Does critical strike nodes need rebalance?

I am not talking about the dagger nodes for shadow as I think GGG got it right on there but i am talking about the little critical strike chance nodes in the middle and the dw/sword section on the south. Right now, you can't make a critical strike marauder or duelist because it is ineffective to branch out and waste so many points on these nodes only to find it gives little benefits. For instance, i counted all the critical strike rate nodes for dw and swords in the duelist area and the max you can get (assuming you use a 5% crit chance weapon) is around 9.75% and thats after branching out and wasting a ton of points on those nodes.

I've made a similar argument in the passive tree thread. +critical strike chance is AMAZING on wands due to their high base crit (with passive points alone you can easily get upwards to 50% crit chance)

They added some nice strike chance nodes to Templar/Marauder recently, but you're right that 5% base crit for most melee weapons is far, far too low. There need to be more +melee crit chance passives, or the base crit chance needs to be buffed. It's very unfeasible to get lots of critical strike chance as a non-Shadow or Witch.

Critical Strike Multiplier is worth stacking as a Duelist/Marauder/Ranger though, if you can gain access to large amounts while using 2h weapons. Critical Strike << Critical Multiplier, by far. Granted, my 600% critical multiplier Witch isn't doing so hot, but I think that's more of because of my spell choice (firestorm/shock nova/spark) than my passives.

Given that critical strikes are intelligence-aligned ("hitting smart"), it's intentional that the duelist and marauder will have a hard time being as good with crits as the intelligence-aligned classes.

The assumption of a 5% crit chance on weapons is an erroneous one if you're actually building for frequent critical strikes, however - staves, claws, and daggers all have base chances in the 6-7% range, and there are weapon affixes that improve critical chance.

Well first of all most of Mara's and low dex Duelists goes for Rest technique so im not arguing about that nodes but i found that hitting smart thing not fair since high int builds can hit hard(general high dps) and smart(crit dps).
With that train of thought i think str based builds needs to hit harder(general dps) than int builds since they have %0-5 chance to crit. Bottomline str based builds need little more dmg for overall.

Except, by and by large, even the smartest Witch will be unable to get a high critical strike chance with axes, swords, mauls, staves, bows and claws. Wands/daggers are possible to get decent amounts of critical strike chance, but that's it. Even if you're crazy and get every critical strike node on the tree, every item in your gear giving +crit strike chance, your skills at full quality... you will, at most, get around 50% critical strike chance. For sacrificing pure DPS increases, critical strike multiplier, defenses, mana, etc.

And that's just one flaw. The other flaw is that Marauders and Duelists should have some means to acquire high critical strike chance, otherwise Resolute Technique's downside is a deceptive one.

You need 2000% increased critical modifier to get 100% crit chance with a 5% base crit weapon or spell. Not that people should be readily able to get 100% crit chance with all spells/weapons, but we need weapon base types of each kind of weapon I think, that offer a high inherent critical strike chance. Otherwise, critical strike is always going to be passed by for critical multiplier or a total-lack of critical strike focus.

Let's also not forget that there is no inherent bonus for getting a physical critical strike. There are just elemental effects. This is another flaw which makes critical strikes vs stronger normal strikes less of a decision and more of an obvious "duh I'll just take resolute technique" situation.

As a FP witch, I go back and forth on this issue.

For one, I do think that str based builds need to be able to hit a little harder, however at the same time, they have FAR more tankiness built into their class.

When I first created my witch, I really did not focus on crit all that much (crazy right?!?). That being said, I was able to hit around 3.5k DPS w/o stacking crit whatsoever.

This is a pretty low amount of damage for endgame purposes. So, that being said, crit is obviously needed in fairly large amounts in order to get the witch to function in an endgame scenario.

We do have to make some sacrifices. For example, I could be gaining A LOT of more defense with +ES% nodes, but currently, I am not taking these. I have around 9000ES now (with CI), and if I wanted to, could probably get around 12k+.

Since spells cannot miss, we don't need accuracy, BUT if you have ever tried to shoot thru a door or small space, such as in Weavers lair, you would know that it can be a pain in the ass.

Witches may seem OP, and we are in certain aspects, but taking physical damage from a volley of archers or those guys that throw stones can bring that 9k ES down VERY QUICKLY.

I'm holding off on making a personal opinion until PvP is released. This will be able to give a better view into how the classes handle against each other.

Further, I had to have quite a bit of mana nodes with my 5L, as I was using 80 mana per cast, w/ a little over 3 casts per second. Now, that I have my 6l, and am able to have a mana leech gem in place, I have been replacing some of those nodes with DPS ones.

There seems to be a fine balance of DPS, defense, and regen with the witch class. As anubite stated, in order for me to get the higher crit chance, I had to remove some of my cold dmg% nodes (pure DPS) in order to gain the chance to crit.

So, once PvP is released, I will post again giving another view on said topic. Especially since there are quite a few heavy hitting GS maras who do more raw DPS than me currently 10k+. This can also be said for Rangers as well. Now, duelists and shadows are "designed" to be more run & gun, so we'll see what happens there. Not sure about templar to be honest though.

Melee classes are only tanky if they choose to build that way. Giving them more critical strike options is fine, provided they cannot acquire it, high base damage and high defense all at the same time.

New base (white) two-handed melee weapons with a higher base chance to crit (but reduced attack speed or other implicit mods) would allow ALL classes, especially Witches, to consider building a two-handed critical chance build. Currently, no class can pull that off.

This is something I brought up in my ES, GS, or GTFO thread.

The global critical nodes seem far too powerful right now, and there's a huge lack of anything similar in the other parts of the tree (especially on the southwest side where I like to hang out :P). This is a large contributing factor to the high DPS builds (15k+) people are making right now, but because there's not much benefit in going with a life build up there right now, I am unable to do the same. I refuse to play ES as I don't enjoy it.

And yes, Wands have the best Critical potential simply due to Power Siphon (up to 300% critical chance which easily allows one to focus purely on multiplier). The fullisade area + Templar Catalyze seems like it could make for a pretty potent build - I've been dying to run a life + shield Wand man up there but haven't been able to make a 0.9.12 Tree worth doing that yet. Regardless, I have a feeling the wand passives are a little too strong (elemental, not physical - the base physical damage on wands isn't large enough to make the big %physical increases too strong compared to other weapons, whereas wands have the same elemental potential as any other weapon).

The only thing i would add to the ES, GS type thread is the ability for archers, ranger class, can also hit high dps ranges. Even shadow if guilts correctly. But I agree the bottom left could use some crit nodes. Might make the RT passive actually seem like a choice.

Btw, same could be said for top of tree. Not too many life or regen nodes, so CI seems "smart" for many. It's only a tradeoff if the other option was available in the first place.

This is something I also noticed. In fact building a spell marauder itself is quite tricky.

My build is a lightning mage marauder, using blood magic.

I recently tried many different permutations of critical strike caster builds using blood magic with marauder, templar, witch, duelist and shadow. Just not possible.

Using the helm that gives blood magic, you need the reduced mana cost nodes, since otherwise you would kill yourself casting. Getting those and even a mediocre casting bonus is difficult. Getting blood magic is so far from the crit nodes there is massive point wastage to then also travel to the crit nodes.

There is a critical damage node near the marauder, but it is small, and awkward to get. Since the resolute technique keystone is right near the marauder, and most marauders get that, why can't there also be a decent crit chance node or two somewhere in the bottom left of the tree. This would allow more build diversity.

Having to travel all the way over to the shadow area for decent crit nodes means even a melee crit marauder is difficult, let alone a blood magic, crit caster marauder.

Also as others pointed out. Making a blood magic caster essentially forces you to start as marauder, since that is the only way to "relatively easily" get enough life regen to make it work. There is no life regen except that small amount in the middle, on marauder start and near duelist start.

EDIT: Replacing one of the big crit nodes near shadow/witch area with a life regen node could work, since with CI right there it gives more choices to that area too. Then drop a big crit node in the bottom left to make crit based duelist/marauder possible.