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Has critical and block become meaningless?

AuthorMessage
Mastermind
Sep 11, 2010
369
With Polaris out, and the new update that changes the critical chances (for hitting and blocking), I noticed something: You need double the critical stat to have any effect compared to before, and block seems to have taken an even harder hit in terms of the calculation.

However, when I go up against my normal bosses, I also notice that they seem to hit criticals at roughly the same intervals as they used to...

Except now I cannot defend against the criticals, because my block rate has dropped through the floor with the update. And, with the changes done to Convention, you cannot even rely on that to take off some of the heat (it was dropped from a 90% block to 20%).

I want to hear others' experiences with this - because it seems that criticals and blocks have changed from being something semi-reliable and useful to becoming a difficulty spike that forces a turtling strategy with tower shields and emphasising resists...

(on the bright side, in the rare event I manage to get a critical through the lowered chances, the bosses are also less prone to blocking them).

Survivor
Jun 29, 2011
1
Not for me, every critical i did get was blocked, every time, so we have been totally down grated with this one, and i just finally got my critical to a decent %, and it took alot of work! all for what? SQUAT!!! this change, has dramaticly changed, my interest in wanting to play this game anymore!! i agree with meaningless, cause thats exactly what it is now, almost as worthless as their flat numbered jewel system they got going!! very very disappointing!!

Mastermind
Mar 13, 2010
328
Conviction used to add 90 RATING not 90%. It now adds 20%.

Regardless, bosses are supposed to be Criticaling less. Yes, we'll block fewer, but they should be Criticaling half as often, so the actual number of Criticals landed on us should be fewer than currently.

If this is not happening, then KI has not done what they explained to us should be happening and it is yet one more unresolved Test issue that made it to Live. (There are quite a few others; it's very disappointing that REPORTED Bugs have made it to Live as well as broken systems.)

Survivor
Aug 25, 2011
14
I agree Kingsisle messed this one up big time, the old wizard101 was, every school has there advantages and disadvantages now it is down right life is the worst school. Why you might ask me because critical on heals is dead! This has made life the worst school by a long shot and after farming for so long to find good gear only to see that I wont be able to solo anymore because of what Kingsisle did. I am telling you I think many a life wizard can agree with me. One thing i know for sure is that I considered quitting the game, and I am sure some life wizards will.

Survivor
Dec 13, 2014
4
Hi Kingsisle

After the update, i found my critical rating chance had dropped by a large amount. I would like to know if it is a glitch or an update on the game. Please tell me why the drop in critical rating percentage.

Btw i really appreciate the effort the developers put into this game. Good Job Kingisle! Keep it up :D

Administrator
Defender
Feb 28, 2013
164
It took me quite a while to get my crit up to where I wanted it and the block wasn't bad either.
Now, with this "update" The crit's garbage and the block may as well not be there.
KI, If you wanted to drive PAYING CUSTOMERS away from the game, congratulations, you finally figured out how to do it.

Defender
Jul 16, 2014
185
I totally agree and am now having second thoughts on playing this game. My crit went from 102% down to 62% then each time I leveled (at102 now) it dropped even more. Also my block is down to like 32% and I'm in Mali gear too. I hate the change in the block and crit they should have just changed the block and cirt for the enemy or left it as is. Game is no longer fun for me I solo a lot and now trying to solo is dead, also as you said farming for our good gear is now useless. I used to be proud of my wiz who would crit every time and block like 80% of the time but now just don't know what to say. Think they need a new calculator.

Survivor
Aug 12, 2014
8
after talking to many players the new critical system is bad and needs to be changed back to old one
i am level 100 with full mali gear and i have 47% critcal really and 27% block thats not kewl
also bruning rampage and stuff should be craftiable i been famring since it came out no spell

if you support this post leave your wizard name

plz kingisle consider doing this

Survivor
Dec 13, 2014
4
Thank you for the quick response :D It all makes sense now.

Survivor
Jan 23, 2015
10
I battled Dimacharus on all my wizards (Fire, Storm, Balance, Myth, and Life) and survived after using Satyr at least a million times. My Fire and Storm just barely made a couple of criticals on the boss and was not blocked. Critical hits and Critical heals are rare now but my wizards are not able to block as they used to and I crafted some really awesome gear to battle well in any situation whether regular or cheat boss. Now even minions are making critical hits and my wizards cannot block them. If King Isle thought this update was going to be appreciated by us they are kidding themselves. I played on Test realm and gave comments that they should not implement this critical and block system in Live realm so it is not like any of us Test players did not protest a bit. I think it will take King Isle's bank book getting smaller for them to go back to the old system or go back to the drawing board and make the critical and block update better. I myself am considering not renewing my 2 yearly accounts as well putting together a new membership (Ice and Death wizards) this next year.if this sytem is not considered carefully by King Isle. Respectfully I love this game and do not want to see it destroyed by a bad mistake on the part of the King Isle team who I believe with the exception of the critical and block update has done a considerable and awesome job on this game. I believe their motives were pure and wanted to give us a better game experience. Yup, critical and block has become meaningless which now make PVE meaningless due to the bosses having such high life points. Dodging critical is very important in PVE and endurance is king. Under this new system endurance is a personal challenge.

Champion
Mar 27, 2011
405
It's terrible! Our critical and block stats dropped like a brick. Please roll back the change. The new system makes everything worse.

Defender
Jul 16, 2014
185
In not going to say they need to do away with it altogether, but when I was level 100 and had a crit of 102% and have that knocked down to 65% is a big penalty especially when enemy still has the same health. I think they need to adjust it or just keep the enemy the way it is with the new update but give us players back our pre-patch stats. Also if you solo and face 4 opponents which happened to me in that jail dungeon (one with Ivan) I almost died 3 times even though enemy only has like 3k Hp each not counting the bosses up. On one boss I had like 1500 hp left and then he cheats blocks my crit hit which was rare and then Crits on me for like 1300 or so leaving me with just 300hp. I also had to do that dungeon 3 times because I could not talk to person at the end because either someone else did and he disappeared or he was not there altogether. With as many people that that played the test realm I can't fathom how this made it to the live one especially when it's only like the 3rd quest or so in.

Survivor
Aug 12, 2011
4
Critical and critical block is pretty much useless. Minions critical on wizards more than a wizard can critical on them. I've fought two bosses today with my exalted death and all I have to say is wow. A dragon beetle critical a natural attack on me and dealt around 700 on me. In most cases I would always block because my rating is high. But the only reason why I won that duel was because I'm death and my hits heal me. GO

Critical today is now useless to Players level 50 to level 80. (Critical should be around 15% depending on gear)
Because what I saw on my stats is that a rating of 137 is 1%. A rating of 233 is still 1%. WHAT!? A rating of 243 is 3%. A rating of 277 is 10%. A rating of 284 is 12% And a rating of 302 is 15%. Which means all bosses in Celestia must have a 1% to 2% chance to critical. The gear in Celestia, Zafaria, and probably Avalon will probably give a max of 1-10% critical.

And sadly there is only one point to get waterwork gear and that is the resist and damage it gives. If you add the critical together it gives you 1% critical and critical block. This probably makes Poseidon's gear useless. Which means level 50 to 60 wizards should not get gear with critical and critical block and find gear that has resist, damage, accuracy, and pip chance.

My exalted death wizard's critical is 398 (35%) critical block 244 (28%) compared to the old system, I am a level 60-70 (depending on the gear).

So KI from the deepest and darkest of my death wizard's heart and from the fiery and blazing part of my fire wizard's heart, please remove this system you've made or please fix asap. And have a nice day

Defender
Jul 16, 2014
185
Please tell me how it makes sense. Why does our crit rating that we farmed for scratched for etc. have to go down just to have the block calculated for the enemy? Seems to me the enemy should have a seaperate block/crit calculation and all they really needed to do was up the block/crit on certain enemies and could have left our stats totally alone. Not sure who their new producer/programmer or whatever is but I think they need to take a better look at his changes/suggestions.

Survivor
Aug 12, 2011
4
I know you guys are working hard all day coming up with new ideas to put inside the game and all but please just remove this system. Everything was fine how it was. The only thing I can understand is that you cut the critical and the block half mostly because most wizards especially storms can hit hundred percent critical and probably more and no one could block most of the time. And if someone critical this many times then bosses will die too easy I'm guessing. If you need to reduce it for that reason then reduce it by a little, change all the gear with critical and maybe instead of a rating maybe this time you can just add the percentage, lower the critical rating of all the gear that has critical on it which will probably take a long time I'm certain so please change it back

Everyone KingIsle, I hope you guys have a nice day

Champion
Mar 27, 2011
405
It's not exactly meaningless. but it's bad. You can get block high enough to shut down all critical, which wasn't possible before, so now it can be all or nothing, but your other stats would be lame. Basically you have less of everything and less control, which is the opposite of what most of us want.

Survivor
Jun 28, 2012
2
Normal day. Get on, start questing. I go to quest, the minions critical I usually block. Not now. I critical, they block easy. Can we just go back to the old critical and block calc whatever you call it, please?

Survivor
May 12, 2009
9
I hate this update so much as a life wizard. My critical was cut down by 40% and keeps going down as I level. My block doesn't exist anymore and if I want to get either one up to where it used to be I have to cut into my other already low stats. I don't know what KI was thinking with this update.

Survivor
Feb 12, 2013
1
Hi ki, I would like to tell you about the "new" system that was introduced today. I found that bosses crit almost all the time and my character doesn't even block once. I As I'm aware this system was to make the game more fair and fun, well so far all this update has is make the game less fun. I hope you guys can go back to the original system or maybe just make an adjustment with this. These changes will be better for the game, and more fair. I hope ypu can make the changes.

Survivor
Dec 30, 2010
7
I am sorry to complain, but critical and block was nerfed way too hard.

My Storm is sitting at 49% critical, and 40% block, which isn't bad, it's balanced.
But my Myth however is sitting at 27% critical and 27% block, which is horrible for Darkmoor, how am I supposed to block Shane, Malistaire, and everyone else in the dungeon? So I came up with an idea on how to balance this even more to make it fair.

We all know you get a certain amount of pip chance as you level, so why not do this with 50-100
Example: Since critical can be a bit too much for storms, everyone would have a .5% crit chance gained with each level. Since the new meta level cap is 110, .5%*100 = 50. This means you would have a natural 50 critical.

Now for block, instead of .5, it would be 1*100= 100 block, this would increase my myth's percentage to about 40% block.

Why am I suggesting this? It was noticed in the game that conviction was nerfed majorly, from 90% block to 20% block now? Kingsisle, I am not trying to be rude, but that was a huge hit and conviction was highly reliable in Darkmoor for my storm before this update came. I remember having no block in Darkmoor for my storm and I'd constantly die, I popped a conviction and I'd be blocking like the rest of my team.

Either conviction needs a buff, or this natural crit and block thing should be implemented. This is my suggestion for the crit nerf and it gives some extra crutch to those playing the game at the level now.

I really hope highly that something is done about this, I wish to enjoy the game, but it is unenjoyable if you cannot even have a chance in Darkmoor. I am not saying that bosses or monsters crit was not nerfed, most likely it was, but knowing hard darkmoor is, and how the new worlds are going to be, this needs to happen. Thank you for reading my suggestion, and I hope it is supported or implemented
-Christopher Storm 100 Storm

Historian
Jun 19, 2010
657
I appreciate the fact my family has been playing with beta, and over time we found, bought or crafted the best gear and equipment; and love how critical hits continually adjusted up along the way. What made the journey nice was how everything flowed and worked with great flow and balance.

My entire family appreciates the new content, storylines, spells, and most everything else...

...except the newly adjusted critical system.

I never considered it broken; because it worked really well...

...until now.

My family will continue to play, and don't get me wrong, with new content comes heightened levels of anticipation, excitement and elation; but even with all of this, the new adjusted down critical system leaves one feeling let down in all the wrong kind of ways.

A much better way to introduced the new critical system; should have been completely separate from the new Polaris content; and released at another time. Others may agree or disagree.

Survivor
Jun 09, 2010
27
You'll also find that your block chance has dropped as well. I know how much discussion of this is happening on these forums, but on others nearly everyone hates this new system. Many people are talking about leaving the game, and I've considered it too. I probably will if it isn't changed.

Survivor
Jun 09, 2010
27
If anyone is interested in reading a discussion about the new system from a Wizard101Central forum thread, please check out the following link and feel free to contribute:

http://www.wizard101central.com/forums/showthread.php?456440-New-crit-system-a-change-for-the-worse

I really hope someone from KI would take a look at that as well.

Delver
Jan 21, 2014
284
I support this totally and completely, not because of the decrease in my crit heals, but the decrease in the critical for EVERYONE and the block decrease for EVERYONE aswell.

Plus, if many of us quit the game because of this, kingsisle could have a economic breakdown. Now kingsisle, you don't want that, or do you? Hope you have fun reprogramming the critical calculator, because it needs a big change.

Isaac GoldHeart lvl 48