From what KBN said, on a dummy you want about 200 crit, and in a raid about 600 crit.

Heres the quote:

Mknightrider does record parsing with about 200 crit rating. He does raids with over 600! (source: former member of Ascension, which seems fair since MK is also a former member of Ascension) Does it lower his top end DPS? Yes, absolutely. Does it lower his average DPS? Probably by 1-2% (which is appreciable). The more important thing is that it lowers his variance. Reducing variance from progression pull to progression pull is vastly more important than a 5 DPS theoretical average increase.

For the record, Mknightrider was going by Buff-shadows as a character name, though apparently he changed it to Happy-shadow after 2.8's changes. You can find him on the DPS leaderboards, right at the top

Where did you find this quote?

Wondering why variance matters. I was about to post some math for 2.8 Balance - about 230 crit rating is optimal. I have no idea how stacking crit reduces variance though, and how an extra 400 could give it any noticeable difference.

Figured it out.

I just don't get why variance is so important in a raid. I get that consistent damage is good in a raid... but I don't get why that is better than the best possible average damage.

600 crit = you will do less damage overall. There is no ability a Madness Assassin uses that benefits from more than around 400 crit.

Figured it out.

 

I just don't get why variance is so important in a raid. I get that consistent damage is good in a raid... but I don't get why that is better than the best possible average damage.

 

600 crit = you will do less damage overall. There is no ability a Madness Assassin uses that benefits from more than around 400 crit.

Well there is thrash...

50% surge boost, high base damage without reliance on power, ect... Im gonna use dread forged as an example, but optimal crit for a spec with limitless force and a thrash button in dread forged gear is...

And the maths came to 540 crit. I guess I was wrong there. It is over 400 though.

However I wouldn't hate on having a little too much crit. Its better to hit your numbers more often than hit bigger numbers, especially when you are already out-dpsing the fight

Also said maths didn't include the bonus 100% uptime on 9% crit so...

Hmm... your math is a little off. Optimal crit rate on Thrash is about 225-250 (didn't calc exact but it is around here).

Did you include the 9% crit chance from Force Synergy? I assumed 100% up time, and I included 15% crit chance from set bonus. Thrash has a relatively high Bonus Damage coefficient... which is why crit only goes so far, even with that 50% surge bonus.

I also used a 74.96% surge multiplier as well (my gear is DF with some DM).

Hmm... your math is a little off. Optimal crit rate on Thrash is about 225-250 (didn't calc exact but it is around here).

 

Did you include the 9% crit chance from Force Synergy? I assumed 100% up time, and I included 15% crit chance from set bonus. Thrash has a relatively high Bonus Damage coefficient... which is why crit only goes so far, even with that 50% surge bonus.

 

I also used a 74.96% surge multiplier as well (my gear is DF with some DM).

I forgot about the set bonus

though I wouldn't call 0.755 a high damage coefficient, especially when you include the other values.

Including the set bonus probably puts it down a bit lower, though force synergy was included with the calculation (though its uptime wasn't assumed 100%, but rather was a function based off the crit rate as force synergy rarely has 100% uptime)

Ok so first off, never ever did I use over 600 crit, especially not in Balance, and not even in Infiltration. That info is just straight wrong and I'm not sure where it came from. Pre-2.8 I was using over 500 for both specs, but for Balance it was closer to 500 than it was closer to 600 (I don't remember what it was exactly anymore without messing around with gear and I'm too lazy to do the math). All of what I just said applied to raids. For parsing I would generally only drop one crit mod for a power mod, so like 69 less crit for parsing for each spec; and sometimes I forgot to do that.

But now that 2.8 is here my target, and what I said would be my target during PTS testing, was just under 300 crit rating. I did quite a bit of testing with various levels of crit and just under 300 came out with the best average over I think it was 7 parses that I did at each level of crit. I would say it's safe to run anywhere from 250-350 crit though, I didn't see a major difference between averages from parses in that range.

So what I say is: Best = 280-300, Greater range that can be used = 250-350

Of course all this is for Balance. Since Infiltration didn't change, I personally would still run quite a bit more crit for it; but that's just me and I'm also not even doing that right now because I don't have access to enough Dread Master gear at this time to worry about making a half set just for Infiltration. Something else to note, I wouldn't even need to worry about Infiltration if the Devs could actually think about how their scaling to 16 mans just doesn't work very well and literally kills certain specs because we don't have enough passive survivability. If I were running 8 man content it wouldn't be a problem (I would still run Infiltration or maybe the hybrid for Draxus but I'm not going to worry about one fight). But it is literally impossible to run our only competitive spec in the Council fight on 16 man without having a dedicated healer just for myself, which is obviously not something that can be done. Tyrans' T-blast and the fact that Raptus' Smash hits everyone no matter what means that you just can't survive as a Balance Shadow in that fight during P1. In Balance you take 18k T-blasts and almost 10k Smashes; Infiltration is 11k and 5k respectively. If you get unlucky and get hit by Tyrans' Shock or have Calphayus' heal debuff (which will definitely happen on NiM at some points) or if two melee get targeted for T-blast back-to-back and I don't get uber healed in between, I just straight up die.

Ok so first off, never ever did I use over 600 crit, especially not in Balance, and not even in Infiltration. That info is just straight wrong and I'm not sure where it came from.

I blame KBN

However, we have the number here. ~300 in dread forged gear.

Easiest way to get that is a crit crystal, 3 mods, and 1 enhancement (or 2 mods, 1 crystal, and either the earpiece or implants)

When I made the move to a crit rating of 600, my DPS with full 180 gear went up. at Crit rating of 600 I'm sitting at above 28% crit chance for both Melee and Force.

This was a DPS increase for both Madness and Deception for me, both on Test Dummy as well as in raids.

When I made the move to a crit rating of 600, my DPS with full 180 gear went up. at Crit rating of 600 I'm sitting at above 28% crit chance for both Melee and Force.

 

This was a DPS increase for both Madness and Deception for me, both on Test Dummy as well as in raids.

Saying full 180 gear could mean you have full Dread Forged gear, or full Oriconian gear, and the difference between the two is pretty big. And what damage did you go from and to? How much of a percentage increase in damage was it? Also, what crit rating did you go from and to?

So running balance/madness in DP NIM counsel is not really viable because of the damage you take.?

Basically, yes. Deception takes a lot less damage on this fight, though I do believe that playing in 8 man makes the damage taken issue not as bad.

So running balance/madness in DP NIM counsel is not really viable because of the damage you take.?

Only in 16m. I do not run 8m anymore as I am in Severity now, so everything I say pertains to 16m.

Only in 16m. I do not run 8m anymore as I am in Severity now, so everything I say pertains to 16m.

Arrhh ok thanks we only do 8 man I am guessing it's because of the damage area reduction along with the constant damage reduction from crits can't remember what it's called