Futility Strike vs Trivial blows

[malmar]

And to clarify burst vs sustain. Burst just means you do more of your damage in a shorter period of time. Sustain means you do more consistent damage. Doesn't have anything to do with FS/TB. If I do all my damage in 5s compared to 20s, the reduction from FS/TB is exactly the same. Why? Because in that 5 second period you might have 20 ticks of damage, FS at max and TB at max apply to every single one of those damage ticks. Just as they would to 40 ticks of damage over 20 seconds.

This is only true if you have infinite health pool and players don't. 10k burst might kill you if it's within 1-2s, and 30k sustained damage over 20s might not if you are healed. Healers can heal you over longer period of time, but not if you are dead to bursts in 2s.

[Wiede]

TL:DR all posts but input:

Rule of thumb (in a vacuum/on paper)
With 60%+ combined chance to be crit TB becomes better than FS

[Alubert]

I think it's not easy to mathematically calculate what is better because choosing one option carries other consequences. E.g. if you play a healing character you choose full FS then you usually want to attach DD to it. If I buy TB I go in with the assumption that range dmg (mainly BW/sorc, SW, Rsh) will hurt me less and spend points on 1xFS only. This way I can save points for heal crit.
This is not clear cut in my opinion.

[Scottx125]

Did some more calc, so it depends. If it's based on incoming crit damage. TB is slightly better than FS but ONLY against crit damage with no additional procs (which is why you stack crit to begin with). If you get ANY kind of procs against you because of crit damage. TB is significantly worse. So if you are only fighting high bonus crit damage classes such as SORC or BW. Yes, TB is slightly better (like 1-2k better damage reduction over 100 hits, it won't save you from a nuke). But I still maintain FS is better overall, because it's nearly the same damage reduction, but also reduces the chance of getting crit procs on you doing significantly more damage (btw, that damage can also crit too).

[Wdova]

You can stack ctbc to the negatives, which eat up opponents chance to crit you. Meaning if enemy has 35% crit chance, and your chance to be critted is -15%, then his real crit chance against you is 20%.

I'm sorry but it sounds like complete nonsence to me, unless someone from the staff can confirm that this is true.

The chance of being crittes is equal to your personal chance of being crit plus enemy chance of crit hit. So if you go for negative you eat from enemy crit chance
If you got -30 and enemy got 35 chance to crit you will be critted 5% of all hits from that enemy

So it is worth it imo since crit levels are not to the roof so far (not like insane amounts as on live).

Are You sure about this. Some ppl told that getting high - % chance to get crit is worthless, since it does not eat enemy crit chance, but only debuffs that increase Your chance to get crit. So if You have - 15% to get crit and You are debuffed by Crimson Death Your chance to get crit is still - 5%, but enemy with 40% crit chance has still his 40% chance to crit You, so those - 5% is worthles and You would be ok with only - 10%. I dont know how this stack with gear procs that increase your chance to take crits.

[Scottx125]

Buffs/debuffs eat away or add on to your stats or your targets stats. If I get a debuff that increases my chance to be crit. That's essentially a 5% crit boost for incoming damage to crit. If I'm debuffed crit reduction by 5%, my -15% becomes -10%. A lot of people say just get it to zero. Problem with that is those debuffs still apply, and you'll have a 5% chance to be crit hit. And people treat low % as if they're worthless, they're not, every single % helps. Even if it just eats up debuffs. Why do you think everyone uses armour pots? Same reason, more armour for debuffs to chew through or just more armour to reduce DMG.

[Nameless]

On live it reduce the enemy chance of crit.
On ror I am 99% it do the same.
Prolly it is good some dev to validate that cos it is looking that there are some speculations about this topic

[Avernus]

Did the test with FS. Had 10.4 incoming crit chance, 0% with full FS (-13% incoming crit chance in theory, rounded up).

WE with 13% did no crits at all (unless its under +crit chance morale). Liniment for -5% incoming crit for me and +5% crit chance for WE - just in case, still no crits at all.

With this, i can confirm (at least for yourself, didn't bother with video after all) that incoming crit chance does go past 0% so in can eat the enemy's crit chance.

[Tyrex2017]

With this, i can confirm (at least for yourself, didn't bother with video after all) that incoming crit chance does go past 0% so in can eat the enemy's crit chance.

For information, this was tested intensely when the devs introduced trivial blow. Futile strike is better than trivial blow in most cases.

For my playstyle (Warrior priest frontline healer), negative 10 FS - 300 initiative buffed is the optimum target, without compromising heal power. With these stats I'm critted once out of 5 on average. To eat up the crit damage of sorcs/magus, invest in toughness. To eat melee crit damage, invest in reduced armor penetration. Also, do not underestimate the power of avoidance : invest in deft defender / parry or block, it help a lot.

[Akalukz]

Generally, it's not the random crits that kill you, its the string of crits, so anything to reduce the string of crits should be better for most classes. FS>TB except possibly tanks.