How to make crit weakness perform

I know chris' recent quote: this curse "feels weak". That's from a particular point of view, though, that doesn't include a lot of experience with CW. Chris is a gamer, he knows his game extremely well, but he wouldn't make that statement having analyzed this thoroughly. No, CW feels weak because a player in any given build should get stuck in uncertainty: when does crit weakness become good? What exactly do I need to make it perform well?

The player is presented with 11% additional crit chance and 67% more bonus critical damage. That seems okay, but it's really hard to know exactly what that does. This is why CW "feels weak", most people won't be able to recognize when it becomes strong.

So let's get into it.

First off, critical strike chance is a linear DPS boost. Critical damage multiplier is also a linear DPS boost. When taken individually. But look at their gains together and they multiply - you get a parabolic gain as you stack both together.



Now, critical weakness adds both crit chance and crit damage, so your benefit will drastically rise as your crit stats improve. Logical conclusion would be that CW should perform better than any curse when your crit stats are very high, but exactly how far do you have to go?

Next graph is the ratio of DPS with CW to DPS without any curse.



This means some classes with easy access to tons of crit dmg can probably double their DPS with crit weakness, something that no other curse can come even close to. I haven't even plotted the range of all possibilities, this just represents what my bow ranger can do.

If we're comparing other curses:
- EW's normal benefit will be 46% additional DPS, on monsters with no resist. On monsters with very high resist, this could be considerably higher.
- PW's normal benefit should always be less than a 40% DPS gain. That includes 7% of slop for the evasion reduction, which is very generous.
- Vulnerability's benefit, again is somewhere between 30% and 40% (if you happen to use PA or puncture)

Anywhere the value is over 1.4 in the above graph, crit weakness outperforms them all (except in the rare case of EW on a high-resist champion pack). Of course, with the RNG and overkill aspects, you actually have to pass that mark by a fair bit to make it worthwhile. Also, that graph is against a zero-quality CW gem; 20% qual shifts the curve up a lot.

Now I've set the damage ratio to 1.4 and plotted against crit:



Now I've added quality to the same. The whole curve shifts down. If you can get above and to the right of this curve, no other offensive curse will give you as much DPS as a qual critical weakness:



Other considerations: prolif, shock, burn. Shock and burn are both damage multipliers that improve crit substantially, but this calculation can't consider them. Basically, if you're an elemental build, there might be other ways you can make it better. Example: is it possible, with enough crit damage and ele damage, to set up a long duration 3-stack shock on a map boss? Now, shock also multiplies burn....

wxMaxima code, for anyone who cares about the math:



Mark's explanation of how CW's bonuses apply

Nice analysis. I was the witch featured in the #10 build of the week that Chris noted CW need a redesign. Even though I have 73% crit chance and 450% multiplier, I still don't feel CW useful (not because it is weak) Since crit chance is high and I can usually 1-2 shot most mobs, using curse is often not worth time. Curse is only used when I take considerably longer to kill a mobs (or temporal chain when it is a dangerous mobs). And guess what happen I have trouble killing a mobs ? When they have a very high elemental resist (or coupled with curse immune). Elemental weakness will always provide an extremely high return, (going from 50% to 7% resist almost double the dmg).

That's my personal perspective, crit weakness isnt weak, it is just not useful when it is needed the most. Maybe a high crit build that deal non-elemental dmg will take it instead though.

The point has already been made, the high crit builds have plenty of DPS for 1-2 shotting mobs. There's no need to cast an extra spell before freezing then shattering anything.

Utility curses like Temporal Chains or Warlord's Mark will make a difference in tough battles which require a bit of preparation. Elemental Weakness works well in groups usually, because of all the different specs with elemental damage.

I will say the icon to CW is probably the best out of all of them.

I wonder how much damage amp you get when you combine 2 curses (due to unique/passive)

I think CW would be better if it only boosted critical strike chance. most crit-based builds already have a high enough modifier to kill really quickly, the only thing you need is to actually land a critical. CW currently hardly helps here.

I'd like to use both CW and EW depending on the situation, but I just never feel like CW is a benefit.

"

Progammer wrote:

That's my personal perspective, crit weakness isnt weak, it is just not useful when it is needed the most. Maybe a high crit build that deal non-elemental dmg will take it instead though.

I think you're mostly spot on here. CW isn't useful at all when you're going to 2-shot everything without a crit, anyway.

If you're focused on making long fights considerably shorter, that's when you'll use it. If I can somehow get a 3-stack long duration shock up on level 60 brutus or level 64 merveill, that's when it'd pay off. If I'm using prolif and fighting a champ pack, then too. Those stacking shocks definitely speed things along.

The latter is much easier to do than the former, but I'm not quite sure the former is impossible. I run two curses, CW for high-HP mobs that I can tank and enfeeble for swarming trash. I think I should find it a bit more useful this way.

"

0nin wrote:

I think CW would be better if it only boosted critical strike chance. most crit-based builds already have a high enough modifier to kill really quickly, the only thing you need is to actually land a critical. CW currently hardly helps here.

I disagree with this, though. The most useful bit of CW is how it makes VERY long elemental status effects on mobs with high HP. The tooltip's wording is a bit archaic, but that 86% "more bonus critical damage" results in several hundred crit multiplier for most crit builds. That's hardly a negligible damage boost. What you need, like Progammer mentioned, is a target that won't massively overkill on your crit. Or prolif, in which case you benefit from the crit even when you overkill (extremely long shock/freeze, high damage burn on all surrounding monsters)

"Extremely long status effects" really only matters for Burning based builds, though, since it's the only effect that doesn't cap out.

I'm talking about either: getting a large spread stacked shock/burn on a whole champ pack with prolif.

or getting a long stacked shock on a boss mob. For that you need every bit of duration you can find (incl. every increased ele dmg bonus you can find, +shock duration, huge crit dmg, etc)

I have a char with 15% crit chance and 1300% multiplier, since I had thought about the maths I thought this was the perfect conditions to use CW but it ended not being better than projectile weakness.

Projectile weakness has 40% more damage + insane "accuracy bonus" that probably helps critical strike chance more than CW.

"

zriL wrote:

I have a char with 15% crit chance and 1300% multiplier, since I had thought about the maths I thought this was the perfect conditions to use CW but it ended not being better than projectile weakness.

On a monster you won't overkill with a crit (probably bosses only?) cw provides a 120% DPS boost for you.

That is, you're doing 220% of tooltip DPS by applying CW on a high-health target. Trouble is RNG is too much of a factor when your crit chance is so low and overkill will be nuts with that high of a multiplier. Your benefit on trash would be exactly zero, since your unbuffed crits are overkilling anyway.

Math is provided in spoiler tag at the bottom of first post.

A rundown of PW's DPS gain vs CW's dps gain (incl. evasion, assuming 90% hit against a level 63 target):


Projectile weakness provides a 45% dependable DPS boost, including the evasion effect and how that trickles down to crit. Critical weakness provides a 122% erratic DPS boost, but it will overkill everything with low to moderate HP.

Now say you manage to ramp up 3 shocks on the boss. you're doing (100% + 122%)*2.2 = 488% DPS. The CW is what enabled you to get those 3 shocks. So by the end of the fight you're gaining 388% DPS from your curse. To pull all that off you'd need to either be in a party, or able to face-tank whatever boss you're facing. IE, you need to be able to just stand still and unload on the boss.

PW is better because it fits the situation, not because it actually provides superior DPS. It's just more dependable, and useful in all situations. CW only works against mobs you aren't overkilling on crit.