiply off the base 150%, essentially just adding x% * 1.5. It seems to be that the curse multiplies the the total multiplier's amount, meaning to be accurate and to follow proper wording this game seems to be using, it should say "total critical multiplier" instead of just "critical multiplier".

I should also note that increasing the entire amount of the multiplier (not subtracting 100%) is equivalent to increasing the entire critical's damage (which is what it said it did before), so the wording was correct before, it just gave a different mechanic than desired (), and hence now has a change in mechanic and change in description (which I'd say is also unfortunately inaccurate at the moment).
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Last edited by Xapti on Jan 6, 2012, 3:48:06 AM
I'll get back to you after the weekend when I can double-check formulas and things at work.
The level 1 gem has a value of 50%. This is applied to the same stat you get from the passive to reduce enemy critical strike multiplier on you, except this applies a positive, rather than negative, percentage. It's effectively giving the monster "50% increased enemy critical strike multiplier on you". This means it's additive with other sources of the same stat (e.g. someone in PVP with those passives).

Because this is applied to someone else's stat, the value of that stat is determined, and then this modification applied. That is, your critical multiplier, including all modifications is worked out, and then the enemy's modification to it is applied, if any. It's not possible for the monster's stats to affect the internal calculation of your own stats, it has to affect the final value of the stat which comes out.

So if you cast it on a monster to increase the multiplier on them by 50%, and then attack them with a critical strike multiplier of 150%, then the 50% modification is appled to the 50% part which is above 100% (as of a change in 0.9.5 in how modifiers to enemy critical strike multiplier work), meaning you end up hitting with an effective 175% multiplier.

If your multiplier had been 500%, this would make it 700%, etc.

I'm not at all sure how you concluded that people with higher crit chance benefit less from this - it's increasing the damage you deal on each crit, and thus will always be better with higher crit chance than lower. Similarly, since it's a percentage increase to the multiplier, it will always be better with a higher multiplier than a lower one.

You are almost correct in that under the pre-0.9.5 way of increasing the whole multiplier it was very nearly functionally equivalent to just increasing critical damage, except for the fact that it's an additive enemy critical multiplier modification and that would matter in PVP (or if something else was able to give the monsters that stat, either positive or negative). So it's not the same, but there were no cases where it was different unless you were attacking other players.

I hope this clears things up a bit, please let me know if you have further questions.
Last edited by Mark_GGG on Jan 8, 2012, 10:22:50 PM
Thanks for taking the time to address this.

One thing didn't seem to be entirely addressed though.
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Xapti wrote:
to be accurate and to follow proper wording this game seems to be using, it should say "total critical multiplier" instead of just "critical multiplier".

Can you comment on if you think the current name is appropriate? I consider it to be misleading.

If not "total critical multiplier", maybe "more critical multiplier" or something (since that seems to be used as well).

x% increased multiplier is accurate in this case (with the curse), but it does not distinguish itself from the x% increased increased multiplier which appears on item mods or passives. In this scenario while the mods are still multiplied, they all work additively, and are always multiplied to the same base essentially just working like addition. More on that in the next section of this post.
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Regarding critical multiplier in general (not on this curse), I think it would be more simple for a layperson to understand if the modifiers were described as "added multiplier percentage" or even "percentage points", and then increase the values by 50%.

ex. "60% increased critical multiplier" would be "+60% to critical multiplier" or better yet "additional 60 percentage points to critical multiplier" (which is obviously a bit long).
This way if a player sees 60% increased critical multiplier, they don't need to do 2 math calculations in their head (150% of 60%, then add that value to their current multiplier), they just need to add the value (90% in this case) to their critical multiplier, which is a far easier math calculation than multiplication.
Multipliers make sense in some scenarios such as when the base changes, but when your base value is a percentage, and the mods are always based off the base value (and not the current/previous/net value) then there's really no use for having it. 12% increased multiplier will always be +18% multiplier, no exceptions.
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Delivery in 30 eons or less
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Last edited by Xapti on Jan 8, 2012, 10:55:33 PM
"
Xapti wrote:
Thanks for taking the time to address this.

One thing didn't seem to be entirely addressed though.
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Xapti wrote:
to be accurate and to follow proper wording this game seems to be using, it should say "total critical multiplier" instead of just "critical multiplier".

Can you comment on if you think the current name is appropriate? I consider it to be misleading.

If not "total critical multiplier", maybe "more critical multiplier" or something (since that seems to be used as well).
"Total" is not used for anything - it was used temporarily before 0.9.5 cleared up descriptions for the multiplicative ones, basically because Rory just put something in so they'd have a description and actually working out how to really describe them was left for the big change to the system.
"Increased" (and "decreased") means additive with other increases of the same type.
"More" (and "less") means multiplicative with other increases of the same type.

This is, technically, "increased" - it's additive with other changes to the same stat, but I do understand why it can feel like it's not - it's additive with other stats doing what it does (modifying the enemy's critical strike multiplier against you), but not with the enemy's stats which affect his multiplier. This brings it into a sort of middle ground in a way, and we haven't worked out the best way to make things clear yet - but "increased" technically fits more than "more" because it is inherently an additive stat. That said, I'd like to be able to make things more clear at some point. My current preferred option is to bring "total" back into the vocabulary to refer to stats which take affect on the final value of something after it's worked out - so this one would be something like "increased total enemy critical strike multiplier". There are a few cases where this comes up, basically because one entity's stats can't affect another's, they can only be used to modify the final value of it.
The ways it's described in the curse (where it's something you're doing which puts a stat on the enemy which means they affect the total critical strike multiplier of enemies hitting them) is more complicated still, but rest assured it's on my list to review.
On the whole I think it's okay for now at this point, but I would like to see it improved, yes.

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Xapti wrote:
Regarding critical multiplier in general (not on this curse), I think it would be more simple for a layperson to understand if the modifiers were described as "added multiplier percentage" or even "percentage points", and then increase the values by 50%.

ex. "60% increased critical multiplier" would be "+60% to critical multiplier" or better yet "additional 60 percentage points to critical multiplier" (which is obviously a bit long).
This way if a player sees 60% increased critical multiplier, they don't need to do 2 math calculations in their head (150% of 60%, then add that value to their current multiplier), they just need to add the value (90% in this case) to their critical multiplier, which is a far easier math calculation than multiplication.
Multipliers make sense in some scenarios such as when the base changes, but when your base value is a percentage, and the mods are always based off the base value (and not the current/previous/net value) then there's really no use for having it. 12% increased multiplier will always be +18% multiplier, no exceptions.
The base is not always the same. If you support a minion gem with the increased critical multiplier gem, then it's applying to a different base :P
That said, your idea has some merit if such corner cases don't lead to balance issues should we change it to an addition. I'll discuss with Carl and Chris at some point.
Last edited by Mark_GGG on Jan 8, 2012, 11:08:39 PM

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