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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
12-30-2010 @ 5:08PM
icepyro said...
Since the beginning I've heard "don't worry about crit, it happens." In the past this was surely true. Even now, this is mostly true. I do note that if you wanted, you could gear completely without crit on gear using this list.
Given our specialization increases crit bonus damage by 100% and talents add more to certain spells, we do benefit from crit considerably.
So then, where is the line drawn?
I'm still leveling, so it's not quite so urgent yet, but haste and crit are dropping through the floor as I do. I know how good haste is, but I always have trouble with crit (it's always just happened) and now with spirit and mastery, crit can be replaced altogether from gear.
Thoughts?
Reply
12-30-2010 @ 5:45PM
Sarah Nichol said...
You could gear completely without crit, but you'd have to be lucky with drops to do so, and ignore some large piles of intellect (e.g. the best boots have a lot of crit on them). We also get a passive 5% from elemental oath, and 2% from a glyph, however one of our main nukes is a guaranteed crit and that is what devalues crit. It's not useless, it's just not as useful, per point as haste or mastery.
12-30-2010 @ 8:16PM
icepyro said...
Well this is what I mean. Sure, LvB is our biggest bonus damage (124% additional damage of a spell already receiving significant bonuses) and it's a guaranteed crit, giving us some good uptime on Clearcasting. Sure, we get 5% from EO, 3% from Acuity, etc. However, we do get double damage if the lightning bolts we constantly spam crit, not to mention ticks from Flame Shock too. Balance druids are the only other spellcasters that get that kind of crit bonuses. Other classes just do more base damage.
Now getting to 100% crit is impossible for us, but if we could, 0% haste and 100% crit would be higher dps than 10% crit (talents and glyphs only, not counting Int or gear) and 50% haste (the point at which GCD is reduced to limit, which also devalues Ele Mastery and BL/Heroism) because of all that bonus crit damage.
Very rough napkin math shows that even with 50% haste we still need quite a bit of crit to get up to 100% crit/0 haste equivalant dps. (I came up with 36.5% assuming quite a bit like partial casts). I'll have to do some more math sometime, but it's still an interesting note. And yet, in the real world, I can definitely point to haste being worth more.
I just wanted to know the balance point on crit/haste.
12-31-2010 @ 5:58AM
Sarah Nichol said...
I don't think there is an exact number, as it will change depending on how much haste and mastery you have anyway. The current 'ep' values are approximately 56 for haste, 47 or so for mastery, and 34 for crit - crit isn't valueless, and you shouldn't ignore it - just don't gem for it because there is no crit number to reach that is more valuable than gemming for int, for example. Just look for a couple of haste/crit or mastery/crit pieces.
12-31-2010 @ 12:24PM
icepyro said...
Sounds like a plan. I didn't even consider how good other stats are with haste/crit (especially mastery... I love when RNG favors multi-overload on chain lightning... looks awesome) so I can see valuing haste over crit in that regard. Now that I think about it, there are plenty of dummies to beat on once I reach 85 (dinged 84 yesterday!). Thanks for your time and especially thanks for the list!