To Crit or not to Crit

[Bagel99]

Hello everyone who reads this and i hope your having a wonderful day! All that aside i've seen a couple posts in the past about CRIT versus NON-CRIT solutions and was wondering what kind of fixes we could come up with to allow both styles of gameplay! Now there are a couple key points i want to start out with:
1. Crit should always reward you with the most damaging playstyle! It has a good amount of investment (2-3 Feats, Power Crit{optionaly and build specific}, Improved Crit and Overwhelming Crit) and usually drives enhancements to sink a main tree with around 32-34pts. Therefore Crit is 100% output
2. Non-crit should be around 66%-77% output and require 2-3 feats and have a flavor feat or two. I say 3 here since you can usually save points or make up power with non crit enhancements or non crit minded multiclasses.
3. Non-crit's flavor feats should add additional benefits or allow you to focus on maybe Tactics or Bleed procs on hit etc. I like bleed cause its not a hits all kinda deal ( undead, elementals etc )

So let me know your thoughts!
My suggestion is a line of feats maybe stemming from power attack which in increments do something like this.
Level 9 standard "X" (Req. Power Attack) - adds 0.5W and 1 melee power per BAB, you can no longer critically strike opponent.
Level 15 Imp. "X" - adds 1W and 2 melee power per BAB, you can no longer critically strike an opponent.
level 21 Greater "X" - adds 2W and 3 melee power per BAB, you can no longer critically strike an opponent.

Flavor Feats: (things along these lines)
Momentous Swings (Req. X, Power attack) - +5 Tactics DCs while in power attack
Bleed them Out - On hit with your weapons apply a stack of bleed [1d6], can be stacked up to 15 and 1 stack expires every 3 seconds. Scales at 200% melee power

i know these number seem high but you will never see chunky spikes in dps like a Barbarian would, but you would see a consistent chipping away of your opponent and the extra melee power and weapon dice allow for some scaling of base damage and the melee power is for ON-hit effects to make up some of the damage. Playing with Vulnerability and debuffs is an option too but i think that would bleed over into assisting regular crit builds. Either way i hope to hear from everyone else about a non crit build or its ideas. It could be tweaked too that precision or a ranged feat allows the ranged variant.

[droid327]

I also think there should be support for non-crit martial builds...I'd love to see a feat that negates your ability to crit but gives you appreciable other DPS bonuses. I also agree non-crit builds should require less investment, to make it more attractive for e.g. hybrid melee-caster builds, or builds in trees that dont offer (full) crit bonuses (Warchanter, Enlightened Spirit, non-War Domain melee cleric, etc.). If you have equal investment available for both, then it just becomes a case where one is mathematically better and the other is obsolete.

However, I dont think you're weighing the options right. For one, crit is a HUGE portion of your DPS at endgame, so you really need to give a LOT of value for giving up your ability to crit. For two, Tactics DC would only be useful for very niche group-obligate CC tank builds, and there's no way DOTs would be able to make up for even unboosted crit profiles, given how fast-paced the game is.

I think if your goal is just to make it about trading spiky damage for consistent damage, but slightly less DPS overall (but also not susceptible to crit immunity), then I think you're aiming for about 80% minimum of crit-focused DPS, and I think you just need 1-2 feats at most: a basic stance (probably mutually exclusive with Power Attack and Precision), and then a passive feat with the same min requirements as Imp Crit. The stance would scale your Melee Power by your BAB as a percentage (so at 25 BAB you'd get +25% total Melee Power and 0% crit chance), the passive feat would add your character level as a flat damage bonus while the stance was active.

Those sound pretty extreme but I think the penalty of giving up all crit (and, worth mentioning, proc-on-crit and proc-on-vorp) would still outweigh it. But it would open up opportunities for builds that scale well on MP to leverage more of those functions instead, and free up some opportunity costs to spend elsewhere while still maintaning "decent" melee functionality.

Alternatively, it could be a function of a new Universal Tree, probably something like Swashbuckler in the Core 2, but in reverse. Disables crit (for certain or all weapons), but grants you various bonuses to those weapon attacks depending how much you invest in the tree.

[Bagel99]

I also think there should be support for non-crit martial builds...I'd love to see a feat that negates your ability to crit but gives you appreciable other DPS bonuses. I also agree non-crit builds should require less investment, to make it more attractive for e.g. hybrid melee-caster builds, or builds in trees that dont offer (full) crit bonuses (Warchanter, Enlightened Spirit, non-War Domain melee cleric, etc.). If you have equal investment available for both, then it just becomes a case where one is mathematically better and the other is obsolete.

However, I dont think you're weighing the options right. For one, crit is a HUGE portion of your DPS at endgame, so you really need to give a LOT of value for giving up your ability to crit. For two, Tactics DC would only be useful for very niche group-obligate CC tank builds, and there's no way DOTs would be able to make up for even unboosted crit profiles, given how fast-paced the game is.

I think if your goal is just to make it about trading spiky damage for consistent damage, but slightly less DPS overall (but also not susceptible to crit immunity), then I think you're aiming for about 80% minimum of crit-focused DPS, and I think you just need 1-2 feats at most: a basic stance (probably mutually exclusive with Power Attack and Precision), and then a passive feat with the same min requirements as Imp Crit. The stance would scale your Melee Power by your BAB as a percentage (so at 25 BAB you'd get +25% total Melee Power and 0% crit chance), the passive feat would add your character level as a flat damage bonus while the stance was active.

Those sound pretty extreme but I think the penalty of giving up all crit (and, worth mentioning, proc-on-crit and proc-on-vorp) would still outweigh it. But it would open up opportunities for builds that scale well on MP to leverage more of those functions instead, and free up some opportunity costs to spend elsewhere while still maintaning "decent" melee functionality.

Alternatively, it could be a function of a new Universal Tree, probably something like Swashbuckler in the Core 2, but in reverse. Disables crit (for certain or all weapons), but grants you various bonuses to those weapon attacks depending how much you invest in the tree.

I actually like your idea for a universal tree per say. I love playing war priests etc. I do think that the universal tree would keep the investment down but also keep the enhancement sink similar to other builds as well. it would be a nice happy medium. And true i didn't think of vorpal procs, i was considering those as a separate rolled on 20 function. If vorpal procs no longer work it would be giving up another little but still sizeable table of functions. Also i do like the Melee power scaling as well as it would make sources of it more impactful and easier to work into rather than a flat addition that may fall off if we ever saw higher levels. It would be kind've hard to target a level of dps though as tons of builds hit around 5x multi on crits. Either way me thinks it would be cool but idk if it would generate money and sadly i think ssg needs that income.

[Jerevth]

Swashies are pretty chaotic.
My thought was "This would perfectly suit a monk tree".
It's order in the midst of chaos.
C1- Perfecting the strike- "you strike like the endless tide, each wave like the one before it". No random critical strike or double strike chance, set base damage is 60% of the weapon die + modifiers.
C2- Rhythmic strike- you gain an extra attack every second strike (Essentially 2 strikes becomes three)
C3- Flawless strike- Each strike adds a stack of resonance to the target up to a maximum of 10 stacks. (one stack of Resonance is +2 force damage bonus with each strike. 1 stack expires every two seconds, but renews with every new stack added.) (Stack # appears over the target's head in blue- only visible to the player)
C4- Dissonance- hot bar icon, six second cool down- expend 10 stacks with a single strike for 500 force damage.
C5- Silence after the storm. Resonance stacks increase to a maximum of 30. After achieving the thirtieth stack, if that 30th stack expires, all stacks expire and the target takes highest of Wisdom or Strength modifier x 500 force damage. (Wisdom 100 means 25k)

Later investments could increase the regular damage (70%-150% etc), add the potential critical strike chance as flat damage, and give an extra strike every 4th/3th/2nd hit. Specific attacks could impose affects like sunder, stun and confusion with increased DCs. Increased defenses against enemy attacks- either general or the current target.

Of course, people would play the other enhancement trees until they had enough points to make this tree meaningful without the "growth". (Bypass the low damage stages and jump straight to one punch man at Tier 5.) It would work better in P&P D&D...

But monks, man.

[Bagel99]

Swashies are pretty chaotic.
My thought was "This would perfectly suit a monk tree".
It's order in the midst of chaos.
C1- Perfecting the strike- "you strike like the endless tide, each wave like the one before it". No random critical strike or double strike chance, set base damage is 60% of the weapon die + modifiers.
C2- Rhythmic strike- you gain an extra attack every second strike (Essentially 2 strikes becomes three)
C3- Flawless strike- Each strike adds a stack of resonance to the target up to a maximum of 10 stacks. (one stack of Resonance is +2 force damage bonus with each strike. 1 stack expires every two seconds, but renews with every new stack added.) (Stack # appears over the target's head in blue- only visible to the player)
C4- Dissonance- hot bar icon, six second cool down- expend 10 stacks with a single strike for 500 force damage.
C5- Silence after the storm. Resonance stacks increase to a maximum of 30. After achieving the thirtieth stack, if that 30th stack expires, all stacks expire and the target takes highest of Wisdom or Strength modifier x 500 force damage. (Wisdom 100 means 25k)

Later investments could increase the regular damage (70%-150% etc), add the potential critical strike chance as flat damage, and give an extra strike every 4th/3th/2nd hit. Specific attacks could impose affects like sunder, stun and confusion with increased DCs. Increased defenses against enemy attacks- either general or the current target.

Of course, people would play the other enhancement trees until they had enough points to make this tree meaningful without the "growth". (Bypass the low damage stages and jump straight to one punch man at Tier 5.) It would work better in P&P D&D...

But monks, man.

I think it would be cool, i do like your idea of using "doublestrike" to scale. It would make up for the crit multi. To make it more universally appealing and to fit in with DDO's current scaling on items and trees we could make a trade off where you can no longer crit but can doublestrike past 100% and in the tree add large chunks of it in the cores (25%,25%,50%,50%,50%,100%) for a total of 3 additional attacks or a 4x damage. Now 4x consistently might be too much flat multi because it would basically be equivalent to 2-20 x3 on a weapon. But for an example it serves its purpose. Q Staff and Vistani builds might find this exceptionally useful due to their trees, but i think you could easily make some nice sword and boards work this way that arent Vanguard which is very crit focused on that shield. Opens some doors! also would allow Two Weapon fighting to balance itself with its intrinsic off hand scaling at 50% ! it fits so well !