Simple question which I have been wondering about

 

Which is better power or surge +crit?

 

Wat I mean by this question is do you want to stack more power than crit and surge. More consistent higher damagign attacks.

 

Or really good chance to crit and do ridiculous damage when you do, which do you think is better for burst?

 

I happen to roll with heavy crit and surge (45 and 80% respectively) I find this giving me a crit almost every other turn and for things such as backblast and shotfirst due to spec and gear I always crit pretty much.

 

Now I don't want people saying no your doing it wrong I just want to know how people do with both in comparison. Everyone plays differently, I know I could do more damage total if I went for more power, however I went burst.

 

Hope you guys find what is said here constructive at some point.

Cunning is probably better than any of power, surge or crit.

 

Of the latter three, what's best for you depends on the balance of those stats you have. A better chance of getting a crit, and that crit being larger, are particularly good for a class like ours that depends on burst. You need to get some big crits.

 

Power is on a linear curve; surge and crit suffer diminishing returns as you stack more of them.

 

Surge maxes crit bonus at 80% (110% for some abilites I believe). Mine is around 450+ giving almost 80%, but lots of that is near-wasted, I'd say you'd be almost as good at 350. I only have so much because the alternative is accuracy, which is even more useless.

 

Your crit chance is improved by crit stat and main stat (cunning for smugglers), the crit chance from either source is 30% max on separate diminishing returns curves. You also get 5% base and potentially bonuses from talents and gear to some abilities (particularly Back Blast). I have crit chance of about 40% on tech attacks.

 

I don't know your gear, but from the 45% crit chance I would GUESS that you could afford to go for some more cunning than crit, failing that power than crit. Your surge may also be inefficiently high, hard to tella s your're pretty much at cap, the value could be in a very wide band.

 

Google up SWTOR Mechanics and look for the equations they've derived to calculate how your stats function to work out your precise figures. Ask Mr Robot is a gearing-test site that may help too.

 

TL;DR: you could afford to lose some surge and crit for cunning and power, in that preference order. I would guess.

The main argument i have seen with this class and a full min/max is if you want your critt at 35% or 39/40%. To be honest I've seen players of both types do perfectly fine and I've seen many arguments for both types. In the end it seems to be personal preference.

 

Also regarding the post above. Surge hard caps at 80%, but soft caps @ 75%. Going above 75% adds very minimal overall critt multiplier.

I mean I suspected for the sake of number efficiency I could take down the surge abit. However my crit rating isn't too high in comparison to that contributed by cunning, maybe tone down surge but apart from that things look good. In my opinion.

 

I mean its all how it works for you. I suppose I could better my numbers with more power less surge but then I like the way I play, anyways thanks for replies! Just interested to see peoples take on things.

No matter how I have tweaked mods, crit, surge and power ratings, I still cannot get my single 'burst' damage to equal the single hit damage heaped upon me at times from "no burst" classes. Both of us being equally geared (full WH).

 

A Marauder/Sentinel hitting me for over 5k, in my WH gear, fairly often (what with their Precision Slash 100% armor penetration buff on a short cooldown and automatic criticals from Immaculate Force now and again) just makes me wonder why people are so grumpy about us poor little scoundrels and our supposed huge burst damage. Remind me again why our armor penetration buff from Flechette round was reduced to 30% ?

 

I can't recall the last time I hit a WH geared opponent for anything like 5k.

 

Amusing

 

My current Crit/Surge balance seems to work well enough though. With Lucky Shots buff it sits at approx 33% / 76%. I don't feel an extra 7% on my critical (7 extra critical hits in every 100) to hit that 40% bracket would be worth the loss to my base damage/Power.

Edited September 21, 2012 by Theagg

I am now min/maxed with the with focus of crit and surge then cunning and power

 

(crit 45%) Surge 80%

 

Cunning 1700

Power 100

 

I have found that generally through this I can get the big numbers (4500 average) and due to such a high crit chance I crit almost every 2 attacks (normal chance ones such as sucker punch) however on things like backblast due to tree bonus and set bonus I now crit every time, and likewise with shoot first. So for me it works. New tier of gear comes out I will be adding more power to the build to fill it out.

 

However I have yet to hit the 5K consistent hits I see from sentinels and snipers. Why are we complained about when other classes do more damage have more survieability and easier to manage resources

When you say "I have never hit over 5k on WHs", you have to remember flechette round. It's off the GCD and part of shootfirst and backblast. I regularly hit shoot first for around 4k on war heros, with 600 crit ticks from flechette round. That's a monster hit.

With your 45% crit or w/e it was, I would love to see what your bonus damage is.

 

 

 

I'd say ~35% crit, get over 700 bonus damage, and surge would be at the 77-78% range.

When you say "I have never hit over 5k on WHs", you have to remember flechette round. It's off the GCD and part of shootfirst and backblast. I regularly hit shoot first for around 4k on war heros, with 600 crit ticks from flechette round. That's a monster hit.

 

- That is a fair point and I think one most scoundrels forget about is that extra damage because you only ever see it as little yellow ticks.

I do crit alot on my dots. Which is quite handy to keep them going down. However you can cleanse dots you can't cleanse burst.

 

My bonus tech damage is at 500.

 

So in my opinion the extra crit is worth it.

 

(little bit of theory crafting here) Numbers are not real nor in affect due to other factors.

 

On back blast lets say we do 3000 damage standard.

 

With my crit and surge ratings and tech damage currently this is how it works out at.

 

60% chance to crit and do this dps.

 

2000 + 500

 

2500 x 1.8 = 4500

 

 

Now for power:

 

50%Chance to crit

 

2000 + 800

 

2800 x 1.7 = 4760

 

Greater damage but less chance to crit and also less surge to play with. That is why I went for the surge + crit. Numbers work with both stats really but you need to be min/maxed to be equal.

 

 

Both of these are with theory crafted builds, min maxing stats.

Edited September 23, 2012 by CarthOnansi

I mean I suspected for the sake of number efficiency I could take down the surge abit. However my crit rating isn't too high in comparison to that contributed by cunning, maybe tone down surge but apart from that things look good. In my opinion.

 

I mean its all how it works for you. I suppose I could better my numbers with more power less surge but then I like the way I play, anyways thanks for replies! Just interested to see peoples take on things.

 

Power and Surge are not really "comparable" secondary stats. What I mean is you cannot effectively lower one while raising the other.

 

Critical Rating and Power - Comparable

Accuracy (or Alacrity) and Surge - Comparable

 

Cunning and Power are not truly even comparable unless you are referring to augments (which should be CUNNING). The 9% increase in our skill tree + the 5% increase from the consular buff outweigh any gains from strictly Power. It is the only place where you can make a direct 1:1 comparison of Cunning to Power.

 

Discussing choice of MODs modifications. Whether you choose a 26, 26A, 26B it is not a direct loss of power and gain of cunning. You lose a LOT of Power when switching from a 26 Mod to a 26A, gain a little bit of Cunning, and a little bit of endurance. Mods are about Ratios between 3 stats and your desired end-build. Since you are a melee DPS, you may have an additional need for Endurance that make the A's or B's desirable to you. As a healer, or a ranged DPS..my personal choice is with the straight 26's all the way...no A's or B's.

 

I hope this helps you when deciding how to min/max your stats for your optimal build. Remember though that min/maxing eventually comes down to goals, usually decided by skill tree choices. As an example, on my healing scoundrel, my goal is to achieve 36% Tech-critical chance fully buffed (all class buffs and my Exotech Stim). The reason for my goal is that my skill tree gives me an additional 24% critical chance using diagnostic scan, my skill tree also lets my restore 2 energy when Diagnostic Scan crits. So, I now have a cumulative 60% chance to crit on each Diagnostic Scan "tick" and I use it often to keep my energy up so I can heal more. As long as my Crit goal is achieved, I can now put all of my Critical Rating/Power choices toward Power for more bonus healing.

 

EDIT: Oh btw, I usually find that surge at 75% is efficient, and all other points should be allotted to either Accuracy or Alacrity (depending on your advanced class of course).

Edited September 24, 2012 by DenitharPurloin