Note, for the purpose of this thread, I am referring to the type of modifcation known as "mods", rather than using the term to mean all types of modifications. My question is only about the "mod" type of mods.

It has long been held that unlettered mods are optimized over lettered mods, because of the greater Power. HOWEVER, I'm curious if the lettered ones might be better now, with the changes to Crit. Since one of the lettered mods (I forget which now) gives higher Mastery than Power - and Mastery increases your crit value too - would this mean that the higher-Mastery mod is now desirable?

Why or why not?

Thanks for your answers

If the trade-off were in a, or close to a, 1 to 1 ratio, then maybe. However if we look at the Advanced Lethal Mod 43(A). Going for the A mod means gaining 11 Endurance and 28 Mastery, but you'd lose 48 Power. While Mastery is generally valued slightly more than Power, the unlettered Mod is clearly better than the lettered ones for DPS.

And finally, there are no vendor/assembled drops of 224 gear. This means there is no Advanced Lethal Mod 44A, but then even if there was, it wouldn't beat the Advanced Lethal Mod 44 and maybe not even the Advanced Lethal Mod 43.

What AdjeYo said.

Also, afaik, if this isn't true please correct me, crit is valuable nowadays because it increases both critical hit chance and critical hit damage.

Mastery on the other hand only provides critical hit chance.