Scale back Critical Hit

[HyperiusUltima]

Controversial topic to a lot of people, but I figured I'd put this out there from a recent discussion I had in a different thread: Critical Hit needs to be scaled back.

Considering that we've had many gripes with how the current meta is always 2 minute Burst, one of the main issues in that meta is Crit Variance.

Crit Variance refers to the difference between dealing a Critical Direct Hit and a normal hit within a raid buff window.

This variance has caused issues namely with the start of the current tier, as even World First groups had to either swap jobs or run multiple PERFECT runs at optimal levels to even manage the DPS Check to get into P8S Phase 2 before the HP Nerf.

For those wondering "Why should we reduce Critical Hit?", the Critical Hit stat refers to both the chance of hitting a Critical Hit, AND the damage scaling of said Critical Hit. Having this dual-use has made it a favorite since Stormblood's Critical Hit issues where it scaled too high.

I'd say we're at that time again, except in a different form - namely where having the 2 Minute Burst Window has caused Critical Hit Variance to become a major issue in dealing the damage required in content, as I hope the development team has realized.

As much as I hate the 2 minute burst window, we should at least address this while waiting for them to actually do something about the burst window itself come 7.0.

[Saraide]

The more damage is focused into unreliable crits, the more we are at risk of having balancing situations where you can have a perfect run but still not beat enrage due to bad crit rng. Once our stats get so high again that crits become reliable again this problem will solve itself but at that point we are probably also looking at the next stat squish. Which would start this entire thing over again.

[HyperiusUltima]

The more damage is focused into unreliable crits, the more we are at risk of having balancing situations where you can have a perfect run but still not beat enrage due to bad crit rng. Once our stats get so high again that crits become reliable again this problem will solve itself but at that point we are probably also looking at the next stat squish. Which would start this entire thing over again.

This became a specific problem with the 2 Minute Burst Meta that was created by the development team. Crit Variance did not have a major effect in any other expansion than this one.

[Mikey_R]

Once our stats get so high again that crits become reliable again this problem will solve itself but at that point we are probably also looking at the next stat squish. Which would start this entire thing over again.

The problem is, stat scaling is effectively reset with each expansion, however, this problem has only appeared in EW and not other expansions.

The vast majority of this issue is down to the 2 minute meta. With everything lining up every 2 minutes, that is where you get massive spikes in damage, which means crit RNG has a bigger influence on the damage. Of course, the next question is, why was this never an issue before? Well, no 2 minute meta. Everything lined up at the start of a fight and every 6 minutes after that, with smaller bursts every minute based on job cooldowns. This means damage is less spikey and crit RNG has a lesser impact on final damage.

As for the solution. One of the easiest ways is to get rid of the 2 minute meta to flatten out the DPS variance through the fight. Another is to go after the stat itself. This can either be by making it scale differently, or altering the stat completely. This could be by making it just crit rate or crit damage, or, for a more drastic change, split the crit stat into 2 and have, say, the crit stat affect the chance and repurpose DH to affect the damage. This would prevent the double scaling that is inherent with crit and I suspect could lead to more interesting builds, focusing either on crit rate or crit damage.

That's just my thought on it though.

[Amenara]

I think the bigger issue is that secondary stats are pretty awful and need a redesign to make other options compelling. When your secondary stats for everyone are crit > everything else you have messed that one up. Good issue to bring up regardless.

[HyperiusUltima]

I think the bigger issue is that secondary stats are pretty awful and need a redesign to make other options compelling. When your secondary stats for everyone are crit > everything else you have messed that one up. Good issue to bring up regardless.

And that's where we need to look at the functionality of stats. Direct Hit is the second best stat in the game next to Determination, as DH provides a chance of dealing 25% more damage and Determination raises your damage floor and healing done. Critical Hit infinitely scales upward in terms of the rate it can proc and the damage it can deal.

If we're to look at stats as a whole, there are a few stats to consider reworking:

Tenacity - Tank-only stat that reduces damage taken. It reduces damage taken very, VERY slightly, and only slightly raises damage done. Not a good stat to invest into.
Piety - A stat that Healers are familiar with, they typically only want to reach a certain piety(even if that Piety is 0 on gear and melds) to be able to handle their MP Economy effectively.
Skill/Spell Speed - A stat that determines your GCD. Definitely needs looking at, as its only purpose is to enforce certain GCD tiers and not provide much else. It's been the bane of some jobs' existence as well.

[Amenara]

And that's where we need to look at the functionality of stats. Direct Hit is the second best stat in the game next to Determination, as DH provides a chance of dealing 25% more damage and Determination raises your damage floor and healing done. Critical Hit infinitely scales upward in terms of the rate it can proc and the damage it can deal.

If we're to look at stats as a whole, there are a few stats to consider reworking:

Tenacity - Tank-only stat that reduces damage taken. It reduces damage taken very, VERY slightly, and only slightly raises damage done. Not a good stat to invest into.
Piety - A stat that Healers are familiar with, they typically only want to reach a certain piety(even if that Piety is 0 on gear and melds) to be able to handle their MP Economy effectively.
Skill/Spell Speed - A stat that determines your GCD. Definitely needs looking at, as its only purpose is to enforce certain GCD tiers and not provide much else. It's been the bane of some jobs' existence as well.

I think I remember reading somewhere about Yoshida wanting to redesign secondaries at some point but I am not sure where he talked about it. I agree, Tenacity is a junk stat because of how poorly it scales and how little the damage reduction matters with the biggest concern being tank busters instead of steady damage throughout a fight along with healers being very strong in the healing department. I wish there was a way to make skill speed akin to haste stat in FFXI, but unfortunately that would require a major combat rework to make auto-attacks more impactful and have a lot more of your skills CDs affected by the stat (bringing us closer to WoW combat I guess :/ ). Piety is more or less a junk stat I imagine got implemented because the people who redesigned substats in ShB ran out of ideas and if I had to guess and expected MP economy to matter at some level.

[HyperiusUltima]

I think I remember reading somewhere about Yoshida wanting to redesign secondaries at some point but I am not sure where he talked about it. I agree, Tenacity is a junk stat because of how poorly it scales and how little the damage reduction matters with the biggest concern being tank busters instead of steady damage throughout a fight along with healers being very strong in the healing department. I wish there was a way to make skill speed akin to haste stat in FFXI, but unfortunately that would require a major combat rework to make auto-attacks more impactful and have a lot more of your skills CDs affected by the stat (bringing us closer to WoW combat I guess :/ ). Piety is more or less a junk stat I imagine got implemented because the people who redesigned substats in ShB ran out of ideas and if I had to guess and expected MP economy to matter at some level.

Piety's been here for quite a while, actually - since inception. Its use hasn't changed at all, other than just the amount of MP regenerated from it. It used to raise your MP ceiling, I think, back in Heavensward and ARR when it actually mattered. Now that it doesn't matter as much due to capping at 10k MP for all jobs, it is a junk stat as you say - but some healer builds still need it to an extent to make sure they don't run OoM in a raid setting, particularly Savage or Ultimate.

[Raven2014]

I think I remember reading somewhere about Yoshida wanting to redesign secondaries at some point but I am not sure where he talked about it. I agree, Tenacity is a junk stat because of how poorly it scales and how little the damage reduction matters with the biggest concern being tank busters instead of steady damage throughout a fight along with healers being very strong in the healing department. I wish there was a way to make skill speed akin to haste stat in FFXI, but unfortunately that would require a major combat rework to make auto-attacks more impactful and have a lot more of your skills CDs affected by the stat (bringing us closer to WoW combat I guess :/ ). Piety is more or less a junk stat I imagine got implemented because the people who redesigned substats in ShB ran out of ideas and if I had to guess and expected MP economy to matter at some level.

The issue with Tenacity is two fold:

First problem, tank has too many defensive CD already, and all the TB mechanic has always been about them using their CD correctly to survive. Tenacity never really played a role in determining whether the tank live or die to a buster.

That leave Tenacity as a damage reduction stat is only meaningful for AOE and Auto attack. Tank pretty much just shrug off the former, and auto-attack come down to one thing: how often does a healer has to heal you for auto? Basically, it needs to reduce the damage from auto enough that it will save the healer one single target heal. The issue is ... healer's single heal are very strong, so the damage reduction have to be massive as well, otherwise all it does it adds overheal on the healer, which is the second problem.

Frankly the tank design in FF14 does not really lend itself to a passive "tank" stat. Pretty much all of their defensive cool down are duration base instead of hit base (like TBN). For example, in dungeon, with proper CD tank can have almost have 100% up time on their mit unless the DPS is really bad, and thus passive damage reduction is negligible.

[Amenara]

The issue with Tenacity is two fold:

First problem, tank has too many defensive CD already, and all the TB mechanic has always been about them using their CD correctly to survive. Tenacity never really played a role in determining whether the tank live or die to a buster.

That leave Tenacity as a damage reduction stat is only meaningful for AOE and Auto attack. Tank pretty much just shrug off the former, and auto-attack come down to one thing: how often does a healer has to heal you for auto? Basically, it needs to reduce the damage from auto enough that it will save the healer one single target heal. The issue is ... healer's single heal are very strong, so the damage reduction have to be massive as well, otherwise all it does it adds overheal on the healer, which is the second problem.

Frankly the tank design in FF14 does not really lend itself to a passive "tank" stat. Pretty much all of their defensive cool down are duration base instead of hit base (like TBN). For example, in dungeon, with proper CD tank can have almost have 100% up time on their mit unless the DPS is really bad, and thus passive damage reduction is negligible.

100% agree, and that's not even talking about self-healing on tanks. All of this is kind of why I'd prefer they just go back to the drawing board when it comes to secondary stats since it looks like they are just going to double down on current combat design and not change that.