[MegaBlues]

For the sake of clarifying why Critical is considered to be so unfair (And has gotten worse), I've taken it upon myself to list the different sources of Critical vs Critical Evade, as well as methods of boosting Critical Damage vs methods of reducing it.

Critical:
Weapons, Weapon Materials, Components, Weapon Forging
Enchantments (Divine, Vorpal, Reaper, Iceheart)
Skill (1 Crit/1 Point)
Luck (1 Crit/ 1 Point)
Skills that boost Skill (Eastern Wind, Install, Deadly Aim, Vampire Shell, Rising Game, Honed Shot, Fenrir, Typhur, Upgrade)
Skills that boost Luck (Install, Lucky Shell, Rising Game, Vampire Shell, Upgrade)
Skills that boost Critical (Northern Wind, Backstab, Poise and Perfect Poise, Serpent Strikes, Fitting Form, Wazabane, Fight as One, Lucky Shell, Vampire Shell, Bloody Karma, Keyshot, Veil Off)
Skills that lower Critical Evade (Sakki, Black Bubble, Lucky Shell, Vampire Shell)
Sarasha Gi, Beserker Shell

Critical Evade:
Enchantments (Boneheart)
Faith (1 CE/1 Point)
Luck (1 CE/1 Point)
Skills that boost Faith (Install, Upgrade, Staff Mastery, Piety)
Skills that boost Luck (Install, Lucky Shell, Rising Game, Vampire Shell)
Skills that boost Critical Evade (Seiryuu Install, Fight as One, Negation)
Skills that lower enemy Critical (Cripple Arm, Crippling Muysig)

Critical Damage
Weapons
Guile (1% Damage/Point)
Fleur (Critting allows multiple actions)
Deadly Arms

Critical Damage Reduction
Lucky Amulet (by -10%)
Dullahan Racial (-1% per 1 Sanctity)
--

Anything missing from this list is an accident (and will be updated as I either remember or am reminded), and while the effectiveness or lack thereof of the listed items can be debated, the fact that the methods to obtain Critical far outweigh the methods to gain Critical Evade. I can get specific numbers if needed, but I figured that simply listing them would be enough.

I suggest tying Critical Evade to a more core stat than Faith (Defense or Vitality, perhaps), giving Armor Critical Evade, allowing for Armor Components, and introducing many more defensive skills into the game. Because as-is, the game is very heavily offensively oriented, with methods to recover, reduce, or avoid damage being extremely strong where present, which leads to them having been nerfed.

[Egil]

Very well-written post. It should also be noted that SKI is invested in far more often than FAI is, so beyond it being infinitely easier to boost crit rather than crit evade, it is easier to overcome crit evade in base for the average joe.

[Rendar]

SKI is a staple in every basic attack build. Not because it's needed for crits, but because it also gives 2 hit (and sometimes even damage scaling) with it. It's what every basic attacker needs.

Faith is, generally, not actually needed in most builds due to it being a (generally) lackluster stat that doesn't provide anything to the build other than what it provides right on the label. LIGHT ATK, Crit Evade, Status Resist. Luck is the same way, if you aren't going for a lightning build or your weapons don't scale off of it... you're not really going to get too much of it.

[Neus]

I don't think you really made much of an argument for why critical is considered 'unfair', unless you meant that it's easier to get critical than critical evade. However, criticals themselves have gotten weaker overall; the base critical damage modifier is down and you need to spend points in GUI to get any meaningful damage. The only weapon class that gets crit damage for free are daggers; I could understand making an argument for those specifically, either reduced scaling compared to other weapons, or lower base critical damage, something along those lines.

But the way I see it, you need to invest in 3 stats to get the most out of critical hits; SKI, LUC and GUI. To avoid critical hits you only need to invest in two stats; LUC and FAI. FAI as a stat is much less situational than it was before because it gives more Critical Evade, FP, and status resistance now.

I could see some of the 'free' sources of critical being nerfed a bit, namely the class skills that give it passively. But as far as stat point influence goes, I think it's perfectly reasonable the way it is.

[Autumn]

"free" as in spending skill points to get them mostly, I don't think they require nerfs, otherwise it's just not worth it to pick those up either, as someone who uses crit in a majority of my builds, crit is not for damage, actually, the damage is only a plus side of the massive utility that critical hits provide, What I am saying is, critical hits are utility, not damage, it doesn't matter whether I deal 1.0 critical damage or 2x critical damage, as long as I get these benfits, justifying it with stuff like that is just..I dunno, I don't feel like it's right, as someone who has played crit focused builds for a while now.

Utility includes stuff like:
Amplified skill effects (example: Geldoren, Cutthroat and breakdown for knockdown)
Amplified weapon effects (Ryeser, Graailty, Skullcaver,Shotguns with one punch KO, etc.)

And the best part, momentum, whether its through Fleur or through critting with 2 weapons, staying an action above your opponent assures they can almost never punish you for overstepping boundaries, or you can burst them down with other abilities that follow crits.(Like lowering your opponent's DEF with Geldoren and then Ether invitation them, or move/haunting away)

Crits, are not for damage despite everything you did to nerf their damage.

this is why black knights cannot be crit 100% of the time by people who barely build crit in their skill builds, you get kited into eternity.
(this is why boneheart enchant exists for them, so even the strongest of crit builds have trouble getting past, usually achieving only 20-30%, which is completely fair)

It is also why critical hits dominate over mages, they do not benefit from critical hits usually and don't have essentially 9 momentum like duelists or anyone dual wielding. (When I say essentially, its basically just that, with everyone achieving 110-150% critical hit chances)

[Neus]

You don't think the 'free' sources of critical need nerfs, but feel critical is too high? Am I misunderstanding you because that seems a little contrary.

[Autumn]

I'm trying not being contrary? I'll try to explain as best as I can, as the system we have in the live server, compared to the beta server, is the more fair version of critical builds.

Critical is high because of the buffs to critical stats and the nerfs to critical evade, this only needs to be reverted, or come to an in-between, and everything would be fine, no one would complain.

-SKI Used to be 0.5 crit per 1 SKI.
-Now SKI is 1 crit per 1 SKI

-LUC used to be 0.5 crit per 1 LUC
-now LUC is 1 crit per 1 LUC

-DEF used to be 0.5 crit evade per 1 DEF
-now it doesn't add any crit evade.

My only solution for an in-between of the two, similar to how you handled Aptitude, is that you could make SKI 1:1 for crit, but LUC as 1:2 for crit (Or vice versa)

While giving DEF it's crit evade back, a tank generally doesn't build LUC, nor do they really build much faith either.

This way that critical hits are not (almost always) 100%+

[Sawrock]

I agree with Spoops in that Defense needs critical evade back, as Defense is a bit lackluster without it, in my opinion. Same for Resistance and Status Resist, but that's for another topic.

[Rendar]

So, I guess I'll provide some visual evidence here, just to solidify that hey, maybe critical bonuses (with just stats and weapon mods) is a tad insane.

Here is a picture of a character that Sawrock plays.



This character doesn't look impressive because they're a glass cannon, but people build similar things to this exact character archetype all the time, generally with about the same stats. (Other races can compensate for human failure). Squishy Glass cannon, build could be better but thats how Saw rolls.

Here is my character.


(PS: Missing 25 crit evade in the picture because no boneheart is equipped)
My character has nothing in the way of being offensive because I am a BK/Priest. I built up my FAI and LUC specifically so I couldn't be crit. Not only can I instantly lose 40 crit evade if someone uses dark water (or black bubble) on me... I also have no real options for fighting back. I'm using a mugendai because it scales better for me due to godrod still being bugged. If God Rod did work, I'd likely use the Overgrowth staff, even though it doesn't fit the theme of the character whatsoever because it isn't shitty STR scaling like the SoE, or low power like the other staves. My build (with just a mugendai) is limited to very few offensive moves (almost all of which can be shut down with a good silence.)

Hanging
Holy Spark
Shine Ray
Needle (man that minor damage is gonna be lovely)
Gentle Torrent
Invocations from Priest (hahahaha no)
Holy Arrow
Kel
Anddd Basic attacks (should I ever hit).

Now looking between our stats, you'll see that his crit is just shy of my 155 actual crit evade. This would seem to make it that VA/Kensei is fine and dandy and no problems are there. Except Kensei reduces my crit evade, evade, and hit by 15 points (more if he does some janky stuff with status afflictions iirc). If he attacks my back, he gets +20 crit from VA. If he uses Poise he gets +18 (*2 if its perfect poise). If he uses Northern Wind, it's +30. If he uses Eastern Wind, that's another +9 or 10 SKI.

So calculating that all in all

Attacker Bonuses
Weapon+stats so far - +146
Blade Mastery maybe not factored in - +5
Back Attack - +20
Perfect Poise - +36
Northern Wind - +30
---------------------------
232-237% critical chance

If he really needs it, He can Veil Off and gain +60 more crit as well.

Defending Side
Stats+Armor so far - +105
Negation- +50
Kensei Shenanigans- -15
---------------------------
140 Crit Evade


There is nothing in the middle of the fight that I can do to raise my crit evade either. This means that the VA/Kensei in question actually has nearly a 100% critical chance on me. If that's 'balanced' I'm. Iunno. I think we have more pressing matters than the Reckoning.


If we focus on what Spo was saying, in shifting 1/2 of DEF into crit evade once more, and lowering either SKI's CRIT chance (which is preferable, since SKI is a god-stat at the moment) or LUC's crit chance to 1/2 of what it is...

The Attacker will get about.. -25 crit (or -30 if LUC).

The defender will get about +17 crit evade.

This brings it at least, somewhat more in line to 'balanced'... The Black Knight is still getting 50-60% of the time, and a Veil Off will make it 100% again. The issue therein still lies in that people who aren't black knights? Or don't specifically build for FAI/LUC are still at a massive downside that they can, and will, be critically hit all of the time. If we reduced SKI and LUC to giving only 0.5% crit per, it'd make BKs have a good deal of crit evade, and would make it so normal people that aren't BKs don't get crit 100% of the time.

[Chaos]

I'm not quite sure if people realize this, but Defense and Resistance are already very good stats. Getting a guaranteed portion of someone's damage thrown away before everything else is always incredibly useful, and unlike the original combat system, DEF/RES are almost impossible to completely bypass. Not to mention that each of them goes towards solid elements (Earth for AoE attacks/skills, Dark for VA/Hexer/Ghost), and find at least one or two good uses with certain skills (Stalemate/Checkmate for DEF, Wraithguard/Rebound for RES).

That being said....

Rendar, your post only really suggests that the skills are the ones that make critical chances 'imbalanced'. Even then, like you said, even if you were to just softcap your anti-critical stats while they went over the limit with their critical stats, a build that relies on criticals will be shut down without stacking up their skills. In fact, let me explain the reason why you're making your argument using a build that is entirely reliant on criticals, rather than a typical build: What your Dullahan has is enough to stop and/or significantly hinder criticals from anything less, and you know it. In fact, even in this case, if someone's all-out building for high critical chances, why should their gimmick have to be nerfed just because it can achieve just that, especially at such a high price for every other stat they possess?

In any case, DEF does not need to get its +Critical Evade back; the crit evade stats are fine as they stand. The only thing that needs a check in that department are the skills, and even then, I think we need a comparison that doesn't involve a critical gimmick before we can make a solid judgment.