The damage variance between a Critical Hit and a Non-Critical hit.

[DixieBellOCE]

Is absolutely disgusting.

Talking about Bard in particular:
A max gauge Apex/Blast Arrow Crit's for upwards of 40k, a Non-Crit hits for 14k.
A 3 gauge Pitch Perfect Crit's for 38k, a Non-Crit hits for 14k.

How is that much variance, almost THREE TIMES the damage, acceptable?

It feels absolutely disgusting with 2515 Critical Strike and still never hitting a single Crit on your big abilities.

[Equitable_Remedy]

Here's the actual secret: variance in gaming is fun.

Critical hits are pervasive in gaming (and have been for decades) because that dopamine hit from a gigantic direct hit crit on your biggest ability is an experience that hits the dopamine. In FF14's case, it also opens some design space for moves that auto crit/auto DH instead of the normal chance-based proc.

Also, that one time that you didn't crit isn't why you hit enrage

[ForteNightshade]

Here's the actual secret: variance in gaming is fun.

Critical hits are pervasive in gaming (and have been for decades) because that dopamine hit from a gigantic direct hit crit on your biggest ability is an experience that hits the dopamine. In FF14's case, it also opens some design space for moves that auto crit/auto DH instead of the normal chance-based proc.

Also, that one time that you didn't crit isn't why you hit enrage

Gonna have to disagree here. While yes, variance can be fun. Too much is simply annoying. It's ridiculous when a Ninja can lose 80-100k on Hyo because the game said "screw you." I have runs on Paladin in P8S where I didn't Crit Goring or most of my Blade combo once the entire fight. Auto DHCs are necessary but kind of defeat the point. Direct Hit itself should be removed and Crit split. You still have some variance but not these insane swings pull to pull.

[Equitable_Remedy]

Gonna have to disagree here. While yes, variance can be fun. Too much is simply annoying. It's ridiculous when a Ninja can lose 80-100k on Hyo because the game said "screw you." I have runs on Paladin in P8S where I didn't Crit Goring or most of my Blade combo once the entire fight. Auto DHCs are necessary but kind of defeat the point. Direct Hit itself should be removed and Crit split. You still have some variance but not these insane swings pull to pull.

For your NIN example, what is that 80-100k over the course of a 10-minute savage pull? What is it over the course of a night of 10-minute savage pulls? Did the NIN's group hit enrage at 80k? What exactly is the "screw you" here other than you didn't do the theoretical maximum damage on a given pull? We should ask all of the same questions for your slightly below average PLD pulls.

Are any of these things making the difference on clears? (The answer is almost certainly no except for the edgiest of cases, though it's the internet, so I'm sure people will say that they consistently wipe at 73 HP or something.) Since there's no fine measure of damage or DPS in the game beyond threat order, are you constantly finding that order varying wildly pull to pull because of crits (as opposed to variance in gameplay by the player)? If yes (which would truly surprise me), do you think that it would be better for the game to be more static from pull to pull?

[Mikey_R]

For your NIN example, what is that 80-100k over the course of a 10-minute savage pull?

Seconds in 10 minutes = 600 seconds, 100K/600 = 166.66 dps

According to everyone's favourite number site, Ninja is doing 10,536 aDPS (since we are using pure damage shown on screen, this is the closest you can get), you then work out the % that 166.66 is in relation to 10,536 and you get ~1.6%.

So, missing that ONE Hyo is equivalent to losing ~1-2% dps over a 10 minute fight.

[Amenara]

This is why we lose stuff like Kaiten and skills become boring auto-crits...

[DixieBellOCE]

This is why we lose stuff like Kaiten and skills become boring auto-crits...

No you lose stuff like Kaiten because the average player doesn't know how to press their buttons and that reflects in the data SQE collects.

Kaiten was a good skill and gave the job some depth, but that depth of knowing when to use Kaiten was too hard for the average player.

[Amenara]

No you lose stuff like Kaiten because the average player doesn't know how to press their buttons and that reflects in the data SQE collects.

Kaiten was a good skill and gave the job some depth, but that depth of knowing when to use Kaiten was too hard for the average player.

Well going with what SE gave us, they added auto-crits to the big attacks in that patch and Kaiten was removed as well for "button bloat". If I had to guess they did all of it to reduce variance because it "felt bad" when your big hits didn't crit and to further reduce the variance they just removed Kaiten and baked it in. Whether it was for making the job more accessible or not we will never know for sure as they didn't start "explaining" changes till the next patch.

[GaiusDrakon]

Is absolutely disgusting.

Talking about Bard in particular:
A max gauge Apex/Blast Arrow Crit's for upwards of 40k, a Non-Crit hits for 14k.
A 3 gauge Pitch Perfect Crit's for 38k, a Non-Crit hits for 14k.

How is that much variance, almost THREE TIMES the damage, acceptable?

It feels absolutely disgusting with 2515 Critical Strike and still never hitting a single Crit on your big abilities.

does it really matter unless you're running parse runs in PF chasing high 99s

but yeah, reducing the variance would be fine. idk why people think that is the same thing as reducing complexity or proc-based decision making

[Oizen]

Direct Hit probably shouldn't even be a stat honestly.