With the mastery and power lvl cap in lower content, it would seem to me that critical crystals will become the new BiS Or am I misreading this?

they have been bis since 4.0 or something

they have been bis since 4.0 or something

 

Not for pvp. Mastery has mostly been BiS

Not for pvp. Mastery has mostly been BiS

 

Mastery has always had its ups and downs sadly as its only based on melee crit, which most classes even warrior classes now stay far away from those moves.

 

I have always run with crit or power, unless I was tanking then run endurance....

Mastery has always had its ups and downs sadly as its only based on melee crit, which most classes even warrior classes now stay far away from those moves.

 

I have always run with crit or power, unless I was tanking then run endurance....

 

I used to run power until 5.0, then the theory crafters did their thing and said mastery was BiS in most cases. So I’ve been sticking with that until 6.0 pts which shows crit to be much better than either power or mastery due to how they’ve adjusted lvl sync.

 

I’m yet to see how this will translate for pvp, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the same considering Bolster will only affect mastery, power and endurance and not secondary stats

I mean, the crystals are still +41 of whatever stat. As the expansions keep coming in and the gear pools get bigger and bigger, +41 is less and less of an impact so you'll likely be able to just use what you like the color of.

I mean, the crystals are still +41 of whatever stat. As the expansions keep coming in and the gear pools get bigger and bigger, +41 is less and less of an impact so you'll likely be able to just use what you like the color of.

 

If I remember correctly (and I’m thinking back to circa 2013 here), a Dev said that he regretted putting any stats on crystals. Apparently, past +41 and they get difficult to balance. So the solution was to keep 41 at the limit perpetually because it was pretty negligible (but not enough so to remove the stats on the crystals altogether).

there is no mastery crystal (edit: i am wrong). i think mastery is better than crit once you get to 2000 crit or something... for pve

 

these are the numbers i get for simple dps model assuming 110 accuracy and 703 alacrity

 

base crit mas surge

1500 2124 7720 0

2000 2250 7594 0

2500 2364 7480 0

1500 2184 7660 0.1

2000 2307 7537 0.1

2500 2418 7426 0.1

 

for 6.0 at 1.3 gcd and 110 acc, i am seeing a 9 dps decrease if using as power crystal instead of crit (18 if using two power crystals)... this is at 1415 crit and 3206 alacrity

 

for 1214 alacrity we get 3407 crit. now when exchanging 82 crit for 82 power, it is only a 0.55 dps loss for using power crystals.

 

this is for an average hit of 2546.... you can see similar discussion here: https://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=965720

Edited October 15, 2019 by dipstik

there is no mastery crystal. i think mastery is better than crit once you get to 2000 crit or something... for pve

 

these are the numbers i get for simple dps model assuming 110 accuracy and 703 alacrity

 

base crit mas surge

1500 2124 7720 0

2000 2250 7594 0

2500 2364 7480 0

1500 2184 7660 0.1

2000 2307 7537 0.1

2500 2418 7426 0.1

 

Well seeing as you have no idea that there is in fact Mastery Crystals, how in the world do you expect anyone to believe your "theory crafting" numbers??

 

War Hero = Mastery

Eviscerating = Crit

Hawkeye = Power

Indestructible = Endurance (tank only)

Well seeing as you have no idea that there is in fact Mastery Crystals, how in the world do you expect anyone to believe your "theory crafting" numbers??

 

War Hero = Mastery

Eviscerating = Crit

Hawkeye = Power

Indestructible = Endurance (tank only)

 

 

 

i dont pvp... thought they were still expertise trash... thanks for the info

im not asking for anyone to believe me. everyone should derive numbers with their own assumptions built into the math.

 

3206 al

crit 11960.35

mas 11942.66

pow 11942.63

 

 

1214 ala

crit 11929.02

mas 11928.68

pow 11928.41

 

looks like crit is still better in all instances... if you change the accuracy assumptions this could change, since you would free up around 600 points. seems likely mastery might be better than crit around 3800 crit or so...

 

edit. with 97% acc and 1.4 gcd crit is still better (3468 crit):

 

crit 11759.02593

mas 11758.68879

pow 11758.53962

 

at 1.4 s gcd you will want 5 mastery more than the lowest you can have (negligible), and crit will only get better with higher surge and crit buffs to abilities in the rotation... so i would suggest crit unless you just want high burst and/or you have auto crit machnics in your rotation. if you have 97% accuracy (1000 rating) you will want to have 528 more mastery than minimum:

mastery 11087.6843

power rating 9909

crit rating 3468.32

surge rating 3468.32

accuracy rating 1000

alacrity rating 1214

force/tech power 7008

 

crystal info:

crit 11759.02633

mas 11758.69588

pow 11758.54651

 

so mastery is still better than power at this point (and remember the more abilities you have with buffed crit/surge, the better mastery will be than these numbers)

 

with no accuracy (i think i heard thats a thing in ranked or soemthing..)

mastery 11975.57489

power rating 9909

crit rating 3580.43

surge rating 3580.43

accuracy rating 0

alacrity rating 1214

 

and looking into crystals again at 0 accuracy:

crit 11330.70931

mas 11330.41093

pow 11330.44095

 

so power is better than mastery, which means the 9909 power can likely be increased by sacrificing mastery (assuming none of your abilities have crit or surge increaser passives). neither power nor mastery are better than crit though...

 

 

 

if you have 1.3 gcd you will want minimum mastery

Edited October 14, 2019 by dipstik

Not for pvp. Mastery has mostly been BiS

 

Why do you think that?

Why do you think that?

 

Because it gives stats to crit chance and well as crit and damage. I guess you could’ve decide to switch around some augments to get the stats balanced on your character, but it always seemed that the majority of pvpers used mastery (unless they were tanks and making crit heavy builds).

there is no mastery crystal. i think mastery is better than crit once you get to 2000 crit or something... for pve

 

As you can see, there are mastery crystals

https://swtorista.com/crystals

i dont pvp... thought they were still expertise trash... thanks for the info

im not asking for anyone to believe me. everyone should derive numbers with their own assumptions built into the math.

 

3206 al

crit 11960.35

mas 11942.66

pow 11942.63

 

 

1214 ala

crit 11929.02

mas 11928.68

pow 11928.41

 

looks like crit is still better in all instances... if you change the accuracy assumptions this could change, since you would free up around 600 points. seems likely mastery might be better than crit around 3800 crit or so...

 

edit. with 97% acc and 1.4 gcd crit is still better (3468 crit):

 

crit 11759.02593

mas 11758.68879

pow 11758.53962

 

at 1.4 s gcd you will want 5 mastery more than the lowest you can have (negligible), and crit will only get better with higher surge and crit buffs to abilities in the rotation... so i would suggest crit unless you just want high burst and/or you have auto crit machnics in your rotation. if you have 97% accuracy (1000 rating) you will want to have 528 more mastery than minimum:

mastery 11087.6843

power rating 9909

crit rating 3468.32

surge rating 3468.32

accuracy rating 1000

alacrity rating 1214

force/tech power 7008

 

crystal info:

crit 11759.02633

mas 11758.69588

pow 11758.54651

 

so mastery is still better than power at this point (and remember the more abilities you have with buffed crit/surge, the better mastery will be than these numbers)

 

with no accuracy (i think i heard thats a thing in ranked or soemthing..)

mastery 11975.57489

power rating 9909

crit rating 3580.43

surge rating 3580.43

accuracy rating 0

alacrity rating 1214

 

and looking into crystals again at 0 accuracy:

crit 11330.70931

mas 11330.41093

pow 11330.44095

 

so power is better than mastery, which means the 9909 power can likely be increased by sacrificing mastery (assuming none of your abilities have crit or surge increaser passives). neither power nor mastery are better than crit though...

 

 

 

if you have 1.3 gcd you will want minimum mastery

 

I’m not going to pick apart your numbers because I know you’ve contributed the theory crafting in the past to Hotties Rambol.net info. So you understand that stuff better than me. But I am interested in how you are determining that crit and power crystals are better in pvp if you don’t play pvp.

 

Have you tested that on main hand weapons because they aren’t covered under bolster. I know in the past when I’ve used crit crystals in main hand that I seem to do less damage. Hence, I just put master in both MH and off hand and tweak my stats using augments and enhancements (ie removing some accuracy).

Edited October 14, 2019 by TrixxieTriss

these numbers are based on a toy dps model that assumes spamming a single ability that has no crit or surge buffs.

 

dps=(base damage + bonus damage)*(1+crit*surge)*(1+alacrity)/cast_time.

 

assuming some cast time (since the change is taken care of by alacrity) we can take that out and look at maximizing the rest. using the equations from here: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=966583&highlight=stat+equations and excel solver (evolutionary algo) i can find where the peak dps is from the contraints of stat pool (right now im only assuming crit and mastery trade which makes it much faster to solve). i calc the dps by comparing my default (crit crystal) to using 82 of mastery or power and those are the numbers i am reporting.

 

of course your hits will be bigger with mastery, since that is what it does, but you will crit less often than if you were to use a crit crystal.

Edited October 14, 2019 by dipstik

 

of course your hits will be bigger with mastery, since that is what it does, but you will crit less often than if you were to use a crit crystal.

 

I think this is the important part of the situation. Because your main hand isn’t included in bolster, having a master crystal that lets you hit harder is the way to go and just gain your extra crit from augments.

Well on my shadow I run the 1.4s alacrity breakpoint at ~720 alac, so I don't use many alac augs and run mostly mastery augs, and 2000 crit. Thus I run two power crystals.

 

Also, I think according to the mastery charts, you hit a soft cap on the critical aspect of mastery at around 8000 or so. I currently have 8197 mastery.

Edited October 15, 2019 by Rion_Starkiller

I think this is the important part of the situation. Because your main hand isn’t included in bolster, having a master crystal that lets you hit harder is the way to go and just gain your extra crit from augments.

 

you typically want to balance your stats to produce higher overall dps, but if you just want big hits (without surge) you can ignore crit completely. you can also use crit crystals and get mastery from augments.... looking at this spreadsheet ( https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rpCTtEAWYs731zN36riNyPhrUH61IXUNhnH5-GVqENQ/edit#gid=754003953 ) for bolster, it looks like you get free mastery, so you may want more crit, since crit and alacrity are typically better than mastery or power. power seems to be better than crit for low values of base hit.

 

base mas pow acc ala crit

1500 7510 4543 737 703 2170

2000 7466 4461 737 703 2296

2500 7355 4461 737 703 2407

 

assuming no accuracy:

base mas pow acc ala crit

1500 8184 4543 0 703 2233

2000 8143 4461 0 703 2356

2500 8033 4461 0 703 2466

 

 

 

 

to know the base hit you need to know the modifiers:

 

 

from bant's methodology:

[Ability DPS] =

( ( [Avg Mainhand Weapon Damage] x [1 + AmountModifierPercent] + [bonus Damage/Force/Tech/Heal] x [Coefficient] + [Avg StandardHealthPercent]*[base_DMG or Base_Heal] ) x [Accuracy %] + [Avg offhand Weapon Damage] x [1 + AmountModifierPercent] x [Offhand Accuracy] )

x ( 1 + [Ability Bonus Damage] + [Ability Active Damage] + [Debuff for F/T/M/R] + [Debuff for I/E])

x ( 1 + [Ability Damage Multipliers] )

x ( 1 + [Debuff for AOE] )

x ( 1 + [Execute Bonus Damage] )

x ( [# of Hits] )

x ( 1 + ( ( [Crit %] + [Ability Crit % bonus] ) + [Autocrit Proc Rate] / [Time Averaged Usage] ) x ( [Crit Bonus Damage] + [Ability Crit Damage Bonus] ) )

x ( 1 - 1 / ( 1 + ( ( 800 + 240 * [Level] ) / ( [Target Armor] x ( 1 - [Armor Debuff] ) x ( 1 - [Armor Penetration] ) ) ) ) )

x ( 1 + [Alacrity %] + [Average Alacrity % bonus] ) / [Time Averaged Usage]

 

 

Well on my shadow I run the 1.4s alacrity breakpoint at ~720 alac, so I don't use many alac augs and run mostly mastery augs, and 2000 crit. Thus I run two power crystals.

 

Also, I think according to the mastery charts, you hit a soft cap on the critical aspect of mastery at around 8000 or so. I currently have 8197 mastery.

 

you need to actually balance the stats instead of relying on what looks like a knee in a curve. as you can see from the above values, mastery above 8,000 is a thing, and you need to adjust the crit throughout the range, because the more mastery you add the better crit is, and the more crit you have the better mastery is. the algo says power isnt *** good as crit or mastery for high base values of hit, so you may want mastery or crit crystals instead.

 

it is evident that mastery augs became viable somewhere in 252 and 258 gear.

Edited October 15, 2019 by dipstik

you need to actually balance the stats instead of relying on what looks like a knee in a curve. as you can see from the above values, mastery above 8,000 is a thing, and you need to adjust the crit throughout the range, because the more mastery you add the better crit is, and the more crit you have the better mastery is. the algo says power isnt *** good as crit or mastery for high base values of hit, so you may want mastery or crit crystals instead.

 

it is evident that mastery augs became viable somewhere in 252 and 258 gear.

 

Ok, I trust your maths more than me eyeballing a curve on a graph. I assume mastery is better than power because of the 5% class buff on a higher stat pool...?

 

Do you think a serenity shadow benefits more from critical or mastery since DoT hits and crits have an added benefit of self healing?

Edited October 15, 2019 by Rion_Starkiller

anything that increases the crit chance or surge will make crit and mastery better. when between crit and mastery, crit gets better than mastery.

Remember also that with the loss of several auto-crit set bonuses, the overall impact of supercrits is going to be somewhat diminished. Off the top of my head, I know this affects the key casted heals for Seer Sages/Corruption Sorcs and Sawbones Scoundrels/Medicine Operatives.

 

Also remember that classes which are heavily Force/Tech based damage classes (so-called "yellow" damage classes) may benefit more from critical rating than weapon-based damage classes (so-called "white damage" classes) because the critical percentage is different for F/T attacks than it is for weapon based attacks.

 

Its just pretty clear that between:

• higher alacrity rating requirements
  
• higher accuracy rating requirements
  
• expense and difficulty in crafting both MK-11 kits as well as MK-11 augments
  
• the need to augment multiple gear sets, and the delay in obtaining them
  

we're going to be playing with a lot less critical percentage than we are used to. Remember also that Mastery and Power do not suffer from diminishing returns in terms of their effect on Bonus Damage, but Mastery's impact on Critical Percentage does.

 

Personally, I think it will be fun to play around with the crystals again and see if some combinations work better than others for certain classes. I'm glad Bioware threw a Seismic Grenade into this particular furball.

anything that increases the crit chance or surge will make crit and mastery better. when between crit and mastery, crit gets better than mastery.

 

But we talking crystals here. Not total stats, which I won’t argue with because I know you are right.

 

My reasoning for the crit crystals being BiS in 6.0 is because lower lvl content has mastery, power and endurance capped. But secondary stats like crit aren’t capped. So you will still get the benefit of the crit crystals and you wouldn’t from mastery, power or endurance unless you are only playing lvl 75 end game.

 

As for pvp prior to 6.0. All I can say is I get higher dps using mastery crystals on my warrior, sniper, Merc and Sorc classes. I’ve assumed the same with my sins and I rarely play my Ops or PTs.

I don’t know exactly why I get better damage using mastery vs crit or power. I would balance my total stats at the same points if I used crit or power crystals. I can only assume it’s because main hand isn’t included in bolster.