Critical Strike

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

Mechanics
Critical strike is defined by two values: the critical chance and the critical damage multiplier.

Critical damage is physical damage and is reduced by various types of armor. When a critical strike triggers, the unit's attack damage number visible in the hud gets multiplied by the critical strike's factor. The result of this multiplication shows up as a red number above the target if the attack successfully hits it. This means that the red number displays the damage before any kind of damage reduction or amplification the attack target has. This also goes for illusions. The red number will show the result of the illusion's attack damage multiplied by the factor, before it gets reduced by the illusion's outgoing damage reduction. Critical strike does not work against buildings, and only very few work against wards. Because critical strike multiplies the attack damage of a unit, after attack damage modifiers, it is a scaling ability (unlike the damage of Monkey King Bar's mini-bash ability).

All critical strikes are subject to pseudo-random distribution, except for Lycan Wolfs' and Alpha Wolf's/Giant Wolfs'.

Interaction with other passive abilities

 * Critical strike: Multiple critical strike abilities do not independently stack, as they can not trigger on the same hit.
 * Lifesteal: Lifesteal is calculated after critical strikes, which means that it will increase the amount of life you steal.
 * Cleave: Cleave is calculated after critical strikes, which means it will deal increased damage to all units within the cleave's range.
 * Bash: Bashes and Critical Strikes can proc on the same attack, and are never multiplied.
 * Illusions: Illusions can use the critical strike ability (The red number above the unit is damage before the illusion reduction). Pseudo-Critical strike cannot be used by illusions.

Pseudo-Critical Strike
The following abilities involve a critical strike mechanic, although they are not triggered as a chance on attack.