Merciless Gaze is useless

Correct me if I am wrong.

1 Merciless Gaze give 15% of Hits converted to Crits.

2 We can safely assume that the player has 50% chance of Hits for each attack, since the player’s accuracy won’t get too far from the enemy’s defense in most case.

3 In a critical hit, we get 25% more damage and 50% more penetration.

Let’s just put the penetration topic aside, and then the damage increase is 15%×50%×25%=1.875% additive DPS increase, on average.

 

In contrast, one point of Might would give me 3%×50% (Hit) + 3%×20%×50%(Graze) = 1.8% additive DPS increase on average.

 

When calculating DPS, I take the chance of crit, hit, graze and miss into consideration.

The math is more or less correct, though the main benefit of a critical hit in this game is the bonus penetration so I would hesitate to neglect it in your analysis of the skill.

Crits also increase the duration of status effects by 25%, which can stack with the increased status effect duration from boosting Intellect with an inspiration. Infuse with Vital Essence and Merciless Graze can make for some pretty potent status effects.

Ahhh... "useless" - my trigger word.

 

Crits have a bigger impact on spells than they have on weapon attacks. Especially since you can't enchant spells with bonus PEN and dmg or use them with another PEN-boosting offensive ability like Crippling Strike or Penetrating Strike.

 

If you take Power Level into consideration (raises your abilities' base damage) then a +25% increase in dmg becomes more interesting.

 

Also crits are more about PEN than the additive dmg increase. Especially on PotD you will sometimes have trouble to penetrate with spells if you only hit. If you can turn an underpenetration into full penetration with a crit that means a tremendous dmg increase.

 

The spell duration is also very long.

 

So it's not "useless". You could also stack some more conversions to macke the whole mechanic worthwhile (like Battlemage could add Disciplined Strikes to Merciless gaze for an overall conversion rate of 36%).

 

Having said that: it surely should get a buff. 25% would be good. Generally the conversion numbers in Deadfire are too low. Because the cons are:

 

- Conversions don't stack additively but get multiplied because one conversion chance is checked after the other (and checking stops once they are all done or one triggers). A 0.15 with a 0.25 conversion only leads to an overall chance of 0.36, not 0.4 - and so on. The more you stack the less impact.

- The better your ACC compared to the enemies' defenses and the more you crit "naturally" the weaker this conversion becomes.

- Crit damage is lower.

- You need to get the spell (ability point or grimoire) and "waste" a spell use in combat. While stuff like Dirty Fighting (+10%) is a passive... 

 

I still think that some designers who determine the numbers have no grasp how the mechanics are implemented.
Reminder: guns got -25% crit damage with "Blunted Criticals" because somebody thought that +25% crit damage and -25% crit damage would result to +0% crit damage - which is not true due to double inversion. Now it got altered to -15%.

 

ALl in all: not useless - but could do better.

Edited December 18, 2018 by Boeroer

Ahhh... "useless" - my trigger word.

 

Crits have a bigger impact on spells than they have on weapon attacks. Especially since you can't enchant spells with bonus PEN and dmg or use them with another PEN-boosting offensive ability like Crippling Strike or Penetrating Strike.

 

If you take Power Level into consideration (raises your abilities' base damage) then a +25% increase in dmg becomes more interesting.

 

Also crits are more about PEN than the additive dmg increase. Especially on PotD you will sometimes have trouble to penetrate with spells if you only hit. If you can turn an underpenetration into full penetration with a crit that means a tremendous dmg increase.

 

The spell duration is also very long.

 

So it's not "useless". You could also stack some more conversions to macke the whole mechanic worthwhile (like Battlemage could add Disciplined Strikes to Merciless gaze for an overall conversion rate of 36%).

 

Having said that: it surely should get a buff. 25% would be good. Generally the conversion numbers in Deadfire are too low. Because the cons are:

 

- Conversions don't stack additively but get multiplied because one conversion chance is checked after the other (and checking stops once they are all done or one triggers). A 0.15 with a 0.25 conversion only leads to an overall chance of 0.36, not 0.4 - and so on. The more you stack the less impact.

- The better your ACC compared to the enemies' defenses and the more you crit "naturally" the weaker this conversion becomes.

- Crit damage is lower.

- You need to get the spell (ability point or grimoire) and "waste" a spell use in combat. While stuff like Dirty Fighting (+10%) is a passive... 

 

I still think that some designers who determine the numbers have no grasp how the mechanics are implemented.

Reminder: guns got -25% crit damage with "Blunted Criticals" because somebody thought that +25% crit damage and -25% crit damage would result to +0% crit damage - which is not true due to double inversion. Now it got altered to -15%.

 

ALl in all: not useless - but could do better.

I like it when someone beat my points with concrete detail and sound logic.

You forgot about all the effects that proc on critic (from items and passives). Lot of spells interrupt on critic.

 

critics are badass. Merciless gaze effect is badass on your char!

Critcs are badass?





Well even if crits would be supercrankredonkulous Merciless Gaze's conversion chance would still be too low compared to stuff like Disciplined Strikes and Dirty Fighting.

Edited December 18, 2018 by Boeroer

Agree, particularly considering the meager duration.

Hm? It's 45 base which scales with Power Level which then scales with INT bonus. That's not what I'd call "meager".

 

I mean ok: if you wanted to keep the low conversion number of 15% then a longer duration would be great.

Edited December 19, 2018 by Boeroer

Okay, my mistake. Still, as others wrote, other classes can do more on a semi-permanent basis.

Yes, I agree.

the gun critical dmg at release was really irritating. Dev put years on PnP systems and they don't have coding to do (and not all other things for a cRPG) it's why I would love if they don't try to reinvent rules at each games and work to polish a robust system.

 

How I see things :

- Merciless gaze have a lower effect but longer duration (effect like discipline strike last only 15sec vs 45sec for MG). Lot of strong buff have a small duration of 10-15sec.

- Wizard have lot of diversity. If all his buffs are the same as other classes, we all roll wizards. It's the price of his diversity. Some classes have a very narrow range of abilities, but the wizard can do many things and adapt to lot of situations with grimoires.

- A wizard is never a critic house in most traditional RPG. It's unfair to compare to some DPS heavy classes.

- The spell stack with other critic chances. A spellblade can have the passive + the spell.

 

There is lot of things I hate in deadfire, like caster that must learn spells like abilities and the lack of passives for them, but I don't thing merciless gaze is the most unbalanced spell. The big problem with casters in Deadfire is the limited spells slots of each level that make lot of spells less appealing.