Base Melee Dmg or Crit Strike Damage?

[:1]I understand both of these are important and your base melee damage effects your crit strike damage, but if you had to pick, which one would be more important?

This isn't irrelevant because it has to do with the Monk's traits|||Base melee damage will obviously be more consistent, crit damage will be spiky/randomized. This has relevance in terms of killing trash monsters (overflow damage might be annoying). There is also relevance in terms of secondary crit effects (for example, hands of lightning will probably stun monsters on crits).

Other than that hard to say.|||Most of the monks traits were specialized in upping crit damage so focusing on base damage will leave you more points to spend on defensive traits, which might be more usefull for HC players..|||I'd go crit anyday. With his speed, it'll almost always trigger, and is a much easier way to increase damage than to increase the base.|||Thanks for the advice guys, I asked this bc there was is a lot of traits in diablo 3 based off of base damage and crit damage, and I didn't know which would be more better. I'd honestly go for base damage at first look bc of consistency. Crit damage bases off of your base damage so for a lot of builds I'd think it's best to go off base damage. But crit damage does a whole lot more other than just damage, so time will tell and I'll just have to find what I like best.|||Quote:








I'd go crit anyday. With his speed, it'll almost always trigger, and is a much easier way to increase damage than to increase the base.




Is crit not calculated as %?

So if you got 20% crit, and 20 dps weapon, does it really matter how fast you hit or are you basing this on all the extra combo hits?|||Speed has everything to do with it.



Since it's a %, your goal is to increase the number of times it hits, thus increasing the number affected by that %.

It's like Crushing Blow. You use it with fast attacks (Smite and DTalon), but wouldn't use it on slow ones as effectively.|||It depends if they use straight %, or "normalized" like they did in WC3.|||The WC3 system works better imo. Standard crits are just too streaky.|||Quote:








Speed has everything to do with it.



Since it's a %, your goal is to increase the number of times it hits, thus increasing the number affected by that %.

It's like Crushing Blow. You use it with fast attacks (Smite and DTalon), but wouldn't use it on slow ones as effectively.




When talking pure damage, speed is completely irrelevant in the equation of base damage or crit chance.

20% crit increases your DPS output by 20% (asuming you're at 0%, at a crit is 100% dmg) - however this equation changes if crits can go over +100% dmg, and once you already have a crit chance (for example, going from 70% to 90% crit is mathematically a 11% increment, not 20%)

Meanwhile, theres secondary effects to consider on crit like stun and interruption.

Increasing your base melee dmg by 20% would result in the same DPS as the above. Except with crit, you are relying on luck. Luck is sometimes needed to beat superior enemies, while bad luck can make you lose to inferior ones.

Comparing CB to crit is incorrect, since slow weapons have higher base damage, and crit is dependant on DPS. CB completely ignores the DPS of the weapon, applies its own independant effect, which, the faster you can apply it, the better.