With the recent changes to crit from the last 2 patches i wanted to touch on(again) critical strike based builds in pvp, and why theyre, for the most part woefully inferior to other options.
From the Update 28 Combat Preview:
"The main cause of this imbalance is the ease of access to gain Critical Chance in our game; we have a large amount of passive Crit enabled from passive abilities (Armor, Champion Points, Base Chance). On top of this, the raw standard of Crit Chance is higher than other DPS stats which results in stacking Crit being incredibly powerful."
Critical Strike chance may be too powerful in pve, however in pvp this is simply not the case, especially in no cp, where the access to critical healing modifiers is incredibly scarce.
In pvp, stats like maximum magicka/stamina, spell and weapon damage are just as important, and unlike critical strike chance, these stats actually directly affect your survivability.
Critical chance gives you a higher chance for your heals to give you a bigger value, but this in not guaranteed, where building for raw stats will give you a more measureable increase in both damage and survivability.
On top of it, critical based builds for the most part have to run light or medium armor, where as builds focusing on other base stats can get away with heavy armor(and with malacaths band of brutality you can even take your opponent critical resistance out of the equation).
On top of that, critical strikes are a modifier to your based damage done, meaning its simply not viable to build exclusively for critical strikes.
You might be able have a build that focused solely on critical strikes and have good damage in pvp, however defensively you will be lacking then.
So here is my proposal:
Make sources of critical damge(like major and minor force) also affect critical healing again, but only at 50% value.
Why? This change would make it viable to build for critical strikes and still have respectable amounts of healing, and investing into critical chance wouldnt feel like a waste over other stats.
Also this would not affect the damage of crit based builds(for example gankers) any further, however would increase the power of builds that ARENT trying to 1 shot people from stealth with crits.
A good example here would be magicka nightblade, which could benefit greatly from this change as they have access to multiple sources of high critical strike chance and healing.
Currently if you want to play a non-invisibility based magicka nightblade, you are pretty much forced to run heavy armor, and stack healing modifiers like vitality, maybe even Argonian.
With this chance you could be able to focus on high critical healing on a class, that already has a theme for having high critical damage.
Templars are another good example, currently theyre in limbo where you really want to run proc sets to boost your damage, since outside of jabs most of the offensive skills of templar are just weak.
On top of that both magicka and stamina templars have been having issues with self healing on offensive builds.
Once again, this would not up the damage of these specs, however you could utilize their critical damage passive(and perhaps add some additional support for critical healing) to a better effect.
If anything this would encourage templars to run more offensive focused builds, as opposed to running sword and board and heavily rely on blocking.
We also have some crit based sets that could use some adjustment:
Briarheart: I have already brought this up, but in my opinion the heal from this set should be allowed to critically heal, to better support the playstyle it promotes(building for high critical chance).
Slimecraw: From the 6.2.0 PTS patch notes :
"While each of these bonuses is normally worth 2 for Minor and 4 for Major, they are worth .5 less than their original value while sourced on an item set, since they are mainly sourced via the abilities and passives in the game. This ensures if you opt to run a set that grants you a permanent major or minor buff, you’ll gain some extra effectiveness on top of that to ensure they aren’t completely wasted if you gain access to the buff from another source."
So where is the extra bonus for slimecraw? In comparison Mighty Chudan also provides 1.2k max health on top of the major resolve buff it provides, and thats also a 2pc monster set.
Maybe add a small amount of extra critical chance to the 2pc bonus of slimecraw?
TLDR:
Let sources of critical damage also apply to critical healing at 50% effect
We now also offer safe, easy and fast crown item buying!