Mod Question: Offense v. Critical Damage

Thrawn(when you don’t need him to go 1st/2nd), Tarkin, krennic, and MT all should have offense mods because of special damage. My MT has 6300 special damage and there isn’t many toons she can’t put into the yellow with her opening AOE. Add EP to that list with EP and Talzin benefitting the most because of their kit mechanics.

It’s the best way to boost Special damage because offense primaries are only 5.88%. And as a whole special damage toons have low crit chance

@StarWars2nd At your early stage, you might want a speed set for him before offense. Thrawn going fast is generally very important. He also isn’t the damage dealer so offense sets aren’t so important for him.

However, with zeta on unique and leading an empire squad, he will be countering a lot and the offense boost would make those counters count and his speed wouldn’t be as important.

In summary if he isn’t 150 speed leading empire, just go speed. As fat as you can get him.

It’s hard to keep him in fracture without an empire squad around him....so it comes down to the squad around him for his speed needs.

There's really 2 things to consider in Crit damage vs Offense mods: Crit Chance, and the value of your offense primaries/secondaries.

Firstly, in no situation (outside of a Nihilus lead) is an offense triangle better than a crit damage triangle. So to begin with the damages we are comparing are 186% crit damage vs. 216% crit damage, a difference of 30% crit damage. 100/(186/30) = a 16.12% increase in damage from crit damage mods. This is modified by your crit chance, but we'll get back to that.

The value of an offense set decreases as you pile more and more offense primaries and secondaries on that toon. To begin with, we are guaranteed to have at least one offense primary. This means that our initial offense before the set is counted is 105.88 100/(105.88/10) and is actually a 9.45% increase in damage. This means that our breakeven point before more offense primaries and secondaries are added in is 100/(16.12/9.45) = 58.8% crit chance.

Conversely, as each offense primary and secondary gets added it increases the damage that the crit damage set will provide, compared to the offense set where each one lowers the value of the damage.

Now if we are analyzing the difference between these two, it is probably because we are trying to maximize their damage, which means we are going to have a lot more offense on them than just the one primary. So let's see where the breakpoint lies when we have 3 offense primaries and a crit damage triangle: 100/((16.12 * (105.88/11.76 +1))/(100/(117.64/10))) 16.12 * ((105.88/11.76)/100 + 1) = 17.57% This is the value of a crit damage set with 3 offense primaries and a crit damage triangle. 100/(117.64/10)= 8.50 This is the value of the offense set with 3 offense primaries. So the breakeven point for crit chance with 3 offense primaries is 100/(17.57/8.5) = 48.37% crit chance to break even.

So lets do some numbers here to see what maximum possible offense primary and secondaries with a crit damage triangle will get us as the breakeven point. I will make some assumptions here. Firstly I will use 3000 damage as the base since that seems pretty average. Secondly I will assume that around 150 is the max flat offense secondary since I haven't seen much higher than that. Finally I will assume that 1.6% is around the max %offense secondary since I haven't seen much higher than that.

So at maximum offense, the offense set would make 3000 * 1.2244 + 6(150) + (3000 * .1) = 4873.2 offense. 100/(4873.2/300)= 6.156% increase in damage.

At maximum offense, the crit damage set would be (3000 * 1.2244 + 900)/(3000 * 1.0588) * 16.12 = 23.21% increase in damage.

So finally, 100/(23.21/6.156)= 26.52% crit for the breakeven point in this scenario.

What to takeaway from this: Offense mods are better in the beginning when you don't have a lot of crit chance or offense secondaries, but as you get more and bigger offense and crit chance secondaries, crit damage becomes better.

To put it another way, offense mods are better when you have a young account, but crit damage mods are likely to be better if you have an older account.

"DedrickRogue;c-1430652" wrote:
Base character has 150% CD, add a triangle it's 36% more meaning 186% CD, full set adds 30% bring CD to 216%

You're saying with a higher CD %, you also need a higher CC % to even out to offense, correct? Because that isn't how common sense says it works. You wouldn't need to Crit hit as often because your Crits that do land are doing +66% damage over a "normal" critical, which means you can land less crits to get the same total damage output.

Either way, I'm out. Too late for this much math.

I was struggling with understanding Anakin's posts as well, as you're right, it does defy common sense (and honestly, Anakin didn't explain it very well). I set up a spreadsheet showing average damage under each of the five situations (No mods, Offense Mods no CD triangle, Offense Mods with CD triangle, CD mods no CD triangle, CD mods with CD triangle), assuming 1000 damage on a non crit, unmodified hit.

The graph makes it clear what's happening - your average damage from an increased crit doesn't catch up to the damage increase from offense mods (which increases both critical damage and base damage, unlike an increased crit, which only increases critical damage) until you hit a certain critical chance threshold. The key is remembering that offense mods increase your crit damage as well as your base damage.

There's also leader abilities to take into account. An HK or JTR lead means that crit damage is better without question. Having R2 in your comp also increases the value of Crit damage mods. A lead like Wedge or Vader that increases offense will actually raise the value of the offense set though.

There's no real easy answer to this question. There are so many factors that can change it, it is really tough. The only real way to tell is to do the math like I just did with each of the mod setups you plan to use.

Most people aren't willing to do that though, so I would say that unless you have uber offensive crit damage mods, or crit chance/damage gains from a leader ability that offense mods are likely to be better.

"Woodroward;c-1431017" wrote:
There's really 2 things to consider in Crit damage vs Offense mods: Crit Chance, and the value of your offense primaries/secondaries.

Firstly, in no situation (outside of a Nihilus lead) is an offense triangle better than a crit damage triangle. So to begin with the damages we are comparing are 186% crit damage vs. 216% crit damage, a difference of 30% crit damage. 100/(186/30) = a 16.12% increase in damage from crit damage mods. This is modified by your crit chance, but we'll get back to that.

The value of an offense set decreases as you pile more and more offense primaries and secondaries on that toon. To begin with, we are guaranteed to have at least one offense primary. This means that our initial offense before the set is counted is 105.88 100/(105.88/10) and is actually a 9.45% increase in damage. This means that our breakeven point before more offense primaries and secondaries are added in is 100/(16.12/9.45) = 58.8% crit chance.

Conversely, as each offense primary and secondary gets added it increases the damage that the crit damage set will provide, compared to the offense set where each one lowers the value of the damage.

Now if we are analyzing the difference between these two, it is probably because we are trying to maximize their damage, which means we are going to have a lot more offense on them than just the one primary. So let's see where the breakpoint lies when we have 3 offense primaries and a crit damage triangle: 100/((16.12 * (105.88/11.76 +1))/(100/(117.64/10))) 16.12 * ((105.88/11.76)/100 + 1) = 17.57% This is the value of a crit damage set with 3 offense primaries and a crit damage triangle. 100/(117.64/10)= 8.50 This is the value of the offense set with 3 offense primaries. So the breakeven point for crit chance with 3 offense primaries is 100/(17.57/8.5) = 48.37% crit chance to break even.

So lets do some numbers here to see what maximum possible offense primary and secondaries with a crit damage triangle will get us as the breakeven point. I will make some assumptions here. Firstly I will use 3000 damage as the base since that seems pretty average. Secondly I will assume that around 150 is the max flat offense secondary since I haven't seen much higher than that. Finally I will assume that 1.6% is around the max %offense secondary since I haven't seen much higher than that.

So at maximum offense, the offense set would make 3000 * 1.2244 + 6(150) + (3000 * .1) = 4873.2 offense. 100/(4873.2/300)= 6.156% increase in damage.

At maximum offense, the crit damage set would be (3000 * 1.2244 + 900)/(3000 * 1.0588) * 16.12 = 23.21% increase in damage.

So finally, 100/(23.21/6.156)= 26.52% crit for the breakeven point in this scenario.

What to takeaway from this: Offense mods are better in the beginning when you don't have a lot of crit chance or offense secondaries, but as you get more and bigger offense and crit chance secondaries, crit damage becomes better.

To put it another way, offense mods are better when you have a young account, but crit damage mods are likely to be better if you have an older account.

@Woodroward My math was not wrong one bit, but knowledge on mods might be. So offense bonuses from offense set is not % of %?
That said, 10% offense bonus from the set is 10% of no-mod damage, right?

Well then I gotta fix the whole math because the base assumption was wrong.

1) No crit damage primary mod
Base Damage×1.1 +Extra Damage from miscellaneous offense primary/secondary+ Base Damage×1.1×CC×0.5+ Extra Miscellaneous offense×CCx0.5
(Offense set)

vs.
(I'll call miscellaneous offense up from primary ^ secondaries as 'Extra')

(CD set)
Base Damage+Extra+(Base Damage+Extra)×0.8×CC

(Offense set)-(CD set)
= 0.1 Base Dmg - (Base dmg × CC× 0.25) -(0.3 ×Extra×CC)
ok so we can't determine a clear breakeven point. It not only depends on CC but also on Extra miscellaneous damage from primary/secondary.

However if 'Extra' is near 0, the result will be near as I calculated previously.
40% breakeven point for No CD primary triangle characters/46.xx% breakeven point for 36% CD primary triangle characters.

0.1-0.25CC-0.3CC × EP >0
(EP is the % of extra dmg out of original dmg. If it's 5.88%, the figure is 0.0588)

0.1 > (0.25+0.3EP)CC
CC <0.1/(0.25+0.3EP)
since the the addition of 0.3EP trivially increased the divider, the breakeven point will clearly bea little bit less than 40%.
So maybe 39.xx% mostly.

The case for crit dmg primary triangle is almost same as above.

CC <0.1/(0.214+0.3EP)
Again the breakeven point will be subtly lower than 46.73%. Somewhere 45~46% most likely.

Summary for TL:DR
Roughly if CC is higher than 40% go for CD set. (When you don't have 36% CD triangle)

When you have 36% CD triangle, use CD mod if your CC is higher than roughly 46%

The other issue here is the time it takes to farm the characters needed to get these mods. And the time it takes to farm these mods with high speed secondaries.

For rebels, who inherently have high crit chance and abilities that give even more crit chance, it is a no brainer to go for crit damage mods from the start. And crit damage triangles are a must for these high crit teams.

Characters that inherenrly have a low crit chance, or dont crit like nihlis lead, offense would do more damage. But DN doesnt do much damage from his basic anyway, so i wouldnt put offense mods on him at all.

As a result, my prefence (since i use rebels) is to just focus on crit damage mods with a crit chance set.