Critical Chance

[J-Pax]

Using the Viper because of it's high base critical chance:

BASE

16 damage per shot

15% Critical Chance

150% Critical modifier.

16 +(0.15*1.5*16) = 19.6 average damage per bullet.

Maxed out Hornet Strike:

2.2*(16 +(0.15*1.5*16)) = 43.12 average damage per bullet.

Maxed Hornet Strike + 1 Maxed Elemental mod:

2.2*(16 +(0.15*1.5*16)) + 0.9*(2.2*(16 +(0.15*1.5*16))) = 81.928 average damage per bullet.

(Each additional Max Elemental mod adds 38.08 damage per bullet).

Maxed Hornet Strike + 4 Max Elemental mods:

43.12 + (4*38.08)= 195.44 average damage per bullet.

Maxed Hornet Strike + 4 Max Elemental Mods + Max Critical Damage Mod:

New Base = 16+(0.15*(1.5*1.9)*16) = 22.84 damage per bullet.

Old : New

19.6 : 22.84 = 1 : 1.165 i.e. a 16.5% increase in average bullet damage.

195.44 * 1.165 = 227.69 average damage per bullet. An increase of 32.25 average damage.

Pay Attention here:

Maxed Hornet Strike + 4 Max Elemental mods + Max Critical Strike Mod:

New Base = 16+((0.15*1.3)*1.5*16) = 20.68 average damage per bullet.

Old : New

19.6 : 20.68 = 1 : 1.055 i.e. a 5.5% increase in average bullet damage.

195.44 * 1.055 = 206.19 average damage per bullet.

A fully upgraded critical strike mod adds a whopping 10.75 average damage per bullet with 4 maxed elemental damage mods and a fully upgraded hornet strike - tihs is 10.75 on top of 195.44 damage. This is not worth 9 Mod power. I would rather have faster reloads/more ammo max.

Maxed Hornet Strike + 4 Max Elemental mods + Max Critical Strike Mod + Max Critical Damage Mod:

New base = 16+((0.15*1.3)*(1.5*1.9)*16) = 24.892 average damage per bullet.

Old : New

19.6 : 24.892 = 1 : 1.27 i.e. a 27% increase in average bullet damage.

195.44 * 1.27 = 248.21 average damage per bullet. Two cards to give a 52.77 damage improvment. That means both of these cards together are equal in value to 1.39 elemental damage cards, while their fully maxxed mod costs are equal to 1.72 elemental damage cards. In essence, they cost more mod power than they are worth together.

Summary:

It is quite clear that critical strike chance is the weakest contender out of all of the damage mod's, enough so that it is more viable to replace it with a utility mod. However, critical strike damage is still a solid contender for a spot in your builds. Please note that the Viper is a high critical chance pistol, and any other weapons with lower base critical strike chance will have even lower values for critical strike's contribution to it's damage.

In order of value in having them all slotted:

Best: Hornet Strike - 23.52 (This improves the damage increase of ALL other mods.)

1 Elemental Mod (38.08 damage.)

2 Elemental Mod's (76.18 damage, +38.08 from previous)

3 Elemental Mod's (etc)

4 Elemental Mod's (etc)

Critical Strike Damage (32.25 Avg. damage increase)

Worst: Critical Strike Chance. (23.52 Avg. damage increase)

Addendum: When I say Elemental Mod's I mean - Fire, Electrical, Ice and Armour Penetrating ammo. Please ignore the fact that Armour Penetrating ammo is clearly not elemental :P

Granted, that all the enemies in the game are weaker to some elements and stronger to others, however none of them are so resistant (as far as I know) to put their values lower than a 5.5% increase in damage. If there are any mistakes on here, please do call them out or send me a PM about it.

Conclusion:

Critical Strike chance is clearly an extremely weak performer in the range of weapon modifications in game at the present time, and needs looking into for tweaking and improvement within the game.

Edited April 3, 2013 by J-Pax

[krisp]

Critical Strike chance is clearly an extremely weak performer

That's an understatement. It'd be pretty weak if the bonus was additive too.

[f3llyn]

Well why would you slot critical chance over say..multishot? Which at 100% would double all values.

In any case, thanks for this thread. I just made a viper and now I know to not waste time on crit chance mods.

Edited April 3, 2013 by f3llyn

[J-Pax]

That's an understatement. It'd be pretty weak if the bonus was additive too.

Actually if it was additive it'd be stronger. 16+(16*0.45*1.5) = 26.8 - 36.7% increased average damage per shot.

If it was additive I would slot it and never look back :P

Edited April 3, 2013 by J-Pax

[J-Pax]

Well why would you slot critical chance over say..multishot? Which at 100% would double all values.

In any case, thanks for this thread. I just made a viper and now I know to not waste time on crit chance mods.

This is me showing, not that some mods are better than critical chance, but that critical chance is absolutely WORTHLESS in any weapon. Even Dual Zoren's. I haven't worked it out yet, but I don't think critical chance would even increase damage - even to the same degree - as other mods until about 66% base critical chance.

Edited April 3, 2013 by J-Pax

[f3llyn]

This is me showing, not that some mods are better than critical chance, but that critical chance is absolutely WORTHLESS in any weapon. Even Dual Zoren's.

Well it's good information to have any case. Thanks for the info.

Edited April 3, 2013 by f3llyn

[J-Pax]

My pleasure. I'm hoping critical chances will get a buff soon, or atleast the mod will. It really needs some loving to be up to standards with the array of other mods available.

[Xrylene]

My pleasure. I'm hoping critical chances will get a buff soon, or atleast the mod will. It really needs some loving to be up to standards with the array of other mods available.

I'd actually rather see it removed entirely, for several reasons.

First off, it's unecessary, what critical strike is, is a % damage, nothing more. It just so happens to also be an RNG based one, making it unreliable, and as a result less desirable than any equivalent damage increase. Would you rather have an extra 20% damage all the time, or do double damage on average every five attacks? The reality is they are both the same amount of damage, but the bonus damage on the crit may come at a time when it's a waste, such as a low health enemy more often than not. Multishot is similar, except it is reliable, not only can the percentage be raised to a reasonable amount, it is not random, it adds up with each shot and reaching 100% procs the effect. 50% multishot for example will fire an extra shot every second shot. Seeing as we already have a normal percentage increase, elemental percentage increases, and a "every x shots" increase, there is zero reason to even need crit in the game, because it's role is already performed by smarter, better designed choices.

The other thing about crit, aside from being random, is that it actually doesn't make sense even from an "RPG" perspective, from which this game derives it. A critical strike, originating from D&D as far as I'm aware, is an attack that strikes a vital area, resulting in increased damage. In pen and paper games, and those with no way to control the aim of your character apart from the roll of the die, it makes sense that it is random, like literally everything else, from whether you can make a jump check, to whether or not you bleed out, to whether you even hit the target, nevermind critting it. However, take note of what it intended to simulate. Striking a vital area for increased damage. Does that sound familiar, at all? Headshots, perhaps? We already have critical hits in this game, and they do not depend on luck, but skill, I say the random based crit is unneeded and a relic of games where aiming isn't possible.

And if you're wondering what would happen to the "crit" weapons, like the Viper and dual zorens, remmeber that crit is a percentage damage multiplier, just a convoluted one. You can convert the crit and crit damage they have, along with other weapons, into an increase to their base damage. Alternatively, some melee crit based weapons could be made into combo weapons, which still simulates the attacking multiple times to get a reward, but puts it in the hands of the player, not the random number generator.

While we're at it, we can remove the % stun chance mods, or at least convert them into a consistent equivalent if nothing else. Something like a stun on a headshot, with the duration scaling with mod rank, and possibly having a cooldown against the same enemy, in other words preventing perma stun, but still allowing you to quickly disable other enemies in succession.

[J-Pax]

I'd actually rather see it removed entirely, for several reasons.

First off, it's unecessary, what critical strike is, is a % damage, nothing more. It just so happens to also be an RNG based one, making it unreliable, and as a result less desirable than any equivalent damage increase. Would you rather have an extra 20% damage all the time, or do double damage on average every five attacks? The reality is they are both the same amount of damage, but the bonus damage on the crit may come at a time when it's a waste, such as a low health enemy more often than not. Multishot is similar, except it is reliable, not only can the percentage be raised to a reasonable amount, it is not random, it adds up with each shot and reaching 100% procs the effect. 50% multishot for example will fire an extra shot every second shot.

Multishot is in the same bag as critical chance, only critical chance is the tiniest fraction of it in effectiveness. Even on the viper 1 maxed multishot mod is equal to 20 critical chance mods. Thanks for reminding to include a multishot calculation into this!

Edit: Ugh, late. Do it tomorrow....yeah.

Edited April 3, 2013 by J-Pax

[[DE]Steve]

Will take a look at the critical chance Mod...

[Xrylene]

Will take a look at the critical chance Mod...

How attached are the DE staff to critical chance? Because it'd honestly be better to just remove it. All it is, is an alternative damage boosting mod. It doesn't change your gameplay in any meaningful way, and even if it were buffed to the point where it isn't worthless compared to normal damage boosts, elemental damage boosts, and multishot, it would always result in it simply being better or worse than the alternatives. If the average damage boost it provided was exactly even with the flat damage ones, like say, Hornet Strike, it would still be better to pick Hornet Strike due to reliability. If it were higher, people would just pick it over the other ones. Either way, it doesn't offer engaging choices or gameplay.

As it is your mod system could use some more work on gameplay oriented mods. Similar to the whole issue with redirection and vitality being considered a necessity for warframe mods due to them simply adding raw scaling to your survival, weapon mods are for the most part just raw damage scaling. It's a very min-max sort of system, and ironicly you could almost exactly duplicate the results with a leveling system, which you apparently removed prior to it. Adding leveling bonuses to health, shields, and power on warframes was a good idea, why not add leveling bonuses of damage to weapons, tone down or remove the mods that only enhance damage, and start adding some mods that actually act as trade offs, stuff that changes how they work?

[Alienami]

Will take a look at the critical chance Mod...

I'm not a math wiz (really, I'm pretty bad)... but isn't one of the real problems the insignificant base crit chance on weapons? 2.5% crit chance with a 30% crit chance increase.. super unimpressive boost. So, if you want to fix the mod while not boosting damage for weapons not running crit mods.. you would really, really have to ramp up the percentages...a lot.

By the way, I (and I am sure the majority of people) would love if the game showed the all weapon stats, all the stats; crit chance, damage, all the goodies people are having to reverse engineer. Really - really would love it. <3

Edited April 4, 2013 by Alienami

[krisp]

Actually if it was additive it'd be stronger.

...that's exactly what I was implying.

How attached are the DE staff to critical chance? Because it'd honestly be better to just remove it. All it is, is an alternative damage boosting mod. It doesn't change your gameplay in any meaningful way, and even if it were buffed to the point where it isn't worthless compared to normal damage boosts, elemental damage boosts, and multishot, it would always result in it simply being better or worse than the alternatives. If the average damage boost it provided was exactly even with the flat damage ones, like say, Hornet Strike, it would still be better to pick Hornet Strike due to reliability. If it were higher, people would just pick it over the other ones. Either way, it doesn't offer engaging choices or gameplay.

It can lead to interesting choices where you'd get more damage with both crit-based mods and less without one, leading you to a choice between a crit build, an elemental damage build, convenience etc.

It's a way to increase build diversity but it has to be done well.

[Xrylene]

It can lead to interesting choices where you'd get more damage with both crit-based mods and less without one, leading you to a choice between a crit build, an elemental damage build, convenience etc.

It's a way to increase build diversity but it has to be done well.

Let's assume for a moment that they made crit chance and damage additive, and capped a maxed crit chance mod at 50%. For simplicity, as I'm not terribly familiar with the indvidual crit damage numbers, we'll assume that the weapon you are using has a 150% crit base, and crit damage is also maxed at 50%. This would mean that with the crit chance alone, you'd have a 25% damage increase, and with both you'd have a 50% damage increase. In order to compare to a 100% barrel diffusion(one rank from max), you would need either 100% crit and a 50% crit damage mod, 50% crit and a 150% crit damage mod, or roughly 75% crit and a 100% crit damage mod.

At that point you are probably using the same capacity, if not more than the barrel diffusion, and you are using two slots, and unless you are using the 100% crit example, you still aren't getting a guarantee, so the barrel diffusion is better simply for being more reliable while doing the same thing. If you do make it 100%, then why does it even need to be in the game? You then would have three seperate damage boosters that all do exactly the same thing. It also changes nothing about how you play. This is why crit is terrible, and does not belong in this game.

Edited April 4, 2013 by Xrylene

[krisp]

Let's assume for a moment

Let's also assume for a moment that they tweak the numbers of the crit chance and damage mods to make them more in-line with the other mods so that having both is better than having, say, multishot while costing a lot more drain. And while you're limited on how much drain you have, you'll either have to give up a mod slot that you could have used in reload speed or magazine size or go with less average dps but more uptime depending on your playstyle. Oh look! Meaningful decisions! I must be some sort of god of game design or something

You then would have three seperate damage boosters that all do exactly the same thing.

But in different ways, and with different resource costs. This is not a bad thing.

[plznohurtme]

At the end of the day there's no way someone is going to replace multishot with crit, so throw that out the window period. It's an idiotic comparison, it's not like we cannot have both of them (not to mention the fact that they go together well). As for the effectiveness of crit it definitely depends on what you're doing and what you're fighting. Fire generally speaking isn't a great source of additional damage, but given how ineffective critical strike chance ends up being it's still better than using crit chance. Similarly electric damage isn't all that great, but again versus the alternative it's still far superior.

Right now critical strike chance just simply doesn't make any sense because it is far too little of an increase and ever since u7 when it was changed from additive to multiplicative it's been a worthless choice, even if critical damage has been an okay choice. I've thought that it needed to go back to an additive increase just to make it an option for people who would like to have a different method of doing things than having a rainbow of damage output. Based on the current split between rifles/shotguns/pistols it seemed logical to me that perhaps we'd see something like +15% for rifle and +10% for pistol/shotgun.

The other reason I think it needs to be a flat number is the differences between bases are quite extreme. On the rifle side of things you have rifles that go from 5% to 20% crit chance and if this is left to multiplicative numbers you'll either end up with something too high or too low for some. I like the fact that there are varied stats, but for a fair/reasonable increase it would have to be done additive... as I don't think that having 22.5% crit on a Braton Vandal is ridiculous, however having 60% crit on a Snipetron probably would be (assuming +200% multiplicative crit strike here) rather than just a flat 15% increase which would be 22.5% on Braton Vandal and 35% for Snipetron.

Edited April 4, 2013 by plznohurtme

[aG3NTo]

the crit damage mod needs improvement as it is not viable to take (you get the same damage % increase as a normal damage % mod).

I remember in diablo 3 the critical damage modifiers were insanely higher than base damage increases, but you had to take lots of critical chance increase mods for it to be useful.

critical chance and damage should be viable on weapons with high attack rate and or high base crit dmg and crit chance. on other weapons plain dmg elements or rof should be the way to go. multishot is just the way to go on all weapons and should not be discussed.

[kaizoku222]

I'm going to assert that crit both needs to be fixed, and needs to stay, mostly because the two frames I have (ash and loki) actually have a viable build around crit and crit damage for melee. With their stealth, they gain 100% crit chance, and if crit chance were buffed enough red crits would be reliable damage for them. I really want to see weapons like the Fang and the other non-charge attack melee weapons become viable, and crit chance is one way they can do it, since crit chance is a lot more viable for faster weapons than slow weapons.

I'd really like to see 60-70% crit chance maxed for melee, along with crit damage getting a little buff, and crit chance for other weapons being as viable as multi-shot on fast weapons, with multi being better than crit on slow weapons. Same for melee, I'd like crit chance to be better on non-charge weapons, and charge damage be better for charge weapons to give some diversity in the weapons.