I've heard some people say it doesn't matter, while others say it does. Well, I think it does.

With a dull iron katana (150/263/290), 19 strength, 8 dexterity, and Master level Pureblade, a slithering ooze took me 6 hits to kill:

You swing a dull iron katana at a slithering ooze. You cut him with a light wound.
You swing a dull iron katana at a slithering ooze. You cut him with a light wound.
You swing a dull iron katana at a slithering ooze. You cut him, leaving a messy gash.
You swing a dull iron katana at a slithering ooze. You cut him, leaving a messy gash.
You swing a dull iron katana at a slithering ooze. You cut him, opening up deep lacerations.
You swing a dull iron katana at a slithering ooze. You cut him, opening up deep lacerations.
The blade shears through a slithering ooze's body, coming clean through the other side with a strangely quiet swish. He appears
momentarily surprised, before his eyes glaze over in death and he collapses to the ground.
You have slain a slithering ooze.
With the same dull iron katana and the same stats, Fabled level Pureblade, a slithering ooze took 4 hits to kill:

You swing a dull iron katana at a slithering ooze. You cut him with a light wound.
You swing a dull iron katana at a slithering ooze. You cut him with a light wound.
You swing a dull iron katana at a slithering ooze. You cut him, leaving a messy gash.
You swing a dull iron katana at a slithering ooze. You cut him, opening up deep lacerations.
The blade shears through a slithering ooze's body, coming clean through the other side with a strangely quiet swish. He appears
momentarily surprised, before his eyes glaze over in death and he collapses to the ground.
You have slain a slithering ooze.
If you don't believe me, make an alt. Of course, I could have just been listening to uninformed people, and this could be common knowledge...

Do the test on a higher level mob, aka a garghast, goat, urn, abhorrence, manifestation.... Make sure combatstyle isn't agressive too, then see what the overall difference is, if it takes 25 swings at Master and 10 at Fabled, then yeah it makes a big difference, but if it takes 25 swings at Master and 23 at Fabled, would really mean the difference is insignificant.

insignificant or not, it makes a difference.

I've heard some people say it doesn't matter, while others say it does. Well, I think it does.

With a dull iron katana (150/263/290), 19 strength, 8 dexterity, and Master level Pureblade, a slithering ooze took me 6 hits to kill:

Also, isn't it dual wield knighthood that is supposed to be good at high levels, not pureblade/axelord?

Alot of PB's use 2 rapiers when hunting, just for the chance to get more crits if that is what ya mean. I don't I cant be bothered to make them and then try and sheathe them when I am jumped.

I've heard about that. Wouldn't the crits be smaller, and crits from a katana much bigger? Then the net result would be the same.

Yes, but in theory you could get one critical with a katana, and possibly an obliterating critical and a regular critical with 2 blades, thus giving more criticals and more damage, depending on what type of critical you get.

Alot of PB's use 2 rapiers when hunting, just for the chance to get more crits if that is what ya mean. I don't I cant be bothered to make them and then try and sheathe them when I am jumped.

just like combatstyle lightning's .17 increase isn't worth it to me either

That, my friend, is the real myth. I've seen calculations done in Achaea for monk attack combos versus mage single attacks, and the end result is the same. In fact, the single attacks may come out slightly ahead because of the huge increase they can see from a good critical. Combo attacks do less damage and the criticals matter less. The real problem in testing two-hander versus one-hander warriors is all the various stats that factor into the damage calculations...

Yeah. I tried that for about 5 minutes when I switched from blademaster to pureblade.

I was missing more than I was hitting. It's not worth doing.

Is it even that much?

Posted on May 2 2005, 07:55 PM

Some notes on critical hits and their relative effects.

Relative to each other, critical hits do not change damage ratios. But, they do change damage amounts. Example:

Attack A does 1000 damage.
Attack B does 1200 damage. 120% more, 200 in actual damage.
2x Crit on attack A does 2000 damage.
2x Crit on attack B does 2400 damage. Still 120% more, but 400 more actual damage.
In other words, the crit multiplier affects the damage difference too. Meaning that attacks that do more damage will outpace other attacks by the same factor as the multiplier of the crit on equivalent attacks.

More crits on smaller attacks DO help. Here's why:

Imagine a single attack that does 1000 damage.
Imagine a combo attack that does 1000 damage spread out over 1000 hits.

Now, imagine both attacks have the same crit chance, of say, 10%. If you average it out, yes, they'll do the same damage. Assuming you're averaging it out over 100,000 hits. Just take a typical round. You use your single attack doing 1k damage, and you have a 10% chance of getting a crit. You've done 1000 damage. You use your thousand hit attack, each hit doing 1 points. If 10% are 2x crits, you'll get 100 crits, for an extra 100 damage. So your combo attack has done 1100 damage. And that's a median value, meaning every round should do that much. On a round-per-round basis, more attacks easily wins. You will consistently do more damage than the single attack. The median damage on the single hit would be 1000. Now, when the single attack does get a crit, it outpaces the multiple attacks by a lot. But only for that round. Would you rather have one round against one mob benefitting? Or would you rather have the practically guaranteed higher-than-normal damage round EVERY round against EVERY mob? Basically, the multiple attacks build up their advantage every round. The single attack falls behind every round until it gets crits. It's an advantage on mobs that lifesteal, and mobs that flee. That's about it.

What you have to remember is that your 1000 hits aren't being done to the same mob with infinite health. So, instead of looking at the full damage of 1000 hits, you're looking at how many hits are necessary to do the full health of the mobs you bash. I'll use an extreme example here to illustrate the point, but, it is a real situation I have verified before.

Let's again take two separate bashing skills, both doing the same damage. One skill consisting of a single hit, the other consisting of two hits. Let's put the damage at exactly 1000. A single hit attack doing 1000, and a dual hit attack with each hit doing 500. Now, let's look at how this works out against actual mobs. If we take a mob with 1000 health, for both people it will require one attack to kill, and thus there will be no difference between the two people for number of attacks needed to kill a mob.

If we raise the health of the mob to 2500, it will now take three attacks from either person to kill. However, a 2x crit from either person potentially reduces that number from three to two. A 4x crit on any of the individual hits making up either attack (including the dual hit, 4*500 + 500 = 2500) will instantly kill the mob. That means every 2x crit scored potentially saves either person one attack, and every 4x or higher potentially saves two attacks.

This rather vehemently contradicts the idea that an infrequent large crit will balance out against frequent smaller crits. When measuring pure damage, the comparison holds true. But not when that damage is divided out amongst mobs. The person with the dual attack should score crits over twice as often, saving over twice as many attacks. I said "potentially" earlier because mobs run out of health. For both people, any crit scored on a third attack won't matter, because the mob would have died anyway. 4x or greater crits will be partially wasted on the second hit, in that a 2x crit would also have killed it anyway. However, the number of times three or two attacks will be necessary to kill the mob is also going to be different. There won't actually be an equal number of first, second, and third attacks. Every mob will take a first attack. But if it dies on that first attack, it won't require a second or third attack. If it dies on the second attack, it will not require a third attack. This skews the ratio to more heavily favor the number of incidences of needing one attack per mob compared to needing two or three attacks per mob. Which, again, favors the dual attack with a greater number of fight ending criticals on the first or second attacks. That's why I said they should save over twice as many attacks as compared to the single attack

The prior example used a situation in which the mob health divided by the damage left a large remainder which the multiple hit attack would benefit more from. It holds true with smaller remainders, but much less dramatically so. You'll still realize the benefits of a higher number of fight ending criticals however, which also reduces the number of wasted criticals scored when the mob is already going to die anyway. And as your critrate rises, you'll also benefit more from the larger crits on larger mobs. Single attacks experience a topping out effect. If an 8x crit instantly kills a mob, then you gain no benefit from scoring a 16x or 32x. So as your critrate rises and you score more 16x and 32x crits, you don't gain anything from them. This relegates them into the category of a wasted crit even if scored on the first attack, whereas the multiple hit attacks will benefit from them while still retaining the advantages described above.

Of course, a lot of this is dependant on mob health. If the mob for the above example had 1 million health, there wouldn't be a very significant difference between the two attacks. Thankfully, most mobs have rather less than that. I think the most I've ever seen was under 70,000 (Yud's Wyverns) extrapolated from testing out attacks against player loyals who can report damage (falcons, baalzadeens) and then counting how many hits something took. In comparison, even something like Kemnast has under 32,000 health. He just takes your health a lot and calls it his own.

So, if you're a real hardcore basher...you can test out your damage on mobs. You can test it when borrowing arties or with and without stat boosting runes or wielding different damage weapons. Once you know how much you're doing, you can repeat that process while bashing and figure out how much health a mob has by counting hits. Then you can pick out the best mobs based on the factors related above and your damage and current critrate and number of hits per attack to maximize your bashing speed.

Anyway, all else being equal, more hits per attack really does gain an advantage from crits against mobs unless you're beating on something with infinite health, lifestealing, or regeneration. Then being able to end it in one big hit becomes a much better way. Sometimes, pretty much the only way unless you've got a big enough group.

I really liked reading stuff by Mulkerrin on the Achaea forums and he was really good about having accurate, detailed information. He was the one that talked most about critical hits and comparing them in different situations. I think most of his posts are still relevant despite being for a different game and for being written a year ago. I'll quote two of them here.

And from another thread but about the same subject matter...

However, the statistical Expected Value for both is equal.

We must agree to disagree.... just like combatstyle lightning's .17 increase isn't worth it to me either