I would vote for capping Crit Multi (e.g. 200%), dropping the multiplier affix and leaving everything else as it is…
Imho, doubling up damage on crits is more than enough when you have enough base damage.
With all the things that proc on Crit in the game already removing the ability to get to 100% crit could potentially make those much weaker/ less useful and I wouldnt want things like that to be removed… I would suggest just leaving the ability to get to 100% crit as it is.
With crit less tied to damage multiplier, it could even become a more creative proc - like it can be with some of the current uniques…
Crit hit builds would then have one less affix to worry about and could concentrate on getting normal damage increases/defensive affixes/or use the “free” affix slot to help make normal hit builds more competitive.
EDIT: This suggestion is isolated to the Crit discussion… The issue of DoT vs Hit build viability and comparative damage is an entirely different issue/potential problem…
I agree completely, I dont even want to ever play a hit based build in later monoliths the way the game is right now
My old Manifest Armor FG would lose approx 95% damage if not more on certain unvoidable shit mods like 100% Crit avoidance, paired with monsters have endurance and approx 80% resist, average crits were 35-40k which were reduced to approx 2.5-4k non crits meaning nothing would die, you end up getting swarmed by mobs - this doesnt even include monsters dodge
In comparison this would be like a DoT build having ‘95% reduced ailment duration’ as mod its brutal, worse than any mod in PoE, at least there I can just not run the map/reroll it
in LE it doesnt seem unreasonable to respec to a new build for 4-6 echoes if you can
also another thing for myself, stacking more and more crit multi in normal echoes feels good as of course you do more damage and can possible one shot more mobs as you run through however due to the big boss reduced damage mechanics it almost feels meaningless getting another 30-60% multi, for me DoT builds just feel better to play on bosses as you are constantly damaging them
If you try clearing a monolith with Smelters Wrath it feels ok, it clears well and one shots most things depending due to its 100% crit and really high damage effectiveness, against bosses its awful to play
In addition to what Wast3d said, crit multi is still an increased modifier, it’s just in a separate bucket.
A t5 crit multi prefix on a 1-handed weapon is up to 44%, an increased damage modifier is up to 105%. Assuming you have no other sources of crit multi, that first affix is worth 22% incremental damage (going from 200% to 244%), as long as you have more than ~500% total increased damage, that 105% increased damage modifier would be comparable to the crit multi.
If you had 1,000% total increased damage, the 105% affix would be worth 10.5% incremental damage & in order for the 44% crit multi to be a better pick (assuming 100% crit chance, obviously), you’d need less than 420% total crit multi.
So if you have a lot of % increased and hit crit cap, crit multi is generally worth it.
Don’t forget, you can choose not to pick mods that are bad for your build. I’m not saying I disagree, and I think there should be a “% less ailment chance”, a “% reduced ailment duration” and “% less ailment damage” (for those DoT spells that don’t apply ailments) to even things up a bit.
The only reason I was doing those monos was to farm Omnis which meant finding Shades but you would get a branch of 3 paths where you can see 3 mods forward, you pick the least resistance path which is usually giving the mobs damage then you uncover the crit avoidance, then you either take it or backtrack but to backtrack those mods were bad anyway which were monsters dodge>endurance threshold or monsters have 40% resistance > monsters take reduced damage at low hp
Although this getting off track I think a suitable solution would be mods lasting only 1 monolith but you have multiple at reduced effect, for example 45% Glancing / 20% Endurance / 45% crit avoidance / Damage mod for example
I missed this prior but im not a fan of caps in these games
Honestly theres no real way around it but Criticals are straight up not good for aRPGs, they are extremely bad for monsters to have as the incoming damage becomes sometimes absurd, it seems even EHG agreed in some fashion by adding an almost mandatory stat in the game to completely avoid the mechanic
Diablo 3/Grim Dawn almost all builds have crit easily just by their passive gear choices, in PoE non-crit builds do huge amounts less damage unless its a special case they have fallen way behind especially in Melee, in this game it also seems its far to easy to crit cap because the bases that give flat crit some of them are insane, 9%+ base crit is realistically exceptionally high
edit: one extreme approach EHG could take is remove crit chance/multi and replace it with a ‘chance to deal double damage’ modifier, its much easier to balance, they can build in ‘base chance to deal double damage’ per skill/weapons some can be 5% or higher, give Rogue higher chance or even balance it so for example Primalist would struggle to get a lot of ‘double damage source’ but instead their skills can be buffed higher since doesnt have to be balanced around crit/multi. would make monsters worse though if they got it
Personally i dislike how crit works in most rpgs simple because it’s changed into a boring more multiplier.
In my opinion crits should be a “feelsgood moment” that is not guaranteed ever. I am a fan of DnD d20 rolls feeling, where your mundane action suddenly becomes an act of the gods by sheer luck.
Obviously to achieve that in this game two main things would need to change:
1- Removal of all ways of increasing crit chance (you can still allow players to scale crit damage if they still wish).
2- Create a different attack/skill effect whenever a crit happens (this is expensive to accomplish i know).
This changes would open room to a more fun base crit interaction while allowing some powerful albeit inconsistent uniques/passives to be created.
I’m not disagreeing with you on that. But imo the current development and state of the game doesn’t allow a change that is that impactful.
But I like the idea of having cool effects that apply on crit else than just a damage modifier. Like crippling an enemy, reducing his damage for a short duration and stuff like that.
Like Frailty? I’m not sure there’d be a less bad time to make such a substantial change than before 1.0 (dev resources notwithstanding & I doubt that they’d have the resources for that kind of thing).
Or imagine having class specific crit effects that fit the theme of the class/mastery. Or having passive points that let you modify the crit effects according to your build (bleed stacks per crit).
Seems like there’s a fair bit of thought going into this; from what I’m seeing we get support for a similar concept to the original, if not exactly the same - reducing Critical Damage to a single open-ended modifier, either fixing the multiplier and giving an increasingly scalable chance, or fixing the chance and giving us better scaling on the multiplier. Either one makes it feel more like you’ve built around Critical Damage, without feeling quite so much like you’ve jammed it into an otherwise impactful build.
Since this topic has been living in my brain rent-free for the last couple weeks, I’m also going to throw out one other option: use the classical three-axis-scaling of other damage types, and give Critical Damage it’s own base (called Precision damage or some such) separate from your regular hit. Thoughts?
That’s exactly correct - Precision Damage would become the base type, similar to Melee/Throwing/Spell/Ailment, with it’s own scaling; some weapons (looking at rogue favorites, here) might have a higher Precision Damage base than the original, to encourage building a Critical damage build, rather than a basic build that does Crits.
Effectively, Critical Hit chance would mirror Accuracy in some other games - and where basic hit types would have a 100% chance, Precision Damage should scale faster because of it’s own “miss chance”
It’s just a thought, not necessarily a good one; even I can see the high-working-cost of developing another damage-type track and the impact that would have on our current base-types and many current builds.
Probably an easier method of helping balance is providing non-hit builds with another generic scaling-axis similar to Critical Damage, that gives them an increasable chance to deal damage faster - similar to Taste of Blood’s effect on Bleeding, but universal.
Circling back around - my brain won’t let go of this one, for some reason - this method is great, when Attack Speed is controlled for. In DnD, everyone gets a set amount of attacks per round - and increasing that provides the direct opportunity cost of doing less damage. When you have a variable attack speed without a reduction in damage - like ARPGs - “fishing” for crits is massively slanted towards high-speed attacks. In speed-independent systems, it’s much better to scale the chances over magnitude - and having a cyclical magnitude would do just that.
Then, slow-hitting “executioners” can still get high-critical damage, by focusing on having more chance, and fast builds get more damage from their speed, not just luck.
For feel, this would be the Headsman swinging once for the neck, or a Sniper aiming for the eyes - guaranteeing a “Critical Hit” with the attackers’ skill (>100% chance of critical) determining the effect.
Mechanically: this also benefits our ease-of-understanding for balance. Rogues providing +100% chance to crit (20 stacks of Critical Vulnerability) only provides one multiple of damage, rather than negating a need to stack your own chance. And enemies with Critical Avoidance can then just have a reduced chance to be critically hit - allowing the players that focus this damage axis to overcome a disadvantage through determination. Much the same way that you can still run maps that have improved resistance, if you do enough damage.
