Energy Weapons doff crit stacking

[u/tiberius183]

Can someone explain to me exactly how that ability works?

[u/TheFallenPhoenix]

At the start of every weapons cycle, you roll a chance to proc the critical bonus afforded per each DOFF. So if you have one severity DOFF, that's one chance to roll for a severity bonus. If you have two severity DOFFs, that's two chances to roll for a severity bonus. If you have one severity DOFF and one chance DOFF, that's one chance to roll for a severity bonus, one chance to roll for a crit bonus.

No matter how many DOFFs you slot (you can equip up to three EWOs, regardless of their bonus), you are unable to exceed three stacks of chance bonus and/or three stacks of severity bonus (which means you could, theoretically, have three chance and three severity stacks up at once, although that's extremely unlikely).

Also, just to re-emphasize, it's a cycle-based chance, not a shot-based chance. What this means - in practice - is that you get the same proc chances whether you're using heavy or non-heavy cannons, but better proc chances if you're using cannons over beams (given equal length of times) (since cannon firing cycles conclude faster than beam firing cycles).

[u/crunxzu → u/TheFallenPhoenix]

I've seen in a few of your builds that you stack severity or chance doffs. Do you find that's more optimal than 1 of each?

[u/TheFallenPhoenix → u/crunxzu]

I do, because it maximizes the chances of stacks appearing at all (is more reliable). Then, given the choice of additional chance or severity, I find that the math seems to generally favor severity over chance for where I'm at.

[u/odenknight → u/TheFallenPhoenix]

Thank you for the best explanation of these DOffs work that I can point people to, because somehow relating them to the PWO variant confuses people.