There are a lot of Keywords and effects in Diablo 4 that all work off each other in various ways. Two that often get muddled and confused are the Lucky Hit Chance and Critical Hit stats.
With so many stats in Diablo 4, these can sometimes be confusing to manage and remember. Especially since there are stats like Lucky Hit, which have multiple factors that affect if it will even trigger. To help you get to grips with these differences, we’ve put together this guide with details explaining the difference between Lucky Hit and Critical Hit.
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What’s the Difference Between a Lucky Hit and a Critical Hit in Diablo 4?
It might seem a bit confusing at first, or you could assume the two are related in some way, but in truth, the Lucky Hit and Critical Hit Keywords are entirely separate from one another and do very different things.
A Critical Hit is when an attack triggers from a Critical Strike Chance, and as such, will deal your damage plus a bonus depending on your stats and Critical Damage, leading to some pretty beefy numbers if your build is geared towards this stat.
As for Lucky Hit, this is the chance for specific effects to trigger that are found on your skills, equipment, and passives. Instead of simply dealing more damage, it may cause powerful effects to happen with each hit of an attack, like executing enemies below a certain amount of health. However, there is a bit more complexity to Lucky Hits than Critical Strikes, which we will explain here.
With Critical Strike, you are essentially rolling a probability once when you attack enemies; is this a Critical Hit, yes or no? If yes, you get a Critical Hit and deal additional damage; if it’s not, then its just considered a normal attack.
For Lucky Hit, you are doing this roll twice, one for the Lucky Hit Chance, which depends on your stats and Skills Lucky Hit Chance (which can be seen if you turn on advanced tooltips in the options), and the other for the effect itself. So, the game is seeing if you get a Lucky Hit first, then checks to see if any of the Lucky Hit effects will trigger based on their probability.
For example, say you use a skill with a Lucky Hit Chance of 50%, and it succeeds. The game will then go through every one of your Lucky Hit Effects you have and check their probability; let’s say it’s a 40% chance to trigger an effect for this example. So, 50% of 40 is 20, meaning in the end, you have a 20% chance for that effect to trigger on a Lucky Hit.
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Of course, if you do not have anything that relies on Lucky Hit, then getting one means nothing since it won’t trigger anything, but if you build around this stat and increase your chances of getting a Lucky Hit, both through stats and Skills, it can be a very powerful tool. My Rogue is a prime example, and thanks to the passives Innervation, Achlemist Fortune, and Second Wind, I trigger these effects quite regularly, which makes clearing large groups a breeze.
