Path of Exile 2 Early Access is officially launched on December 6th. During this period, let’s discuss what adjustments GGG will make to the critical mechanics in POE 2 and how they work differently from the same mechanics in its predecessor. If you want to adapt to the new game mechanics faster and have a better experience in Path of Exile 2 Early Access, then don’t miss this guide. Here, we will introduce Critical Strike and Critical Damage Bonuses in POE 2. Without further ado, let’s get started!
Changes To Critical Strike
A Critical Strike in Path of Exile is an attack with damage multiplied by the Critical Strike Multiplier. When the player uses a skill or triggers a skill, a Critical Strike roll is triggered, with a roll range from 0 to 99.99, which will determine how much the hit must exceed the critical strike chance to cause a critical hit. But Path of Exile 2 is making some pretty big changes to Critical Strike.
Critical Strike Multiplier vs Critical Damage Bonus
Firstly, the term Critical Strike Multiplier will be completely gone in POE 2, replaced by a new term, Critical Damage Bonus, which is tied to the stat of the gear, so if you want to optimize your damage bonus, investing in POE 2 Currency to get better gear is essential.
As a disclaimer, the developers of Path of Exile 2 have stated on the official POE Discord server that this new terminology may change before or during Early Access because they are not entirely happy with any potential confusion it may cause.
Let’s move on, so what is the difference between Critical Strike Multiplier in POE 1 and Critical Damage Bonus in POE 2?
In fact, the Critical Strike Multiplier is the total multiplier of the critical hit damage, and by default, the base Critical Strike Multiplier in POE 1 is 150%, and the critical hits deal a total of 50% additional critical hit damage. But in Path of Exile 2, the Critical Damage Bonus only refers to the additional damage portion caused by critical hits, and by default, this will be 100%. Therefore, the total critical hit damage multiplier is 200%, of which 100% comes from the base hit and the other 100% comes from the Critical Damage Bonus. This also means that no additional modifiers or scaling potential are included by default.
Scaling Of Critical Strikes
The base Critical Strike damage in POE 2 has been strengthened compared to POE 1. But more importantly, the scaling of critical strikes and the damage they deal has changed dramatically between POE 1 and POE 2.
As we mentioned before, there will be no Critical Strike Multiplier in POE 2, instead there will be two new stats that scale the extra damage you deal from a critical strike.
First, the more common modifiers will be multipliers of the Critical Damage Bonus. They will mostly consist of increases or decreases to the Critical Damage Bonus, rarely existing as a multiplier of more or less of the Critical Damage Bonus.
Second, the less common modifiers will exist as increases to the Critical Damage Bonus, they function exactly like the Critical Strike Multiplier in POE 1. You can add their bonuses directly to create a total critical damage bonus stat, then scale it by rolling multipliers by investing in Path Of Exile 2 Gold.
Examples
Let’s look at some examples to tie it all together.
For example, here Gloves has a modifier that gives a 222% increased Critical Strike Damage Bonus. Then we have this Flail, which has a modifier that increases the Critical Damage Bonus by 41%. Finally, we have the Pain Attunement keystone, which in PoE 2 reduces the Critical Damage Bonus by 30% when full life, and increases it by 30% when low life.
Let’s say your character has Gloves and Flail equipped, and has the Pain Attunement keystone assigned to the passive skill, and the character’s life is also low in order to maximize the keystone’s potential.
If your character has no other Critical Damage Bonus modifiers, you will get a default Critical Damage Bonus of 100%. With the additional Critical Damage Bonus applied from Flail, you get a total of 141%, which is then multiplied by the increased multiplier to get a final total of 223% Critical Damage Bonus. This means that your character’s critical strike will deal a total of 323 base damage, with 100% of that being base damage, plus an additional 223% from the Critical Damage Bonus. That’s crazy damage, not to mention that if you have more Path Of Exile 2 Chaos Orbs, you can add extra damage modifiers to it.
Critical Strike Chance
Also, Path Of Exile 2 is making changes to Critical Strike Chance, but this will be more in the form of stat allocations than modifier changes.
In POE 2, because the base crit chance of weapons and spells is generally tied to their stat allocations, you can generally go with weapons and spells with higher base crit chances, like this Crone Knife or this Icicle Flail, but there will still be plenty of weapons and spells with lower base crit chances that are worth choosing, depending on your POE 2 Currency reserves.
In a previous post from the POE 2 developers, they detailed the general order of base crit chances for spells based on damage type and the idea that the scaling of crit chance is tied to intelligence allocations. So intelligence-based weapons tend to have higher base crit chances.
But because we don’t know how easy it will be to increase or decrease crit chance in POE 2 at this point, and given the size of crit chance on certain weapons and spells, it may be numerically less easy to achieve, or generally a more scarce stat, which will make it much easier to limit crit chance on cold spells than on melee builds.
l Related: What Do You Think Of The Path Of Exile 2’s Early Access Release Delay?
Critical Strike No Longer Guaranteed Ailments
Finally, there is another very important change to Critical Strike from POE 1 to POE 2, and it has to do with Ailments. In Path of Exile 1, a critical strike would guarantee the application of Elemental Ailments based on the damage type. For example, a critical strike with fire damage would apply Ignite based on the total fire damage of that strike.
But in Path of Exile 2, Elemental Ailments are no longer guaranteed by critical strike. And the developers have also said that critical strikes will not increase the chance to Ignite enemies because that depends on the damage you deal, but now it is not guaranteed. And they also mentioned another mechanical change in the response, which is related to the application of Ailments in POE 2, that is, it will now be based on damage rather than Critical Strike roll or the chance of causing Ailments. In short, all this means that critical hits will no longer be a guaranteed way to cause Elemental Ailments.
All in all, based on the information we know so far, the way the Critical Strike mechanism works and the damage calculation have changed a lot in POE 2. Of course, everything may change before the release of POE 2 Early Access, but how can knowing these in advance not be considered as being prepared for it? All the exiles who are ready to fight, looking forward to seeing you in the game!
