Critical Strike Avoidance, The Mandatory Menace

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Crit avoidance is kinda a weird stat.
It’s the only stat in the game that is mandatory for every class and spec in the game, regardless of build type. It’s a binary stat, if you don’t have enough, it’s unreliable and your investment is occasinally worthless. If you do have more than 100% crit avoidance, you can flat out ignore a whole host of modifiers in endgame monoliths and dungeon runs. It doesn’t matter how much crit chance or bonus crit damage you stack on enemies if you just negate it completely. This actually makes “fishing” for these modifiers beneficial, which is somewhat counter-intuitive.

Even resistances, which is the other stat that everyone recommends getting to the 75% cap has more choice and flexibility in it. A few missing points of resistance aren’t the end of the world. Different classes get different amounts from their passive trees and class gear and even buffs from skills, so it feels unique to build and plan resistances depending on your build. It’s granular, so every percentage point matters, even over the cap, for things like resistance shred, poison/shock debuffs, and Marked for Death. There’s also unique items which synergize with resistances, either having effects based on resistances, or reducing resistances as a downside for their powerful effects. Crit avoidance has none of those factors to make it feel dynamic.

Crit avoidance is similar to Dodge, a defence that is unreliable, but very powerful if you have enough of it. Avoiding the damage done by crits is obviously a much bigger deal though, as it can lead to one-shots and feels-bad gameplay moments. It’s a boring, but mandatory stat at the moment.

What if Crit avoidance as a gear affix was a hybrid stat connected to dodge? Something like “+flat dodge rating AND % of total dodge applied as crit avoidance”. It could be balanced in a way so that if you get it in a few places while building dodge, it could be a multiple of your dodge chance, say between 150-300%. This would let you dynamically accumulate dodge in other places, until you got a combination that let you avoid crits entirely (so, for example, 34% dodge chance and 300% dodge->crit avoid, or 80% dodge and 125% dodge->crit avoid. Something like that). This would make it more granular, and feel more rewarding. The afformentioned issues with ignoring endgame modifiers still exist, but this could be a benefit for investing in what is otherwise an unreliable defence, Dodge.

This would also necessitate/allow for “Less damage from crits” mods to become more common. We could also tie those to the other main defences. New hybrid affixes like “+ flat armor, doubled against crits” or “Ward per Second, and Crits do % less damage against ward” or “(total > 100%) of block chance/effect applied against crits”. Maybe even “Endurance threshold is applied at (>100)% to Crits”. These are just springboard ideas. Go wild with it. The point is that all of these options make building your regular defences more meaningful, give granular alternatives to dealing with deadly end-game crits, and can also be more thematic and dependant on your build/class/spec, instead of just being one stat that everyone needs at >100% or you’re gonna have a bad time.

Thanks for reading.

TLDR: Crit avoidance affixes should be less prevalent, and related to dodge to make both more interesting.
Less damage from crits affixes should be more prevalent, and based on other defenses. Extra armor/block effect/ward vs crits etc.

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I am a fan of the current system (its complex but easy to understand)

Every build needs crit avoid? Yes → so bring it as a single affix :slight_smile:
Not every build is using dodge → disadvantage (at least when the crit avoid values are lower for the new hybrid affix)

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There is also the Less damage from crit affix to consider in this suggestion. It creates a variation in the Crit Avoidance cap needed issue. Although its use is only for certain 2h weapons which limits its usability in a lot of situations.

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Basically I’m advocating for making more usable variations of this affix. I think it would be good for the game if it was far more common, and a viable alternative to just getting 100% crit avoidance or bust.

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What about resis? They are boring and bland as well. Crit Avoidence is something rahter uncommon and more intresting in LE and you go for that stat? Why? All the old even more boring and bland stats out there are worse so why change one of the unusual stats?

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The problem with this approach is that the dodge % you see in your character sheet is vs mobs at your current level. This means people have to start checking formulas to make sure they’re crit immune vs mobs that tend to be 10-15+ levels higher than them. It wouldn’t really help make dodge a more reliable layer of defense either. Outside of temporary, stackable buffs like the Slither node in Serpent Strike combined with Sleet-footed in Maelstrom, or even very short buffs like the Elusive node in the Shift tree, you will have to reserve a fair few suffix slots on gear to obtain and maintain a high dodge percentage. This presents a real opportunity cost as you have to forego health, resists, endurance, block and armour, all of which are far better defensive layers at higher corruption levels. Hell most rogues convert all their dodge to Glancing Blows through Apostacy, simply because it’s much more reliable.

I genuinely appreciate your attempt to make hybrid mods that are more interesting than the current ones, but tying Critical Strike Avoidance together with dodge won’t make dodge more interesting to scale, it will just make it mandatory. And the same goes for the Less Bonus Damage Taken from Critical Strikes hybrids. For the classes who have an inherently difficult time scaling dodge, those affixes would still be mandatory.

I don’t really know if I consider this a big problem. You’ve paid the opportunity cost of either allocating passive talent points, using a suffix or taking a specific blessing.

On the other hand you’ve got DoT abilities like Hail of Arrows, Consecrated Aura from Judgment, Disintegration, Maelstrom etc. These can all ignore modifiers like dodge, crit avoidance, glancing blows and frenzy+haste on hit because they don’t have a hit component. This seems like a more egregious case of mod fishing than being able to ignore crit mods. And even then once you start delving into 300+ corruption monoliths, it’s really only the +Base Crit modifier that’s “free” stability. The hybrid inc % crit modifier has a % damage component, which starts being rather significant at higher corruption.

Anyway I always find it interesting to read suggestions on here. But while you’ve obviously given this some thought, I think messing with CSA in the current iteration of the game will just make gearing needlessly more complicated.

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I’d like to see crit avoidance just turn into less bonus damage taken from crits. Do away with crit avoidance and replace those affixes with balanced less bonus damage taken affixes. Should take the same amount of affix tiers to reach “cap” as crit avoidance does now.

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I’d personally like to see critical strike avoidance and “less bonus damage from crits” merged into 1 stat, let’s call it “crit mitigation”.

If you have 10% crit mitigation, you would have 10% crit avoidance and if you do get hit, 10% less bonus damage taken.
If you have 50% crit mitigation, you would have 50% crit avoidance and if you do get hit, 50% less bonus damage taken.
If you have 90% crit mitigation, you would have 90% crit avoidance and if you do get hit, 90% less bonus damage taken.

The obvious advantage is that its not an all or nothing stat and you are totally fine with 80-90%.
You are still better off investing in it.
You have a gradual process of improvement which feels organic leveling up.

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Thank you for your thoughtful response.

The calculation is based on the zone level you’re in, not individual mobs, which at endgame should always be 100, so I don’t think that’d be a problem. Unless you’re referring to leveling through monos, which should display correctly inside of the echos, but maybe not in town? If it isn’t accurate, they could always change the way it’s displayed, possibly make the character sheet scale based on the last combat zone you were in? Or just still show whatever the end result of what crit avoidance calculation would be on the character sheet, like they currently do, independent of zone level.

I agree that it wouldn’t make dodge more reliable, that’s a separate issue. I’m just saying it could make gearing dodge more interesting. And yes, balancing of different defenses per affix is part of the puzzle, and to me, a big part of the fun. I don’t like it when one puzzle piece is required no matter what I’m making though, so I’m asking for more puzzle pieces, and also giving a suggestion of how to make dodge more competitive vs those other layers.

If high-dodge builds like Rogues were the only ones that could possibly get to 100% crit avoid, then that would be something they could build towards, and it would give them a choice vs going Glancing Blows. And give them all the benefits I mention in my original post of being able to ignore certain enemy modifiers. Obviously the range of all the numbers would have to be tested, but that’s why I gave the example of 300-400% total dodge conversion, that would mean that if you only got 25-35% dodge, you could still be crit avoid capped. That might be too easily achievable, depending on how many affixes it would take to get there, but there’s a lot more flexibility with such a system, because you could invest in either dodge itself or the conversion.

Something I perhaps didn’t make clear in my original post is that changing Crit Avoid by itself absolutely would be game breaking in the current Meta. It’s currently mandatory, and my goal is to make it optional. The alternative would have to be making Crits less scary in other ways, so that classes that don’t have access to good dodge numbers would be able to survive. That’s why I suggested the other mods at the end of my post. I’m saying there should be more ways to avoid deadly one-shots at endgame. If you were building an armor character, and could eventually get your defenses to the point where “Armor reduces bonus damage from Crits by 100%”, then that’s effectively the same, but makes more sense thematically if you’re a heavily armored Sentinel than having an “avoidance” statistic. That’s a partly pedantic argument, but still. And again, it’s granular and rewards you for investment in that type of defense, even before you get to the magical 100% mark.

But right now that’s a mandatory opportunity cost. I’m saying there should be other gear/passive/blessing choices.

Yeah, DoT Damage scaling does avoid a lot of defenses, for both players and enemies, but that’s a topic for another time.
It would make gearing more complicated, in the sense that there would be more affixes, but you wouldn’t have to pay attention to all of them. There would be more options that would make sense based on which defenses you were already focusing on. Needless? Perhaps, but the theorycrafting and mixing and matching of gear is why I love this genre of games in the first place.

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I would prefer this a lot myself. Mostly because crit avoid is so un-fun

It really is right now a case of you either have 100% or you insta-die from crits

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Well, I think crit avoidance is a bad design decission, adds unnecessary complexity, because less bonus damage taken from critical strikes also exists. All the flexibility you get in other places, you lose it with crit avoidance: if you don’t have 100% you’re fucked. Actually in hardcore is mandatory for empowered, 2x damage is much risk.

They is an easy solution I proposed a few times:

  • Replace crit avoidance, with less bonus damage taken from critical strikes instead, maintaining crit avoidance magnitudes.
  • Rename it to critical damage mitigation for better readability.

Fixed!

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Yeah, that’s not bad. You’d probably be ok with hitting somewhere between 50% and 75%-80% before diminishing returns kick in.

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Yeah I was mainly talking about the way to 100. But thinking about it, most people will normally just rush to empowered monoliths. And from there you can just check how much rating is required to hit the crit immune cap in a level 100 zone so that’s probably a minor issue all in all.

I wrote a larger section with an argument saying that crit immune affixes would still be mandatory. Then I re-read your response and realised we’re both in agreement on that, and that you just want to find a different path toward that point.

And that’s completely fine. We all have different reasons for playing the games we love. I still maintain that, all in all, your approach would be the opposite of QoL. But I’ve also never been a fan of changing core systems, unless the changes make sense and are for the betterment of the game.

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Hey. Ok everyone has their preferences.
I like this type of defense layer and reaching the goal to cap crit avoidance feels good to me.
Yes, maybe you could combine “crit avoid” and “less dmg taken” to one affix.
Currently they are a little different.
Less damage taken is damage mitigation and Crit Avoid is chance not to get a crit hit.
There is “Cirt vulnerability” which affects Crit Avoid, but not Less Damage Taken.
Yes, it is complex, but the type of complexity i like :slight_smile:

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Yeah, to each his own I guess. Nothing wrong with that.

But they went the easy way with so many things, this one stands out.

Is like the flat/hybrid stun avoidance. Sure you want to avoid those affixes.

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