Should You Ever Use A Crit Build For Sidearms?

[Cynick]

This may seem like it has an obvious answer but I'm not so sure anymore. 

The crit mods for sidearms are generally considered to be a waste due to how little reward you get for the mod points, therefore making a dual element a more damaging replacement. 

All the max DPS builds from DPSframe use elements over crit/crit damage for sidearms (all of the good ones anyway) and that seems logical and reliable. 

HOWEVER; I have seen many posts lately about how critical hits which are also headshots multiply the damage far higher than it should (aka bugged, in a good way) and how critical hits have something like an 8x multiplier when you are not the host (aka also bugged). How true is this information? 

Considering the latter, are crit builds actually worthwhile despite what the "numbers" say?

[shut]

Depends on the weapon. Obviously, for guns with a base critical of 5% or something, you shouldn't build for crits no matter how many headshots you plan to aim for. (And yes, headshots receive a 4x multiplier from crit shots, and a 2x multiplier from regular shots.)

 

That said, though, there aren't really a lot of secondary weapons with a high crit rate in the first place, and even fewer are worthy of crit builds (possible exceptions being Akmagnus, which has a very high base crit chance, and Wraith Twin Vipers, whose high fire rate greatly stabilizes the distribution of critical hits). To my understanding, all crit-built secondaries will be unreliable at best. Remember that even if criticals will theoretically improve the secondary's DPS on headshots, the amount of reliance that you have to put into the RNGods during combat makes the guns far too unreliable on anything that isn't a boss or a bullet-sponge level 100 Heavy.

Edited March 14, 2014 by SortaRandom

[TC-Guardian]

Morelok, Akvastos, and Akmagnus, Crit build them.

[Ambisyon_Ni_Batman]

I crit build a Lex once but it was pre Damage 2.0

[shut]

Morelok, Akvastos, and Akmagnus, Crit build them.

Nah, man, Status build that Marelok. If you have the Cicero and Tethra mods, that is.

[Cynick]

Morelok, Akvastos, and Akmagnus, Crit build them.

 

Marelok non crit build: 15646 dps. 

 

Marelok crit build: 13015 dps. 

This is what I mean... the numbers obviously show that non crit builds are superior, even on weapons you would think suit critical builds. I'm just wondering if there is something more to it.

EDIT: Akmagnus is the exception of those three it seems. It is the only one to have higher DPS when using a crit build. 

Edited March 14, 2014 by Cynick

[tveeggad]

Consider that pistols have a lot more potential when it comes to multishot than primaries, which also affects crit values. It's 180% versus 90%.

 

For example, if your pistol of choice has 15% crit chance with 180% multishot, if you fire 3 bullets which is most likely, you then have 3 separate projectiles with their own chance to crit. 15x3=~45%. If you only fire 2 bullets you still have a ~30% chance. Now, add Pistol Gambit to get 120% more crits. Do I need to say more? Heheh.

 

Now, for crit DAMAGE, though. If a secondary only has 1.5x multiplier I usually don't bother unless the crit chance is good enough, but at a 2.0x multiplier is still worth considering. Yet again, consider multishot on the damage, too.

 

But most amusing is the Brakk, in my opinion. With Pistol Gambit, Target Cracker and Hollow Point I have a 33% crit chance and a 4.4x multiplier, but since the Brakk is considered a shotgun, each PELLET has its own separate crit chance. And let me tell you that al the yellow numbers makes it look like a sand storm.

 

So, yeah, I give crit builds on secondaries a big YES.

Edited March 14, 2014 by ConcretePie

[ArcLightCRO]

1 answer: Aklex

[ASH_PRIME]

Aklex, Brakk and Wraith Twin Vipers all LOVE the crit % and crit damage, and im sure there are others, but those are my fav crit builds atm

[Naftal]

If improving your dps is your goal, no you should not. All secondary crit mods have too low values to be as useful as elementals/bane.

 

EDIT: AkMagnus is the only weapon where they give more benefit.

Edited March 14, 2014 by Naftal

[Naftal]

Consider that pistols have a lot more potential when it comes to multishot than primaries, which also affects crit values. It's 180% versus 90%.

 

For example, if your pistol of choice has 15% crit chance with 180% multishot, if you fire 3 bullets which is most likely, you then have 3 separate projectiles with their own chance to crit. 15x3=~45%. If you only fire 2 bullets you still have a ~30% chance. Now, add Pistol Gambit to get 120% more crits. Do I need to say more? Heheh.

 

Now, for crit DAMAGE, though. If a secondary only has 1.5x multiplier I usually don't bother unless the crit chance is good enough, but at a 2.0x multiplier is still worth considering. Yet again, consider multishot on the damage, too.

 

But most amusing is the Brakk, in my opinion. With Pistol Gambit, Target Cracker and Hollow Point I have a 33% crit chance and a 4.4x multiplier, but since the Brakk is considered a shotgun, each PELLET has its own separate crit chance. And let me tell you that al the yellow numbers makes it look like a sand storm.

 

So, yeah, I give crit builds on secondaries a big YES.

This is not how math works.

[tveeggad]

This is not how math works.

Go ahead and correct me, professor! I dare you!

... Not only to be cool on the internet, but to actually learn if I did something wrong aswell.

[ExorcistEX]

Aklex, Brakk and Wraith Twin Vipers all LOVE the crit % and crit damage, and im sure there are others, but those are my fav crit builds atm

 

Wraith Twin Vipers issue is that it's ammo go too fast and it will require the ammo multation mod which took 1 slot away...so if you use this weapon than you will need to take a lot of ammo refil with you

[Darzk]

On weapons eligible for crit builds (thinking Dual Vastos crit levels at least):

 

#1 If you aim for headshots, yes, crit build, for the higher multiplier, as you stated.

 

#2 If you want to isolate an element, yes, crit build, for a higher vulnerability multiplier.

 

#3 To build for damage per shot to one shot enemies, dont crit build (as you might not crit and then have to shoot twice) etc Marelok

 

#4 To build for raw DPS (non-headshot) like the shotgun pistols, generally dont Crit build, unless #2.

Edited March 14, 2014 by Darzk

[treb1e]

Go ahead and correct me, professor! I dare you!

... Not only to be cool on the internet, but to actually learn if I did something wrong aswell.

Suppose you get a tripleshot.

Chance to get at least a crit with 15% chance per shot is

1-0.85^3=1-0.61 rounded ==> around 39% chance to get at least a crit.

That is 1 minus the chance that you get NO crits on the 3 shots.

[Darzk]

Suppose you get a tripleshot.

Chance to get at least a crit with 15% chance per shot is

1-0.85^3=1-0.61 rounded ==> around 39% chance to get at least a crit.

That is 1 minus the chance that you get NO crits on the 3 shots.

 

But theres also a chance to get 2 crits, and a chance for all 3 to crit.

 

It's reasonable to instead say an average of 0.45 crits per trigger pull.

[Naftal]

But theres also a chance to get 2 crits, and a chance for all 3 to crit.

 

It's reasonable to instead say an average of 0.45 crits per trigger pull.

No, that 38-39% chance is to get at least one crit. It includes the chances of getting two or three crits.

[treb1e]

But theres also a chance to get 2 crits, and a chance for all 3 to crit.

 

It's reasonable to instead say an average of 0.45 crits per trigger pull.

 

True, that's the expected value of crit chance when one shoots the gun an INFINITE number of times.

When dealing with statistical values I think it's better to put things more in perspective, for pratical reasons and to have more data that helps making decisions.

 

Expected values alone never tell all the story.

 

To recap:

chance to get at least 1 crit is 39%

chance to get 1 crit on  3 shots is 0.325 or 32.5%

chance to get 2 crits on 3 shots is 0.057 or 5.7%

chance to get 3 crits on 3 shots is 0.00337 or 0.337%

 

Expected value of crit chance = 45% (again, this is the average after one shoots the gun an infinite number of times).

Edited March 14, 2014 by treb1e

[manole10]

No, that 38-39% chance is to get at least one crit. It includes the chances of getting two or three crits.

 

 

Plus, the damage multiplier applies only to the pellet or bullet that critted, not to all that were shot. Basicallly, multishot is just a straight damage increase and crit/proc smoother, it should not be involved in crit decision calculations.

[treb1e]

Plus, the damage multiplier applies only to the pellet or bullet that critted, not to all that were shot. Basicallly, multishot is just a straight damage increase and crit/proc smoother, it should not be involved in crit decision calculations.

 

No, the calculated chance to get at least one crit doesn't include any information about how many crits you are actually gonna get, it's just the chance complementary to the probability you get 0 crits.

Basically:

61% no crits

39% hey there is at least one crit here, how many? -> check my other reply

[Darzk]

but 45% is the value we need to calculate the damage increase from the crit multiplier.

 

With 15% crit chance and 3 bullets per shot, a 2x crit multiplier increases base damage to 145%

 

If we were to add R5 Target Cracker, the modifier changes to x3.2, and our multiplier increases base damage to 45%*3.2 + 55% = 199%

 

While the 38.6% is what we use to determine how often we crit at least once, the 45% is the number we need to calculate how much damage those crits are worth.

Edited March 14, 2014 by Darzk

[treb1e]

Yes, that's the only way to calculate the damage contribution of crits.

I only wanted to point out that all the numbers calculated are expected values and should be regarded as such when decision making

[tveeggad]

Did I just start a flamewar?

[(NSW)Omgwtfl9lbbl]

lmao

 

Here's a really simple way to compare the DPS of a gun hitting nothing but body shots vs. a gun hitting only headshots if you're using a calculator site like Warframe Builder. This'll let you decide if a gun is worth building crit for headshots (assuming that you have the skill to hit mainly headshots or that the targets even have a headshot/weak region).

 

All you actually need is the critical chance (without multishot) and critical damage of the gun. Your relative headshot DPS vs. your bodyshot dps is

 

[(1-crit chance)*(2) + (crit chance)*(4)*(crit damage)] / [(1-crit chance) + (crit chance)*(crit damage)]

 

 For instance, let's pretend we're looking at a Latron Prime modded with Point Strike and Vital Sense. That gives a 37.5% chance to crit and 5.5x crit damage.

 

(.625*2 + .375*4*5.5) / (.625 + .375*5.5) = ~3.53

 

So on average, with that build, the headshot damage you're dealing with the Latron prime is ~3.53x more than your body damage (and your average DPS will scale proportionally). 

 

Now if you want to compare a crit build to a non-crit build, just do it for both and compare.

 

Also, whatever multishot is irrelevant in a sense. Average DPS is average DPS. Of course, if you have a gun with a 1% chance to crit and a 50000000x multiplier, gambling on that 1% chance every shot obviously isn't the most sound thing.

Edited March 14, 2014 by omgwtflolbbl