At what point should you take crit enhancement lines over damage?

[Jaid314]

air has some nice stuff. chain lightning and ball lightning can be handy for when your off-element stuff is on cooldown. if you're an air savant, electric loop offers some inexpensive CC potential.

that said, acid certainly has some nice toys as well... acid rain and black dragon bolt, for example. as an earth savant, i favoured acid/cold, but i wasn't fooled into thinking it was better than electric/cold for most purposes.

[Coyopa]

In general, the first of either enhancement lines are stronger than the 2nd through 6th (or 7th in the spell power line)...it also depends on how much spell power and crit stuff you already have. So there is no single enhancement type that is guaranteed stronger for everyone.

For example, let's take a water savant with 6 tiers of the ice spell power enhancements, and nothing at all (gear or enhancement) for crits. Then crunch a few numbers to see when the 7th spell power enhancement (+10 spell power) is even with the first crit range enhancement (+4%, 1.5 multiplier). Essentially, when you have the first crit range enhancement, you will get half an extra spell's worth of damage, 4% of the time. So, out of 100 casts, you will, on average, see about a 2% increase in your overall damage. For +10 spell power to be a 2% increase in your damage, you need to already have 400 spell power from other sources (the first six tiers of the enhancements, metamagics, gear, etc). So if you already have 400 spell power on your spells, the 7th (or 2nd, or 3rd, or so on) spell power enhancement breaks even with the first critical enhancement. If you have more spell power, it's weaker, and less spell power, it's stronger than the crits.

But if you have a superior ice lore item (+12% crit chance and +.5 to multiplier) and compare the same enhancements, it's different. Now, every 100 casts, without any enhancements, on average you'll get an extra spell's worth of damage on 12 of them. The crit range enhancement will make it 16 of those casts out of each 100 instead. So the crit range enhancement adds 4/112 (simplifies to 1/28) to your damage. For 10 spell power to add 1/28 to your stuff, you need to have 180 spell power from other sources...if you have more, the first crit range enhancement is stronger.

But then, take the above example...once you take the first crit range enhancement, the second only adds 1/116 to your damage, meaning that it is only stronger than the spell power enhancement if you already have 1060 spell power...which you probably do not.


TLDR, for most people, it's best to take 7 enhancements in spell power, 1 in crit range, and 1 in crit multiplier, if you're tight on enhancement points, though I can't say for sure until I know your spell power/crit without enhancements (and how many points you want to spend altogether)

+1! Thanks for this information. I'd been trying to work out the math for some time. Eventually, I simply got lazy and took only the first crit enhancements anyway and max'd the damage line. Good to know I was doing it right!

[Such755]

Q: Why can't you rely on crits?
Say you have 9% from enhancments and 12% from superior lore item, that gives you 21% (let's make it 20% to simplify things).
Frost lance, for example, shoots 3 rays instantly, each having its own crit chance. That means that every 5 times you cast it, 3 rays will be crits. That sounds like a lot to me. . .

Someone also mantioned that crits are less important for casters because they don't cast fast as melee swing, but if you spam all your spells (Sorcs can spam quite a lot, wizard can spam a considerable amount with quicken) and you load 2 DoT on the boss you fight, that's a lot of chances for crits...

Again, I am just asking why you can't rely on crits if you can easily achieve 20% crit chance.

[Kinerd]

Personally I wouldn't couch it as you can't "rely" on crits, just that the 7/1/1 will arithmetically give you higher average values than the 3/3/3 (or whatever). 7/6/6 does give you more damage than the 7/1/1, but it's so much less of a return on investment for the same (technically slightly more) AP that it makes more sense to put them in another element unless you have to spend 7/5/5 anyway on your savant stuff.

[firemedium_jt]

This is a thread from the Divine Punishment DOT thread I posted. The numbers are the same for a 16 second DOT stacked three times. You can see how hard it would be be stack 6-8 sec DOTS especially with the fade outs you guys talk about. 6 seconds to stack helps with that.


So how many bosses are immune to Elect or Cold? cause this is alot of damage, and that is just for the first initial stacks assuming the fight is over in 36 seconds... If you keep the stacks going the average criticals are even higher. For Wizards is is slightly different than divines. And about 225-100->7x125=875 extra from criticals is about 20%. Well I will say as long as you use them and stack them you will rock critical or not. Guessing 4x75=300 for 7/1/1 ballpark.

100 is a nice average. If your guy does more or less. I.e. 110 pts damage then just X1.10 to get your numbers.

______________________________________

Ok now a Major or Greater Radiance lore item is not hard to get and max smiting lines here goes.
3 stacks for 16 seconds that reset with every stack for 36 seconds total.
Average 18% critical chance and 2.5x or every 5.5 tick or every 6th then 5th tick.
My toons DP with spell power gear are around 100 damage maybe a a little less or more, so based on your toons numbers just add or subtract the percentage from 100. Ie. 96 pts of damage then subtract 4% from total numbers.
Average mana per cast is 75 sp maxed out with quicken, empower and maximize. Spell power is in 70s with all critical smiting enhancements.


Initial casts. Every tick is every 2 seconds.

Time
in
Sec. DP1 DP2 DP3

0 Cast
1
2 100
3
4 100
5
6 100
7
8 100
9
10 100 Cast
1
2 225 100
3
4 100 100
5
6 100 100
7
8 100 100
9
20 100 225 Cast
1
2 225 100 100
3
4 100 100 225
5
6 100 100 100
7
8 100 100 100
9
30 100 225 100
1
2 100 100 100
3
4 225 100 100
5
6 100 100 225

39x100 = 3900
7x125 = 875
_______________

4775 total damage for 3 stacks (only the initial stacks first 36 seconds)

4775/18 = 265/2 seconds

__________________________________________________ __________________________

Every 20 seconds triple stacked

0 Cast 100 100
1
2 100 100 100
3
4 100 100 100
5
6 100 100 100
7
8 100 225 225
9
30 225 100 100
1
2 100 Cast 100
3
4 100 100 100
5
6 100 100 100
7
8 100 100 225
9
20 225 225 100


31x100= 3100
6x125= 750
________________

3850 total damage for 3 stacks every 20 seconds

3850/10= 385/2 seconds

__________________________________________________ ___________________________


Yes the timer resets for previous castings when you cast a new one up to 3 times damage. Too risky to wait until last tick to reset. I just keep tapping at around the 10 second cool off timer. More casts keep it going at 3x damage not including the critical ticks.

And good luck stacking them exactly in combat, so take some off from that, but getting close to 5000 points is nice for 225 sp. I will even take 4500 as a low number

This is why Bosses charge you. You are dishing out 300 to 600 damage per stack tick plus your melee or other casting damage. A melee has to do more than this to hold aggro or have good threat.

My guy CLR18/FTR2 does about 110-130 per tick and 280-300 critical hit tick with 72 spell power, all enhancement smiting lines and and Greenblade 9%/.25x.

Am I right or wrong with this and the math?

_____________________________________

http://ddowiki.com/page/Divine_Punishment

http://ddowiki.com/page/Niac's_Biting_Cold

http://ddowiki.com/page/Eladar's_Electric_Surge


These are the best single target DOTs in the game IMHO.