As has been documented here and in other IREs for what seems to be forever, there exists a very real imbalance between the hunting prowess of classes that have weak, fast attacks (monks, dual wield warriors) and classes that have a single, long balance attack (everyone else).

I contend that this discrepancy stems predominantly from the fact that denizen health is a finite resource. Once we get into critical hit territory, short, fast attacks gain the full benefit of virtually all critical hits. The higher damage of the single attack is meaningless when most of the time, the extra damage of a critical is simply overkill. Even at my relatively low circle (78), I've observed enough high level hunting from monks, warriors and mages to determine that there are some very real discrepancies between the relative value of crits.

This has all been said before, and the same old arguments have always been circulated. I hope to put a fresh spin on the topic.

My suggestion is simple: for classes that have a single, long balance attack, critical hits that kill the monster should have any remaining damage transferred to the next monster in the room. Any damage that would usually 'disappear' would now be transferred to a new monster, ensuring that classes like mages and guardians receive some measure of extra benefit from their critical hit rate. To further balance the critical discrepancy, the critical damage could be passed on to a third monster if the second happens to be killed by the initial damage (I'm thinking of a case with a World Shattering critical on a monster with low health).

Some examples will help clarify the proposal. This example denizen has 100 hp at base. Example player deals 50 damage per attack.

Mob A has 10 hp. Mob B has 100hp. Player scores a CRITICAL hit for 100 damage. Mob A dies (-10 hp), Mob B has 10 hp (-90 hp).

Mobs A and B have 100 hp. Player scores a CRUSHING CRITICAL hit for 200 damage. Mobs A and B die.

Mobs A, B, C and D have 100hp. Player scores an ANNIHILATINGLY POWERFUL CRITICAL hit for 800 damage. All four mobs die. 400 damage overkill.


Obviously this is an extreme example, but the principle remains the same: the 'wasted' damage from critical hits should go into other mobs in the room.

From a lore perspective, it is useful that the classes that suffer most from the critical problem all have convenient explanations for dealing damage to several denizens in the room at once. Mages can have a particularly strong staffcast, axelords can cleave right through their enemy into the next target, guardian symbols can flare with unexpected power. A simple, one or two line notification that critical damage has passed into other denizens is all that is required, something like:


You have scored a CRUSHING CRITICAL hit!
No longer able to stand the brutal force of the icy waters, a mutilated mugwump struggles for one last breath before succumbing to death.
The sheer power of your attack carries on through the broken corpse, striking a mutilated mugwump!


This base proposal is naturally crude, and I look forward to ideas from other players. Some other ideas I had for controlling and balancing the dispersion of critical damage include:

* Having extra critical damage affect only the same kind of denizen that the attack was directed towards (i.e. can't kill Illithoid + inner worm in the same strike)
* Capping the number of targets that can be affected by a single critical hit (which will only really come into play with higher level players bashing low level denizens)
* Enabling control over when the ability takes place, i.e., CONFIG UBERCRIT ON/OFF (for situations where you might not want to aggro extra denizens, such as hunting beyond your circle)
* Granting a percentage of the wasted damage as damage to the next mob (i.e. 50% of the remaining critical damage instead of the full 100%)
* Granting the bonus critical damage to all classes, instead of just slow balance classes

Ultimately, all this is about is converting some of the wasted crit damage that any hunter has come to experience into something a little more valuable. It will save the majority of hunters some valuable time within the confines of the existing critical system, and will not usurp monks in their dominant bashing position: rather, it will bring some much needed balance into the ability of various classes to hunt.

I disagree with the idea that your critical strike on one target should continue on into a target that looks similar.

I thought your idea was going to be that the chances of getting the stronger critical hits should decrease with the lower health of a mob, thus you would get your best hits closer to the start of a fight and end with the more sane damage, avoiding the "splattered it all over the walls with that world shattering hit" scenario.

The problem with carrying the damage over from one mob to another might be more problematic then helpful. What if you had a hard fight with one mob, score a crit and kill the mob, and PO another mob that you're not ready for?

I know that like at 80+ pretty much everything you hunt is aggressive (catacombs, Astral etc.), and therefore wouldn't matter, but crits start appearing at about 60+, when things AREN'T always aggressive. This I think would cause undue problems for those with long equilibrium/long balance recovery. They aggro another mob, have virtually no health and have to wait before they can either run or shield.

I don't know if it's a fact or not, but I believe that greater the diffrence between the "level" of the mob, and your own level, the more likely you are to get a crit hit.

It might be a good idea to have any crit become like a "cleave" attack, where it hits any other mobs that are allready aggro on you.

@fireweaver: the OP makes allowances for that.

Seems like an interesting idea to me *shrug*

Seems like every time I get an annihilating critical hit it's on a merian child, so I know the feeling of frustration. But I don't think the solution is to have that damage carry over to another mob. I envision myself hunting something a bit too powerful for me and wanting a couple of seconds to rest up before I attack the next one, and getting destroyed because I made the next one aggro due to a crit (also: just wait until someone starts griefing low-level players by killing every krokani in the room with a single hit).

How about making critical hits active attacks in the following manner:

Upon attacking a denizen, you may become "charged." This would be when you formerly scored a critical hit. You have a short period of time (20 seconds?) to discharge or lose it. Upon doing so, your next attack is a critical hit (of the strength equal to what you charged). Therefore if you become charged when something is almost dead, you can bank it for the next denizen. You may have up to three charges stored at a given time.

Additionally, it wouldn't take/consume/use balance/equilibrium to discharge. It'd be like a free action.

Narsrim's idea is cool, but it feels like it'd be hard to code in.

Daganev, I think an admin has come out to say that crits don't vary depending on your level or the mob's level, but I'm not sure...

No more difficult than anything else, really.

um, wow. I absolutely abhor this idea.

As somebody who plays a squishy race, Mugwump, transferring damage from one mob to the next is asking for death, especially if you need time between mobs to regain health.

It wouldn't be such a big deal with aggro mobs, but with those mobs that don't attack untill provoked, this would be an issue.

I believe he addressed this by adding a toggle function,

Bashing imbalances were just addressed via the runes that can be put on staves/symbols. Might not be perfectly equal across the board, but it's pretty close.

How would this work for crit immune mobs?

It would fail. The charge fizzles when discharged on a critical immune mob.

How about instead of it 'cleaving' to the next mob, you gain a buff to increase your crit chance until you crit or it expires? If you crit with this 'free' crit, you don't get that increase crit buff, so you don't maintain the buff indefinitely.

Thanks for the feedback guys, a few points:

To those worried about non aggressive mobs I know exactly what you mean. That's why if anything like this would be implemented, you'd want to toggle it: just like a warrior who's bashing denizens he can't tank (lolwut?) might not be so trigger happy on smashing his macro over and over.

To Celina, I think I posted this just after the new runes were implemented. They definitely made a significant impact on hunting, but I think there is still a bit of an imbalance. And I think everyone can share the frustration experienced by those one in a million criticals that are about as useful as hitting the mob with a wet sock. Even monks would benefit from having their World Shattering's cleave.

Narsrim's idea is technically better if the admins ever considered a revisitation of critical hit mechanics. The ability to store up your crits would make bashing something more than hit macro every balance: you'd have to optimise hunting by storing up criticals on one mob then unleashing them on the next. For a mage in particular that would be a powerful buff: every saved staffcast is ~3 seconds saved, and look at how much we love the .5 seconds of the rune. It would also allow you to hunt things you'd otherwise struggle with, like a room full of defensive mobs: charge up criticals on a loner, jump in the room to take out one enemy quickly, jump out to avoid being smashed, rinse and repeat.

Other possibilities include turning wasted critical damage into a reduction on balance/equilibrium (i.e. score a world shattering crit on a near dead mob and your resulting equilibrium cost is near 0) or grant a flat haste buff on your next x attacks (reduce the next 3 attacks by .5 seconds). In light of the hunting buffs, what other ways are there to make the critical system more interesting?

Nice ideas but I would see two major problems.

First, I fail to see how this could be reasonably explained in game. If you are lucky to score an über-hit to someone, how can it possibly affect someone else after that? You would need -quite- advanced quantum physics to explain it, I suppose.

Second, for group hunting this would mean that the highest-level person would just get even more kills than currently, wouldn't it?

"cleave" It's a feat in DnD that if you kill one creature, you get to attack another in it's proximity. I.e.,you slice a creature in half,and the end of your attack hits the guy behind him.

There is a bit of one, yes, but it's very insignificant at this point. Crits aren't a big deal. Once you actually get a decent level (90+) they are a dime a dozen. The untimely crit as a midbie that results in epic overkill of a mob isn't something that requires massive coding changes.

I leveled to 87 as a mage, I understand, but these buffs have really fixed any cross archetype balancing issues.

Mmhm. Yeah, as simple as that. Silly me.

And for bards those critical notes are so epic that they go in from one ear and out from the other and travel all the way to the next person? That seems slightly amusing but I suppose it could be explained somehow...