Many character builds that thrive off Crits will still do so, for the Crit will still land (and proc your crit-dependent abilities). For those builds with extra Crit damage, that will shine through.
Helluva lot better than being 1-shotted, though.
For my own part, I can attest that I am purposefully avoiding level-50 PvP until more of these changes show promise. I've heard the "you still get great rewards even from losses" encouragements to do PvP, and that may be true, but I can only be facerolled by Prestige-6s so many times before I decide that I have better things to do with my online time than get creamed every time my 20-minute Queue pops.
Hopefully some changes can be effected (and that these show some tangible effect) that makes a Rank-1 going into endgame PvP something other than a good joke for the Rank-6.
Test Update 1.3's PvP Changes on the PTS this Week
Do you want to check out the PvP changes that are coming to Rift in Update 1.3? Then get ready to join the battle royale on the public test shard this week! A roughly two-hour event will be held each day from June 14-16 at 4:30 p.m. PDT and will involve running multiple warfronts. The Trion Worlds team will listen to your feedback on the PvP changes, so make your voice heard if you participate. There's a guide on the official forums that explains how to access the public test shard.
So what PvP changes are coming in Update 1.3? You can read Producer Adam Gershowitz's general outline of the changes, as well as the preliminary patch notes, after the jump. Update 1.3 is scheduled to launch on June 22.
PvP Comments from Producer Adam Gershowitz
With 1.3 we've focused on tuning around giving level 50 players a better on ramp into PVP, allowing lower rank players to have better chance of surviving vs. high rank (or raid geared players) through a higher base valor value and more ways to obtain valor pre-50. In addition these adjustments continue to improve PVP gear progression ensuring that the more Valor you get the better your chance of survival, especially against those players using gear without Valor.
Specifically we wanted to address the lethality of critical hits in PVP which was causing a number of situations where players (or their allies) would die from damage spikes with no way to react to the attack. In addition we are continuing to hand tune specific ability combinations for PVP (without touching PVE performance) that would result in similar results without the aid of a critical hit.
Finally we realize that increased survivability will also increase the effectiveness of healing and defensive abilities, and we will be closely watching these particular builds on PTS (and live). Our overall goal is to ensure that healing and support is desired in team play but doesn't create builds with both extreme durability and offense at the same time.
Over the next week we plan on having a number of PVP oriented play tests on our PTS server to help us gather feedback, and so that we can continue to tune these values prior to 1.3 being released.
Preliminary Update 1.3 PvP Notes (subject to change)
COMBAT
* Stealth: Fixed a bug with toggling melee auto-attack would cause stealth to break.
* Fixed a bug causing the Class Mechanic UI to display effects from other players instead of just your own (ex: Stormcaller, Necromancer).
* Fixed some effects on pets to be lost when teleporting.
* Fixed an issue causing abilities to fail to work properly against players that had just been stunned while jumping.
* Mana: Changed the way mana-regeneration is calculated to now include diminishing returns. This should have little impact on leveling characters and is only noticeable once higher levels of gear are attained.
PVP/WARFRONTS
* Channeled abilities used in PvP against player targets will now break if the target moves out of the channeling caster's range, or line-of-sight.
* Valor updates!
* All level 30+ PvP rewards now have Valor.
* Base Valor amounts have been adjusted to account for a significantly larger amount of damage reduction.
- Level 1-40 characters have 10% reduction.
- Level 40-50 characters scale through 11-20% damage reduction.
* Valor now reduces the critical hit damage bonus received from player hits, capping at 50%.
- Reduction scales based on character level.
- Level 50 characters with no additional Valor receive a 33.7% reduction in critical hit bonus damage.
- A full set of rank 2-3 PvP gear (356 Valor) provides a 50% critical hit bonus damage reduction.
* With the increase to base Valor, the amount provided by ranked PvP gear has been adjusted.
- Rank 1/2 sets provide 323 total Valor, for 26.9% damage reduction and 45.4% critical bonus damage reduction.
- Rank 3/4 sets provide 394 total Valor, for 32.8% damage reduction and 50% critical bonus damage reduction.
- Rank 5/6 sets provide 480 total Valor, for 40% damage reduction and 50% critical bonus damage reduction.
* Runes that grant Valor bonuses have their Valor stat values adjusted but still provide the same percentage of damage reduction.