Enemy Critical Strikes

[blueFinnedTuna]

Hi everyone,

I would like to start up a conversation on critical strikes and their place in this game. For those uninitiated, enemies in this game have a chance to do critical strikes just as the player character can and any damage is at 200% the normal damage.

In my opinion this mechanic is incredibly unfun and should ideally be removed, or at the very least, reworked. Let’s dive a bit deeper into it.

It adds an additional layer of challenge in the game and now you have to consider two additional defense stats in how you build your character. However, this type of difficulty is the worst type imaginable where you can randomly get one shot without any active counterplay available, other than trying to dodge every single enemy attack.

The two additional affixes to mitigate crits are critical strike avoidance and critical string damage reduction. Critical strike avoidance is just a percentage chance to negate the crit (at 100% you cannot get crit) and damage reduction simply reduce the amount of damage an enemy critical strike does. What I dislike is you are pretty much forced to invest in these stats if you want an enjoyable late game experience. There are choices for other defensive abilities (more health instead of armor/resistance) or even replace the defensive suffix with dots for more damage. This limits player expression and artificially restricts builds. You find a godly exalted item, but you cannot craft that crucial crit defense, so you are stuck using your old gear. Resistances are also somewhat mandatory to cap in late game but at least there is some active counterplay options to avoid said damage type.

Melee builds are in general harder to make viable in these games and this mechanic disproportionally affects them. Going forward it’s going to be much harder to balance melee and ranged build with this mechanic in place.

I understand that EHG has a much wider view than I do, and perhaps certain things are balanced based on this mechanic, which might make it difficult to outright remove it from the game, so here are a few suggestions to improve the current state.

• Reduce the enemy crit multiplier. 200% is an insane amount of additional damage and reducing this by itself should prevent some of those one-shots. For reference PoE has it at 130%.
• Bundle crit damage avoidance/reduction with other defensive stats (like hybrid health) and increase the rarity of these affixes.
• What we are really trying to achieve is not have unfun one-shots. Crit avoidance is an affix where anything less than 100% is not ideal. However, getting 100% is not very difficult and once you have it its objectively better than building crit damage reduction, so most optimal builds will focus on this over damage reduction. IMO removing this affix and having crit damage reduction as the only defensive option is something to consider. This is because crit damage reduction is not as strict and punishing, if you say choose to go down from 100% to 60%, unlike crit damage avoidance. This ultimately means that builds have more options and variety w.r.t new gear and upgrades.

Hope that some changes can be implemented and the devs are looking into this.

[Llama8]

@blueFinnedTuna

Reduce the enemy crit multiplier. 200% is an insane amount of additional damage and reducing this by itself should prevent some of those one-shots. For reference PoE has it at 130%.

PoE’s is multiplicative (2.3x), LE’s is just 2x damage.

Crit avoidance/damage reduction is a gear tax, I prefer the damage reduction modifier as it’s less punishing compared to not hitting cap.

[DJSamhein]

@blueFinnedTuna

The two additional affixes to mitigate crits are critical strike avoidance and critical string damage reduction. Critical strike avoidance is just a percentage chance to negate the crit (at 100% you cannot get crit) and damage reduction simply reduce the amount of damage an enemy critical strike does. What I dislike is you are pretty much forced to invest in these stats if you want an enjoyable late game experience.

At 100%, both do the exact same thing. So you should only use one or the other because there’s no benefit to using both at the same time.
And it’s not hard to get to 100% with just 2-3 affix slots.

@blueFinnedTuna

Bundle crit damage avoidance/reduction with other defensive stats (like hybrid health) and increase the rarity of these affixes.

Crit reduction already bundles with armor.

@blueFinnedTuna

Crit avoidance is an affix where anything less than 100% is not ideal. However, getting 100% is not very difficult and once you have it its objectively better than building crit damage reduction, so most optimal builds will focus on this over damage reduction.

It’s actually objectively worse. Because, as I mentioned, at 100% both do the same thing, but reduced critical damage usually comes with armor. Though you need more affixes to 100% it, so it’s sort of balanced that way.

[blueFinnedTuna]

I based the 130% from this thread How deadly are monster critical strikes? : r/pathofexile (reddit.com) can you share you reference for the 2.3x for PoE (that would mean it has 230% crit multiplier).

[DJSamhein]

Critical multiplier in PoE is smaller for both enemies and players.
If they reduce enemy crit multiplier in LE they will also reduce player crit damage multiplier.

[blueFinnedTuna]

@DJSamhein

At 100%, both do the exact same thing. So you should only use one or the other because there’s no benefit to using both at the same time.

My understanding was that crit avoidance negated the entire damage altogether whereas crit dmg reduction only reduced the additional damage inflicted due to crit and not the base damage. I guess I was wrong in which case, yes crit dmg reduction should be the better stat. Seems weird to have it as an option that is outright better. Even 50% damage reduction will pretty much negate any effect of crit strikes in that case.

@DJSamhein

Crit reduction already bundles with armor.

Yeah, this is something I’m seeing this cycle, not sure if it was there earlier. Thanks for pointing it out.

[Llama8]

https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Critical_strike

Crit multiplyer is a multiplier in PoE, so 200% is x3.

@blueFinnedTuna

Even 50% damage reduction will pretty much negate any effect of crit strikes in that case.

No, 'cause that stat is multiplicative with the increased bonus damage from crits, so if a crit does 2x, the bonus bit is reduced by 50%.

[DJSamhein]

@blueFinnedTuna

My understanding was that crit avoidance negated the entire damage altogether whereas crit dmg reduction only reduced the additional damage inflicted due to crit and not the base damage. I guess I was wrong in which case, yes crit dmg reduction should be the better stat. Seems weird to have it as an option that is outright better. Even 50% damage reduction will pretty much negate any effect of crit strikes in that case.

The reduction only applies to the critical damage part, so the normal damage still hits.

Neither is objectively better or worse. As I said, at 100% both do the same thing. But crit avoid requires less affixes, whereas crit reduction also has armor. So it’s basically a choice.

The main difference between them is when they’re below 100%. And in that case, reduction is always better (assuming the same values for each), even though the average damage is still the same.

[Kulze]

@blueFinnedTuna

In my opinion this mechanic is incredibly unfun and should ideally be removed, or at the very least, reworked. Let’s dive a bit deeper into it.

That’s a wild take.

First of all it’s a go-to mechanic which has been established since a long time as well as a aspect to handle to enforce a more varied defense buildup of some sort. Either by pure EHP and then leeching/recovering beyond the ability to get damaged or simply… crit avoidance or crit reduction to 100% (the second comes with bonus armor so it’s superior).

@blueFinnedTuna

It adds an additional layer of challenge in the game and now you have to consider two additional defense stats in how you build your character.

Yep, that’s the point

@blueFinnedTuna

without any active counterplay available

As mentioned, 100% crit avoidance or using crit reduction.
The boots alone reduce the bonus damage down to 50% at best. A single T5 mod generally does roughly 25%.

@blueFinnedTuna

What I dislike is you are pretty much forced to invest in these stats if you want an enjoyable late game experience.

Exactly, that’s the point. Limiting the affix slots for other defensive options or pure EHP. You can forego it in some scenarios and it allows a wider variety of items and build variants overall.
Imagine if a single item provides a vast reduction in crits… or even telling you ‘you can’t be crit’. Those are hence things which actively open up affixes which can otherwise be used, a great and positive aspect of how character building is handled. It’s an upside, not a downside to have it in the game.

@blueFinnedTuna

more health instead of armor/resistance

Armor does more against crits since DoTs can’t crit and Armor works directly on hits, hence reducing incoming damage even related to non-crits, being an overall better choice this way. As a secondary thing you won’t have to recover as much health this way while your EHP are as high (and can be applied partially to DoTs as well via the experimental affix).

@blueFinnedTuna

This limits player expression and artificially restricts builds.

What sort of ‘expression’ are you talking about? It increases build variety, not decreases it.

Also yes, every offensive mechanic restricts builds by design, that’s their task, to make more meaningful choices.

@blueFinnedTuna

Melee builds are in general harder to make viable in these games and this mechanic disproportionally affects them.

Make a build with a shield and you’ll be darn tanky, LE is very forgiving in comparison to other games towards melee.
As for balancing melee versus ranged… that’s an age old issue and has never been solved to date. I don’t think LE will be the first to do it either.

@blueFinnedTuna

Bundle crit damage avoidance/reduction with other defensive stats (like hybrid health) and increase the rarity of these affixes.

Crit reduction is already bundled… with armor.
Get some of that.

@blueFinnedTuna

Crit avoidance is an affix where anything less than 100% is not ideal.

It’s generally not ideal since you don’t get anything besides removing crits. Hence again, use the combination of crit reduction/armor. Its as difficult and simply acts as a minimum requirement when you want to get into later stages of the game, hence enforcing a respective minimum quality of gear.

@blueFinnedTuna

once you have it its objectively better than building crit damage reduction

100% reduction is as achievable as avoidance, and I fell into that as well for a while. It’s a factually wrong statement.

@Llama8

PoE’s is multiplicative (2.3x)

No, PoE has 50% bonus damage for players baseline and 30% bonus damage for enemies baseline.

That’s not right what you wrote.

[Llama8]

@Kulze

No, PoE has 50% bonus damage for players baseline and 30% bonus damage for enemies baseline.

I stand corrected, the final bit…

Critical strikes cause hits to deal “extra damage” compared to a non-critical strike, the magnitude of which is determined by critical strike multiplier (i.e. crit multi). Player characters have a base crit multi value of 150%, while monsters have a base crit multi value of 130%, or 50% and 30% “extra damage” respectively.[2]

Can I play the concussion card?

[Kulze]

Absolutely, you’re excused because of your concussion

[blueFinnedTuna]

@DJSamhein

The reduction only applies to the critical damage part, so the normal damage still hits.

I see, so this applies to both avoidance and reduction. When it comes of 100% preventing one shot potential, damage reduction seems better in that case (the additional bundled armor helps too).

@blueFinnedTuna

without any active counterplay available

What I mean here is things like dodging, investing in movement speed, evades and not affixes. IMO having active counterplay options for missing defensive is a more fun and rewarding than simply investing in a stat and being done with it.

Thanks for clarifying a bunch of things especially w.r.t crit avoidance and reduction. The additional armor with reduction was not something I was aware of either so it’s good that its already there and it makes the situation a lot better.

Apologies if some parts were written somewhat misguidedly. My point with the mechanic was that more often than not it was the cause of a one-shot death which does not feel good to play as. Not saying that we remove challenge, but the game has sufficient ways of having more fair challenge so as to not to resort to this. And yes, other counterplay exists, but you hardly have all the pieces to solve the puzzle in the beginning, and as you are levelling up.

Not totally convinced of the additional build variety that having this mechanic provides, I still think having a somewhat mandatory affix with no active counterplay is not that great, but I might change my stance on this as I play more.

[DJSamhein]

@blueFinnedTuna

When it comes of 100% preventing one shot potential, damage reduction seems better in that case (the additional bundled armor helps too).

Both prevent one-shots the same way. The main difference, as I said, is that avoidance only requires 2-3 affixes while reduction requires 4-5 (either affixes or implicits) but also gives armor.

EDIT:

@blueFinnedTuna

Not totally convinced of the additional build variety that having this mechanic provides

Much like with most other things, it forces you to consider what you want to sacrifice to have this. Do you want 100% of either one? You have to sacrifice a few things. Is 50% avoid enough? You only have to sacrifice one or two affixes.
You might even go full glass cannon and have 0% of each and simply try not to get hit, or kill stuff before they can get to you.

All are part of the build variety. If you didn’t have this, however, you’d always take the same affixes instead because you’d have less options to consider.

[blueFinnedTuna]

@DJSamhein

Both prevent one-shots the same way. The main difference, as I said, is that avoidance only requires 2-3 affixes while reduction requires 4-5 (either affixes or implicits) but also gives armor.

At 100% yes, but lets say you only have 60% avoidance vs 60% reduction. If EHP is 1000 and the monster does 500 damage with a 5% chance to crit then its effectively 2% chance to get one-shot, whereas with the DR the max damage dealt will never be able to one shot you. Hope this makes sense. I think this is why CDR has lower values per affixes than CDA.

[ashorak]

Crits do feel a little overtuned if I’m honest. There is a sense of sudden rippiness particularly with certain boss and rare monster attacks (that otherwise aren’t oneshots) that feels abrupt/out of nowhere and… Jagged? In terms of breaking up the gameplay flow. Requiring crit avoidance/reduction cap is perhaps something that could be retuned. I think they should be highly valuable defensive affixes, but not absolutely mandated for many builds to have smooth gameplay. Crits being put down to 175% for monsters would likely be enough.

[Darthelmet]

In general I don’t like cap stats. They often make upgrading gear a headache. I know you don’t always have to be at cap for all of them (other than crit avoid if that’s what you’re doing), but I still kind of just want to be able to put on a piece of gear without having to worry about losing my load bearing resist or crit avoid stat or something and then having to move a bunch of stuff around.

I will say though, the change to blessings has made this less ass at least. Now I have an easy way to adjust a decent part of the source of those stats in my build as needed.