Helping You Better Understand Critical Hits in ESO | For Both Veterans and Beginners!

This guide aims to help easily explain the Crit Chance, Crit Damage, and Crit Resistance systems in the Elder Scrolls Online. Made in Update 36 of ESO.
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RECENT VIDEOS
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OUTFIT IN OPENING
Blood-Forged Skin
Iron Atronach Battle Axe/Daggers
Crimson Oath Hat
Stags of Z'en Epaulets
Stags of Z'en Cuirass
Stags of Z'en Gloves
Stags of Z'en Sash
Stags of Z'en Guards
Prisoner's Shoes
TIMESTAMPS
Introduction 0:00
Crit Chance 0:16
Crit Damage 3:27
Crit Resistance 5:54
How Much Damage Does Crit Add? 7:42
Outro/Thanks! 12:34
#eso #elderscrollsonline #mmorpg

[@skinnycheeks]

Thanks for watching! Feel free to ask questions if you have them, either here or in the discord server: discord.gg/F3Zd2ZzJNh

[@stinkfinger1942]

Can't find anything about the offset on wep/spell crit, having them the same wouldn't be depriving me of dps would it? That's all I'm worried about lol, having a hard time getting one higher than the other.

[@skinnycheeks]

@@stinkfinger1942 no they’ll often be the same, that is fine! If one is higher than the other though it picks the highest

[@stinkfinger1942]

@@skinnycheeks Thanks mate, I was worried with the way it's worded, phew 😄

[@KingAlfredBooks]

After playing ESO for 2 years, I finally understand how to read critical stats. Thanks!

[@nydarisa]

This new line of videos is absolutely amazing and a much needed resource for both new and experienced players!

[@skinnycheeks]

thank you!

[@rayneblah731]

this FINALLY helped me understand why PVE and PVP have to be different builds and I’ve had people explain it to me repeatedly for the last few months. I’m the type of learner that needs the whole picture to understand why something does/doesn’t work and no one gave me anything close to this kind of info - or if they did, it wasn’t this clear and concise at all. Thank you!!! I hope there’s more of these coming ❤

[@hamishblair7504]

Just a philosophical point but, if you didn’t know what you didn’t know, how did you know that you had yet to know the whole picture?

[@rayneblah731]

@@hamishblair7504 I didn’t know that I didn’t have the whole picture before, I thought I was just dumb for not understanding. It was after I watched this that i knew. I agree, I wouldn’t know what I don’t know until I already know what I’m supposed to know, but that said, if i don’t know that I don’t know something, I wouldn’t know how to ask for the information I need to know either, and this vid provided that missing piece of knowledge. Just like I’d still be throwing on random armor pieces I pick up if someone didn’t tell me how sets work when I first started 💜

[@fenixwakinyan1042]

Wow, never thought it was so complex; hello rabbit hole. I'd probably need play dough and crayons to do the maths behind it, but this video gives me an excellent dive into the numbers. Love it! Thanks a lot, Skinny!

[@skinnycheeks]

thanks!

[@ownlight2532]

As a veteran player I suggest everyone new or old to watch your videos

[@skinnycheeks]

Thanks man!

[@Coolican]

This video needs to be pinned on the eso forums or something. Having to add the 50% base crit damage to the number you see in the advanced tab has not been mentioneded on any other video I’ve watched. They all just say you want 125%. My stat says 60% atm and I have been racking my brain trying to figure out where I’m going to get an extra 65%. Thanks mate for this one

[@joeyanunti]

The way I like thinking of it is you want your crit damage and crit be rate to match. If you crit for 1.5 times as hard, 50 percent of the time, you get 1.25 times overall damage. If you are 1.4 at 60 percent of the time you only get 1.24 times damage. Keeping the numbers squared always gives best results. (If it were to cost the same to build into either stat)

[@Augustus0802]

Excellent presentation as someone who just now started playing a few months ago this is great information. I’ve learned so much in the last few weeks.

[@lanawilliams7615]

Shared this with our resident ‘build guy’ in our guild coz he likes figures too! Thanks Skinny 😁

[@blazedray9903]

You can add axes as your melee to lightly increase crit DMG aswell

[@briankingham175]

I'm liking these videos explaining these stats...been playing for years & still learning. I've always wondered the breakdown of what increases damage most, so that chart with pen, crit chance, weapon/spell dmg, etc was a great visual! Thank you for taking the time to figure out these things!!

[@motsy15]

I’m luvin these videos. These subjects are really unclear ingame and with a lot of other content creators. But this guy! He just nails it!

[@FOULMISCHIEF]

Slowly filling in all of my combat knowledge gaps. Thanks again, Skinny :)

[@redheadedstepchild2240]

Thank you so much. I've been tanking for years in this game, so all the damage modifiers confused me so much now that I'm trying out dps. Thanks a ton for this video!

[@newworldforward1842]

Again, great stuff!! Very important info for those trying to put their own builds together..

[@TheTyronecus]

Didn't learn anything new, but you did a great job presenting and providing insight. Keep up the good work, a smarter player base makes the community better!

[@jakefoster7650]

You knew none of this....

[@JamesOKeefe-US]

Incredible info. Answers so many questions. Thanks Skinny for all the time it took to put this info together for us!!

[@John-Wolfe]

this is the best explanation of critical i have seen in ages! thank you!!!!

[@skinnycheeks]

Thanks!

[@Thatnativeson]

Now we’re talking. I’ve been needing a guide on the crit.

[@Ehntu]

The 50% base being hidden is such a bizarre design choice. Thanks, here I was being quite concerned I couldnt get past 50% off the dummy and it turns out I'm actually at 100%!!

[@r.j.gavadin2807]

I've been running Order's Wrath, Pillar of Nirn & 2xSlimecraw on my magblade when I'm not running trials. Unbuffed I'm at roughly 60% crit chance. Trials I switch to Depths & Harpooner's Kilt with 1xSlimecraw (keeping Nirn).

[@jessemcdonald7791]

Very clearly presented as always

[@skinnycheeks]

thanks!

[@matphil]

Damn, 2000 hours and now I understand crits 😭🙏

[@Beretta980]

really appreciate these videos

[@hasina1461]

Thank-you for addressing the crit strike chance stuff. It’s almost like there attempted to go with % say with something like the death knell passive which instead of saying increases by 1752 for each grave lord ability slotted it says 8% but at least I know how to convert these Numbers to % now

[@Cigybutt]

Thanks Mr Cheeks!

[@clash505]

Very nice video. Especially like the prioritization of pen, crit and crit dmg. People really be out here with max crit damage and very under pen.

[@shackamaxon512]

The formula shown for crit chance is also known as maximum critical value (MCV). There is another formula which uses the MCV as the denominator. The numerator is the flat value from all sources: sets, buffs, skills, mundus stone and CP. Crit Strike Chance% = 10 + 100 * (flat value from all sources / MCV) If the entire crit chance rating comes from 5 peices of Levithan then the flat value would be 2842. If you are at CP160 the formula would then be: 10 + 100 * (2842/21912). Since the baseline crit % is 50, then wouldn't the above formula represent the boost to crit %?

[@Will-ul7rg]

This video is so well done 👍 thank you good sir 😊

[@skinnycheeks]

Thank you!

[@luketimewalker]

Excellence egain! The spreadsheet part however did confuse me. I'll need to watch it again...

[@N0Tsoftware]

You are legend bro thanks a lot. When I theory craft for my pvp chars I duel with my friends and try how much damage increase or how much it hits. Now I dont need to bother them lol thanks

[@minimalpancake6852]

Thank you!

[@patricktully9661]

Thank you so much for these videos. I would love to see - if you could - a "status effects" comparison video to help understand status effects more clearly. i.e. poisoned vs burning vs chilled vs off balance, etc An example would be: some meta setups are using daggers - one nirnhoned and one infused with one flame glyph and one poison glyph. I have heard others say nirn on off hand flame, infused on poison main, I've heard the opposite, and I've also heard that it doesn't matter. Would love to see some actual empirical data showing what the difference really is. Thank you for all you do!

[@skinnycheeks]

Nirn is always main hand. the boost is reduced in the off hand. I use charged or precise off hand. Infused is not really worth it unless backbar weapons. And thank you 🙏

[@patricktully9661]

@Skinny Cheeks thank you that makes sense! And slight correction I did mean charged not infused on FB 😬 Thank you!

[@Sssssssht]

when he said: '' maybe thell update that at some point" i laughed

[@CreativeExcusesGaming]

Thinking about this video again, can you do a similar comparison kind of video for armor traits? Im thinking specifically about the difference for damage dealers between infused and divines, but also between divines and something like well-fitted or reinforced when going for a spooky trifecta or something where hexos ward would be overkill, but maybe a couple percent more mitigation would be worth the damage loss, or could be the difference between running 3dps for a dungeon or not. Basically, is the meta for traits a little more open than we thought, kinda like the tristat enchants and food, and even like crit/weapon damage being fairly comparable outside of trial settings.

[@ALegionOfAngels]

Hey Skinny! Thanks for putting together this video! I would love to get your confirmation on a crit question. I play a Stamsorc that benefits from minor prophecy. Minor prophecy increases my spell crit only. If I use weapon damage glyphs, will my weapon damage benefit from spell crit? Or will I need to use spell damage glyphs in order to benefit from my increase in spell crit? Or in other words, does a stat sheet always take the best of either/or and apply it? Thank you in advance and may God bless you.

[@zodiac_rvk6845]

Thank you for another great guide skinny Spell crafting guide next?? 😁

[@skinnycheeks]

Thank you. Man I hope so

[@ruhaho]

Enlightening video. How does critical damage/chance work with aoe?

[@nyromath2195]

Honestly just pointing out that the 125% crit cap is cumulative with the 50% base crit damage alone is super helpful. I was always confused by the advanced stats tool tip, like is 125% the cap for the number it shows, for a 175% crit damage total, or does the 125% cap include the base 50%, so the max shown would be 75%? Even writing that out is confusing, so thank you for clarifying.

[@skinnycheeks]

yeah they don't explain that very well at all

[@CreativeExcusesGaming]

The absolutely fascinating bit about this is that it seems to confirm that building relatively balanced stats between crit chance, damage, and weapon/spell damage is the best for solo builds (assuming good or decent penetration values). On my solo builds, and others without thrassian stranglers, 4.5-6k weapon and spell damage is fairly typical, and getting up to 100% crit damage (let alone 125%) with 50-60% crit chance only really happens on really sweaty and insanely optimized score pushing builds. Ive had the suspicion that weapon and spell damage are more valueable the lower your basic stats are for a while and this seems to confirm it. Percentage boosts like crit/crit damage are more valueable the more damage you already have. So in a trials or dungeon group with SPC, PA, and minor courage where youre getting like 1.2k extra weapon and spell damage, crit/crit damage are insanely valueable. But on a solo build with less than 5k weapon and spell damage, crit is much less valuable.

[@skinnycheeks]

Yep. Same conclusions I’ve come to pretty much

[@CreativeExcusesGaming]

@@skinnycheeks Thanks for making those charts though. Those really drive home how similar weapon and spell damage compare to crit chance. Great video

[@The_JackAzel]

another great video from the man the legend! thank you for sharing your knowledge with us mortals 🙏 also your dude in the intro is super cool! may i have the outfit parts?

[@skinnycheeks]

Thanks! They are in the description.

[@SimsFanseiten]

Thanks for clarifying the whole crit system ♥ I didn't know that you already start with 50% crit damage, even if it shows 0%... I wasted about 15% the whole time since I was already at 90% additional crit damage 😅

[@bullet3020]

So does 50% crit actually mean 100% so you crit damage every hit?

[@KadeshEU]

Superb

[@michaelwgrover]

These videos are so good, really helping me get optimized. So I’m hitting 122% in actual content on crit damage. Buffed, my crit chance is at 62%. Is 62% pretty good? I can’t figure out how to get it much higher than that without sacrificing something. I’m using Thief, Slimecraw, Mora’s, perf Coral, Nirn, and Blackrose daggers.

[@skinnycheeks]

Thanks. And yeah 62 is fine if other parts of the build are in place.

[@robinbarnard1434]

Thanks for a very helpful video! I guess they use those weird numbers instead of percent because you might think it is an increase over what you have already. Say you had the base 50% chance, then a 10% increase could be seen as going to 55% instead of 60%🙂

[@skinnycheeks]

No prob. And I’d still say that is way less confusing at it would take one time looking at your character sheet to realize the % boost is additive and not multiplicative. Then the confusion is gone.

[@MrCreed145]

I have a critical healer for b-grounds. Think I forgot to account for his critical damage to make sure the heals actually land higher. He didn't say but I assume it works the same as damage just into the negatives.

[@aaronmarkham4424]

How would you get up to that 2.5 modifier?? Whats a build that could get you up there??

[@uglybuzzardgaming1460]

Does reinforced reduce crit damage or just the base damage. Also does impenetrable reduce any base damage or only the additional damage added from a crit strike?

[@skinnycheeks]

reinforced adds armor which is a total damage reduction. impen only reduces crits, has no effect on non-crits.

[@kurhooni5924]

would hav ebeen nice to cover the thief mudus stone crits chance with gears depending on rarity^^

[@blastmyship6501]

So i have a question it does pertain to pvp but i play warden that does have about 74 crit dmg modifier and typically around 30 percent crit. rallying cry(good portion of players have) and base crit resist thats 39 percent crit dmg at 30 percent crit what would be the effective dmg of something like malacath at that point like how much is that 39 percent crit dmg loss giving up so i can subrtract that from mala to get the over dmg boost

[@cameronbachman8161]

Malacath is still good in pvp, don't build for crit unless you're a gank blade.

[@ewapiksrandeb3966]

Is there any way to ignore somebody's crit resistance?Is your damage penetration involved in?Or just need to improve crit dmg as high as possible?

[@skinnycheeks]

I don’t believe so

[@FataFolterer]

Good stuff. The crit chance values displayed ingame are such an outdated user unfriendly relic. Really hope they change it to showing the actuall crit chance percentage at some point.

[@benjima100]

at 07:54 what cosmetic are you using that shows your skull with armor?

[@skinnycheeks]

It’s the pirate skeleton mask

[@-ExceI]

Hi. Is the base 10% crit chance shown in your character sheet? Mine says 59% right now, so is it actually 69?

[@skinnycheeks]

No crit chance shows the correct amount

[@-ExceI]

@@skinnycheeks Thank you very much!!

[@takiitopotato2507]

thanks

[@sergioalexanderdeinschlimm9752]

I still don't understand, so what would be better for pvp, critical damage or penetration?

[@Geldis1306]

Best in slot video 📸

[@zBeeKing]

Nice "special thanks" jam at the end there, lol.

[@skinnycheeks]

Haha thanks

[@hastriv]

And about critical chance healing? Do you know how it works?

[@jakeklassen23]

Great vid man, but why is it that my spell crit% didn't go up changing my race to khajiit w/ all the passives? Shouldn't it go up 12% in the stats?

[@skinnycheeks]

khajiits get crit damage in their passive, not crit chance

[@jakeklassen23]

@@skinnycheeks Gotcha. thanks!

[@christophermccormick5505]

Have they ever once said why crit chance is still not changed to just be the percent.

[@skinnycheeks]

Not that I know of

[@unpresidented4131]

I dont know if im going crazy but using the examble of being lvl 50 and using the formula for 100% crit chance how does 2x50x100+50=15000 does it not equal 10050 (2x50x100=10000+50=10050) am i missing something ? Where is the 4,950 coming from ?

[@skinnycheeks]

Parenthesis go first

[@unpresidented4131]

@@skinnycheeks AaAah got it

[@Prince_Smugarina]

Sadly already understood this, mostly, but it is good to get harder number values at your finger-tips. Trying to get a good Khajiit Templar going, unsure just what sets to use, especially with my aversion to PVP. Thinking of crafting full sets of 2 of the following 3. Order's Wrath/Forest Wraith/Innate Axiom. Each one works roughly the same as the sets I don't see myself being able to utilize like "Deadly Strike" or "Scathing Mage" due to bad luck with this game's RNG and again, disinterest in PVP. Monster Helm wise. Iceheart and Slimecraw set is already in my possession, so I'll probably settle on one of them... worry about Mother Ciannait later... or never...

[@jakefoster7650]

Do you just type to see yourself type or what bro? Whats up?

[@Prince_Smugarina]

@@jakefoster7650 do you just comment on old comments to get a reaction? What's up?

[@jakefoster7650]

@@Prince_Smugarina .....yes bro 😔

[@Prince_Smugarina]

@Jake Foster lol, you passed the test and to answer your question.. I dont know.... I honestly don't remember half the nonsense I post

[@jakefoster7650]

@@Prince_Smugarina me neither! Lol cheers 😎👊

[@TheCallmom]

So.. ignore wpn/spl dmg and get crit n crit dmg?

[@ckn7.117]

Almost 3000 hours in the game and I still didn't know a few of those details 😅😬

[@akreid4614]

How does crit healing work with all of this?

[@danksalt5935]

Crit dmg is important in Cyrodiil when you want to kill someone as fast as possible.

[@joshuablanchette878]

S-Tier video like your pen video

[@amiwho3464]

Thanks, but what about "Critical rating"? :) Can someone explain this one please!

[@verafried6224]

Can you crit against another player blocking?

[@skinnycheeks]

yep!

[@DS-lk3tx]

This is my first mmo and just started playing about 2 months ago. This game is like battlefield: Calculators at war! 😂

[@toddpattison]

For the queen!!!!!!!!

[@antihero8603]

NIce

[@1848revolt]

I would imagine crit damage is primo now that no one runs impen on gear now that we have other options.

[@spiffdaddy]

So no way to see crit chance only damage ?

[@XYZ_55]

What about Shadow mundus as a source of crit damage? Or is it just always inferior to the Thief?

[@varana]

It's definitely possible to use it, and was used a lot more when crit damage wasn't capped. But these days, it's rather easy to get to the crit cap without the Shadow, but you're very unlikely to ever get to 100% crit chance consistently (unless you use Mechanical Acuity, or specialised stuff like that). So for most builds, using the Thief to get crit chance while sourcing their crit damage elsewhere is more efficient.

[@ewapiksrandeb3966]

Shadow would be used for nbs in pvp In the other hand for most of the classes in pve you ll use thief.

[@8dragon1o]

Wish you broke down the numbers of CRIT damage What's the multiplication of 10% Example plus 50% is 1.5 So what's 10%

[@domex5334]

1.1

[@zSRV950]

why aren't you talking about Mora's Whispers? in theory it's even better than slimecraw , right?

[@skinnycheeks]

Generally you’d run them together. Great combo. Unsure why you felt I should bring it up though? This video is meant to cover the mechanics of crits

[@blackmild488]

What’s your style ?

[@skinnycheeks]

In the description

[@babydeeps2536]

You always have to play with the CRIT

[@cujokills]

*kowtow

[@Toomuchpeppa]

End of the vid went a lil hard

[@lemonbalm_tea]

21912 is also a palindrome sorry had to do it totally irrelevant comment again xD

[@skinnycheeks]

Palindromes are always relevant

[@youmadbro4203]

All these guides prove is how bad zos is teaching players how to play

[@markc6571]

I got bored from the zero breaks in dialogue Still don't get it

[@SirBanana1992]

this whole mess of translating crit chance as seemingly random numbers just reminds me of raw vs true raw in Monster Hunter. I don't want to sit at my desk and have to do extra math to know what my values actually are or how one piece vs another is going to impact me dammit! I'm here for escapism, not math school!

[@MrObviousJester]

What the hell. They made this so over complex for no good reason. Just a few flat, readable numbers and percentages would do fine.

[@oldgrouchy5740]

People still play that?

[@vallarfaxgaming]

I'll ask a really simple question because crit damage is incredibly poorly explained by the devs The crit damage% under advanced stats, if it says 75% does that mean you are at the 125% cap because of a hidden 50% starting bonus you cannot see? I'm confused as all absolute hell trying to figure out whether my stat should say 75% or 125%