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Crit versus mastery augments and power crystals


dipstik

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edit 6/30/19: corrected mastery numbers and including tech power and 5% crit buff

 

in light of alacrity being quantized, i thought perhaps when using the low alacrity build, it might be beneficial to use mastery augments instead of crit due to diminishing returns of crit. since there have been no spreadsheets updated since 5.0, i decided to use a toy model of dps:

 

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

 

this assumes 100% accuracy, and doesnt include really anything. this only works for a single ability.

 

I'm not sure what values of base damage we have. We could back out some effective value by solving for it knowing the other values.

 

This is what i found:

 

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

 

 

Where surge is the surge bonus to an ability. base is the base damage of the attack (typically a range).

 

Assuming 703 alacrity (and 737 accuracy) that gives a minimum crit of 1320 and a max of 2706; and mastery min is 7138 and a max of 8524. As you can see some augments would go to mastery.

 

Since many abilities have crit and surge bonuses, this will decrease the amount of mastery you want (and this optimization doesnt include using power crystals either).

 

Back when alacrity was continuous it seemed like crit and alacrity were around 30% better than power or mastery, back in 5.0 (i would have to play with bants sheets to see the actual values) but since alacrity is wasted like accuracy is, that makes the trade between crit and mastery/power, and with crit going into high numbers, there may be reason to use some mastery or power...

 

the best way i can think of to tell without doing too much work would be do 10 parses using one setup, then ten parses with another setup, then do a two sample t test to see if they are significantly different (low p value)... the other potion would be to take damage info and find the ratio of overall damage contibution from each ability, and use a toy model for each ability with weights for contribution to overall dps (so if force lightning does 10% of damage and saber stike does 90% you have 0.1 and 0.9 weights for those abilities surge, alacrity, crit bonuses).

 

im not terribly interested in trying to redo bants work on dps in 6.0 (might do tank if the new gear system isnt too complicated), so any input would be nice.

Edited by dipstik
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Disclaimer: the below does not apply in level 70 content, whether synced up / bolstered or just plain level 70 anyway.

 

If you do any significant amount of gameplay in level-synced content (where you're synced down), stacking mastery, power, or endurance won't help you *at*all* (because you'll be over the local cap) and will, in fact, hinder you because you can't stack those points into Crit and alacrity. (In general, you shouldn't be stacking Accuracy above 110% total, of course.) To be sure, stacking them into Crit won't help *much*, but it will help more than stacking them into Mastery in synced-down content.

 

Then again, in synced-down content, you're rarely in need of those points anyway.

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Disclaimer: the below does not apply in level 70 content, whether synced up / bolstered or just plain level 70 anyway.

 

If you do any significant amount of gameplay in level-synced content (where you're synced down), stacking mastery, power, or endurance won't help you *at*all* (because you'll be over the local cap) and will, in fact, hinder you because you can't stack those points into Crit and alacrity. (In general, you shouldn't be stacking Accuracy above 110% total, of course.) To be sure, stacking them into Crit won't help *much*, but it will help more than stacking them into Mastery in synced-down content.

 

Then again, in synced-down content, you're rarely in need of those points anyway.

 

Out of curiosity .... what percentage caps (approximate) would you look for in a DPS character for

1. Accuracy: ( ie. you suggested 110% cap )

2. Mastery:

3. Crits:

4. Alacrity

 

I know that different classes: trooper / JK / smuggler (and their DS counter parts) use different builds and consequently different percentages.

 

OH ! While I'm actually thinking about it (senior moment thing going on here) ... any guess if this will be altered that much with the release of 6.0 ?

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Out of curiosity .... what percentage caps (approximate) would you look for in a DPS character for

1. Accuracy: ( ie. you suggested 110% cap )

2. Mastery:

3. Crits:

4. Alacrity

 

I know that different classes: trooper / JK / smuggler (and their DS counter parts) use different builds and consequently different percentages.

 

OH ! While I'm actually thinking about it (senior moment thing going on here) ... any guess if this will be altered that much with the release of 6.0 ?

 

I am hardly an expert on this subject, there are a few guides around (on these forums and on Reddit) that go into more depth, but the general guidelines for stat distribution are:

 

 

  1. Accuracy: you need a minimum of 110% for PVE (PVP can get away with less, ~100-105'ish %). Most suggest ~735 accuracy. That will put you at just under 110% (around a couple hundredths of a point below), which is something like a one in a million miss chance. I generally go for 750 accuracy, which puts you slightly over 110%, but I'm not a min/max'er and 750 is easy to hit with 252 gear and 228 mods (I'm not bothering with 258 gear).
     
  2. Alacrity: the alacrity thresholds are 702 and 1857 for most classes. 702 gives you a 1.4s GCD while 1857 gives a 1.3s GCD. Whether you try for a 1.3s GCD or settle for 1.4s depends on a number of factors. TK Sage/Lit Sorc have a passive alacrity buff that is easy to keep up, and an active alacrity buff that is a little more situational (but may become less so with 6.0 from looking at the new set bonuses). They can hit a 1.1s GCD with 1229 alacrity and hit an easily sustainable 1.3s GCD with 1097 alacrity. Gunnery Commando/Arsenal Merc and Combat Sentinel/Marauder Carnage all have an alacrity bonus, which changes their threshold numbers, but I'm mostly familiar with Sage/Sorc. If you're min/maxing with bis gear then you'll probably want to hit 1857 (or whatever you need for your class). If you're not, and you're not going to hit the cutoff for the next threshold, then just go for 702. You can get 708 with three pieces of 252 gear.
     
  3. Mastery: that varies a lot with crit allocation.
     
  4. Critical: and this varies a lot with your class and the damage type you do. It's my understanding that those classes that primarily do white damage will gain less benefit from having crit over 1800 than those that primarily do force/tech dmg. If your dmg is primarily white then after you hit 1800 crit (or there about) then start stacking mastery. If your dmg is primarily force/tech then push your crit to ~2400 before you start stacking mastery. These numbers will be harder to hit if you're not using 258 gear and 240 augments.

 

Most of this is just a guideline. Can you do with less than 110% accuracy? Yes, if you're just running around doing PVE dailies or your focus is PVP, but don't try to run a MM OP or FP. On my main, when I'm doing dailies I often won't bother with using an accuracy stim because having less than 110% accuracy doesn't make much of a difference, but for harder content I pop that stim. The alacrity numbers don't have much wiggle room (aside from those classes/specs with alacrity bonuses). Those are hard numbers. If you're not going to hit 702 alacrity and don't have an alacrity bonus then ignore alacrity. If you're not going to hit 1857 alacrity (with gear or gear and bonuses) then stop at 702. Numbers over 702 and under 1857 (without a bonus) are wasted points. Where are the sweet spots for crit and mastery? That's a little harder to say. Does it matter if you don't hit those sweet spots? That depends a lot on what content you're running.

 

Whether any or all of this will change with 6.0 is unknown. Generally the target numbers have changed with each integer update, and they've said that they are open to looking at alacrity and adjusting it so it's not so thresholdy (but that likely won't come with 6.0).

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I am hardly an expert on this subject, there are a few guides around (on these forums and on Reddit) that go into more depth, but the general guidelines for stat distribution are:

 

 

  1. Accuracy: you need a minimum of 110% for PVE (PVP can get away with less, ~100-105'ish %). Most suggest ~735 accuracy. That will put you at just under 110% (around a couple hundredths of a point below), which is something like a one in a million miss chance. I generally go for 750 accuracy, which puts you slightly over 110%, but I'm not a min/max'er and 750 is easy to hit with 252 gear and 228 mods (I'm not bothering with 258 gear).
     
  2. Alacrity: the alacrity thresholds are 702 and 1857 for most classes. 702 gives you a 1.4s GCD while 1857 gives a 1.3s GCD. Whether you try for a 1.3s GCD or settle for 1.4s depends on a number of factors. TK Sage/Lit Sorc have a passive alacrity buff that is easy to keep up, and an active alacrity buff that is a little more situational (but may become less so with 6.0 from looking at the new set bonuses). They can hit a 1.1s GCD with 1229 alacrity and hit an easily sustainable 1.3s GCD with 1097 alacrity. Gunnery Commando/Arsenal Merc and Combat Sentinel/Marauder Carnage all have an alacrity bonus, which changes their threshold numbers, but I'm mostly familiar with Sage/Sorc. If you're min/maxing with bis gear then you'll probably want to hit 1857 (or whatever you need for your class). If you're not, and you're not going to hit the cutoff for the next threshold, then just go for 702. You can get 708 with three pieces of 252 gear.
     
  3. Mastery: that varies a lot with crit allocation.
     
  4. Critical: and this varies a lot with your class and the damage type you do. It's my understanding that those classes that primarily do white damage will gain less benefit from having crit over 1800 than those that primarily do force/tech dmg. If your dmg is primarily white then after you hit 1800 crit (or there about) then start stacking mastery. If your dmg is primarily force/tech then push your crit to ~2400 before you start stacking mastery. These numbers will be harder to hit if you're not using 258 gear and 240 augments.

 

Most of this is just a guideline. Can you do with less than 110% accuracy? Yes, if you're just running around doing PVE dailies or your focus is PVP, but don't try to run a MM OP or FP. On my main, when I'm doing dailies I often won't bother with using an accuracy stim because having less than 110% accuracy doesn't make much of a difference, but for harder content I pop that stim. The alacrity numbers don't have much wiggle room (aside from those classes/specs with alacrity bonuses). Those are hard numbers. If you're not going to hit 702 alacrity and don't have an alacrity bonus then ignore alacrity. If you're not going to hit 1857 alacrity (with gear or gear and bonuses) then stop at 702. Numbers over 702 and under 1857 (without a bonus) are wasted points. Where are the sweet spots for crit and mastery? That's a little harder to say. Does it matter if you don't hit those sweet spots? That depends a lot on what content you're running.

 

Whether any or all of this will change with 6.0 is unknown. Generally the target numbers have changed with each integer update, and they've said that they are open to looking at alacrity and adjusting it so it's not so thresholdy (but that likely won't come with 6.0).

 

I appreciate the input. the only item that I see that I have been really weak on is alacrity: The one item that I've just not thought that much about it until my return. Of course now I have time to play the game. Back in the day (so to speak) .. I worked from 55 to 60 hours a week. Add to that family responsibilities and other duties .. and yeah it made for a long week. So... all that aside. Back to the matter of getting some of this right for a change!

 

BTW... once again my thanks !

Edited by OlBuzzard
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I totally forgot about that paper but remember when it came out.

 

My mastery numbers are totally different though.

 

Yeah, if you're using tier 1 alacrity and 258 gear, mastery is much higher now (and even moreso if you're using no accuracy in pvp), so I imagine crit can be pushed up a lot higher. I'm not good enough at math to use his formulas myself though.

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i forgot to add the base mastery and stim, and something else it looks like... maybe a hilt and armoring... update op.

 

the paper and me are doing the same thing exceptr i am using a solver and considering the trade between mastery and crit.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The softcap for Mastery is 7800 and at that point Power is better because the "crit" part of Mastery has diminished returns. Power never has diminishing returns. Unfortunately, there are no gold Power augments, so at that point you would decide between using Crit or Mastery augs -- particularly if you are using the ~750 1.4 GCD Alacrity breakpoint. For pvp, it might be worth playing around with 228 purple Power augs and see how they bolster....? Or maybe the tank Defense augs (80 power 99 defense) . lol

 

OH ! While I'm actually thinking about it (senior moment thing going on here) ... any guess if this will be altered that much with the release of 6.0 ?

 

Supposedly they are changing Alacrity in 6.0. I think they said it in the dev stream...?

Edited by Rion_Starkiller
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The softcap for Mastery is 7800 and at that point Power is better because the "crit" part of Mastery has diminished returns.

 

Where are you getting that number? I've never seen it anywhere. Just because the crit from mastery has diminishing returns doesn't necessarily mean power is better. Maybe power is better at a certain point, but I've never seen someone actually calculate where the point of diminishing returns is that would justify using power over mastery.

Edited by JediMasterAlex
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Where are you getting that number? I've never seen it anywhere. Just because the crit from mastery has diminishing returns doesn't necessarily mean power is better. Maybe power is better at a certain point, but I've never seen someone actually calculate where the point of diminishing returns is that would justify using power over mastery.

 

https://www.rambol.net/home/2018/3/13/stats-and-damage-calculation-in-swtor#diminishing_returns=

^Mastery section. So I'm basing this on Rambol & Hottie's graphs, which also seems to be used in Smarty's spreadsheet.

 

But the number might be closer to 8000+. It's hard to tell when it graph is every 500 points. From 9000 to 10000, it really starts to flatline.

 

For some reason everyone started thinking Mastery was better than Power in 4.0 -- and maybe it was for the 4.0 stat distrubution. Mastery is better for parsing dummies because of the crit rating, and obv, you only upload your spikier best parses. I wish there were some sort of 240 Power augs we could test with.

 

Anyway, that's my opinion. Nobody really discusses these things (with me), so take it with a grain of salt. I love this sort of water cooler discussion.

 

Every point in Power adds 0.23 Bonus Damage and 0.17 Bonus Healing.

the coefficient of Bonus Damage from Mastery is 0.2 and the coefficient of Bonus Healing from Mastery is 0.14.

 

EDIT: interesting note is that Rambol and Hottie use dipstik's formulas in their acknowledgments section at the bottom.

Edited by Rion_Starkiller
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https://www.rambol.net/home/2018/3/13/stats-and-damage-calculation-in-swtor#diminishing_returns=

^Mastery section. So I'm basing this on Rambol & Hottie's blog graphs, which is also seems to be used in Smarty's spreadsheet.

 

It might be closer to 8000. From 9000 to 10000, it really starts to flatline.

 

For some reason everyone started thinking Mastery was better than Power in 4.0 -- and maybe it was for the 4.0 stat distrubution. Mastery is better for parsing dummies because of the crit rating, and obv, you only upload your spikier best parses. I wish there were some sort of 240 Power augs we could test with.

 

Anyway, that's my opinion. Nobody really discusses these things (with me), so take it with a grain of salt.

 

My understanding has been that mastery is superior to power because of the added crit from it. Theoretically, it makes sense that at some point the diminishing returns from that crit will be so great that taking power would be better, but as far as I'm aware no one knows what that point is. So if you see that between 8000-10000, diminishing returns seem to be really increasing, that still doesn't answer at what point it's worth taking power over mastery unless someone actually does the math.

 

Probably the reason no one has figured it out yet is that the only consequence of that knowledge would be whether you use mastery or power crystals, assuming you're not using crit crystals, which would only make a tiny difference overall. And it's also a moot point for raiders, because they're using high alacrity and 110% accuracy, so their mastery isn't getting that high.

Edited by JediMasterAlex
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I heavily edited my post.

 

Yeah, it's just speculation without someone to do the numbers. But the crit chance from Mastery is definitely a curve, and not a straight line, so it is subject to diminishing returns. So i'm guessing ~8000...... without giving myself a headache trying to calculate.

 

I also think that it wasn't easy to go over 8000 Mastery until 258 gear coupled with 240 augs.

Edited by Rion_Starkiller
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So i'm guessing ~8000...... without giving myself a headache trying to calculate.

 

Well I have 8952 mastery on my main at the moment, so if anyone knows for sure or wants to figure it out, let us know lol.

 

I also still don't know the exact crit amount I should be using either. I'm using 2254 right now. Also 704 alacrity and 0 accuracy (madness sorc).

Edited by JediMasterAlex
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there is still no good definition of soft cap... as long as the stat gives more dps than another stat, you want it... you could calculate when the slope of the curve is halved from the initial slope, but that still doesn't mean much to how you gear.

 

and looking into mastery/power trade would be meaningful if there was a power augment... it is impossible for power to be more than 15% better than mastery ((.23-.2)/.2) so trading 99 mastery and 39 power for 80 power is a loss of 23% (point for point, not in bonus damage), which is greater than 15%, so not viable. also, 138>80 and more numbers is pretty much always better than optimized numbers (except when alacrity in concerned)

 

in reagards in when to trade crit for mastery, look at the OP. if you have high base hit and surge, you want more crit (likely as much as you have now with no mastery augments). If you have low surge and low base hit, you want to trade for mastery around 2200 crit... but that assumes all the stuff stated in OP.

Edited by dipstik
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