Shock Chance vs Crit Chance?

I'm quite new to the game and I have been trying to do some research but I could not get a clear answer in regards to shock chance vs crit chance. I just have a few questions...


1. Are they two separate things?

2. For example, if one of my skills has 10% to crit, and 20% to shock, what does this mean?

3. I've read that monsters are shocked when you get a critical hit on them with lightning damage?

4. If I want to shock monsters as often as possible, should I stack on crit chance or shock chance, or try to balance on both?

5. This is a little off topic, but is conductivity or wrath better for a lightning totem build? Does wrath work on totems?


If someone could clear this up for me, that'd be wonderful. Thank you in advance.

Critical hits apply elemental status ailments, but there is a threshold of damage you have to deal with a single hit to apply the ailment. The higher the damage in relation to the mobs life in %, the longer the duration of the ailment.
Shock chance gives you the chance to shock an enemy without having to crit it, as long as your non critical hit does enough damage.
Most lightning damage has a very high gap between its damage rolls, so it is possible to shock most enemies even without a crit. If you do plan to go for a high crit chance, chance to shock is not all too important, if you do not go for crit, it is your only chance to apply shocks.
You can of course also go for both, if you only have a mediocre chance to crit and want to reliably shock, chance to shock helps you with that.

Yes, Auras work on your Totems. Totems scale with most things of your character (Charges for example too). Wrath is a nice offensive addition to your Totems damage. It adds flat damage, which scales with your increases in lightning damage, crit, etc
Conductivities main advantage is the lowering of the enemies resistance. Note that Curses have a reduced effect on rares and bosses. You will get a very high damage increase against enemies that have high lightning resistance when lowering their resistance, due to the way resistances work (they are a %ual reduction, so the closer they go towards 100%, the stronger they get). But this is all connected to the content you are playing, your gem choice (especially Lightning Penetration), if you use Elemental Equilibrium or Elemental weakness, etc.
Since Conductivity is a Curse and Wrath an Aura, there is not really the question of Conductivity or Wrath.

Try to develop your character as you progress. Your setup can change, as long as you understand the mechanics, you should be able to choose what is best for you. There is no simple go to way.

1. No, when you crit you have a freebie 100% chance to trigger elemental status, so your chance to shock stat does something only when you don't crit.

2. That means you got 10% chance for 100% shock and 90% chance for 20% shock, so you will see a shock 28% of the time.

3. Yes, all status ailments trigger when you crit, but to get the actual effect you also need to do a large enough amount of the associated damage type, for shock that's lightning. Ignite is a half-exception, you will get ignite no matter how little fire damage you did.

4. It's generally wasteful to invest in shock chance if you're running a crit build, you want shock chance if you're running a non-crit build that does a lot of lightning damage per hit.

5. You should try to use both, nothing's forcing you to choose. Totems aren't directly affected by offensive auras, however you are, and they use all your permanent and temporary offensive bonuses.