High potency skills and/or auto-crit/auto-direct-crit

[Aravell]

This is mathemathicaly false. Even if you hit 3 time, you still roll 3 time with the same chance to do a crit.

So yeah, you may see a crit more often because you triple your try each time, but in term of damage output and variance, it's the exact same. If you are unlucky, you will not triple crit on double down or even double crit. The variance will still be there because it's related to luck anyway, unless it's 3 completely different Attack on 3 different button, it won't change anything because you still do all this in 2.5 GCD for 1 attack.

To resume, Increasing the number of it doesn't increase either the damage nor the chance to crit.

It's not false, instead of critting 1 massive hit of 1200, you're rolling 3 times for a crit on 350, 350 and 500. It's always going to roll lower than critting the 1200 hit unless you roll a crit on all 3 hits.

[TabrisOmbrelame]

I don't really mind the variance with the type of combat FF14 offers. If you're trying to be competitive then it might be frustrating, but outside of that it's only mildly disappointing/interesting to me. Forced crit/DH reduces rather than increases variance as it narrows the range of multipliers on a given skill. In that sense they are nice to have, especially for heals.

Conceptually I prefer the idea of crits being skill based rather than randomly generated. Critical damage based on timing, position, or something along those lines is infinitely more deep than random crits.

You are right, Having forced crit on attack will actually reduce the variance by a lot, even forced DH would be efficient. But it's only a bandaid on what could be done I think.

On a second note, your idea of crit under timing, position or other thing aren't part of the actual game design of FF14. Positionnal are still a thing (less than before, but still) cause it increase damage done by certain skill on a certain position against the boss (Something between 40-60 Potency, which is nowhere near a crit). I like the idea tho, but it will probably never happen here

[GoatOfWar]

Do you like these? Or don't like them? Do they cause too much variance? Does it feel too bad when Double Down doesn't crit but also every Midare auto-critting also feel bad? Does WAR Inner Release and Primal Rend auto-direct-crit feel bad? What about skills like MCH Reassemble, using it as a specific mechanic for your tools? Should Shoha 1 and 2 be combined to make room for Kaiten which can make Midaire auto-crit? Or just do bonus damage like before?

What's FFXIV's General Discussion's opinion about these right now?

It depends on how it's implemented.
For example, playing GNB i feel like i'm wasting my time for not playing War if double down doesn't crit. And i think it should just guarantee crits.
But i don't see why Warrior needs to have guaranteed direct crits when the direct hit doesn't even come on any of our gear pieces.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

This is mathemathicaly false. Even if you hit 3 time, you still roll 3 time with the same chance to do a crit.

You may still have the same chances on each individual hit, but the amount of damage you'll achieve will be far lower on average than on single hits due to law of statistical averages with higher attempts.

The issue with the high potency skills is that they're used very infrequently, mostly at 1/2 min intervals. This makes them far more susceptible to variance than say, your 1-2-3 combo would. If you only get 5 Double Downs in one fight for example, with the current framework, someone only needs to get 'lucky' 5 times in a fight, with only having to hit 10 rolls total (1 crit roll + 1 dh roll for each of them.) If we pretend that the person has a 30% crit rate & 20% DH rate, it means they have a 6% ish rate to hit both rolls at once.

If the damage is split into 3-4 instances of damage, variance is insanely reduced. For the example, we'll say double down was split into 4 hits of 300 potency instead. Now, to get the same damage as the single 1200 roll, each of those 4 hits would need to crit-dh individually, meaning all their rolls are independent and not influenced by each other. Meaning they each get that 6% chance. For the multi-hit Double Down to the same damage as the single hit one, we get a chance of (6% * 6% * 6% * 6%) = 0.00001296%. Practically minuscule and an insanely random event contrasted to the single hit's odds. Instead of the 10 rolls the person has to get 'lucky' on for the single hit double down, it has quadrupled to 40.

You can even see this at play in parsing on the game's older design during ARR-SB era, where most kit's potencies barely went above 500 at the top end. Getting lucky on the higher end skills of your kit had a much smaller impact on your overall damage because potency was far more spread out across the kit than focused into single huge hits. If Square wants to keep huge potency hits, then breaking them up into multi-hit smaller potency bundles would go a far way to reducing the absolutely ridiculous variance on how a single Ryoshu(? the super ice one) mudra on NIN can do anywhere from 100k-300k damage for literally nothing more than 'get lucky bro'

[ZiraZ]

I think auto crit/dh is lame and removes some of the fun between pulls.
Endwalker jumped the shark and gave most jobs absurdly high potency skills and dug it's own grave.
They should've gone the DRG way with low to mid potentiates spread across the entire kit, they could still do this in 7.0 but they would have to deal with people crying their meme ability not doing a gazillion potency now even if it's for their own good.

[Valence]

This is mathemathicaly false. Even if you hit 3 time, you still roll 3 time with the same chance to do a crit.

So yeah, you may see a crit more often because you triple your try each time, but in term of damage output and variance, it's the exact same. If you are unlucky, you will not triple crit on double down or even double crit. The variance will still be there because it's related to luck anyway, unless it's 3 completely different Attack on 3 different button, it won't change anything because you still do all this in 2.5 GCD for 1 attack.

To resume, Increasing the number of it doesn't increase either the damage nor the chance to crit.

Variance is going to actually be more streamlined by the very fact you'd have a thrice bigger sample. That's the whole point.

[Vyrerus]

Auto Crits can be good if they're limited to being on a separate cooldown. Like Life Surge for DRG. By themselves though, they're super unappealing because they don't actually increase your maximum damage potential. They merely remove variance.

Best example of this is old Berserk vs. New Berserk/Inner Release.

The oldest form of Berserk used to grant +50% damage to Warrior for 20 seconds, followed by 5 seconds of pacification. This meant you could use it in an ideal manner after stocking your wrath/abandon, and then funneling in as many of your high potency attacks as possible. The dream was 3 Inner Beasts and later on 3 Fell Cleaves during this 20 second window. But you could also just use it at any time and get more damage and pretty much always get at least 2 of your big hits in, anyway, unless you were like Tomahawk kiting or something.

Upon the introduction of original Inner Release, they also reworked Berserk to be more of a Fight or Flight with +30% damage for 20 seconds without a penalty. The ideal then became to stock 100 wrath in the gauge, and then get off 6 Fell Cleaves by combining it with Berserk and Infuriate. Still, at any time you could use your damage buff instead of combining it, if the immediate situation dictated that it would be better to do that.

So seeing that people always tried to combine these moves, they made the Warrior rotation more streamlined but also worse by robbing us of our freedom to buff what we want when we want with the attack buff. Dictating that you now could not adjust your burst as the fight may need.

And people cheered because they lowered the cooldown time and mathed out that the auto crits would be more damage over time and it's therefore better... Ignoring that it made the gauge and resource building less relevant and that still the damage potential was ultimately lower during the ideal burst . And the non-ideal burst had its place and could be used in an emergency or a last ditch, "Hey I need to try to do more damage now!" sort of situation.

God forbid we have rotations that have room for error and room for making the most of a non-ideal situation. The way auto crits are now, especially for Warrior, ties up the lionshare of your damage in one ability on a couple of big GCDs.

Way more fun when you can put the damage on other stuff, sometimes.

Kind of similar happenstance with SAM and its auto crits. Got rid of Kaiten, which could actually be used on any WS, not just the Iaijutsu. Meaning you could Kaiten on a combo ender and such, if you weren't going to get more GCDs in a fight to build to Shinten or pre-Shinten if the fight wasn't going to last til another Midare.

Way it is now, it is hardcoded for that damage to be in your big hit, and while that was always the ideal, it just means you can't, "Make your own big hit" when you need to, more or less. Quite the uncommon concern, but also a way to pad out the end of a parse/maybe beat that enrage in spite of things etc.

[Mithron]

^

Very good analysis and putting to words what a lot of my thoughts were too. I like skills such as Reassemble and Life Surge where they give you conditional auto-crits because you still have to use those particular buttons in slightly more skillful ways to get the payoff. Not all of your Tools or Full Thrusts are going to be direct crits. I liked Kaiten. I liked HW DRK Dark Arts. I just don't like Inner Release or Midaire auto crits nor do I like Double Down not critting simply because it's a gigantic potency attack where it actually matters if it doesn't crit. I'd rather have lower potency attacks, no free auto crits, and no 2 min burst meta.

[mallleable]

Kinda related to auto crits, but a thing I like about PVP actions is that they use the visual language of "crits!!" to provide feedback that a job mechanic was done correctly or a skill is at its maximum potential. Like a Powerful Shot at maximum range will "crit!!," a fully charged Wildfire will "crit!!," and casting Flare will "crit!!," etc. A part of me wants this to be carried over into PVE, but it would require reworking how stats work.

[PyurBlue]

On a second note, your idea of crit under timing, position or other thing aren't part of the actual game design of FF14.

As much as I like the idea, I feel the same. It doesn't fit with the current iteration of FF14 nor does it seem to be in the direction that SE wants to go.

You may still have the same chances on each individual hit, but the amount of damage you'll achieve will be far lower on average than on single hits due to law of statistical averages with higher attempts.

The average is actually the same. Just do the math on 1 hit vs 3 (as the contribution from all other damage will be unaffected).

1200 with 1.5x crit damage at 50% chance is 1200 + 1200*1.5 * 0.5 = 1500.

400 with 1.5x crit damage at 50% chance is 400 + 400*1.5 * 0.5 = 500.

Multiply the latter by 3 so that the base attack is the same as the original large attack and average damage becomes 1500. The 1200 damage attack is limited to having larger deviations from the average more often, but on average they are exactly the same.

If the damage is split into 3-4 instances of damage, variance is insanely reduced. For the example, we'll say double down was split into 4 hits of 300 potency instead. Now, to get the same damage as the single 1200 roll, each of those 4 hits would need to crit-dh individually, meaning all their rolls are independent and not influenced by each other. Meaning they each get that 6% chance. For the multi-hit Double Down to the same damage as the single hit one, we get a chance of (6% * 6% * 6% * 6%) = 0.00001296%. Practically minuscule and an insanely random event contrasted to the single hit's odds. Instead of the 10 rolls the person has to get 'lucky' on for the single hit double down, it has quadrupled to 40.

Right, one big attack critting is the same as many small attacks critting. While the average over many attempts is the same either way, the deviation from the average is can take lower values with the many smaller attacks than it can with the one large attack.

Breaking large attacks into smaller ones may slightly soften the impact of damage variation, but it doesn't actually remove it. It's more of a repackaging. While it's unlikely for someone to crit x times for massive damage, it's still possible even if x is a large number. I think just forcing crits gives more control over the variation because you're literally constraining the range of possible values to smaller numbers. Good players can also make use of this. If you know with a high amount of certainty that something is going to deal 25% of a target's HP bar, you can aim to use that skill at the exact moment when the target is at 25%. It's harder to do that if you need to rely on crit rolls that can massive impact the final damage number.

Auto Crits can be good if they're limited to being on a separate cooldown. Like Life Surge for DRG. By themselves though, they're super unappealing because they don't actually increase your maximum damage potential. They merely remove variance.

That, to me, is the appeal. Removing damage variance is very desirable for the reasons I outlined above. It gives you control and predictability, which you can use if you have the skill or knowledge to do so.

A skill that forces crits is also fine, but not necessary.

I understand that you want some more freedom in being able to generate high damage, but we do have something for that already, charges. They allow us to get away from super rigid rotations by varying the timing of major skills. Instead of pressing X every Y seconds, you can press X twice (or however many charges exist) in Y*2+ seconds and have the option to hold one 1 less than the maximum number of charges to use in whatever way is optimal.