Critical Strike Mechanics?

The Critical Strike stat is weapon based only, and unaffected by the 3 attributes. If an average melee weapon reports a critical strike value of 5%, the players critical strike chance, without any other bonuses, is 5%. A dagger has an innate buff to Critical Strike of (if memory serves) 40%. The reported Critical Strike chance on the character screen is somewhere south of 7%, which (7% exactly) is where it would be if the 40% were being applied as a modifier to a base value of 5% Critical Strike chance. Is there some hidden mechanic that has another affect on the Critical Strike stat?

If the mechanic works the way I just described, with all +% buffs applying as multiplicative to the base of 5%, this means that each Passive Skill that increases Critical Strike chance by 10% has the effect of a 0.5% increase in Critical Strike chance, correct?

From what little I have seen in the Passive Skill Tree and the stats being provided on gear, building a high Critical Strike chance takes a lot of focus in the stat to get absurd amounts of +% for very modest gains.

I hope someone can show me where I am wrong, because I have always enjoyed Crit builds, but it seems like an unreasonable way to build with the current mechanics.

You are, overall, correct. Critical strike chance bonuses are applied as a multiplier to the base chance on the weapon (or spell) you're using.

The fun starts when you start noticing that not all weapons (and not all spells) have the same base odds of critical strikes. Intelligence alignment on weapons shows up as a higher base critical chance: 5% is actually the lowest chance to crit you'll find on a weapon.

Also not immediately apparent is that critical hits can do more than just extra damage: the elemental damage types each have their own status effect which is automatically triggered when you crit with them.

Thank you for responding. So you are saying that weapons that have an Int. requirement will have higher "base" Critical Strike chance stats? But at the same time, a characters Critical Strike chance is not affected by their Int. attribute right?

My next question would be, how much opportunity is there, via the passive tree and item buffs, for buffing a Dex-Int build ranger to high critical strike chances, like 50% or more? Is this possible/viable with this mechanic?

I too am curious on this topic. It does not seem that a crit build is currently a viable or efficient use of points, and I too like crit builds.

so 'increase critical damage %' & 'critical damage multiplier'

is it we have to choose both of em to maximize our crits or just either one?

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/11707

Extensive post on game mechanics everyone should read.

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westenskow wrote:

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/11707

Extensive post on game mechanics everyone should read.

tq dude ;)

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westenskow wrote:

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/11707

Extensive post on game mechanics everyone should read.

Thank you from me as well.