ZOMG!! These daggers...

Just starting to learn about critting and have put together a fun shadow so far but now I'm having a bit of a tough time sorting through the trash in my stash for just the right tool.

Currently I'm at level 64 using Static Strike and this dagger along with a Perandus shield... ...but looking at the choices on hand, it may not be the best one. It's the second highest calculated DPS and has 5 life on hit, which I think is important but beyond that I'm kinda lost. Not sure how APS plays out other than wanting more hits with life gain vs wanting harder hits to apply status effects. Also not sure of the interactions of Critical Strike Chance number shown above the level requirement vs the one below. The Kris has 9.17 which I feel might be important but I think my static strike tool tip dropped by about 8% when I equipped it...

I'd sure like to understand that whole relationship better and if you'd care to take a look at the spoiler below maybe you can help me choose the right one. These are all I have that calculate over 120 total dps..

I might have to stay with the one I'm using now for the life on hit+dps it has but if I'm missing out on something better right under my nose I'd like to know. If one of the others is that much better I may try it with a life on hit in place of my Weapon Elemental Damage gem. And I noticed the one I'm using has no quality yet. I'll be taking care of that right away. And if all these crit stats are properly reflected in the tool tip then I guess I can swap them all in and out to see but it would be nice to know what the heck I'm looking at when stuff drops without having to try it all on.

Crit is good, but you also want to keep in mind attack speed and how much accuracy you actually have to make use of crit damage. The elemental damage prefixes are decent enough for levelling, but eventually you'll want a pure phys weapon since static strike is a conversion skill, then slap on phys to lightning so wed (both the support gem and whatever you get on belt/jewellery) becomes more effective.

LGoH probably won't be enough to sustain you later on, so transition to using Life Leech (or the Warlord's Mark curse, but don't rely on it) eventually. Blood Rage is also an option, but keep in mind that its bonus physical life leech won't be as effective when Static Strike deals lightning damage.

As for choice of daggers, if you play self-found, craft Vagan's flat phys (make sure it's the 1c for 10-20 not 3alc tier) on the Torment Fang ambusher since it has a decent amount of IPD already to ~214 pDPS), the Imperial Skean also goes to ~180 + some eDPS. If there isn't a prefix left anymore on either of those daggers, just buy an upgrade if you can find anybody to trade with on poe.xyz.

ok heres how crit strike chance works in this game...


each weapon or spell has a 'base' crit chance, that slaughter knife is 6.8% for example. On the tre you will see nodes like

Nightstalker: 60% increased critical strike chance with daggers

Assassination: 30% increased critical strike chance


you will also see crit chance stats on gear, some examples...




these have 'global critical strike chance', daggers themselves also have 'global critical strike chance' as an implicit stat, on the slaughter knife its 40%, on a kriss knife it is 80% etc.

Now these increased critical strike chance nodes/stats all add together and multiply your base critical strike chance. So if you have a total of 100% increased critical strike chance, and your base crit chance on your weapon is 6.8%, you get an additional 6.8% on top, giving you a total of 13.6% critical strike chance with your attacks.


Heres where it gets a little more complex. If you look at the Rune Hunger Platinum Kriss you linked, it has a '26% increased critical strike chance' suffix. when crit chance rolls on weapons like this, it is local, not global. You will notice the base crit chance of the weapon has gone blue, meaning that its been altered by one of the stats on the item, that local crit chance has boosted the base crit chance of that kriss to 9.17%. So, if you still have 100% icnreased global critical strike chance from the tree and gear, this will double that base 9.17% giving you 18.34% total crit chance with that weapon, rather than 13.6% you were getting with 100% increase of the 6.8% base chance on the slaughter knife.

does that make sense? I know its all a bit "lol..... wut?" but it should start to click after a moment.


So the base crit chance of the weapon is very important for a crit build if you want to get really high crit chance. Getting that local critical strike chance suffix on the weapon means all your increases are multiplying a bigger number, resulting in far higher total crit chance with your skills.





a binos slaughter knife for example has very high base crit chance, 9.86% in this case, with a weapon like this its possible to get 90%+ total crit chance with your attacks, which is something you wont realistically be able to do with a 6.8% slaughter knife.

38% increased critical strike chance is the highest roll possible on a rare dagger, binos being a unique has a range that goes higher than this, 9.86% base is not possible on a rare slaughter knife. Kriss knives however have a higher natural base crit of 7.28%, and with a 38% perfect crit chance roll a rare Kriss has 10.04% base crit chance. Kriss knives also have 80% global crit chance implicit, which is twice as much as the 40% on a slaughter knife, but 1.2 attacks per sec is just way too slow for a 1 handed melee weapon and your slaughter knife has way more phys damage than the kriss you linked, so I would stick with the slaughter.

What you really want though is a weapon with 1.4 attack speed or higher, good physical damage AND high base crit chance, like 8.6%+ base crit at the top. In an ideal world a kriss is going to be better because of the 80% global implicit stat, but they require a high attack speed roll to match the natural speed of a slaughter knife or a Skean, and even with a perfect 27% attack speed suffix they cant be as fast as an Ambusher is naturally. The more good stats on a weapon the harder it is to find and more expensive its likely to be.





something like these are pretty realistic to find/trade for, thats sort of what you want to be looking out for. Close to perfect daggers look like this...




a Platinum Kriss is probably the best base for a super hard hitting, extremely high crit chance dagger, and an Ambusher is the best base for a really fast, really high damage per second dagger. However Imperial Skeans and Slaughter Knives make for really good budget dagger bases as you can get acceptable speed, damage and crit chance with less good rolls required.

Thanks much for taking the time to write that up, I think I get it.

In most basic terms, if I understand, the base damage is king because it's the base from which all crit damage is calculated. Then next is the crit strike chance because all players skill and equipment will be used with that number, 9.86 on the Bino's for example. Then I guess last would be the crit multiplier to determine how big those critical strikes are when they hit...

After fooling around all night with my gear I managed to get out of the Tabula Rasa and Carnage Heart (25% reduced max life, no thanks) and I crafted up some pig stickers. Here's what I came up with...



Unfortunatly the ambusher has no room for more mods so it looks like that one will go into a chaos recipe!

Checking the static strikes tool tip with Hatred and Herald of ash running, #1 for DPS is the skean showing 14,605 and on the character sheet 4303dps with 37.2 chance to crit and all showed a 330% multiplier. Next best is the slaughter knife at 12,453 tool tip, 3636 dps and 36.2 chance. Last of these is the Kris with 11,955, 3589 and a relatively large 52.6 chance. I can see where a tiny bit more base damage on that Kris would really shine.

Somewhat interesting, I found that the Kris seems to freeze mobs quite a bit more often than the others. Kind of a bonus defense mechanism but of limited use. I don't think I froze Gravicious for even a split second and the Kris definitely was worse than the others for boss killing. Took a while and for a second I thought he might actually win that fight.


By the way for a little while tonight I put on Abyssus and stuck all support gems with my Static Strike in the Tabula Rasa instead of reduced mana or life leech or whatever as sort of a test. Also went dual wield and just abandoned resists and any kind of defense. Had something like 51,900 tool tip dps and was blowing the hell out of stuff in Merciless Crypt and Marketplace. The big painted statue blew up in about 2.2 seconds, lol. I can only imagine how such a build would run with a full skill tree and top shelf gear. Pretty exciting stuff =)