I'm farming for emblems and when i get enought to exchange for weapons, the stats on the purple weapons don't make sense. I need to know if crit chance is more important than crit severity? What we have also besides those two stats is accuracy. So what should i be looking for. I don't get why on the purple quantum torps they don't have crit chance on them but all the mines do. I swear the devs in this game really like mines. We get them as reward at the end of weekly episodes. The stats on mines are awsome but i don't use them. Should i stick with my blue quantums with crit chance on them? The damage seems to be the same. Accuracy seems like it should be more important but i don't get what the devs are doing with weapon stats.

There are no clear answers to the questions whether CritH, CritD or Acc is better. It basically depends on what you want out of it.

These are the implications of the values in general:

A higher accuracy means it is more likely you hit in the first place. If you really need to hit reliably, go for Acc. (Since Mines can't miss, they don't have Acc)
A high critical chance increases the chance to make a critical hit. If you want more critical hits, that's obviously what you go for.
A high critical severity increases the damage of your criticals. If you need your critical hits to be particular strong, that's your choice.

Okay, the above was obvious - but when do you want more hits, stronger critical hits, or more reliable hits?

For Accuracy: Beam Overload might be the most important example where you really want to hit. Because you deal a lot of damage at high cost, you want that damage to hit. A similar argument could be made for Heavy Torpedoes (Plasma Torpedoes with High Yield and Tri-Cobalt Torpedoes)

For Critical Hit Chance: You have a weapon that already delivers considerably critical hits (Some powers boost that, and Anti-Protons have a higher critical hit chance to begin with). You might also consider that with single powerful attacks like Beam Overload or Heavy Torpedoes, it would be nice to get a better critical chance. But I would suggest that the chance of it are stll too low for that to benefit from it.

For Critical Hit Severity: A high severity means you can create significant damage spikes. So relying on it might be an option if you don't have much potential for delivering damage spikes - or it might be a great choice to boost an attack that already inflicts a lot of damage, since its damage spike ability will become immense this way.

I tend to think that Acc and CritD are the way to go overall here. Hoping to get more critical hit still seems kinda futile. engineering that if such hits happen, they are devastating seems more effective.

At some point one has to consider the difference between DPS and Burst damage. CritH seems to mostly increase DPS, as your overal damage is likely to get increased. But CritD means that when you're lucky with a critical hit (idealy during a damage burst phase), you will hit _really_ hard.

I know that one player is well known and feared for his Tri-Cobalt "instant-kill" hits in PvP. It isn't that he can do such hits all the time - but it's just taht people remember very well when they happen. And in the end - the amount of failed attempts don't necessarily mean as much as the fact that you do succeed at delivering such damage spikes. At least in the current state of the game (in PvP), you really need to be able to generate a deadly damage spike - just high and constant DPS usually do not cut it.

Very well laid out, couldnt have said it better myself........You sir are the sizzle

MustrumRidcully

Thank you for that post. You have helped me more than you could know.
Thank you.

O god, did I create a monster?

The problem is you can have all the CritD you want but if you ignore CritH your CritD will remain rather unused. On the ground my Tac has a critH of 17% and critD of 140%, compare that to someone that only runs the base 2.5% CritH and 240 critD?

(I would say that critH is more important on the ground where you have fewer shots being fired overall or for beam weapons which have a low fire rate)

~D

yES, MOST LIKELY.
I'll alert the villagers, Doctor frankenstien. :p

Very true, HIgh crit is useless if it never manifests.

So mixing weapon types of crit severtiy and accuracy is the key then? I think i did the mistake of buying 6 mark XI phasers that have 40% Crit Severity. Should i have got a few phasers with accuracy too? It doesnt clearly show how the weapons stack together or i missed something

Weapons don't stack together. So if you have one weapon with +10Acc and another with +10CritD you don't have a +10Acc/+10CritD on all your weapons but only the individual buffs of the weapons. BO-Powers or traits like Accuracy on the other hand stack.

A quick comparison of space weapons' [CrtH] and [CrtD] (disregarding [Acc] and [Dmg], for the moment...):

Take 100 hits with a weapon, that deals 1000 damage per hit. (Simplified for ease of math. )

Total Damage Dealt: 100,000 Dmg

Factor in standards for Critical Chance and Critical Severity:

Critical Chance: 2.5% = total of 2.5 Crits per 100 hits

Critical Severity: +50% Damage per Critical hit scored

Standard Critical: +500 Dmg per Critical

Thus, for example used: +2.5 Crits (still count as normal hits, with an extra +500 damage per Crit, in this case, (2.5 * 500) = +1,250 Dmg

Adjusted Total Damage: 101,250 Dmg


[CrtD]:

Add in a [CrtD] modifier for +20% Damage per Critical hit Scored

Critical Severity: Now +70% per Critical = +700 Dmg per Critical

(2.5 * 700) = +1,750 Dmg (a difference of +500 above standard, approximately the value of one, additional Critical hit)

Adjusted Total (with [CrtD]): 101,750 Dmg

Adjusted Per-Hit value of [CrtD]: +500 Dmg (above standard) / 100 Hits = +5 Dmg per Hit


[CrtH]:

Add in a [CrtH] modifier for +2% Critical chance

Critical Chance: Now +4.5% (4.5 Criticals per 100 hits)

(4.5 * 500) = +2.250 Dmg (a difference of +1,000 above standard)

Adjusted Total (with [CrtH]): 102,250 Dmg

Adjusted Per-Hit value of [CrtH]: +1,000 Dmg (above standard) / 100 Hits = +10 Dmg per Hit


Now, this is simply a straight comparison between the two, factoring [Acc] into the mix can provide some balance for [CrtD], as excess Accuracy, when used against a Target's Defense (excess, in this case, being the amount by which your Accuracy roll beats their Defense score, in the engine, behind the scenes), is added to your Critical Severity (which is why Tractor Beams or Beam: Target Engines skills are critical to the 'one-shot wonder' kills).

These traits are only factored for the individual weapon with that trait, so, if you have two Beam Arrays with [CrtH], each of them, individually, will have a +2% to their Critical chance, they will not gain a 'cumulative' +4% chance. Captain traits (mainly Accurate), however, are applied to all of your weapons, thus, if your Captain is Accurate, all of your weapons gain the +10% Accuracy bonus, at all times.

In game, the differences between the two modifiers are negligible, but the math generally supports that the more often your weapon fires, the more valuable [CrtH] becomes. Conversely, slow-firing weapons (torpedoes and Heavy Torpedoes, in particular) tend to benefit much more from the spike damage that [CrtD] provides, but, it really comes down to player preference.

One aside, any user of Beam: Overload (any version), should strongly consider getting as many [Acc] modifiers as possible for the weapons that they employ for the skill, as there is nothing more frustrating than missing with a spike skill that costs you -50 Weapon Power.

Hope that helps,
-Big Red


Oh, and MustrumRidcully, my friend, Antiproton weapons have a built-in [CrtD] as their 'special', not [CrtH]... Definitely wish it was the other way around, though.