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.
