Hi, I have been playing Wizard101 for a while now and I have always enjoyed the way the critical ratings worked. I understood that getting your critical rating to a certain point would guarantee you critical every time. Sure it was frustrating when I wouldn’t critical, but I at least knew that when I did critical, it would apply to everyone. I am now noticing that every time I critical with a character that doesn’t have a 100% chance to critical, it doesn’t apply the critical boost to every mob I hit with an attack. It also does not work on everyone for heals, it will sometimes just choose a couple people to boost the heal on. I’m not even sure if it works 100% of the time on my storm that has 100% crit rating, haven’t payed enough attention on that character yet to see if this is the case as well. I am very frustrated with how this works since now I not only don’t know when I will critical on some characters, i don’t even know if it will apply to every mob. I always was excited when I did critical because I knew it would pretty much double the damage for the whole attack. Now when I critical I’m not as excited since I figure it will miss some people or even the boss. This update took a lot of fun out of the game. I know you guys are trying to expand room for more gear or something for high level wizards so that the “fun can continue”, and you are trying to balance critical block(which I never paid attention to that much) but by so doing you took a huge chunk of fun out of the entire game for all characters of every level. I’m not even sure im wanting to continue playing the game that much due to this....please change critical back to the way it used to work!!!
I like the new system better. Under the old system boss monsters seemed to block way more frequently. Seriously, it was like 8 times out of 10 bosses like the Devourer or Prince Viggor would just critical block. So under the old system it was more like having a 100% chance of watching your criticals get completely blocked 80% of the time. So I didn't really "know" I would always be hitting for x2 damage under the old system either.
Even if the damage multiplier is no longer always x2 I feel like the damage output from players is still higher overall because more critical hits are actually going through even if they aren't as strong. two successful critical hits doing 1.6x damage is more total damage output than one successful critical hit doing x2 damage.
One issue I do have is that I don't think I've seen an enemy display the "Critical Blocked" animation even when they are taking what appears to be 1x damage. In fact, I don't think I've seen an enemy display a "Critical Blocked" animation ever since the update dropped. I feel like that must be a bug?
Also, I would like to see critical rating make more of a difference in damage at higher levels. From spreadsheets I've seen critical rating stops making as much of a difference after about 650-700+ rating or so, and it's better to just focus on outgoing damage instead. I think this is a game balance issue since critical is supposed to be Storm's signature stat going forward. Still, the new formula can apparently be tweaked much easier to potentially address this problem which is another advantage over the old system.
I think an issue I see is that mobs and bosses in PVE never critical at all with this new system. The only times that I have seen a mob or boss in PVE critical with this new system is when they have Vengeance (+20% critical chance) aura casted on them or when any of the critical and pierce global spells is casted.
In Avalon, I was in the Lair of the Bane Wyrm and the Scurvy Skirker and the Scurvy Skirker had Vengeance casted on them. While having Vengeance on them, they critical'd a blizzard on me, but luckily I blocked (the animation showed).
In Karamelle, I was in Uwe's Chamber and Morganthe (actor) casted Katabatic Wind (+25% ice pierce, +10% ice critical chance) and one of the following rounds, Morganthe (actor) casted Snowball Strike and critical'd.
So, in PVE, it does not seem impossible for mobs or bosses to critical, however, it seems they need an aura or a global that increases their chance to critical in order to critical.
Now, in regards to the invisible critical block animation that people often talk about, I think this is an oversight in terms of understanding how the new system works. You probably notice invisible critical block animations when attacking with AOE spells. However (I am going to put this in bold because this is important to understand), when you critical an AOE spell, it means that you have successfully critical'd on at least one enemy. Notice how I say "at least one." Meaning, when you critical an AOE spell, it does not automatically guarantee that you have successfully critical'd on every enemy. This is why we often see an invisible critical block because they were actually never critical'd on in the first place. I will say, for those enemies that we successfully critical on, it does not seem that they have much chance to block at all. I have never seen an enemy successfully block a critical in PVE with this new system.
It seems that the critical system still has some issues in the PVE environment, and I hope that Sparck can pass these concerns along to Ratbeard and Mattnetic for them to investigate and look into. :)
I like the new system better. Under the old system boss monsters seemed to block way more frequently. Seriously, it was like 8 times out of 10 bosses like the Devourer or Prince Viggor would just critical block. So under the old system it was more like having a 100% chance of watching your criticals get completely blocked 80% of the time. So I didn't really "know" I would always be hitting for x2 damage under the old system either.
Even if the damage multiplier is no longer always x2 I feel like the damage output from players is still higher overall because more critical hits are actually going through even if they aren't as strong. two successful critical hits doing 1.6x damage is more total damage output than one successful critical hit doing x2 damage.
One issue I do have is that I don't think I've seen an enemy display the "Critical Blocked" animation even when they are taking what appears to be 1x damage. In fact, I don't think I've seen an enemy display a "Critical Blocked" animation ever since the update dropped. I feel like that must be a bug?
Also, I would like to see critical rating make more of a difference in damage at higher levels. From spreadsheets I've seen critical rating stops making as much of a difference after about 650-700+ rating or so, and it's better to just focus on outgoing damage instead. I think this is a game balance issue since critical is supposed to be Storm's signature stat going forward. Still, the new formula can apparently be tweaked much easier to potentially address this problem which is another advantage over the old system.
With the new system, at least the way it is now, it stops mattering WELL before that. I critical almost every round in almost every fight, and have MAYBE 300 critical as a L130+ wizard (I have 7 wizards). My smallest wizard is in Avalon right now and it goes critical like every fight.
