Critical Strike

Critical strike is a passive ability that gives a chance to deal bonus damage on a successful attack.

Mechanics
A Critical Strike's occurrence is determined upon beginning an attack, and not upon attack launch or attack landing.

For example, if the hero has and it starts an attack that procs Critical Strike, the attack applies Crystalys' Critical Strike value regardless of if the item is being upgrade in the middle of the attack animation. Or when attacking an enemy affected by, and the debuff expires during an already started attack animation, that attack still applies the Critical Strike, since the attack started while the debuff was still present.

Visual feedback
When a Critical Strike occurs, a red-colored number pops up on the victim of the strike, with a lightning bolt icon on the right side of the number. This number shows the multiplied damage value before reductions or amplifications. Therefore, the displayed value does not equal the damage the target actually took from the attack.

Multiplier
An attack that triggers Critical Strike has its total damage value multiplied by the given multiplier of the source of the Critical Strike. This means a critical strike is basically an attack damage amplifier, as it does not add extra damage on top of the attack damage, but directly increases the damage of the attack by multiplying it.

The multiplier is applied before any reductions or amplifications on the target or on the attacking unit. It only counts the unit's main attack damage, plus any bonus attack damage (percentage and flat bonuses) it has, meaning any damage instance added to the attack damage which is separate from the attack damage itself is not considered by critical strikes. If an ability adds its damage directly to the attack damage, then it may be considered by Critical Strike, though there are exceptions to this. See total attack damage for the complete calculation.

Critical Strike Multiplier is defined as:

With  being the Critical Strike value.

All chance-based sources of Critical Strike use pseudo-random distribution.

Stacking
Multiple critical strike procs are rolled from the strongest to weakest multiplier, and stop rolling once proc occurs, so that two critical strikes cannot proc on the same attack, resulting in a diminishing behavior. This means when having multiple sources of chance-based crits, and the one with a higher multiplier procs, that attack is not counted for the other critical strike sources, since they did not roll. Thus their pseudo-random distribution states are preserved: the unrolled weaker critical strikes' current proc chance is neither increased nor reset for this attack.

For example, 's attack will not proc the critical strike of ' while casting  because the latter ability has a higher proc chance and critical strike value of.

With cooldown-based critical strike sources (e.g. ), this means that when a stronger value occurs, the cooldown-based critical strike stays unused and does not go on cooldown for that attack.

Attack modifier interactions
Critical Strike is an attack modifier which fully stacks with any other modifier. However, it does not interfere with any attack modifier. If an attack modifier increases or reduces attack damage, it is counted by the critical damage multiplier. Abilities which grant conditional attack damage bonuses may or may not be by the multiplier.


 * Lifesteal: Lifesteal is calculated after critical strikes, which means that it increases the amount of life you steal.
 * Cleave: Cleave is calculated after critical strikes, which means it deals increased damage to all units within the cleave radius.

Conditional attack damage bonuses which are counted by critical strike are:
 * Splash and Psi Blades are calculated after critical strikes, which means they deals increased damage to all units within the cleave radius.

Conditional attack damage bonuses which are not counted by critical strike are:

1 Multishots / bounces can proc critical strikes. The bonus damage from the spell is not affected by critical damage.

Other sources
The following abilities involve a critical strike mechanic, although they are not triggered as a chance on attack.

Version History
Критический удар 致命一击