UAC Gloves - Damage or Crit Weighting

[Maerit]

So, I was wondering if anyone has done any testing to determine which is the best type of weighting to apply to UAC gloves. I would suspect that Crit is still most popular and valuable on Boots due to kick having a particularly high DF, and being exceedingly nasty for critical hits already. However, gloves are another matter.

Someone informed me that UAC attacks have significant diminishing returns on crit weighting because the system enforces specific critical tiers. If you say had +10 damage weighting on your gloves instead of +10 critical weighting, then your jabs will actually deal noticeable damage instead of insignificant damage as would grapple attacks (which are usually on the lower damage end).

I currently have SWCW gloves, and kept them there they can be blessed, but now I might start putting more weighting on them as I no longer require blessable equipment. I was considering making them SWCW and HDW. Pricey, but worth it?

[Stumplicker]

Profession matters. A monk for example will almost always be at excellent tier, which means you have a good chance of your next aimed hit being a death crit anyway if you're aiming correctly. Just a little bit of crit weighting can push you over onto the "just about always death crit" range. 10 points is probably excessive.

A bard however will probably top out at decent or good position and mostly rely on quantity over quality. In that case I'd say damage is better. It'd take a significantly larger amount of crit in order to reliably be death critting without the excellent positioning boost.

A rogue is getting the good tier pushup from hiding, so crit is nice there to ensure you hit the right tier to death crit. You don't have the super low RT that a bard has to fall back on.

[Maerit]

I would have thought that monks and rogues would benefit even less from crit weighting considering the mastery (punch/grapple) and rogues ambushing from hiding? These gloves would be primarily used by a warmage and bard, so hasted attack style. I usually like to make items that are generally useful for resale, so hopefully adding damage weighting would not reduce their usability. If leaving them blessable would make them more desirable and marketable, then I'd prefer that (they are KO flaring, SWCW with T5 ensorcell, so going to be pricey to add weighting).

[Stumplicker]

I would have thought that monks and rogues would benefit even less from crit weighting considering the mastery (punch/grapple) and rogues ambushing from hiding? These gloves would be primarily used by a warmage and bard, so hasted attack style. I usually like to make items that are generally useful for resale, so hopefully adding damage weighting would not reduce their usability. If leaving them blessable would make them more desirable and marketable, then I'd prefer that (they are KO flaring, SWCW with T5 ensorcell, so going to be pricey to add weighting).

Rogues and monks barely need it. I did some testing a while back. With an open ambush at excellent tier, I never hit lower than I believe a rank 7 critical. There's a bit of randomization to it, but if you're punching the head I believe rank 9 is a death crit. It doesn't take much crit weighting to push that baseline excellent tier into just about always death critting.

Rogues are similar. They're only ambushing from good position as a baseline so starting at a lower minimum crit level. They get a push up I believe from the ambush though.

If you're a bard swinging quantity over quality, I would say you're better off with either damage weighting, or just ALL the crit weighting, to push yourself into death crit range from decent/good open position. If however you often find yourself at excellent position on things with about 3-4 hits left to go before they die, crit will benefit you.

As for resale, you're right that there's some value in keeping it blessable. I can say that as a monk I really didn't care about the bless after a while. I didn't even switch out to blessable hand/footwraps for undead or Reim because the power is overkill. So selling to a monk is meh. Can't comment on rogue, bard, or warrior, but you'd think there'd be situations where they'd still want them available.

[gilchristr]

I would say flares are better but between those two I would say crit. Here is why, and i dont think its mentioned in the other replies.

A crit can be the difference between a stun or knockdown, or not, even if it doesn't get you a "crit kill." That in turn will give you an MM bonus on your next attack, which will yield you extra damage or may be the difference between a crit kill on the next attack.

Not to mention that criticals also give bonus damage even if you don't get a crit kill. With all that added up, I wouldnt be surprised if the crit weighting gives you as much extra blood damage as the damage weighting, in addition to the chance to crit kill.

Having said all that, I think flares are powerful on UAC because they get you stuns and knockdowns, which give you MM bonuses. Not to mention the occasionaly crit kill from a flare.

[gilchristr]

"they are KO flaring, SWCW with T5 ensorcell"

OMG, if you dont care about blessability, put flares on them. The KO will not block adding flares (I cant recall whether the SWCW will block adding flares at this point).

[drumpel]

"they are KO flaring, SWCW with T5 ensorcell"

OMG, if you dont care about blessability, put flares on them. The KO will not block adding flares (I cant recall whether the SWCW will block adding flares at this point).

I asked a question of similarity some time ago about flares on an item and adding weighting. These were the answers I received:

"Only temporary flares like eblade are reduced with WPS and I believe they are reduced completely once you get to heavy crit weighting. Permanent flares are not affected."

"Guiding light flares are also affected by a reduction in flare strength (or is it frequency?), and stop completely when a specific level of weighting is reached. This includes the permanent Guiding Light flares of a paladin-bonded weapon."

Though, these are player's answers to my question, I never got a NIR answer to confirm or deny the player's responses.

[Stumplicker]

Gilchrist makes a valid point about flares and knockdowns, but between UAC's tendency to put things on their butt already, knockout flares, and a 1 second RT, if it's not on the ground by the third hit, you're doin' it wrong anyway. That said, even knockdowns aside, if you don't worry about the blessing, flares are as good a choice as damage weighting in that they're much more cost effective to add, contribute extra damage, and add the possibility of their own death crits.

[Maerit]

I haven't put flares on them yet in order to keep them enchantable, and possibly leave room for permabless. Same with the boots, which are now 7x VHCW T5 ensorcelled with bubble flares. I'll get them both to 8x before adding flares since the flare types I'd be interested in block enchanting.

Ideally they would be permablessed in order to be able to hit everything in the game. My goal would be something like 8x+, permablessed, SWCW, HDW, T5 ensorcelled, KO Flaring gloves w/ 8x permablessed, VHCW, T5 ensorcelled, Bubble Flaring boots. Then I'd be able to swap them around between alts, and never risk losing them to the current item loss mechanics.

Oh, and I added 13 services of damage weighting at the silver WPS and it cost nearly 5mil for just 13 services (1.3 points). It was barely cheaper to added services for crit weighting (like 10% less expensive).

[Stumplicker]

I haven't put flares on them yet in order to keep them enchantable, and possibly leave room for permabless.

That's brings up another valid point. They're already way overkill for any need you may have for them. They don't really need crit weighting. They don't really need damage. They don't really need flares. It may be the best option to just leave it open ended and wait for a raffle win to put something on them. Extraplanar bane would be my choice, though I don't know if that takes up the same slot as the knockout flares. That aside though, there are plenty of specialty things you could leave it open ended for. You really don't need anything extra to be viable on those as they are.

[Maerit]

I'm not sure these are overkill for a warmage. Until the weapons cause me to kill things faster than using bolt spells, they're not overkill, and I can say that in DR it takes this wizard probably 5 mins, at least, to finish the arena. That means he's slower around 2 minutes than most wizards using RF and bolting - so not overkill enough yet!

[Mobius1]

What profession are we talking here?

I know as a rogue, I never ever kill through blood damage. Crit weighting has been super helpful for me on my gloves, because it makes a large amount of my initial "good" positioning punches to the head death crit. If I'm tiered up to exceptional, I could care less about the crit weighting because it's going to die anyways. But I noticed a massive enough increase in death crits on my first ambush, to make crit weighting pretty damn nice to me.

But if you want to be able to 6 strike focused mstrike something to death by blood loss (or haste attack?), then I could see damage weighting or flares being useful. But not really...

[Ososis]

For the record, a good cleric can bless items at least a decent ways past HCP. 14 CER is the highest I tried, and from a capped cleric it swung till I was bored of counting. I really should put some more time into that with all the random weighted stuff in my lockers. Anyway, the big thing I learned was that the WPS decreases bless by a static number of swings, regardless of bless. So max Voln is 152 swings, at HCP it lasts for only like one swing and if you get a cleric bless on HCP it would be <cleric bless math> minus 150ish, which leaves the upper threshold a bit open, though certainly there is obviously a scaling that happens.

[Maerit]

For the record, a good cleric can bless items at least a decent ways past HCP. 14 CER is the highest I tried, and from a capped cleric it swung till I was bored of counting. I really should put some more time into that with all the random weighted stuff in my lockers. Anyway, the big thing I learned was that the WPS decreases bless by a static number of swings, regardless of bless. So max Voln is 152 swings, at HCP it lasts for only like one swing and if you get a cleric bless on HCP it would be <cleric bless math> minus 150ish, which leaves the upper threshold a bit open, though certainly there is obviously a scaling that happens.

This is good to know, but at the same time a warmage swings 3-5x as much as a monk or rogue. My bard was doing symbol of blessing, which works fine on 5 CER gear, but past that point you are just wasting favor since the bard also swings for excessive amounts with 1s RT.

In the end, I think the message is - if you're going to pad your gloves, damage weighting is better for hasted attackers who don't instantly achieve excellent tier, and a minor amount of crit weighting is best for professions with masteries, ambushing, or who can achieve excellent tier immediately. I'll continue pushing to the goal of adding Damage weighting on the gloves, and they will have 5 CER of Crit weighting already. Maybe I'll stop at 5 CER damage weighting to have a nice balance because it's costing around 3.5mil to do 10 services at the new WPS wagon.

[Mobius1]

I'd actually say crit weighting is near worthless if you achieve excellent tier immediately. If it hits the right area, it's going to kill whether it has weighting or not.

[Stumplicker]

I'd actually say crit weighting is near worthless if you achieve excellent tier immediately. If it hits the right area, it's going to kill whether it has weighting or not.

Pretty near. You can dip slightly under the death crit if you get unlucky with crit randomization. Especially if you're talking boots and aiming torso because you can't reach the head. 95% of the time the thing's on the ground though and head works. Punch to the neck or head can slip under slightly too even when hitting the open ambush in the right spot. Somewhat-Heavy is enough to push it over to where if you hit the spot, you're gonna death crit.

[Mobius1]

Pretty near. You can dip slightly under the death crit if you get unlucky with crit randomization. Especially if you're talking boots and aiming torso because you can't reach the head. 95% of the time the thing's on the ground though and head works. Punch to the neck or head can slip under slightly too even when hitting the open ambush in the right spot. Somewhat-Heavy is enough to push it over to where if you hit the spot, you're gonna death crit.

Hmm, a kick to the torso should be the same as a crit to the head.

https://gswiki.play.net/Kick_critical_table_(UCS)

But yeah, perhaps at times it could get you over that threshold. In the end it depends mostly on what your end rolls look like. If you're often just barely hitting, then it could perhaps be useful. For me personally, it's all about the good tier death crits, though.

[Stumplicker]

Hmm, a kick to the torso should be the same as a crit to the head.

https://gswiki.play.net/Kick_critical_table_(UCS)


But yeah, perhaps at times it could get you over that threshold. In the end it depends mostly on what your end rolls look like. If you're often just barely hitting, then it could perhaps be useful. For me personally, it's all about the good tier death crits, though.


I can't get to the wiki from my office without my VPN up or I'd have checked it out. I forget which was which. There was some combo where a torso death crit and head death crit were one tier off. Maybe it was punch. It's not something you have to worry about unless you're a gnome/halfling. Either way though, you don't need much crit weighting if you're at excellent tier to make sure you always kill it in one hit.

[khorpulent]

On my monk, I have damage (and greater fire flares) on my gloves and crit on my boots. I never really aim my attacks, I basically just indiscriminately mstrike everything (mostly focused unless there are more than 3 creatures) and it kills stuff. Takes 5 seconds to aim a kick, or 5 seconds for a focused mstrike, so I never really saw the sense in aiming (though I will finish with a kick to the abdomen in the rare even that I'm low on stamina). My monk's a halfling anyhow, so I usually can't kick anywhere vital without some sort of knockdown first.

My logic in putting damage on the gloves was that if I'm gonna jab/punch something 5 or 6 times, that extra damage probably adds up, especially with the flares. I never bothered to do the math, but stuff seems to die well enough.

[gilchristr]

Some of the perspectives in this thread may be based degree of uphunting or not. For instance, getting a knockdown almost everytime with UAC sounds like hunting like level. I am currently using UAC to uphunt over 10 levels, I don't get a lot of tier ups or knockdowns from targetted mstrike. But as far as I know, flares still work when uphunting. So for uphunting, flares are a sort of can opener for open hunting with UAC.

[kutter]

I would say it is entirely dependent on the build. My warmage has 7X somewhat crit padded handwraps and 6X light padded footwraps with vacuum flares. He really only uses hand attacks for tier up and spams kicks with celerity. He was running the arena in 3-3 1/2 minutes, with perfects about 85-90%. he occasionally got caught by a maneuver, but that is just bad luck and the fact the pures suck at maneuver defense. That being said, I have to agree that the vacuum flares work pretty darn well and if I have the chance I would add flares of some type to my handwraps as well, probably fire since he is in sunfist unless I could score a really rare type flare.

[Mobius1]

One thing to keep in mind about grapple, is if you just want to prone them, aiming for the abdomen is your best bet - It causes the target to sit with a measly rank 2 crit. The next best is legs (if abdomen is too high) which need a rank 3 to prone them.

But if you aren't trying to aim, it doesn't really matter.