Stop doubling down on Auto Crits and homogenizing jobs because of this

[Nizzi]

Some amount of variance in games is fun.

If you've never gotten an endorphin hit from a big direct crit, I am sorry for you. Maybe play more chess?

I play SCH so I don't even notice if that ever happens, my eyes glaze over when I'm spamming Broil @_@

[Sebazy]

My best guess is that this is to narrow the window of expected group DPS variance further, perhaps to make gauging and tuning dps requirements easier for the dev team.

It fits in well with the running theme of changes IMO.

[Rolder50]

My best guess is that this is to narrow the window of expected group DPS variance further, perhaps to make gauging and tuning dps requirements easier for the dev team.

It fits in well with the running theme of changes IMO.

Frankly I would be amazed if crits caused enough variance to cause this. If we're going that route it just sounds like balancing laziness...

[Rosenstrauch]

My best guess is that this is to narrow the window of expected group DPS variance further, perhaps to make gauging and tuning dps requirements easier for the dev team.

It fits in well with the running theme of changes IMO.

I suppose the end of this progressive development cycle is all Jobs having a 2 minute burst phase with auto crits on all their biggest hits. And maybe critical hit damage being changed to a fixed multiplier, like Direct Hit. And then maybe the ability to get critical hits or direct hits outside of burst phases being removed from the game. Less stats to keep track of if crits/direct hits are always all or nothing.

[DixieBellOCE]

When damage variance from dh/crit/crit+dh looks bad? When you have a bunch of skills with 2000+ potiencies on 2 min cooldown so if nothing procs it will look bad: missing damage from gambling you can't even control.

But is it because crit mechanic overall is bad?

Or it comes from devs lazyness to even play a job to certain level so they put such drastic potencies in 2 minute cooldowns so it's either win or lose every 2 minutes.

Auto crits is terrible approach to try to fix what devs had did themselfs. Is it hard to play with potencies of every skills in rotation to just simply spread some bits from 2 min cooldowns into rotation loop? Oh wait, this requires some competent person to do this work.

The genius behind SAM auto crit thought that some damage variance will be bad in ultimate ... Thanks to him as SAM i can't find any static to do DSR... You either play NIN/MNK/DRG or switch roles. SE literally ruined first ultimate patch for me.

And to add insult to injury as recent Live Letter states they are going to do adjust crit buffs to work with auto crit abilities ..... which 99% is going to be just plain damage buff. This will easily lead to homogenizing buffs even more - all of them will be same % damage up after some patches.

After WAR, SAM who is next? DRG (which obviously on the way), DRK (this is literally 5th dps at this point with these 2 minute potencies, devs destroyed SAM/DNC combo and now sometimes DNC should switch DP to TANK in DSR ...), GNB, NIN (that is new SAM of this god awful patch)

boo hoo my class that's been the best in the game for years is not meta anymore, *sob sob sob* buff my job its bad..

Nobody is going to bench a static member because they want to play samurai, it sounds like a YOU problem.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

And the people deliberately farming logs are generally not the people that complain about it.
It just makes me wonder who this change was for? Who asked for it? Sure, bad rng can be frustrating but making everyone's damage into a perfectly predictable flatline with an equally perfectly predictable spike every 2min doesn't make it better.

The people who want to do big number but can’t stand the idea of mastering their job.

[Raven2014]

The people who want to do big number but can’t stand the idea of mastering their job.

Can confirm. A good example right now is PLD. Most "tried hard" PLD will complain exactly that, it's a flatline boring rotation. But the amount of optimizing done by a master PLD will result a night and day difference comparing to a average one.

[Shurrikhan]

The people who want to do big number but can’t stand the idea of mastering their job.

But, that doesn't make any sense, either.

One's mastery doesn't make a given attack any stronger. That's gear and, at most, a matter of hitting Kaiten before Namikiri.

And auto-crits don't improve one's average dps, nor one's percentile. It doesn't even reduce the standard deviation of a given parse relative to its job, as all other parses by that job will have tightened identically.

"People want lower skill ceilings" could explain the removal of Kaiten, but not the addition of auto-crits. The latter has zero connection to skill ceiling.

So, to break up your claim by interpretation:

• Big number as in floating combat text --> No, auto-crits made the numbers smaller, just more consistently punctuated (with an "!").
  
• Big number as in damage over time --> No, auto-crits have zero impact on that besides causing the job to scale slightly differently with Critical Hit stat.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

But, that doesn't make any sense, either.

One's mastery doesn't make a given attack any stronger. That's gear and, at most, a matter of hitting Kaiten before Namikiri.

And auto-crits don't improve one's average dps, nor one's percentile. It doesn't even reduce the standard deviation of a given parse relative to its job, as all other parses by that job will have tightened identically.

"People want lower skill ceilings" could explain the removal of Kaiten, but not the addition of auto-crits. The latter has zero connection to skill ceiling.

So, to break up your claim by interpretation:

• Big number as in floating combat text --> No, auto-crits made the numbers smaller, just more consistently punctuated (with an "!").
  
• Big number as in damage over time --> No, auto-crits have zero impact on that besides causing the job to scale slightly differently with Critical Hit stat.

You're absolutely on point, it's only half true regarding what was done to Kaiten. I was merely assuming so because I found it hard to dismiss the possibility of adding auto crit (1.5x) based from the old Kaiten's 1.5x multiplier to next weaponskill without accounting gear.

[Shurrikhan]

You're absolutely on point, it's only half true regarding what was done to Kaiten. I was merely assuming so because I found it hard to dismiss the possibility of adding auto crit (1.5x) based from the old Kaiten's 1.5x multiplier to next weaponskill without accounting gear.

Right. My point was merely that those are two separate steps.

They could as easily have just left Kaiten's damage baked into Iaijutsu directly instead of converting it auto-crit, and the skill ceiling would be unchanged.

The removal of Kaiten cost skill ceiling. That they used auto-crit instead of a 50% damage buff is irrelevant.