What is the stance against big potency skills having auto-crit?

[Ransu]

Am I doing something wrong? I see lots of talk about stacking Crit and DH but as a Black Mage I have been stacking Crit and Spell Speed. Am I doing this wrong?

Depends on which build you're doing.

If you go spell speed build you should essentially have no crit materia or gear. It should be SpS then DET/DH in materia slots where you can't place SpS or you have reached 2287 SpS (with food).

If you go crit build you're basically dumping crit into everything and only having around 840 sps (with food). I believe there's a mixed build with 1200 SpS and high crit, but its apparently not optimal. Look up the balance discord and I'm sure they can give a way better answer than me.

From what I understand, the difference between the two is pretty small. Crit built has the higher max dps potential though. I went sps since I'm new to BLM this tier so I wanted to be able to cast faster to make managing mechanics easier. I might try the crit built late in the tier to see how different it feels though.

[Hozomeen]

I think a middle solution would be good. For RPR something like Plentiful Harvest always critting, and the next Communio afterwards always critting. Something like that. That way, there is still some RNG preserved, but the variance is smoothed out at least a little bit. Currently it's just too damn high.

[UkcsAlias]

Because in the same way that the devs buff things instead of nerfing things because people don't like nerfs.

Nerfs are one of the best changes in balance when they happen usualy. But thats luckily because the devs do understand some key balance features quite well: when you balance things, you want to avoid touching old content. which simply means only the newest buffs are being handled. And in most cases they decide to underpower every thing they arent sure about to be able to buff it later on.

However, such system cannot compensate for game breaking issues. If a certain skill from the previous expansion ends up overpowered (or just plain broken). Nerfing might still be needed. But by being safe with buffing, this rarely happens.

It also follows the general flow of power creep. As you get further into the game, your skill is demanded to improve, so mechanics can be harsher, which are usualy the greatest nerf towards players. It just doesnt feel like that to them.

Note that the savage boss damage reduction could also have been handled by buffing all the other bosses. The simple reason not to do that is because buffing feels better (and reducing boss health is a buff here).

But this only works in a pve based system. When its PvP, nerfs are generaly required in order to avoid instant kills, or to add vulnerabilities (avoiding the unkillable). In PvP they normaly buff the weakest and nerf the strongest. And even if it isnt perfect. The change of meta can change a lot (and over time, even without any change, just because of a certain aspect a certain class can turn out a lot stronger).

However, even in pve. Nerfing is sometimes just needed. If abilities make you able to do excessive things, nerfing might be mandatory because it avoids the situation in which you have to buff everything to a broken state. And especialy when a single job is OP. Nerfs are the way to go. Making everything OP is a disgrace towards the balance team as they generaly balance things towards the current state, and not the buffed one.

[Eraden]

Depends on which build you're doing.

If you go spell speed build you should essentially have no crit materia or gear. It should be SpS then DET/DH in materia slots where you can't place SpS or you have reached 2287 SpS (with food).

If you go crit build you're basically dumping crit into everything and only having around 840 sps (with food). I believe there's a mixed build with 1200 SpS and high crit, but its apparently not optimal. Look up the balance discord and I'm sure they can give a way better answer than me.

From what I understand, the difference between the two is pretty small. Crit built has the higher max dps potential though. I went sps since I'm new to BLM this tier so I wanted to be able to cast faster to make managing mechanics easier. I might try the crit built late in the tier to see how different it feels though.

I am currently running with about 2.1K Crit and 2K Spell Speed before foods. Hopefully that is ok.

[Ransu]

I am currently running with about 2.1K Crit and 2K Spell Speed before foods. Hopefully that is ok.

I'm actually kind of impressed you got over 2k in both, but you're wasting stats doing that though.

https://etro.gg/gearset/bd1b7a52-589...c-d47aea22d8d2
https://etro.gg/gearset/12deb5db-9f3...a-f8be8ddcb97d
https://etro.gg/gearset/73f9f3af-2fa...3-a0f6adbb5e28

These are the recommended BiS stats/gear from the balance discord.

[Briarthorn]

Nerfs are one of the best changes in balance when they happen usualy. But thats luckily because the devs do understand some key balance features quite well: when you balance things, you want to avoid touching old content. which simply means only the newest buffs are being handled. And in most cases they decide to underpower every thing they arent sure about to be able to buff it later on.

However, such system cannot compensate for game breaking issues. If a certain skill from the previous expansion ends up overpowered (or just plain broken). Nerfing might still be needed. But by being safe with buffing, this rarely happens.

It also follows the general flow of power creep. As you get further into the game, your skill is demanded to improve, so mechanics can be harsher, which are usualy the greatest nerf towards players. It just doesnt feel like that to them.

Note that the savage boss damage reduction could also have been handled by buffing all the other bosses. The simple reason not to do that is because buffing feels better (and reducing boss health is a buff here).

But this only works in a pve based system. When its PvP, nerfs are generaly required in order to avoid instant kills, or to add vulnerabilities (avoiding the unkillable). In PvP they normaly buff the weakest and nerf the strongest. And even if it isnt perfect. The change of meta can change a lot (and over time, even without any change, just because of a certain aspect a certain class can turn out a lot stronger).

However, even in pve. Nerfing is sometimes just needed. If abilities make you able to do excessive things, nerfing might be mandatory because it avoids the situation in which you have to buff everything to a broken state. And especialy when a single job is OP. Nerfs are the way to go. Making everything OP is a disgrace towards the balance team as they generaly balance things towards the current state, and not the buffed one.

To be clear, i'm not anti-nerf. I'm simply saying in the way that square would rather fix problems by buffing the weak then nerfing the strong, they'd rather say it always crits/direct hits then say it never does. Even if it means the same thing in practice.

[Equitable_Remedy]

What is the stance against big potency skills having auto-crit?

Here's a secret about game design: some amount of variance is fun. Crits, direct hits, and direct crits are dopamine hits that lose much of their value without the variance of mostly often not getting them.

Further, having two sorts of big moves - high potency and guaranteed crit/DHit/DCrit - opens up the design space for abilities without too much added complexity.