Ret pally question: Why use crit?

Classes Paladin
1

Ok I know this might be a noob question but almost each expansion it keep changing from either mastery or crit as your second major second stat after haste. So what I am asking is why bother with crit for a CHANCE to do more damage?

After looking at WoWhead, Icy vains, and Noxx which in the past all seem to have different stats but this time it seems all of them are now saying the same thing which is haste, crit, vir, and mastery as the dump stat.

I mean I could see crit being good if you can get it over 40% but 30% and lower is it really worth it? With Mastery: Hand of Light passive ability wouldn’t it stand to reason mastery would be more suited sense you are getting constant plus with VIS or am I misunderstanding the differences?

2

Because that chance to deal damage determines whether you outdamage other people. The fact is that probability affects the majority of outcomes in WoW, whether it’s PvP or PvE, a lot of the time your victory is reliant on a dice roll.

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3

in pvp crit means less than pve, so adjust accordingly.

4

While crit is based on the roll of a die, it’s something you can add to. The critical strikes you get add up to more damage than the increase from versatility or mastery.

5

the problem is crits are nerfed in pvp, so unless the pve stat weights for your class are heavily into crit…it’s usually the worst stat. crits are 100% damage in pve, but only 50% in pvp. a huge difference.

ele and destro work a bit diff of course.

to respond to the actual question of the op. you average out the chance for damage into your hits. if you have a 50% chance to crit and crits did double damage, that would be a 50%~ damage increase over a long fight. it’s a damage increase just like any other. if your crit is 20% you calculate it just the same, of course it would be lower than a 50% increase to damage.

of course just because you have a 50% chance to crit does not mean you will crit half the time. 1 fight you may crit 15% and the other 75%. it’s a bad system to have in games.

6

Is this for PvE or PvP?

I only really PvE, but currently IMO crit CAN be better than mastery.

This is due to the fact that mastery only affect HOLY damage, so does not affect Crusader Strike or Blade of Wrath, only Holy Power abilities. However, 1 point in mastery goes farther than 1 point in critical strike. For example, I have 795 Critical Strike, adding +11.04% to my critical hit chance, while i have 669 Mastery, adding +14.87% to my Holy damage done.

The biggest difference as someone said has to do with the die roll, as well as if your critical strike is affecting anything trinkets you have or healing you do. If you are lucky and can critical strike more often on your templar’s verdict or wake of ashes on a trash pack, etc than your are on your crusader strikes, you’re going to do more damage.

Another very nice reason for stacking critical strike is the fact that Avenging Wrath gives a flat 20% buff to critical strike. Once the new azerite pieces become available, you should be able to stack lights decree, Avenger’s might, and Empyrean power/Relentless Inquisitor for massive DPS output during wings. Since we are mostly a burst class, being able to pump up your stats to insane levels is very strong for us. This also flows through to or BiS trinkets, which are on use trinkets, so they can be timed in your burst window.

So in effect, if you are able to stack azerite traits properly IMO your stat weights should be: Haste>Critical Strike>/= Mastery=Versatility. Though you should sim to make sure.

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7

It’s all down to math. Over the course of a long fight, it is reasonable to expect 3% crit to happen during 3% of your attacks. With crits being 200% damage dealt, it’s reasonable to expect that to come down to ~1.5% damage increase. The longer the fight, the more likely you are to reach those results.

However, there is such a thing as diminishing returns. You talked about having a low crit chance… but did you know that’s when crit’s return is the highest? Jumping from 0% crit to 10% crit should be around ~5% increase to your damge. Jumping from 10% to 20% will not yield the same increase. Yes, it’ll be ~10% increase to base damage, but now you only got ~4.7% from those 10% crit, so even though you doubled your crit, you didn’t get double the benefit. The higher you go, the less it’s worth, which is why stat weights are constantly evolving and you should keep simming to be accurate. The reason is because each stat is additive, not multiplicative, but each stat multiply the others. If you have low versatility, you get close to 100% value from versatility stat, which might not be enough if Versatility is terrible for your class, but if the stats are close enough, it might just tip the scales.

The only time you want to hit certain breakpoints is when you have class mechanics around it. For instance, Holy Paladins used to double Holy Shock’s crit chance, which meant that at 50% crit you had a 100% crit chance, which is reliable, something healers like. At the same time, Holy Paladins had cooldowns that increased crit, which meant that being too close to that permanent 100% holy shock crit meant you’d be “wasting” crit during Avenging Wrath. But for DPS it’s really just a numbers game, and the longer the fight the more RNG tends to just boil down to its own percentage.

In general you just go with the highest iLvl. According to bloodmallet, the difference between ret with perfect itemization and ret with worst itemization is ~4% DPS. That’s about 8 iLvls worth of stats, meaning that any time an item has 10 stats more than your previous item, it’s an upgrade. Also according to bloodmallet, the perfect itemization would come from 30% crit, 50% haste, 10% mastery and 10% versatility. If your question really is about PvP crit would be worth half as much, I’d imagine it wouldn’t be worth it for long fights. But PvP is also about short skirmishes, and having crit ups your burst potential, even if unreliably. PvP is less of a numbers game.

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8

I can see this discussion was a while ago, however I just simed my pally on raidbots with Pawn and my weights on pawn change completely. It stats that my Crit is worth 3.4 points and my haste just 2.8. Mastery is at 2.6 and verse around 2.5. It’s confusing because I know I need haste, even if taurens have Brawn passive…so confused

9

Ret has no static stat weights, it changes all the time.
Everytime you get a new piece of gear, run a quick sim.

10

You wear your highest simming set for the situation. The reason its probably showing to be decently high for you is because your boots.

11

Alright. So as always here. Mastery helps your sustained and level out your dmg while crit gives you crazy spikes. Haste helps smooth and speed gameplay.

In this case with ret. Haste>mastery>crit.

The only reason mastery wins out, is it increases all the holy dmg you do. Your main dmg is from your holy spenders. So while crits are nice, the more mastery you have, flat out, the more dmg you do