Blocking Question

[Jpec07]

Can a critical strike be blocked? I know you can't Parry crits, but I'm curious about blocking. Thanks!

[Legion88]

You can block a critical hit.

[Exodus_Kenpachi]

You can block a critical hit.

What? Lol I swear to God people on the OF just make shit up as they go along.

No, you cannot block a crit. This part of the reason why parry and block are meh. The game implements a series of checks when you take damage:

Dodge, Crit, block, parry, regular damage.

Block and parry would become more useful if crit was placed at the bottom of the list. But as it stands now, no you cannot block a crit.

[Donjo]

You cannot Block a Critical Hit. Attacks are rolled in the following order:

Critical Hit -> Dodge -> Block -> Parry -> Normal Damage

Crit and Dodge might be swapped in order, but it has been proven by the likes of Raw Intuition and Sheltron that a Critical Hit cannot be Blocked or Parried. This is why people are slightly more amicable toward Awareness these days: it forces Crits off the table and thus slightly raises effective Block/Parry rates.

[Jpec07]

This is why people are slightly more amicable toward Awareness these days: it forces Crits off the table and thus slightly raises effective Block/Parry rates.

You read my mind to see where I was going with this. I've got a work in progress examining just how effective Awareness actually is, because a lot of people seem to think it's not all that great (where preliminary results suggest 15% total mitigation against a 30% Crit rate - not sure what actual numbers are, but that doesn't seem to unreasonable to me). I'll be crunching numbers job to job this afternoon, but it looks like it might be one of the better CDs out there--especially (ironically, perhaps) for WAR.

[Exodus_Kenpachi]

Awareness is amazing for WAR for the simple fact of RI.

[Februs]

Awareness is amazing for WAR for the simple fact of RI.

It actually does not too shabby for Drk either. Similar to the way a Pld uses it to proc more Blocks when Bulwark is up, a Drk can use it to proc more Parry's when Dark Dance is up. It's not as effective as using Dark Arts with Dark Dance, but it can be worked in for some extra mitigation. The highest utility for that move, at the moment, is certainly by Warriors though. It pairs beautifully with Raw intuition (with a mere 5 second discrepancy). I'd say it's a must for any Warrior.

[Syzygian]

My biggest problem with Awareness is its duration. 15s is just not long enough to see meaningful returns from avoiding nasty crit RNG from a boss, in spite of its synergy with stuff like Dark Dance, Bulwark, and Raw Intuition. I wish the PLD trait just cut the recast time for PLD but the duration was 25s for all the tanks.

[Jpec07]

Now the real question (since I'm trying to figure out if it's worth it to pair Awareness with DA-DD):

Is Dodge or Crit rolled first?

[Cabalabob]

Now the real question (since I'm trying to figure out if it's worth it to pair Awareness with DA-DD):

Is Dodge or Crit rolled first?

Its hard to say but I'm going to go with dodge comes before crit as with the old perfect dodge I never saw anyone get hit while it was up with a critical hit, this may just have been everyone in the game getting lucky but I doubt it.

So I'd say stagger DA DD and awareness DD as they likely conflict.