Heya guys!!  You all think you know how critical hits work in WoW, but you’re most likely wrong or unsure of the exact mechanic.  Unless you’re Chuck Norris that is. 

Critical Hit Mechanics

Most people out there think that if they gain crit % that it is a flat increase to their DPS.  Sadly they couldn’t be more wrong.  That only holds true if you examine a character with 0% crit chance with no critical strike modifiers.  Confused yet?  It’s ok, I’m here to hold your hand. 

Well, if you’re sexy and female I will anyways.  If you’re a dude…well you can sit there and listen. 

0% Crit

When you have no critical hit chance, then any critical hit % you gain is a flat dps gain.  This means that if you had 0% melee critical, then if you gained 20% crit you’d have just gained 20% more dps from your melee damage.

#% Crit

Now on the flip side, no one has 0% crit.  You have some numeric % chance to crit as any DK, no matter how crappy your gear is.  So lets say you have 30% melee crit chance.  And then lets say that you gained 5% crit. 

While your critical strike chance of 35% does mean that you will be doing 35% more physical dps than if you had 0% crit chance, it does not mean that your dps increased by 5% going from 30% to 35%.  I know that doesn’t seem like it makes sense, so lets get into the math a little bit.

Formulas

I personally hate formulas because it’s been so long since I took a math class that I’ve forgotten even most of the basics.  /sigh  So then I sit there and try to understand how they all work and my brain just locks up.  Kind of like when a hot girl walks by in rl, but somehow far less satisfying…

Now to fully make you see the differences in adding in crit % to your character, we’re going to cover three different examples of crit %.  We’re going to use a 5% increase in crit % as the baseline example.

100% + New Crit % total / 100% + Old Crit % total = x (being the answer)

20% Crit Base

1.25 / 1.20 = 1.0416

5% crit chance increase resulted in a 4.2% dps gain

40% Crit Base

1.45 / 1.40 = 1.0357

5% crit chance increase resulted in a 3.6% dps gain

60% Crit Base

1.65 / 1.60 = 1.0312

5% crit chance increase resulted in a 3.1% dps gain

Conclusion

The lower your crit % chance is, the more you gain from additional crit %.  The more crit % chance you have, the less you gain from additional crit %.  So you get it now right?!  You have the answer!!  WRONG!!  There’s more.

Critical Hit Damage Multipliers

Death Knights, like many classes, get lots of fun lil talents which actually increase the critical strike damage itself.  Obliterate is one of the best examples.  Guile of Gorefiend makes OB do more than 200% total damage on a critical hit.  So this of course changes the formulas.

100% + (New Crit % total * Crit dmg mod) / 100% + (Old Crit % total * Crit dmg mod) = x (being the answer)

20% Crit Base

1+ (.25 * 1.45) / 1+ (.20 * 1.45) = 1.3625/1.29 = 1.0562

5% crit chance increase resulted in a 5.6% dps gain

40% Crit Base

1+ (.45 * 1.45) / 1+ (.40 * 1.45) = 1.6525/1.58 = 1.0458

5% crit chance increase resulted in a 4.6% dps gain

60% Crit Base

1+ (.65 * 1.45) / 1+ (.60 * 1.45) = 1.9425/1.87 = 1.0387

5% crit chance increase resulted in a 3.9% dps gain

Thresholds

A Crit Threshold is the minimum Crit % needed to where additional Crit % results in less than, or equal to, dps gain.  However I am not going to sit here and break down every single DK Strike/Spell so you can see where the crit % threshold lies simply because you should be over 30% crit buffed in any type of raid environment.  And I don’t think there are any crit Thresholds are over 30%. 

Conclusion

The lower your crit % chance is, the more you gain from crit % holds true.  But you see now as well that if your crit is low enough the % gained can actually result in a total dps gain greater than the crit % gained for some abilties/strikes. 

At 20% crit chance, 5% more crit resulted in 5.6% more overall dps for OB.  However the basis of our previous Conclusion proved true, minus a base threshold which is dependent upon the critical hit damage multiplier when dealing with certain talents.

The more Crit % you have, the less you gain from Crit % gained once you exceed the Threshold for each attack.

So in the end if you’re sitting in a raid with 40% crit, and you get some buffs bringing you up to 50% crit, you now know that you’re dps isn’t actually increasing by 10%.  It’s going to be less that that.  It’s also a handy piece of info when comparing gear. 

Once you have enough crit %, new gear with tons of crit % on it won’t actually be all that great for you.  Things to keep in mind when itemizing your DK!!

-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters.

Tags: Things you didn't know about WoW