High potency skills and/or auto-crit/auto-direct-crit

Do you like these? Or don't like them? Do they cause too much variance? Does it feel too bad when Double Down doesn't crit but also every Midare auto-critting also feel bad? Does WAR Inner Release and Primal Rend auto-direct-crit feel bad? What about skills like MCH Reassemble, using it as a specific mechanic for your tools? Should Shoha 1 and 2 be combined to make room for Kaiten which can make Midaire auto-crit? Or just do bonus damage like before?

What's FFXIV's General Discussion's opinion about these right now?

The higher the potency of an attack you have, the more variance you will encounter. Take for exemple Communio from the Reaper with a 1100 Potency and nothing guaranted. When you DH Crit on that, you can feel the difference against a non crit one.

Let's also say you are Unlucky and on a 10 minute fight you only do No crit and no DH on those. You could have done way more damage if you are lucky.

Variance should always be a thing but it shoudn't affect if you can kill a boss or not in the end just because of this.

Also, This will enforce the Crit Meta as the more you have, the more often you do and the more powerful they become

I like crit and big number.

Well you've been hanging around here lately so may have caught some arguments on this, but for the duration I've been here, the general opinion is that high-potency attacks are bad because of how these attacks critting or not critting can make such a massive difference. However, I only see it brought up occasionally, so it's the sort of issue that not everyone brings up over more simpler buzzwords like "2 minute meta". It tends to get brought up when someone makes a more detailed post about the subject, which is rare, compared to just saying "2 minute meta = bad".

I remember that before this was such a big issue, WoW had a similar problem that everyone brought up as a way of saying this game was better. They would say that WoW's crit variance was so massive that it completely imbalanced the classes on a massive scale and that SE was better with balance, leaving only minimal differences. But now in this expansion, we have reached a point where burst windows caused a significant imbalance that made GNB practical to clear P8S over a PLD due to things like Double Down in a burst window.

As for auto-crits and auto-dh, these were complained about a lot until SE addressed it by making crit chance and DH chance still contribute extra damage to the attacks, but this effectively makes them high potency attacks as well.

It might just be better if we flat out didn't have buff windows and just have our job rotations, or if party damage buffs couldn't stack so that people just spread them out and don't feel the pressure to get all attacks into a narrow window.

I do like high-potency attacks. They feel good. But they don't need to be that high. I remember a "high potency attack" used to be something like 400, 500 or 600 potency, not 1200. But maybe it's the stat squish and how high level we are now. Maybe we just need to condense levels so ARR goes up to 30 instead.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

I do like high-potency attacks. They feel good. But they don't need to be that high. I remember a "high potency attack" used to be something like 400, 500 or 600 potency, not 1200. But maybe it's the stat squish and how high level we are now. Maybe we just need to condense levels so ARR goes up to 30 instead.

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I don't think Level have actually to do anything in this. For exemple, the potency of the bard are mostly low. Other classe like Reapers can hit almost twice as strong with any attack they have. If anything, it's more a balance issue over Crit and DH than anything else.

To be more precise, Having DH and Crit on top of each other is actually a design that will bring incredible Variance. The formula work like this : Base Damage * Crit DMG% * DH DMG

Usually a Crit DH goes around 1.8x to 2x the base damage (if not higher) which create those huge variance.

For me, We should only need Crit to reduce that variance and rework Direct hit to be something else.

Unfortunately, doing such a thing will require SE to rebalance the whole game. A fast solution would be to increase potency in accordance to the potential DPS loss of DH removal, but it will only be a bandaid and not an actual solution.

Variance is of course needed inside a game, but it should be kept inside a certain window to not break balance completely or make classes impossible to play on Savage or Ultimate because of bad crit rate inside a burst window.

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Originally Posted by Mithron

Do you like these? Or don't like them? Do they cause too much variance? Does it feel too bad when Double Down doesn't crit but also every Midare auto-critting also feel bad? Does WAR Inner Release and Primal Rend auto-direct-crit feel bad? What about skills like MCH Reassemble, using it as a specific mechanic for your tools? Should Shoha 1 and 2 be combined to make room for Kaiten which can make Midaire auto-crit? Or just do bonus damage like before?

What's FFXIV's General Discussion's opinion about these right now?

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The whole Samurai button Bloat solution has been repeated enough we already know the solutions and yes Kaiten back but I hate... vehemently despise Auto-Crit.

I understand why? because players want to feel like their performance isn't going up or down? and for some shiny number... but for parsers? it's always going to be a Slot-Machine anyways on trying to get a funny number they want since we can still DirectHit-Crit. I just want big number on my screen achieved sometimes through RNG not some stupid ACT, and have me reach that big number on my screen through more then just spamming my Shinten or a Hollow 2 minute meta. Very Simple...

I would be okey with Auto-Crit? if everyone is treated equally. So if I get the Auto-Crit treatment? " Everyone equally does as well ". And if not? Then " None of us equally get the treatment ", mhm

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Originally Posted by TabrisOmbrelame

To be more precise, Having DH and Crit on top of each other is actually a design that will bring incredible Variance. The formula work like this : Base Damage * Crit DMG% * DH DMG

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True.

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For me, We should only need Crit to reduce that variance and rework Direct hit to be something else.

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I just hope that whatever they change it to isn't Accuracy. :D

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Unfortunately, doing such a thing will require SE to rebalance the whole game.

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SE has not usually rebalanced the whole game when they've changed things anyway. That's why, even reducing yourself to the Minimum Item Level, old content still becomes such a joke, like how MINE ARR extremes still had a significant amount of things being skipped compared to their unreal versions.

I think as long as the old content still has a bit of life to it with MINE settings then they don't worry about making changes.

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A fast solution would be to increase potency in accordance to the potential DPS loss of DH removal, but it will only be a bandaid and not an actual solution.

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Arguably, DH is one of the reasons old content dies quicker, because it is a pro-damage stat even at small amounts, whereas Accuracy was just preventing your attacks missing and combos from being missed. We have 100% Accuracy + DH now.

If we're talking about removing DH entirely, then for Stormblood and higher content, we could just pretend we've only ever stacked crit and determination. In theory content should have been clearable with this since it was meant to be a choice.

I don't like the really high potency hits.

I have made the case before that high potency attacks need to become multi-hit strikes with the potency distributed across each hit, like Double Down hitting 3 times for 350 > 350 > 500. That would immediately fix a lot of the crit variance issues that are caused by such massive potency spikes.

I understand that some people like seeing big numbers, so that can be solved by having a display option that only shows the final added up number as floating text.

I don't really mind the variance with the type of combat FF14 offers. If you're trying to be competitive then it might be frustrating, but outside of that it's only mildly disappointing/interesting to me. Forced crit/DH reduces rather than increases variance as it narrows the range of multipliers on a given skill. In that sense they are nice to have, especially for heals.

Conceptually I prefer the idea of crits being skill based rather than randomly generated. Critical damage based on timing, position, or something along those lines is infinitely more deep than random crits.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

I have made the case before that high potency attacks need to become multi-hit strikes with the potency distributed across each hit, like Double Down hitting 3 times for 350 > 350 > 500. That would immediately fix a lot of the crit variance issues that are caused by such massive potency spikes.

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This is mathemathicaly false. Even if you hit 3 time, you still roll 3 time with the same chance to do a crit.

So yeah, you may see a crit more often because you triple your try each time, but in term of damage output and variance, it's the exact same. If you are unlucky, you will not triple crit on double down or even double crit. The variance will still be there because it's related to luck anyway, unless it's 3 completely different Attack on 3 different button, it won't change anything because you still do all this in 2.5 GCD for 1 attack.

To resume, Increasing the number of it doesn't increase either the damage nor the chance to crit.

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Originally Posted by TabrisOmbrelame

This is mathemathicaly false. Even if you hit 3 time, you still roll 3 time with the same chance to do a crit.

So yeah, you may see a crit more often because you triple your try each time, but in term of damage output and variance, it's the exact same. If you are unlucky, you will not triple crit on double down or even double crit. The variance will still be there because it's related to luck anyway, unless it's 3 completely different Attack on 3 different button, it won't change anything because you still do all this in 2.5 GCD for 1 attack.

To resume, Increasing the number of it doesn't increase either the damage nor the chance to crit.

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It's not false, instead of critting 1 massive hit of 1200, you're rolling 3 times for a crit on 350, 350 and 500. It's always going to roll lower than critting the 1200 hit unless you roll a crit on all 3 hits.

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Originally Posted by PyurBlue

I don't really mind the variance with the type of combat FF14 offers. If you're trying to be competitive then it might be frustrating, but outside of that it's only mildly disappointing/interesting to me. Forced crit/DH reduces rather than increases variance as it narrows the range of multipliers on a given skill. In that sense they are nice to have, especially for heals.

Conceptually I prefer the idea of crits being skill based rather than randomly generated. Critical damage based on timing, position, or something along those lines is infinitely more deep than random crits.

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You are right, Having forced crit on attack will actually reduce the variance by a lot, even forced DH would be efficient. But it's only a bandaid on what could be done I think.

On a second note, your idea of crit under timing, position or other thing aren't part of the actual game design of FF14. Positionnal are still a thing (less than before, but still) cause it increase damage done by certain skill on a certain position against the boss (Something between 40-60 Potency, which is nowhere near a crit). I like the idea tho, but it will probably never happen here

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Originally Posted by Mithron

Do you like these? Or don't like them? Do they cause too much variance? Does it feel too bad when Double Down doesn't crit but also every Midare auto-critting also feel bad? Does WAR Inner Release and Primal Rend auto-direct-crit feel bad? What about skills like MCH Reassemble, using it as a specific mechanic for your tools? Should Shoha 1 and 2 be combined to make room for Kaiten which can make Midaire auto-crit? Or just do bonus damage like before?

What's FFXIV's General Discussion's opinion about these right now?

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It depends on how it's implemented.
For example, playing GNB i feel like i'm wasting my time for not playing War if double down doesn't crit. And i think it should just guarantee crits.
But i don't see why Warrior needs to have guaranteed direct crits when the direct hit doesn't even come on any of our gear pieces.

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Originally Posted by TabrisOmbrelame

This is mathemathicaly false. Even if you hit 3 time, you still roll 3 time with the same chance to do a crit.

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You may still have the same chances on each individual hit, but the amount of damage you'll achieve will be far lower on average than on single hits due to law of statistical averages with higher attempts.

The issue with the high potency skills is that they're used very infrequently, mostly at 1/2 min intervals. This makes them far more susceptible to variance than say, your 1-2-3 combo would. If you only get 5 Double Downs in one fight for example, with the current framework, someone only needs to get 'lucky' 5 times in a fight, with only having to hit 10 rolls total (1 crit roll + 1 dh roll for each of them.) If we pretend that the person has a 30% crit rate & 20% DH rate, it means they have a 6% ish rate to hit both rolls at once.

If the damage is split into 3-4 instances of damage, variance is insanely reduced. For the example, we'll say double down was split into 4 hits of 300 potency instead. Now, to get the same damage as the single 1200 roll, each of those 4 hits would need to crit-dh individually, meaning all their rolls are independent and not influenced by each other. Meaning they each get that 6% chance. For the multi-hit Double Down to the same damage as the single hit one, we get a chance of (6% * 6% * 6% * 6%) = 0.00001296%. Practically minuscule and an insanely random event contrasted to the single hit's odds. Instead of the 10 rolls the person has to get 'lucky' on for the single hit double down, it has quadrupled to 40.

You can even see this at play in parsing on the game's older design during ARR-SB era, where most kit's potencies barely went above 500 at the top end. Getting lucky on the higher end skills of your kit had a much smaller impact on your overall damage because potency was far more spread out across the kit than focused into single huge hits. If Square wants to keep huge potency hits, then breaking them up into multi-hit smaller potency bundles would go a far way to reducing the absolutely ridiculous variance on how a single Ryoshu(? the super ice one) mudra on NIN can do anywhere from 100k-300k damage for literally nothing more than 'get lucky bro'

I think auto crit/dh is lame and removes some of the fun between pulls.
Endwalker jumped the shark and gave most jobs absurdly high potency skills and dug it's own grave.
They should've gone the DRG way with low to mid potentiates spread across the entire kit, they could still do this in 7.0 but they would have to deal with people crying their meme ability not doing a gazillion potency now even if it's for their own good.

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Originally Posted by TabrisOmbrelame

This is mathemathicaly false. Even if you hit 3 time, you still roll 3 time with the same chance to do a crit.

So yeah, you may see a crit more often because you triple your try each time, but in term of damage output and variance, it's the exact same. If you are unlucky, you will not triple crit on double down or even double crit. The variance will still be there because it's related to luck anyway, unless it's 3 completely different Attack on 3 different button, it won't change anything because you still do all this in 2.5 GCD for 1 attack.

To resume, Increasing the number of it doesn't increase either the damage nor the chance to crit.

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Variance is going to actually be more streamlined by the very fact you'd have a thrice bigger sample. That's the whole point.

Auto Crits can be good if they're limited to being on a separate cooldown. Like Life Surge for DRG. By themselves though, they're super unappealing because they don't actually increase your maximum damage potential. They merely remove variance.

Best example of this is old Berserk vs. New Berserk/Inner Release.

The oldest form of Berserk used to grant +50% damage to Warrior for 20 seconds, followed by 5 seconds of pacification. This meant you could use it in an ideal manner after stocking your wrath/abandon, and then funneling in as many of your high potency attacks as possible. The dream was 3 Inner Beasts and later on 3 Fell Cleaves during this 20 second window. But you could also just use it at any time and get more damage and pretty much always get at least 2 of your big hits in, anyway, unless you were like Tomahawk kiting or something.

Upon the introduction of original Inner Release, they also reworked Berserk to be more of a Fight or Flight with +30% damage for 20 seconds without a penalty. The ideal then became to stock 100 wrath in the gauge, and then get off 6 Fell Cleaves by combining it with Berserk and Infuriate. Still, at any time you could use your damage buff instead of combining it, if the immediate situation dictated that it would be better to do that.

So seeing that people always tried to combine these moves, they made the Warrior rotation more streamlined but also worse by robbing us of our freedom to buff what we want when we want with the attack buff. Dictating that you now could not adjust your burst as the fight may need.

And people cheered because they lowered the cooldown time and mathed out that the auto crits would be more damage over time and it's therefore better... Ignoring that it made the gauge and resource building less relevant and that still the damage potential was ultimately lower during the ideal burst . And the non-ideal burst had its place and could be used in an emergency or a last ditch, "Hey I need to try to do more damage now!" sort of situation.

God forbid we have rotations that have room for error and room for making the most of a non-ideal situation. The way auto crits are now, especially for Warrior, ties up the lionshare of your damage in one ability on a couple of big GCDs.

Way more fun when you can put the damage on other stuff, sometimes.

Kind of similar happenstance with SAM and its auto crits. Got rid of Kaiten, which could actually be used on any WS, not just the Iaijutsu. Meaning you could Kaiten on a combo ender and such, if you weren't going to get more GCDs in a fight to build to Shinten or pre-Shinten if the fight wasn't going to last til another Midare.

Way it is now, it is hardcoded for that damage to be in your big hit, and while that was always the ideal, it just means you can't, "Make your own big hit" when you need to, more or less. Quite the uncommon concern, but also a way to pad out the end of a parse/maybe beat that enrage in spite of things etc.

^

Very good analysis and putting to words what a lot of my thoughts were too. I like skills such as Reassemble and Life Surge where they give you conditional auto-crits because you still have to use those particular buttons in slightly more skillful ways to get the payoff. Not all of your Tools or Full Thrusts are going to be direct crits. I liked Kaiten. I liked HW DRK Dark Arts. I just don't like Inner Release or Midaire auto crits nor do I like Double Down not critting simply because it's a gigantic potency attack where it actually matters if it doesn't crit. I'd rather have lower potency attacks, no free auto crits, and no 2 min burst meta.

Kinda related to auto crits, but a thing I like about PVP actions is that they use the visual language of "crits!!" to provide feedback that a job mechanic was done correctly or a skill is at its maximum potential. Like a Powerful Shot at maximum range will "crit!!," a fully charged Wildfire will "crit!!," and casting Flare will "crit!!," etc. A part of me wants this to be carried over into PVE, but it would require reworking how stats work.

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Originally Posted by TabrisOmbrelame

On a second note, your idea of crit under timing, position or other thing aren't part of the actual game design of FF14.

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As much as I like the idea, I feel the same. It doesn't fit with the current iteration of FF14 nor does it seem to be in the direction that SE wants to go.

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Originally Posted by Daeriion_Aeradiir

You may still have the same chances on each individual hit, but the amount of damage you'll achieve will be far lower on average than on single hits due to law of statistical averages with higher attempts.

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The average is actually the same. Just do the math on 1 hit vs 3 (as the contribution from all other damage will be unaffected).

1200 with 1.5x crit damage at 50% chance is 1200 + 1200*1.5 * 0.5 = 1500.

400 with 1.5x crit damage at 50% chance is 400 + 400*1.5 * 0.5 = 500.

Multiply the latter by 3 so that the base attack is the same as the original large attack and average damage becomes 1500. The 1200 damage attack is limited to having larger deviations from the average more often, but on average they are exactly the same.

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If the damage is split into 3-4 instances of damage, variance is insanely reduced. For the example, we'll say double down was split into 4 hits of 300 potency instead. Now, to get the same damage as the single 1200 roll, each of those 4 hits would need to crit-dh individually, meaning all their rolls are independent and not influenced by each other. Meaning they each get that 6% chance. For the multi-hit Double Down to the same damage as the single hit one, we get a chance of (6% * 6% * 6% * 6%) = 0.00001296%. Practically minuscule and an insanely random event contrasted to the single hit's odds. Instead of the 10 rolls the person has to get 'lucky' on for the single hit double down, it has quadrupled to 40.

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Right, one big attack critting is the same as many small attacks critting. While the average over many attempts is the same either way, the deviation from the average is can take lower values with the many smaller attacks than it can with the one large attack.

Breaking large attacks into smaller ones may slightly soften the impact of damage variation, but it doesn't actually remove it. It's more of a repackaging. While it's unlikely for someone to crit x times for massive damage, it's still possible even if x is a large number. I think just forcing crits gives more control over the variation because you're literally constraining the range of possible values to smaller numbers. Good players can also make use of this. If you know with a high amount of certainty that something is going to deal 25% of a target's HP bar, you can aim to use that skill at the exact moment when the target is at 25%. It's harder to do that if you need to rely on crit rolls that can massive impact the final damage number.

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

Auto Crits can be good if they're limited to being on a separate cooldown. Like Life Surge for DRG. By themselves though, they're super unappealing because they don't actually increase your maximum damage potential. They merely remove variance.

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That, to me, is the appeal. Removing damage variance is very desirable for the reasons I outlined above. It gives you control and predictability, which you can use if you have the skill or knowledge to do so.

A skill that forces crits is also fine, but not necessary.

I understand that you want some more freedom in being able to generate high damage, but we do have something for that already, charges. They allow us to get away from super rigid rotations by varying the timing of major skills. Instead of pressing X every Y seconds, you can press X twice (or however many charges exist) in Y*2+ seconds and have the option to hold one 1 less than the maximum number of charges to use in whatever way is optimal.

I find them fun when I'm goofing off, soloing a FATE or mark, farming something in a lower level area, seeing if I can phase a boss in that one GCD when I'm unsyncing them for WT.
Anything that sees me use my whole kit? I don't much care, at that point those abilities become just another part of the kit.

But then I'm the type of player that makes those who do progression and expect optimal performance from everyone else rage when they get me in a daily roulette. I've long lost the ambition to do high-end content so I don't bother trying to perfectly line up buff windows or anything, the variance inherent to high potency attacks means little to me.

Auto-crits do feel rather cheap, but at the same time Crit Rating I do believe is generally the most desired secondary stat for every Job because crits make so much difference to the DPS due to how the game is balanced...

A skill that auto crits is not inherently a bad thing, in certain cases I actually think it can be a good thing, however high potency skills you press once per 2 minutes (hyosha ranryu, comunico, enkindle etc) are terrible in our crit focused meta if you can’t force them to crit


I’d either prefer everyone’s rotations worked like BLM or BRD where your damage isn’t functionally reliant on one skill you press maybe 8 times in an entire fight or if they are going to include those skills then include mechanics that if you execute a complex party of your rotation correctly it causes those skills to auto-crit

Say for example on WHM if you never drop your DOT and do a specific amount of glare casts per minute then POM gains a buff that forces misery to crit

You should be rewarded for correct implementation of your rotation, not stuck dealing with the crit roulette, also direct crits shouldn’t scale from crit buffs, reducing the effectiveness of crits (give chain a new effect to compensate)

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Originally Posted by CelestiCer

The whole Samurai button Bloat solution has been repeated enough we already know the solutions and yes Kaiten back but I hate... vehemently despise Auto-Crit.

I understand why? because players want to feel like their performance isn't going up or down? and for some shiny number... but for parsers? it's always going to be a Slot-Machine anyways on trying to get a funny number they want since we can still DirectHit-Crit. I just want big number on my screen achieved sometimes through RNG not some stupid ACT, and have me reach that big number on my screen through more then just spamming my Shinten or a Hollow 2 minute meta. Very Simple...

I would be okey with Auto-Crit? if everyone is treated equally. So if I get the Auto-Crit treatment? " Everyone equally does as well ". And if not? Then " None of us equally get the treatment ", mhm

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its because in early clears of things like savage ultimate, that variance can literally make or break you. someone who is unlucky and doesnt crit on their big damage hits in the fight can actually screw you over.

I dislike auto crits. Partially because if a crit is guaranteed to happen, that basically removes the entire point. The point of a critical hit is to be a little surprising bonus to give you an extra hit of dopamine. If you know it's gonna happen every time then that aspect of it is totally dead. The other reason being that it cheapens crit materia and crit buffs which forces awkward party comps/metas. I agree with what Aravell said on page 1, that is the balance concern around high potency attacks critting vs not is solved very easily by having all of them just deal multiple hits so the crit variance is essentially spread across those hits.

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Originally Posted by SargeTheSeagull

I dislike auto crits. Partially because if a crit is guaranteed to happen, that basically removes the entire point. The point of a critical hit is to be a little surprising bonus to give you an extra hit of dopamine. If you know it's gonna happen every time then that aspect of it is totally dead. The other reason being that it cheapens crit materia and crit buffs which forces awkward party comps/metas. I agree with what Aravell said on page 1, that is the balance concern around high potency attacks critting vs not is solved very easily by having all of them just deal multiple hits so the crit variance is essentially spread across those hits.

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It doesn’t cheapen crit materia because crit materia already stacks twice because it increases change and damage, making chance 100% just makes it so crit scales the same as the other materia

As for crit buffs (like chain) on auto crits they just change into pure damage ups so they are really disadvantaged either

OMGs....is jobs with skills whats has potencys of 1200?! Mao thought Mao doings good with Xenoglossy whats has 880 potencys. Mao not so sure BLMs has big booms now. Mao sad.

I feel like attaching auto-crits to all high potency abilities is just kind of a necessary evil at this point due to the sheer amount of damage you can lose from bad RNG, which is exasperated in fights with multiple DPS checks like ultimates where not getting a DH crit can have a substantial influence on how easily you can beat an enrage.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

I feel like attaching auto-crits to all high potency abilities is just kind of a necessary evil at this point due to the sheer amount of damage you can lose from bad RNG, which is exasperated in fights with multiple DPS checks like ultimates where not getting a DH crit can have a substantial influence on how easily you can beat an enrage.

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Why not just lower all potencies into reasonable ranges and rebalance the game instead?

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Originally Posted by Mithron

Why not just lower all potencies into reasonable ranges and rebalance the game instead?

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Because as we know square refuses to nerf anything In this game

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Originally Posted by Daeriion_Aeradiir

You may still have the same chances on each individual hit, but the amount of damage you'll achieve will be far lower on average than on single hits due to law of statistical averages with higher attempts.

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This is what we call Gambler's Fallacy.

For example, suppose a fair coin is flipped 100 times. Using the law of averages, one might predict that there will be 50 heads and 50 tails. While this is the single most likely outcome, there is only an 8% chance of it occurring according to P(X=50\mid n=100,p=0.5) of the binomial distribution.

If you read the Law of averages correctly, you'll know that your chance doesn't increase nor reduce with the number of attempt.

For exemple, If you split Double down in 4 hits like you said, you will just roll 4x time more dice but your chance never increase. Let's admit that in the original 1 hit you do 20% crit chance, over a fight you then land 2 Double that are crit when you launch 10 of them.

So, 10 Double down, 2 are crits. Now if we are to increase that to 4x time you do 40 Damage of double down and 8 Crit. See ? 0 Difference (Because your damage, even if they are split will lead to the same result) 1200 x 2 = 300 x 8 = 2400. This will not change also because you still press 10 time one button inside the same window of time. This is called proportionnality. You may see more crit BECAUSE you roll more, but the end result would still be the exact same. More roll dice doesn't affect your crit chance and by extension doesn't touch variance.

To reduce the Variance you need to play with the crit chance or to readapt the potency for every single attack on your jobs to be more equal. Because 1200 x 1.5 (Crit DMG) is clearly more powerful than 300 x 1.5

If you were to have Double down at 15 sec of GCD and 300 potency for 1 hit it would be the exact same because now it's 1200 potency for 60 sec CD. Variance comes from the power of all the attack in total you have and which one is gonna crit and which one won't. If double down was 120 potency 10 times on a single button, that wouldn't change anythin because the button would still be a 1200 Potency value.

So basically, If you are lucky you will kick ass from anything. If you aren't, you will simply have a poor DPS.

TL: DR : Increasing the quantity of roll doesn't increase the chance.

People claiming that what I'm suggesting won't change a thing probably don't understand what I'm actually suggesting. I am suggesting that big damage hits be split into individual hits that each have a chance to crit, this will fix massive crit variance because it effectively reduces your chance to crit your big hits to the same effect.

Let's say, for an example, you hit 100 times during a fight and 4 of those hits are Double Downs and 2 of those Double Downs crit, so the crits on your big hits account for 2% of your total hits during the fight. Now let's say Double Down now hits 3 times, so now you have 4x3=12 hits from Double Down, adjusted total hit count is now 108. Now let's say you want the same total damage that you got from before, you now need to crit 2x3=6 hits from Double Down, which increases the total amount of crits that needs to go into Double Down from 2/100=2% to 6/108=5.56% of total hits.

Whichever way you slice it, it would be a lower chance to get the equivalent results as now, not exactly the same. The percentage only stays the exact same if you triple the hits of everything else in your kit too. If people still think it changes nothing after this, then have it your way, think what you want, I won't bother trying to change your mind.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

People claiming that what I'm suggesting won't change a thing probably don't understand what I'm actually suggesting. I am suggesting that big damage hits be split into individual hits that each have a chance to crit, this will fix massive crit variance because it effectively reduces your chance to crit your big hits to the same effect.

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There might be a small misunderstanding from looking at the problem in different ways. Breaking up attacks won't change the average damage done over many instances. It does increase the number of possible outcomes for a given attack and some of those new outcomes will deviate less from the average, but it doesn't change the min or max possible variance.

Splitting attacks into multiple parts will mean that any given damage log is more likely to fall closer to the average, but the top 1%/bottom 1% is still going to be biased by luck. If the desire behind breaking up attacks is a very, very slight increase in consistency then it might make sense, but I'm not sure if people will really notice. If the desire is to eliminate or reduce the luck factor inherent in the very best or very worst instances of a raid, the change won't do anything. Forced crits are a better solution in the latter case. They directly reduce variation.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PyurBlue

There might be a small misunderstanding from looking at the problem in different ways. Breaking up attacks won't change the average damage done over many instances. It does increase the number of possible outcomes for a given attack and some of those new outcomes will deviate less from the average, but it doesn't change the min or max possible variance.

Splitting attacks into multiple parts will mean that any given damage log is more likely to fall closer to the average, but the top 1%/bottom 1% is still going to be biased by luck. If the desire behind breaking up attacks is a very, very slight increase in consistency then it might make sense, but I'm not sure if people will really notice. If the desire is to eliminate or reduce the luck factor inherent in the very best or very worst instances of a raid, the change won't do anything. Forced crits are a better solution in the latter case. They directly reduce variation.

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The top 1%/bottom % is basically irrelevant in this scenario. Doesn't really matter if someone gets a god crit/dh once in a single run, it's about creating more consistent damage profiles for the 99% of runs, and tightening the expected damage outcome to a singluar point than allowing it to swing so insanely wildly as it does currently.

Take TOP for example, a fight with notoriously tight dps checks, coupled with short phases making 2mins become a far more important source of damage than in other fights. In phase 1, you only get 1 set of 2mins, meaning any crits/dhs within this single set of 2mins can lead to massively different damage spreads on the boss, purely because they make up a significant chunk of the damage done to the boss during the phase. A single Hyosho from a NIN can do anywhere from close to 100k to an upwards of 300k depending on no other factor than pure luck. My group can go anywhere from seeing halfway through the enrage castbar of phase 1 to having to hold for an upwards of 10s to make sure our 2mins are up for the start of p2 purely on nothing more than CRT/DH rng as a group, which is ridiculous design.


Heck, a variation of this problem was even occurring in TOP's P6 because the insanely high damage hits of Limit Break used to be subjected to a +/- 5% damage range, which meant getting unlucky on enough of the LB rolls would put your group 100-200k damage behind another group that just got lucky, which was the make or break of many groups that weren't ultra top tier when coupled with the phases's tighter than usual dps check. Square solved this by doing the exact same thing several suggestions in this topic are hinting towards - they simply tightened the expected damage values towards a singular point by lowering the possible variance on Limit break skills to +/- 1-2% instead, making LB damage's contribution far more consistent for the phase.

Splitting single huge attacks into multiple instances of damage would in fact creating a far more concentrated, consistent damage profile around a single expected value - purely because outside of a blue moon, no one will be getting lucky enough to hit multiple god rolls for each individual part of the multi-hit on their big skills, while the odds of getting equally unlucky will be insanely low as well. The mins & maxes may not have changed, but getting to them will be statistically rare. The expected average potency of the skill will be more centralized around an expected value instead of wildly ranging from 1200 to an upwards of 2500 depending on statistical odds that are relatively easy to achieve comparatively (6-10% for CRT+DH currently). You can even already see this type of damage philosophy and its expected outcomes on DRK contrasted to a tank like PLD. DRK's Shadowbringer is split into 2 individual 600 potency hits, when coupled with a huge abundance of 460 & 500 ish potency hits from their various OGCDs, makes it so their damage profile is far more spread out and getting the DH/CRIT rng on one skill doesn't influence their damage profile as heavily.

Contrast PLD, where they have such an insane amount of potency funneled into 4 skills that those 4 skills basically dictate the PLD's damage output that particular minute depending on how lucky the PLD gets. For a DRK to get a 'god' damage output, they have to win something like 40-50 damage rolls between all of their OGCDs, GCDs and LS's attacks, making each roll contribute far less to the overall damage profile. PLD only have to win 8 rolls across 4 skills, meaning each roll's outcome causes the final result to swing wildly, positively and negatively.

It's simple mitigation tactics. More rolls = each roll contributes less to the overall result = expected damage fixates upon a singular point than being in a very wildly swinging state and is far easier to be balanced around, while also giving that dopamine hit for the player of getting that ultra rare quad-dh/crit, or even just the dopamine of getting 2-3 parts of your multi-hit attack to crit.

Auto crits do nothing for me, im not fooled by big numbers that are automatically handed to me. I dont understand their approach to big potency abilities anyway, is anyone seriously going to lose sleep over it if we were to go back to more spread out potencies?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Daeriion_Aeradiir

The top 1%/bottom % is basically irrelevant in this scenario.

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If that is not a case of interest, then I can understand the desire for split attacks a little better. However I still think forced crit is a better solution.

Quote:

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Splitting single huge attacks into multiple instances of damage would in fact creating a far more concentrated, consistent damage profile around a single expected value - purely because outside of a blue moon, no one will be getting lucky enough to hit multiple god rolls for each individual part of the multi-hit on their big skills

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I'm not sure that the difference would be that much just because of the number of attacks in a given run of anything is fairly high.

Out of curiosity I coded a simulator for the situation we've been discussing and let 1000 instances of 100 big vs 300 small attacks play out and took the max total damage from both. As it turns out, despite the odds, the small attacks gave the highest value. My code is a little sloppy because I did this quick, but if anyone is interested in playing with it or checking it for errors, this can be run in Python:

Code:

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import random
big = 1200
sml = 400
crit = 0.5
rate = 0.25
crit_set = 0
big_sum = 0
sml_sum = 0
big_list = []
sml_list = []
atk_num = 100
tst_num = 1000

for k in range (tst_num):
    for i in range(atk_num):
    crit_check = random.random()
    #print(crit_check)
    if crit_check > rate:
            crit_set = 0
    else:
        crit_set = 1
        big_damage = big + big* crit * crit_set
        #print(big_damage)
        big_sum = big_sum + big_damage
        #big_average = big_sum/tst_num
        #big_list.append(big_average)
    i = i + 1
    big_average = big_sum/tst_num
    big_list.append(big_average)
    for j in range(atk_num*3):
    crit_check = random.random()
    #print(crit_check)
    if crit_check > rate:
            crit_set = 0
    else:
        crit_set = 1
        sml_damage = sml + sml* crit * crit_set
        #print(sml_damage)
        sml_sum = sml_sum + sml_damage
        sml_average = sml_sum/tst_num
        sml_list.append(sml_average)
    j = j + 1
    sml_average = sml_sum/tst_num
    sml_list.append(sml_average)
#print("Sum of big attacks is ", big_sum)
#print("Sum of small attacks is ", sml_sum)
    big_average = big_sum/tst_num
    big_list.append(big_average)
    sml_average = sml_sum/tst_num
    sml_list.append(sml_average)
    print("List of big attack logs is ", big_average)
    print("List of small attack logs is ", sml_average)
print("Max of big attack logs is ", max(big_list))
print("Max of small attack logs is ", max(sml_list))
#print("big is:", len(big_list))

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Result:
Max of big attack logs is 44962.2
Max of small attack logs is 45021.6

The fact that the small attacks ended up being larger is a small detail, what's more telling is that they're so close. You could argue that my approach is flawed because this is just the same attack over and over, not a rotation. That is a limitation with my method that might skew results.

Edit
Code needs fixing, I tested it again and noticed that it's not making a list of averages, so it's actually just printing the last values. I was hoping this would be quick, but code never is. Sorry.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PyurBlue

Out of curiosity I coded a simulator for the situation we've been discussing and let 1000 instances of 100 big vs 300 small attacks play out and took the max total damage from both. As it turns out, despite the odds, the small attacks gave the highest value. My code is a little sloppy because I did this quick, but if anyone is interested in playing with it or checking it for errors, this can be run in Python:

...

Result:
Max of big attack logs is 44962.2
Max of small attack logs is 45021.6

The fact that the small attacks ended up being larger is a small detail, what's more telling is that they're so close. You could argue that my approach is flawed because this is just the same attack over and over, not a rotation. That is a limitation with my method that might skew results.

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Errr… 100 big hits should be at least 100 * 1200 = 120,000 damage. Due to indentation errors, I think you're summing only the critical hits. And I think you're not resetting some variables between loop iterations?

Fixing the errors (I hope)…

Code:

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import random
import statistics

big = 1200
sml = 400
crit = 0.5
rate = 0.25
big_list = []
sml_list = []

for _run_id in range(1_000_000):

    big_damage = 0
    for _atk_id in range(100):
        big_damage += big + big * crit * (1 if random.random() < rate else 0)
    big_list.append(big_damage)

    sml_damage = 0
    for _akt_id in range(300):
        sml_damage += sml + sml * crit * (1 if random.random() < rate else 0)
    sml_list.append(sml_damage)

print("-" * 40)
print("[100 big hits] Average total damage:", statistics.mean(big_list))
print("[100 big hits] Maximum total damage:", max(big_list))
print("[100 big hits] Variance:", statistics.pvariance(big_list))
print("-" * 40)
print("[300 small hits] Average total damage:", statistics.mean(sml_list))
print("[300 small hits] Maximum total damage:", max(sml_list))
print("[300 small hits] Variance:", statistics.pvariance(sml_list))

---

After running each scenario one million times:

[100 big hits] Average total damage: 135000.0018
[100 big hits] Maximum total damage: 148200.0
[100 big hits] Variance: 6750386.27999676
----------------------------------------
[300 small hits] Average total damage: 135002.1402
[300 small hits] Maximum total damage: 143600.0
[300 small hits] Variance: 2253780.41954396

The average total damage is the same between the two scenarios, and exactly what it should be: 135000 = 100 * (1200 * (1 - 0.25) + 1200 * 1.5 * 0.25).

The variance is lower for the scenario where we use smaller hits, which explains why the maximum total damage of the smaller hits scenario is slightly lower.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AmiableApkallu

Errr… 100 big hits should be at least 100 * 1200 = 120,000 damage. Due to indentation errors, I think you're summing only the critical hits. And I think you're not resetting some variables between loop iterations?

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Thanks for double checking. Yes, I was forgetting to reset variables and probably had the indentations incorrect as well. I started over and I'm also seeing lower maximums with small hits now:

Code:

---

import random
big = 1200
sml = 400
crit = 0.5
rate = 0.25
crit_set = 0
big_sum = 0
sml_sum = 0
big_list = []
sml_list = []
atk_num = 100
atk_num_s = big/sml
tst_num = 1000

for k in range (tst_num):
    big_sum = 0
    #sml_sum = 0
    for i in range (atk_num):
        crit_check = random.random()
        #print(crit_check)
        if crit_check > rate:
            crit_set = 0
        else:
            crit_set = 1
        big_damage = big + big* crit * crit_set
        #print("big damage: ", big_damage)
        big_sum = big_sum + big_damage
    i = i + 1
    #print("big sum: ", big_sum)
    big_average = big_sum/(atk_num)
    #print("big average: ", big_average)
    big_list.append(big_average)
    #print("big list: ", big_list)
   
    sml_sum = 0
    for j in range (atk_num*3):
        crit_check = random.random()
        #print(crit_check)
        if crit_check > rate:
            crit_set = 0
        else:
            crit_set = 1
        sml_damage = sml + sml* crit * crit_set
        #print("small damage: ", sml_damage)
        sml_sum = sml_sum + sml_damage
    j = j + 1
    #print("small sum: ", sml_sum)
    sml_average = sml_sum/(atk_num)
    #print("small average: ", sml_average)
    sml_list.append(sml_average)
    #print("small list: ", sml_list)
#    i = i + 1
#k = k + 1
#print("big sum: ", big_sum)
big_average = big_sum/(atk_num)
#print("big average: ", big_average)
big_list.append(big_average)
#print("big list: ", big_list)
#print("small sum: ", sml_sum)
sml_average = sml_sum/(atk_num)
#print("small average: ", sml_average)
sml_list.append(sml_average)
#print("small list: ", sml_list)
print("Max of big attack logs is ", max(big_list))
print("Max of small attack logs is ", max(sml_list))

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About 40 less. I expected a smaller difference, but this shows that it pays to do the math.