Don’t fall into the crit damage trap unless you have nothing else to invest
I‘m a new player to poe so I may be wrong, please correct me if I said something wrong.
Recently, I checked poe2ninja and helped a few players fix their Bloodmage CoC BD. A common issue I noticed is overstacking critical damage, which has diminishing returns, similar to armor or evasion.
Proof 1: Simple Node Swap Test
Try this – remove a 15% crit damage node and add a 10% increased spell damage node instead. You’ll often see a DPS increase, even with 100% crit chance. I tested this on my own 100% crit chance bloodmage and still saw better results.
Proof 2: Quick Math Check
Using the formula from Maxroll in chapter 3:
https://maxroll.gg/poe2/getting-started/damage-scaling
Assume:
300% increased spell damage
500% increased critical spell damage (5x crit multiplier)
Before:
(100 + 50) * 3 * 1.4 * 1.2 * 2 = 1512
0.5 * 1512 * 5 + (1 - 0.5) * 1512 = 4536
After 10% Inc Spell Damage:
(100 + 50) * (3 + 0.1) * 1.4 * 1.2 * 2 = 1562.4
0.5 * 1562.4 * 5 + (1 - 0.5) * 1562.4 = 4687.2
After 15% Inc Crit Damage:
0.5 * 1512 * (5 + 0.15) + (1 - 0.5) * 1562.4 = 4611.2
Clearly, the 10% increased spell damage wins.
Comments
I appreciate the idea, but like PoB exists for this reason.
One problem is that there are a lot of nodes where you gain inc damage when you crit(like 100% inc normally) which would reduce the value of inc damage node and raise value of crit damage. I usually just manually add some inc damage manually then calculate if I should add spell damage or crit damage node.
When you add crit damage, value of SP goes up. When you add SP, value of crit damage goes up.
Every upgrade you will need to check which is worth more as it will constantly be changing
you can just check node power & power report in pob to see which node is most logical for more dps in pob
Investing in 1 Stat is always a Bad idea. Simple Example: You have 3 Stats all Multiplicative: 2x2x2 equals in 8. Now you get 3 Points to spend. Spend all in 1 Stat: 5x2x2 equals in 20. Spreading all 3 Points across all Stats to 3x3x3 equals in 27. Easy to understand
Pob kinda owns
"Diminishing returns" isn't really correct. You are still getting a linear increase. "diminishing marginal returns", perhaps. But you do have a point.
> 300% increased spell damage
> 500% increased critical spell damage
When you have two different stats that are multiplied together, it's better to raise the lower one if possible. With 100% chance to hit, your two scenarios boil down to this:
10% inc damage: 3.1 * 5 = 15.5
15% crit multiplier: 3 = 5.15 = 15.45
Base damage and other more multipliers don't matter for this comparison.
Technical corrections: the example uses 200% inc damage, for a multiplier of 3. You are also using a 50% chance to crit but it doesn't matter much.
Having more crit multi than inc damage was really difficult in poe1. Guess it's changed for some builds.
doesn't it depend on the crit chance?
Its not so simple thats why PoB assign weights to stats.