The value of +Crit dmg and Crit dmg scaling?

Grim Dawn Gameplay Discussion
#1

So i kinda thought that Crit damage was all the rage and we want big juicy crits and nice flashy numbers in shiny colours and all that.
So i went about trying to stack a bunch of OA and add a fair bit of +Crit dmg thanks to OK buff supplying 46% of that.
So i have 3400OA selfbuffed, jumps to 3800 with Ascension, and almost hardcapped FB for additional 330DA shred, and a neat little 96% crit dmg getting spiced up to 113% by Dying God at times.
… and my dmg/crits are kinda underwhelming :no_mouth: 100-120k, “big” crits at 200k with everything up and running and RR stacked… which just, doesn’t kinda seem worth it…?

basically i was hoping for something “glass-cannon’ish” but kinda ended up just way more glass than “cannon”, and rearranging gear to be more sustainable just lowers the dmg further, while also not fulfilling my “aim” of hardcapped Firestrike line - Brimstone with passthrough for combined big aoe/big dmg
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/M2gm1DgZ
^that’s the girl, low armor, scary low phys res, low attack speed (combined with low dmg) means the sustain is pits with mere 10%ADCtH, - like i said, glassy, but not the cannon to back it up despite the OA crit and +dmg bonuses :disappointed:

so do i just accept that +100% crit does “nothing”, rebuild for less glass; suffer the dmg loss and come to terms with just being a sucky approach and that it not be worth a pot of piss to celebrate anything?
Or can the idea of a hardcapped firestrike line be salvaged to do some decent dmg at least (- while not dying to the first baddie merely raising their eyebrow)?
^the “thought” kinda being that OK crit + hardcapped firestrike line with massive oa/da shred would make up for the loss of not being a Purifier

(sustain-wise i’ve tried rearranging gear to accommodate more phys res, changed points to blast shield and ascension, the attack speed is still crap/lowered dmg means a bit extra LL does help but not “much”, ditching dying god for ex ghoul helps fairly here and there)

idono, did i misunderstand crit and its value, or is it just not “as effective” for “everything”?/ how does crit dmg eventually scale and is it “equal” for all things ?

cheers for bothering to “teach”/provide input :+1: to this traveler still learning the ropes it seems

#2

when you crit you then deal double damage (+ the crit damage you would normally deal when critting) https://i.imgur.com/C7Z5xSV.png
let’s say your base crit is 40% with +100% crit damage you then deal +140% of your normal damage when you crit.
With crit chance lets say its 30% your damage gain is over all 0,7 + 0,3 * 2,4 = 1,42 in other wordings 42% damage buff on average.

Formula is (1-crit chance/100) + (crit chance/100)*(+crit damages)

if your base damage is low to begin with, then even double shit damage is still shit damage, right?

problem with ranged shield break is that oathkeeper has “no” flat damage that you converts and no shotgun like storm spread

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#3

ye weap dmg is pitifully low on that baby :grimacing:

so with OK loss of wps+dmg, the crit buff doesn’t really make up for it at all without massive flat dmg to actually boost it/attack speed to increase the frequency?

#4

at least not for 2H ranged no, with purifier you can get both flat damages that you can convert and crit damage (at the expense of less OA, uness you are pierce damage)

wpn damage is ok, look at this [1.1.8.1] Zavageryyy - Elgoloth Ranged Vindicator (SR80) which has like 10% more weapon damage but probably has more than double single target damage compare to your shield break

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#5

yea that’s why i was partially puzzled, so many builds with half the crit yet do double the dmg, really thought the crit modifier + hardcapped firestrike would help make up for “something” big time
i’ve played belgo blademaster that crit higher lol

#6

It is just maths

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#7

For big crit numbers you really need to stack bonuses on a single instance of damage, which Fire Strike, especially with a ranged weapon, can’t do. You’re better off accomplishing it with a cooldown skill like Grenado with item modifiers, or by stacking DoTs.

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#8

oh yea definitely, got a lightning grenadier elementalist cooking that easily hits big numbers which ofc makes sense being a bigger dmg skill to begin with and having bigger +flat modifier straight up.
idono, was just really suprised that such huge point investment into firestrike line yielded so little on this, when ex belgo blademaster is basically free aa replacer and wps not necessarily needing as heavy investment - yet easily outdo 66points worth and despite double the crit :no_mouth:

#9

That’s just the problem with ranged weaponry. For 2H they have half the damage of melee weapon and only increase about 60-75% of its damage compared to melee, at least for 2H they have almost the same attack speed as melee. It’s even worse for the 1H pistol, it’s flat and percentage damage is a bit equal to the sword while having the slowest 1H attack speed, the fastest gun have a 1.71 attack speed, a little bit more than the slowest mace with 1.66 speed (1.64 is the average speed of most gun in-game).

I think it’s better to stack more projectile/aoe wps to increase the kill speed of ranged playstyle than going with increasing crit damage approach.

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#10

oh yea definitely the lower base dmg is something to compensate for, it’s just strange when you see belgothian strikes at 40k sheet and 66points firestrike at 40k sheet - yet wimpy 2x1handed free aa-replacer + wps does more dmg than 66points+over double the crit. Really thought the loss of wps modifier could be made up for by stacking more skill points+crit.
and it’s not like the aoe dmg is trash, the brimstone+passthrough works nice enough, the numbers are just small(er), than expected at least, and ofc when not having the 4aps of like belgo bm it suffers further dps loss on top when only at 150% attack speed, being slow even for a 2h build using Kraken and still not even reaching 3hits per second

but i guess purifier just wins again :sweat_smile:, really had hoped shield breaker could be made this way and i wouldn’t have to rely on purifier for this idea :confused:
^i mean it’s not like it totally doesn’t work, like i mentioned the glassy’ness can be made up for - the dmg just isn’t what i hoped for/wanted, not really awesome compared to stuff that already “works” :confounded:

#11

I treat crit as a second RR, and my rough go to estimation is 10% crit chance with +100% crit damage results in 10% damage boost - about the same as 10% extra RR or maybe +250-300% damage bonus. Unless you have fucktons of crit damage literally for free it’s not very efficient to invest into crits.

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#12

Having a full set or even a weapon that boosts Fire Strike would help bring it up, but at least it has a ton of AoE compared to Belgo.

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