The damage variance between a Critical Hit and a Non-Critical hit.

Is absolutely disgusting.

Talking about Bard in particular:
A max gauge Apex/Blast Arrow Crit's for upwards of 40k, a Non-Crit hits for 14k.
A 3 gauge Pitch Perfect Crit's for 38k, a Non-Crit hits for 14k.

How is that much variance, almost THREE TIMES the damage, acceptable?

It feels absolutely disgusting with 2515 Critical Strike and still never hitting a single Crit on your big abilities.

Here's the actual secret: variance in gaming is fun.

Critical hits are pervasive in gaming (and have been for decades) because that dopamine hit from a gigantic direct hit crit on your biggest ability is an experience that hits the dopamine. In FF14's case, it also opens some design space for moves that auto crit/auto DH instead of the normal chance-based proc.

Also, that one time that you didn't crit isn't why you hit enrage :)

This is why we lose stuff like Kaiten and skills become boring auto-crits...

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Originally Posted by Amenara

This is why we lose stuff like Kaiten and skills become boring auto-crits...

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No you lose stuff like Kaiten because the average player doesn't know how to press their buttons and that reflects in the data SQE collects.

Kaiten was a good skill and gave the job some depth, but that depth of knowing when to use Kaiten was too hard for the average player.

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Originally Posted by DixieBellOCE

Is absolutely disgusting.

Talking about Bard in particular:
A max gauge Apex/Blast Arrow Crit's for upwards of 40k, a Non-Crit hits for 14k.
A 3 gauge Pitch Perfect Crit's for 38k, a Non-Crit hits for 14k.

How is that much variance, almost THREE TIMES the damage, acceptable?

It feels absolutely disgusting with 2515 Critical Strike and still never hitting a single Crit on your big abilities.

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does it really matter unless you're running parse runs in PF chasing high 99s

but yeah, reducing the variance would be fine. idk why people think that is the same thing as reducing complexity or proc-based decision making

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Originally Posted by DixieBellOCE

No you lose stuff like Kaiten because the average player doesn't know how to press their buttons and that reflects in the data SQE collects.

Kaiten was a good skill and gave the job some depth, but that depth of knowing when to use Kaiten was too hard for the average player.

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Well going with what SE gave us, they added auto-crits to the big attacks in that patch and Kaiten was removed as well for "button bloat". If I had to guess they did all of it to reduce variance because it "felt bad" when your big hits didn't crit and to further reduce the variance they just removed Kaiten and baked it in. Whether it was for making the job more accessible or not we will never know for sure as they didn't start "explaining" changes till the next patch.

Direct Hit probably shouldn't even be a stat honestly.

If I had to guess most classes operate on a formula that outputs a nice little curve which probably involves a lot of mathing than just those two points of variance (overal variance, standard dev, mean, etc).
Those crit values vs normal values are on that curve that balances the overall damage BRD does. More points needed on graph maybe.
BRD doesn't do the best damage so it'd make sense that when it does crit, its crit are big brain to bandaid the sad feels.
It's very late and I am half asleep. Forgive me.

because for whatever reason they decided that crit should make you crit % and crit dmg higher so it scales exponentially. it's way too good of a stat. The damage variance of crit+DH compared to non-crit, or crit-nonDH is way too high.

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Originally Posted by Mewthredel

because for whatever reason they decided that crit should make you crit % and crit dmg higher so it scales exponentially. it's way too good of a stat. The damage variance of crit+DH compared to non-crit, or crit-nonDH is way too high.

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This is why i always thought that critical strike should not add damage, just % Chance.

i feel like an idiot every time i have to look at my high roll crit dh hyosho do nearly 3x damage of a low roll no cdh hyosho. last tier i could witness both a <60k and a nearly >140k hit in the same 2 minute windows. variance is scaled up too high and it's the reason why i really despised progging TOP because it becomes very apparent in encounters like it.

noone wants autocrits but a nerf to crit and direct hit would be a good choice.

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Originally Posted by Equitable_Remedy

Here's the actual secret: variance in gaming is fun.

Critical hits are pervasive in gaming (and have been for decades) because that dopamine hit from a gigantic direct hit crit on your biggest ability is an experience that hits the dopamine. In FF14's case, it also opens some design space for moves that auto crit/auto DH instead of the normal chance-based proc.

Also, that one time that you didn't crit isn't why you hit enrage :)

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Gonna have to disagree here. While yes, variance can be fun. Too much is simply annoying. It's ridiculous when a Ninja can lose 80-100k on Hyo because the game said "screw you." I have runs on Paladin in P8S where I didn't Crit Goring or most of my Blade combo once the entire fight. Auto DHCs are necessary but kind of defeat the point. Direct Hit itself should be removed and Crit split. You still have some variance but not these insane swings pull to pull.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

Gonna have to disagree here. While yes, variance can be fun. Too much is simply annoying. It's ridiculous when a Ninja can lose 80-100k on Hyo because the game said "screw you." I have runs on Paladin in P8S where I didn't Crit Goring or most of my Blade combo once the entire fight. Auto DHCs are necessary but kind of defeat the point. Direct Hit itself should be removed and Crit split. You still have some variance but not these insane swings pull to pull.

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For your NIN example, what is that 80-100k over the course of a 10-minute savage pull? What is it over the course of a night of 10-minute savage pulls? Did the NIN's group hit enrage at 80k? What exactly is the "screw you" here other than you didn't do the theoretical maximum damage on a given pull? We should ask all of the same questions for your slightly below average PLD pulls.

Are any of these things making the difference on clears? (The answer is almost certainly no except for the edgiest of cases, though it's the internet, so I'm sure people will say that they consistently wipe at 73 HP or something.) Since there's no fine measure of damage or DPS in the game beyond threat order, are you constantly finding that order varying wildly pull to pull because of crits (as opposed to variance in gameplay by the player)? If yes (which would truly surprise me), do you think that it would be better for the game to be more static from pull to pull?

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Originally Posted by Equitable_Remedy

For your NIN example, what is that 80-100k over the course of a 10-minute savage pull?

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Seconds in 10 minutes = 600 seconds, 100K/600 = 166.66 dps

According to everyone's favourite number site, Ninja is doing 10,536 aDPS (since we are using pure damage shown on screen, this is the closest you can get), you then work out the % that 166.66 is in relation to 10,536 and you get ~1.6%.

So, missing that ONE Hyo is equivalent to losing ~1-2% dps over a 10 minute fight.

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Originally Posted by Equitable_Remedy

For your NIN example, what is that 80-100k over the course of a 10-minute savage pull? What is it over the course of a night of 10-minute savage pulls? Did the NIN's group hit enrage at 80k? What exactly is the "screw you" here other than you didn't do the theoretical maximum damage on a given pull? We should ask all of the same questions for your slightly below average PLD pulls.

Are any of these things making the difference on clears? (The answer is almost certainly no except for the edgiest of cases, though it's the internet, so I'm sure people will say that they consistently wipe at 73 HP or something.) Since there's no fine measure of damage or DPS in the game beyond threat order, are you constantly finding that order varying wildly pull to pull because of crits (as opposed to variance in gameplay by the player)? If yes (which would truly surprise me), do you think that it would be better for the game to be more static from pull to pull?

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Such a dumb retort lmao

The elephant in the room is obvious: fflogs

And SE clearly designs around it. They make like 99% of their changes for JP casual raiders who get upset they're grey on fflogs

at this point just remove all secondary stats, equalize all skill potency to the same amount and let every job do the exact same every 2 minutes - we're already at the lowest point anyway

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Originally Posted by DixieBellOCE

No you lose stuff like Kaiten because the average player doesn't know how to press their buttons and that reflects in the data SQE collects.

Kaiten was a good skill and gave the job some depth, but that depth of knowing when to use Kaiten was too hard for the average player.

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Or they saw that Kaiten took too much extra effort for the same or less effect compared to other jobs.

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Originally Posted by Equitable_Remedy

For your NIN example, what is that 80-100k over the course of a 10-minute savage pull? What is it over the course of a night of 10-minute savage pulls? Did the NIN's group hit enrage at 80k? What exactly is the "screw you" here other than you didn't do the theoretical maximum damage on a given pull? We should ask all of the same questions for your slightly below average PLD pulls.

Are any of these things making the difference on clears? (The answer is almost certainly no except for the edgiest of cases, though it's the internet, so I'm sure people will say that they consistently wipe at 73 HP or something.) Since there's no fine measure of damage or DPS in the game beyond threat order, are you constantly finding that order varying wildly pull to pull because of crits (as opposed to variance in gameplay by the player)? If yes (which would truly surprise me), do you think that it would be better for the game to be more static from pull to pull?

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Funny story. Yes, my P8S group did week 1. Our Ninja had a run with zero DHCs which was just enough to miss the enrage. Considering how tight that DPS check was, people missing out DHCs on their biggest hitting abilities the entire fight did have an impact in early prog. The "screw you" aspect is it just isn't fun that through zero fault of your own, you simply do less damage. You comment on my "below average PLD skills." I did the exact same rotation, down to the same GCD, which I got from studying top Paladins and got a 97%. What was the difference? Everything Crit that time. It wasn't me performing better. I got lucky. That's why people hate this degree of RNG variance. It isn't skill person when you get up to the higher levels, it's whether RNG is nice enough to you.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

Seconds in 10 minutes = 600 seconds, 100K/600 = 166.66 dps

According to everyone's favourite number site, Ninja is doing 10,536 aDPS (since we are using pure damage shown on screen, this is the closest you can get), you then work out the % that 166.66 is in relation to 10,536 and you get ~1.6%.

So, missing that ONE Hyo is equivalent to losing ~1-2% dps over a 10 minute fight.

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You do realize that's roughly the equivalent of going into without a single meld come Tuesday, yes? 2% may not sound like much but it adds up, especially when you consider it isn't necessarily only one person rolling low. What if the Dark Knight and Paladin also don't crit their bigger hitters? Now that 2% has climbed up to 4-5% if not higher since Hyosho isn't Ninja's only big potency ability. That difference could be you clearing with even a death or dying to enrage in early prog. Sure, weeks later this is less of an issue but then gear is the almighty balancer.

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Originally Posted by Shikiseki

at this point just remove all secondary stats, equalize all skill potency to the same amount and let every job do the exact same every 2 minutes - we're already at the lowest point anyway

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Or... and hear me out because this could be revolutionary. We could... just go back to Shadowbringers or Stormblood where this wasn't a problem. I know, I know, not the extreme example that you're throwing out.

Sarcasm aside, nobody is asking variance to be removed entirely but to make the swings far less dramatic. The issue is SE keeps adding ridiculously high potency skills and Crit scales so incredibly high that it leads to swings in damage that didn't exist in previous expansions. Splitting Crit up also has the benefit of maybe making it not the de facto best substat in the game. You say we're at the lowest point and yet every piece of gear is met with "does it have Crit? No? Trash." Says a lot that one substat is that much better than the others.

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Originally Posted by DixieBellOCE

Is absolutely disgusting.

Talking about Bard in particular:
A max gauge Apex/Blast Arrow Crit's for upwards of 40k, a Non-Crit hits for 14k.
A 3 gauge Pitch Perfect Crit's for 38k, a Non-Crit hits for 14k.

How is that much variance, almost THREE TIMES the damage, acceptable?

It feels absolutely disgusting with 2515 Critical Strike and still never hitting a single Crit on your big abilities.

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The alternative isn't very fun.... SAM no longer has variances, but now we get wet noodle auto crits that basically do the same damage they did on a non-crit.

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Originally Posted by Oizen

Direct Hit probably shouldn't even be a stat honestly.

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Yeah I never understood this either. It was meant to replace Accuracy but I also never understood why adding additional crit damage with more crit damage. It worked fine before then so why another extra crit?

It's weird because other games make it very easy and simple: crit increases crit percentage and usually that's it since a crit damage is usually a static multiplication (double damage or 2.5 damage, depends on the game itself), spell/skill speed increases speed (why isn't it just one stat called haste already...), and determination is a net damage and healing increase of a certain % (if you played wow, it's the Versatility stat)

And I also don't get it why we tanks get Tenacity - which is essentially a worse determination stat - and hardly any other proper avoidance stats like Parry or Dodge (we had parry but it was poorly implemented)
Piety is completely useless mana recovery stat considering how healing works in the game and with so many mana recovery skills already in the game. I'm not even a healer main and I rarely go oom!

It's no wonder that most classes still only require Crit and Det to this day!

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Originally Posted by Voltyblast

Yeah I never understood this either. It was meant to replace Accuracy but I also never understood why adding additional crit damage with more crit damage. It worked fine before then so why another extra crit?

It's weird because other games make it very easy and simple: crit increases crit percentage and usually that's it since a crit damage is usually a static multiplication (double damage or 2.5 damage, depends on the game itself), spell/skill speed increases speed (why isn't it just one stat called haste already...), and determination is a net damage and healing increase of a certain % (if you played wow, it's the Versatility stat)

And I also don't get it why we tanks get Tenacity - which is essentially a worse determination stat - and hardly any other proper avoidance stats like Parry or Dodge (we had parry but it was poorly implemented)
Piety is completely useless mana recovery stat considering how healing works in the game and with so many mana recovery skills already in the game. I'm not even a healer main and I rarely go oom!

It's no wonder that most classes still only require Crit and Det to this day!

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Pretty much the state of XIV.

Direct Hit should be changed to "Critical Damage %" and Critical Strike should just be "Critical Strike %"

This way you still build like normal, but overall damage variance is only dependent on a single multiplier and not two.

If crit was a flat % potency increase, then stats below would work fine:
2515 Crit = ~33% Crit Chance
1718 Det = ~27% Flat Damage
1400 Crit Damage = ~25% bonus Crit Damage

33% chance to hit for 25% extra damage, with your base damage being 127% of potency.
This would result in Base Potency + 27% x 1.25

So a 100 potency attack that crits would be:
100 + 27 x 1.25 = 158.75

Where as a non-crit would be 127.00

Now add that to an actual skill (Blast Arrow)
And you have 600 + 27 x 1.25 = 633.75 potency

That is a much small variance than having DH included in the calculations, but is not including the weapon damage to get the actual damage. (I believe it is different for every job, for bard it used to be 1 weapon damage = 9.153 Dexterity)

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Originally Posted by DixieBellOCE

Pretty much the state of XIV.

Direct Hit should be changed to "Critical Damage %" and Critical Strike should just be "Critical Strike %"

This way you still build like normal, but overall damage variance is only dependent on a single multiplier and not two.

If crit was a flat % potency increase, then stats below would work fine:
2515 Crit = ~33% Crit Chance
1718 Det = ~27% Flat Damage
1400 Crit Damage = ~25% bonus Crit Damage

33% chance to hit for 25% extra damage, with your base damage being 127% of potency.
This would result in Base Potency + 27% x 1.25

So a 100 potency attack that crits would be:
100 + 27 x 1.25 = 158.75

Where as a non-crit would be 127.00

Now add that to an actual skill (Blast Arrow)
And you have 600 + 27 x 1.25 = 633.75 potency

That is a much small variance than having DH included in the calculations, but is not including the weapon damage to get the actual damage. (I believe it is different for every job, for bard it used to be 1 weapon damage = 9.153 Dexterity)

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I mean, that would be Determination's job, the whole "increase damage %" overall, but even this idea works better for sure so I can get behind this easily. At least now we have 3 stats to balance out instead of 2 (unless they changed "haste" to be a bit better and stronger)

Just don't get whole DH thing - plus it's also hard to see if you do get a DH so I never feel like it's a constant thing. Also I could swear that it used to have a single ! to show a DH and 2 !! for a critical hit, but either it was changed in the patch notes or im simply wrong).