Base Crit on Weapons is unbalanced

Feedback and Suggestions
1

I haven’t played all the classes yet but the numbers of (base) +Critical Strike Chance on Weapons (implicit, spear-types) and also (to a lesser extent) the explicit base-crit affix are too strong.

For hit based builds it feels mandatory to use a spear. I don’t like that at all.

Base crit scales threefold in this game (base chance itself, increased chance, multi) and it seems fairly easy to reach high amounts of increased crit chance and some multi.

Hence, with typical investments e.g. a +5% implicit can straight up double your DPS.

The only effective balancing of base crit comes from the 100% total crit chance hardcap.

9% (or 7?) explicit affix is also quite strong and has only very few competitors for hit based builds. There seems to be a trade off (against other possible affixes) but I think it is not even close to be balanced. I can’t give the proper number, because the question is at which level of investment (%increased crit, %critmulti) you want the balance.

Base crit should be shifted even more towards skilltrees and a little bit in passives.
With glancing blows freeing up affix slots, it could also be a good idea to have base crit as affixes on much more itemslots (and of course with (compared to now) much lower values)

Having a crit heavy build shouldn’t be about choosing the weapon type.
Crit implicits should be changed to %increased crit chance.

A different thing is, that there is no unique purpose of critical strike chance in this game besides straight increasing the dps and turning some numbers to yellow.

Having an attack-hit (especially melee) based build automatically means you have to go crit in this game if you want to be somewhat effective.
This is a wasted opportunity.
Altough, this will maybe change once the (useless) penetration/resistance-shred mechanic is fixed so that it could become an alternative (altough I doubt that).

The unique purpose of critical strikes could/should(?) be that it is something you can not rely on (hence the name…).

Crit chance should be an effect that you can’t rely on for normal mobs because the chance that it happens is just too low.
However, you can rely on it for bosses / monsters you hit more often.
So what this comes down to (in the case one wants that ‘crit’ has a unique gameplay purpose) is that a “crit focused build” should have maybe max. 10% total chance to crit but a crit multiplier of 2000% or so.
Of course this doesn’t work with the DR of bosses that is currently in the game. (which is rubbish and should be replaced by more defensive monolith area modifiers)

3 Likes
2

I kinda agree with you, I did some maths on polearms compared to 2-h swords for a build (just going with the implicits) & 2-h swords didn’t get better than similar levelled polearms till the penultimate sword.

IMO polearms should have a lower attack speed as the crit implicit is, as you say, too strong compared to the other 2-h weapons, &/or maybe tone their base damage down a bit

1 Like
3

Agree with the basic idea here…

I have found many such instances where you are “forced” into a specific weapon/item as its implicit affix is a requirement (not just base crit - even others)… this compounds as you get into higher levels… Like to swap your 2h sword for that Polearm… nah, implicit affix makes too big of a difference to the effective damage. Or want to wear a different armour piece, nah, you need the implicit movement affix.

Am definitely hoping that the “space” provided by the removal of GB affixes will help with this, but only time will tell…

4

I would like to see polearms base damage been lowered slightly.

Leaving the crit chance aside, the difference in “pure base dps” compared to other base types is not that huge. (Polearms have roughly about 10% less base dps, while having 3-8% base crit)

And base crit is one of the most important stats to scale you crit chance.

As @Llama8 suggested, reduce their attack speed further or lower their base damage a little bit more.

5

The concept of a 2 handed weapon having crit base kinda disgusts me. High base damage, base crit chance and decent attack speed. I’d like to see crit on polearms removed and moved on to daggers (incoming rogue??) and bleed moved to polearms. Makes better thematic sense.

6

I don’t really have a problem with a polearm being a slow high damage (high crit chance) weapon, that’s not far off how they would have been used, especially if it’s “proper” polearm (ie, something the length of a spear with a dirty great big axe head on the end of it), it would be unwieldy but devastating if you were able to land a proper hit with it.

It should have a high crit chance, they just need to significantly reduce their attack speed, or possibly give them mobs you’re attacking with it a % chance to dodge by default.

And the head of the Sovnya is wrong in-game…

7

The problem comes because the crit is directly present as an affix mod on itself. So you have gear that gives +crit and you just can’t not use it.

Having 50% chance to deal 250% dmg is always going to be better than having 0, so you end up having +inc dmg already at diminishing returns (~1000%) and start dumping all the rest into crit.

More over if you have crit on gear you can reach stupid amounts like 100% crit. If each one of your hit is a 250% crit then a build that doesnt crit is plain stupid by comparison.

A good way to have a clever balance is to tie crit (and even stuff like chance to be hit) tied to an overlaying value for example offensive ability vs defensive ability.

This way you can easily control the crit cap, your crit increases vs mobs with lower def or DA and vice versa mobs will crit you if you have too low DA and they have high OA.

Every class can work on getting offense ability and a critical hit is really a critical hit that happens once every 5 if you’re very strong or 10 hits if you’re average.

Additionally it adds another layer of fun stuff like OA/DA temp buffs and OA/DA debuffs, so you will see your crits being boosted by that slam skill that you specced and vice versa

8

OA and DA was the worst addition to Grim Dawn and basically made every single build a crit build without even trying, I had over 12 characters with 3100 OA, one character had 3700OA. It also made it so if you didn’t have enough OA against certain bosses your whole devotion setup would shut down if it relied on Crits

I was posting on Grim Dawn forums from early access OA/DA was awful and all they did was tweak it for 9 patches after release, when GD released ultimate mode at first you had 0% crit rate and mobs would crit you 25% of the time due to whacked OA/DA formulas

9

Doesn’t look troublesome now, much better than the crit system here where the highest VK pusher is no wonders 100% critter that kites stuff in melee, there is not much to do in LE either you must put all into that max crit at some point

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