What is lucky hit chance?

PC General Discussion
1

I think its the chance to execute an enemy (non boss/elite) when it is sub 35% HP? Is that correct?

Is the execute mechanic the same for each class? i.e. rogue/barb/sorc their lucky hits all refer to executing a mob?

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No, chance to execute non-elite is just one of the many many Lucky Hit effects in the game. These effects always appears as “Lucky Hit: (effect description)”.

These effects have a chance to proc based on your skills’ lucky hit chance multiplied by the chance of the effect. For example your skill has 50% Lucky Hit chance without bonus from items and 8% chance to execute injured non-elite, you will have on average 50% x 8% = 4% chance to proc it.

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3

as far as i can tell it is condontional proc that serveral different effects use basicaly they wanted to be able to adjust two different luck based events (crit and now lucky hit) with the benfits that they are grouped for item effects and the like

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4

Looks like the crit chance trigger, but with any effect instead of critical damage

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5

in any other game it would be called proc rate or proc coefficient. Every game does it and its just hidden.

For example, with your example lets say an item has a 10% chance to execute bosses less than 35% life. Obviously the best thing to do would be would be to just use the fastest attack, like barbarian whirlwind, because that would get you the execute really fast.

But with the procrate of WW being low, then it can still be balanced. Thats lucky hit, each ability has its own lucky hit chance, and that procrate is what is used for the descriptions your looking at. When a talent says “lucky hit: your crits stun the mob”. That does not mean that all your crits will now stun the mob, because again that would mean you just spam the fast ability and youll get a lot of crits. What it means is that your lucky hit criticals will stun the mob and the chance of getting a lucky hit is based on the specific ability to balance each proc differently for each ability.

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Lucky hit is a bit awkward to understand because it uses the word “Lucky hit chance” everywhere.

Really on the skill tooltip it should say something like “Lucky hit ratio”

If your skill says 50% Lucky hit chance, then you have a 50% Lucky Hit ratio.

Then you have an effect that says “up to a 10% Lucky hit chance to do X”

That effect has a 5% chance to proc when your 50% ratio skill hits.

+Lucky hit chance on items increases your lucky hit ratio. So getting +10% lucky hit chance changes your Lucky Hit ratio for that skill from 50% to 55%

This would give you a 5.5% chance to proc effect X.

On a skill with a Lucky hit ratio of 50%, you need +100% lucky hit chance to get the full 10% chance to proc X

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Ok so, was playing around with a frost mage, if I remember correctly, the frostbolt spell had 50% lucky hit chance, then does XYZ dmg and 15% chance to chill.

What does the lucky hit chance here apply to, not the chill, correct? Was trying to figure out what the lucky hit chance had a chance to do…guess what everyone seems to be saying is that it depends on some abilities that have some luckly chance to do something where the skill/item also provides a specific description of what the lucky hit chance will do?

IMO, this whole thing can be explained and implemented easier

8

Some abilities specifically say “lucky hit chance” others just say “chance”, if it only says chance then it doesn’t scale with lucky hit.

If something applies on hit without a chance then from what I can tell it always works.

It’s hard to test and in some places there is a lucky hit without the words “up to” so it’s not clear if that is just missing those words and works the same or if that particular chance can go above the value it has listed.

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a lvl one naked character casting frostbolt will do nothing with lucky hit, whether it procs a lucky hit or not it wont do anything. its like saying frostbolt has a proc coefficient of 50%.

All of your procs from talents or gear will get multiplied by the proc coefficient (lucky hit) and that is the actual chance of the ability to proc. In world of warcraft they call it procs per minute, so regardless of how fast your weapon is if you use a faster weapon it will just reduce the proc rate to average the same procs per minute. In diablo 4 it is called lucky hit rate and its attached to the ability not a weapon or special effect.

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10

Say you have:

Fireball
Lucky Hit: 33%

Affix
Lucky Hit: 5% chance to execute injured non-elite enemies

Affix
Lucky Hit: 40% chance to double damage to vulnerable enemies

Now you have 3, 100-sided dice:

  • You roll the first dice (Fireball):
    • If you roll a 33 or lower, you get to roll the next 2 dice
    • If you roll a 34 or higher, you’ll have to cast Fireball again for another roll
  • You roll the next dice (Execute):
    • If you roll a 5 or lower AND the enemy is injured (35% health or less), they are killed instantly, and you can continue to roll the next dice (they’re dead now due to execute, but imagine this was a different lucky hit affix)
    • If you roll a 6 or higher, this proc is ignored and you can continue to roll the next dice
  • You roll the last dice (Vulnerable)
    • If you roll a 40 or lower AND the enemy is vulnerable (marked as purple receiving 20% more damage), they receive double the damage you would have done without this proc, and continue to roll the next dice (in this case, this is the last lucky hit proc affix so there are no more to roll)
    • If you roll a 41 and higher, this proc is ignored and you can continue to roll the next dice (in this case, this is the last lucky hit proc affix so there are no more to roll).
  • Rinse and repeat with other spells alongside Fireball.

I’m using only Fireball as the example here, which has its own lucky hit chance (not sure if its 33%).

You could use another spell and they all have their own lucky hit chance and it would go through the same set of bullet points.

Finally, you get one dice for every lucky hit affix, there are few different ones with more to be added, I’m sure. I used two affixes here in the example.

All spells (basic, core, etc) across all classes can have their own lucky hit percentage (the first dice). AOE spells usually are lower because more enemies are being “rolled” while single target is higher. Also, faster spells are lower while longer spells are higher (think 2h vs 1h attacks).

The reason for this is that each spell can be adjusted or else everyone would just use faster attacks or AOE to trigger lucky hit more often.

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12

Thank you that was very clear. So the lucky hit chance on my frostbolt for example is to trigger an affix thats on one of my other abilities/weapons?

The execute and Double damage affixes, are they indepednent of each other? I imagine they should be. So I can still fail the execute roll but be successful at the double damage roll?

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13

Don’t you get to roll Dice #3 as well in this scenario?

Edit: you don’t say it right here but said it earlier, all good.

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14

Thank you that was very clear. So the lucky hit chance on my frostbolt for example is to trigger an affix thats on one of my other abilities/weapons?

That’s right. More explicitly, it’s a chance to trigger(1) the chances to trigger(2) your entire set of lucky hit affixes, each affix getting their own chance(2).

The execute and Double damage affixes, are they indepednent of each other? I imagine they should be. So I can still fail the execute roll but be successful at the double damage roll?

They are, yes. You can fail one but the other could succeed.

Here’s a link to Maxroll, in case you’re interested. They have another example along with some formula for the whole thing.

https://maxroll.gg/d4/getting-started/stats-for-beginners#h-lucky-hit-chance

In their example, that I left out in mine, was that you can also get percentage increases to your base lucky hit to make all your spells have higher lucky hit (the first dice).

But you don’t add the percentages, you do it multiplicatively. The article does a better job about that than I can.

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15

Thanks, updated it just now to make it more clearer, sooner.

16

thanks for writing this, it does help to understand. But now i’m going to toss my 2 cents in on the part that hurts my head:

Holy crap why must it be this confusing to begin with and are we are going to have to make spreadsheets for everything?

I like when things are simple. if base crit multiplier is 100%, great i know that a crit rate of 10% grants 10% of whatever my multipler is, which in this case is 10% more damage on average. That far i can easily understand and it seems to be universal without attack speed/rate being taken into account.

But when i have to figure out things like your example (blizzards design) of a % chance to then get a % chance to do additional things i really don’t wan to do that math on that. i just want to know: what is the chance to do whatever the “thing” is per hit.

In this case i guess it would be a 5% chance out of every 33% chance for execute. And a 40% chance off every 33 % chance to deal double damage. so then i ask what is the “real” value to me??? not very simple.

And i don’t even want to think of the compounding build people will come up with where they want something like: based off XX weapon with YY speed, and with ZZ skill you will have % lucky strike, to proc a vulnerable, to proc some stun, to then increase crit chance based off stunned mob, to etc etc… like holy crap i get people enjoy the complexity but min/max is not a fun game for all.

Again i appreciate what you wrote and it helps but i think it provides a great example to the developers of the kind of headache a casual person might have in just want to play the game and have fun without the mess of the math like that.

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17

I like when things are simple. if base crit multiplier is 100%, great i know that a crit rate of 10% grants 10% of whatever my multipler is, which in this case is 10% more damage on average. That far i can easily understand and it seems to be universal without attack speed/rate being taken into account.

I agree, dealing with percentages of percentages isn’t as simple as flat static stats.

And what’s more confusing is that the percentages are relative to the spell being used, the lucky hit affix triggered from it, and plus any base lucky hit variables on top.

And yeah, critical chance and critical damage multiplier is a little more straight forward in that regard.

But when i have to figure out things like your example (blizzards design) of a % chance to then get a % chance to do additional things i really don’t wan to do that math on that. i just want to know: what is the chance to do whatever the “thing” is per hit.

Totally. If it helps, to get the “actual” percent chance of a specific spell with a specific lucky hit affix, the math would be:

Lucky Hit Chance = 0.33 (Fireball) * 0.05 (Execute) = 0.0165 * 100 = 1.65%

So of all your hits with Fireball, there is 1.65% chance to execute. Or another way, for every 100 Fireballs cast, 1.65 of them will Execute (if they are injured of course) the enemy.

The problem here is that the stats UI would have to do this math for every spell (each one you can equip in a slot that have lucky hit chance) per every lucky hit affix you have equipped. Because, lucky hit is relative to the spell being cast and the affix to be triggered. Unlike lucky hit, critical chance is the same across all spells (unless a spell is specifically buffed for more critical chance due to a passive or affix) and only needs to apply critical damage modifier after rolling a critical hit.

I think a good user experience would be to have a dedicated section in the stats UI that’s titled “Lucky Hit Chances” or something where there is line for every lucky hit affix computed against every spell you have available.

Something like:

  • Fireball (33%)
    • Chance to execute: 1.65%
    • Chance to double vulnerable damage: 13.20%
  • Frostbolt (40%)
    • Chance to execute: 2.00%
    • Chance to double vulnerable damage: 16.00%

As you add/remove/upgrade more spells and more lucky hit affixes, these numbers would update in your stats menu UI.

This is the best I can come up with to lower the mental overhead.

18

Its a poorly implemented stat that just confuses people. The chance listed on the item will likely never be your chance to fo it. I had a post on this about a week ago.