Despite what some people say, equipment requires a lot of choice in Diablo 4, there are plenty of features that compete with each other, with very clear advantages and bonuses. But to choose which items to equip, what to enchant, and how to optimize your build, it’s essential to understand what each stat brings. Blizzard had the good idea of adding tooltips under the skills to explain certain effects like Vulnerability, but the information about Lucky Strikes is ultimately limited and uninformative. We will therefore adopt it, as it is very easy to misunderstand the matter.
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How Lucky Strike works explained
To simplify and use jargon that you’re probably familiar with if you’ve played other high-level hack ‘n slash or MMORPGs, or might associate “Lucky Strike” with “Trigger Chances” and the infamous “Process“. Even if in reality it is a coefficient.
When you inspect an offensive skill in the talent tree (after activating the advanced description option), you can see that there is a line that Chance of Lucky Strike. They are generally higher on single-target skills than AoE skills, as well as on skills with cooldowns rather than non-cooldowns.
- Let’s take an example with the Druid’s Wind Shear ability below, which has 33% Chance of Lucky Strike.
This means that every time you hit an enemy, you have 33% chance of triggering an additional yet-to-be-defined effect. But what effect? This is where it gets interesting. Through your talents and equipment, you can potentially collect dozens of different effects that can all be triggered with each Lucky Strike.
For example, let’s say you have a talent that gives “Up to a 10% chance to make an enemy Vulnerable on a Lucky Strike” and an affix “Up to a 5% chance to execute an enemy on a Chance”. This does NOT mean you have 10% and 5% respectively to make an enemy Vulnerable and execute on each hit. Although both effects and possibly others all have a chance of being triggered on every hit. When a Lucky Strike is triggered (33% of the time in our example), you have a 10% chance to inflict a Vulnerable and a 5% chance to execute an enemy. You have a chance to have a chance : ouch!
But don’t panic, you can easily calculate your actual chances of producing a certain effect if you still remember the basics of the math (we’re not trying to offend you). Divide them all by 100, then multiply them together and multiply the result by 100:
- 33% give 0.33, 10% give 0.1 and 5% give 0.05.
- (0.33 x 0.1) x 100 = 3.3%
- (0.33 x 0.05) x 100 = 1.65%
So per Shearing Wind you have a 3.3% chance to make the target vulnerable, and a 1.65% chance to execute it. It doesn’t seem like it’s said that often, but there are solutions.
Improve the chance of Lucky Strike
There are talents and equipment additions that increase your chance of Lucky Strike. Let’s say +20% on an item and +30% through a talent you placed a point in. We haven’t been able to confirm exactly how the game calculates this yet, but we’re pretty sure it’s multiplicative and won’t just add to your Lucky Strike chance. Otherwise, achieving 100% luck across all your skills would be far too easy and render the stat virtually useless.
- To use the example of Shearing Wind, who has a 33% chance of being lucky.
- Divide all values by 100, add up the bonuses and multiply by the chance of luck:
- 0.33 x (1 + 0.2 + 0.3) = 0.33 x (1.5) = 0.495
- We multiply the result by 100, which gives the new percentage: 49.5% Chance of luck.
- If we take the above effects, the new result gives:
- (0.495 x 0.1) x 100 = 4.95%
- (0.495 x 0.05) x 100 = 2.475%
You now have a 4.95% chance per Shearing Wind to make the target Vulnerable, and a 2.475% chance to execute it. It remains little, but if we take skills with better chances of luck at the base, and effects that also have a greater effect, this makes it possible to trigger a certain effect very regularly. For skills that are used very often and very quickly, such as Hydra’s shots, this makes a big difference in practice.
We hope to have been clear, do not hesitate to let us know if any points still seem confusing or unclear to you.
Why Lucky Strike Is a Good Thing (Even If It’s Complicated)
If math makes you sick and theory building isn’t your thing, you may find it all unnecessarily complicated and unnecessary. But in reality, Blizzard was doing players a huge favor by openly displaying this stat for once. Indeed, Lucky Strike Chances have always existed in most RPGs/MMOs/Hack ‘n Slashes, it was simply hidden. She was never openly communicated to players, so the majority of people vastly overestimate their chances of making an effect with her abilities. Players who wanted to be able to calculate all this to optimize themselves were forced to engage in data mining, asking the developers for information (hoping for an answer), or looping each skill for hours to collect data. perform statistical analysis. You don’t have to do that here, the information is openly available.
It’s a necessary evil to have Luck Chance, not just apply the same chance of an effect directly to all skills. Indeed, this would make area of effect (AoE) abilities way too powerful, the same goes for multi-hit skills. Imagine if Sorcerer’s Hydras, Necromancer’s Skeletons, and Rogue’s Rapid Shot all had a 5% chance to execute a target on each hit? The number of attacks would allow them to slaughter everything in record time, even on high difficulty, and these types of effects would become the undisputed kings in the players’ builds.
In summary, it balances the different skills and rewards using major attacks, rather than spamming dozens of minor attacks or AoEs. Developers can also afford to integrate more powerful and interesting effects, such as a Meteor or a giant Poison Nova, without immediately destroying the overall balance. Finally, this may also allow you to create real builds built around Lucky Strikes, by choosing your skills well, collecting effects and increasing the chance of Lucky Strike, without being overwhelmed right away.
