Talent upgrading abilities seem to follow a trend - they make it 50% stronger. Examples would be upgrades to Arcane Veil, Lay on Hands or Flames of Devotion.

 

How does Critical Focus compare to them? Very poorly, unfortunately.

 

Zealous Focus gives 6 accuracy (let's ignore second bonus for a moment). To make it 50% more we need 3 more accuracy points. How much is 3 accuracy? In best case it converts 3/100 from misses to criticals:

 

3 * ( 1.5 - 0 ) = 4.5 weapon damage / 100 attacks.

 

Not bad. But there are situations where accuracy gives less. It may also convert misses to hits or grazes to criticals. How much weapon damage per 100 attacks is that? Let's see:

 

3 * ( 1 - 0 ) = 3 weapon damage / 100 attacks.

3 * ( 1.5 - 0.5 ) = 3 weapon damage / 100 attacks.

 

And now the Critical Focus, that converts hits to crits. Max hit chance is 50% so it can affect up to 2.5% of your attacks.

 

2.5 * ( 1.5 - 1 ) = 1.25 weapon damage / 100 attacks.

 

Ugh.. that's bad. It's 3.6 to 2.4 times worse than it should.

 

 

Fortunately Obsidian is not afraid to do 'doubling and halving' even after game release. Heck, they even divided some skills/spells by 4 or 5! It shouldn't be any problem for them to triple Critical Focus bonus.

I always take Zealous Focus for Pallegina, and never Critical Focus. Waste of a talent.

And if we do not ignore Graze to Hit conversion Critical focus would need another 5% Hit to Crit conversion. It would need to be quadrupled.

Ya dude.  the only thing I can think of is if you combine it with say a Priests Desperate Prayer (the crit one) I know they stack.  Or you are giving the Zealous Focus to a rogue who already has 20% crit chance.  You would give him 25%.  Combining with other cit effects makes it kind of crappy..Critical focus by itself is miserable.

Now now boys, even though that particular talent may be poorly designed, Paladins don't need anymore buffs lol.

Except paladin's aura are spell like abilities that does not stack with spells. Paladin's aura are far better than any other martial class abilities.

 

As an example, monks gets +2 speed for 1 ability, paladin gets +2 party wide for 1 ability.

 

On the other hand critical focus is a passive that stacks with everything.

 

5% party wide hit to crit is a decent passive. Not incredible of course, but decent.

Edited October 1, 201510 yr by Elric Galad