Which is better? Overpower or Critical Strike

PC General Discussion
1

I am having trouble understanding Overpower Damage vs Critical Strike Damage. I have two Nesekem The Herald mythics. After 12 masterworking upgrades, one has the following

+290 All Stats
2340 Maximum Life
425.0% Critical Strike Damage
877.5% Overpower Damage

and the other has

+290 All Stats
2040 Maximum Life
612.5% Critical Strike Damage
652.5% Overpower Damage

I was going to destroy one of them and get another resplendant spark. Which one of these is better, the one I should keep? I’m not sure it matters, but in case it does, this character is a Spiritborn.

2

Spiritborn has dedicated overpower builds but those numbers are additive so it doesnt make a ton of difference. Personally I would keep the overpower 877 one as it also has more life.

3 Likes
3

Thank You Uzra. I will keep that one.

1 Like
4

I rounded the values slightly, but worked out that the top option is better if your crit chance is roughly 4% or less – but that’s assuming you have no source of overpower other than the 3% baseline, and that you don’t have any passives or paragon nodes that scale with these stats.

5

With regard to Overpower and Critical Strike:

  • It is easy to get close to 100% Critical Strike Chance and Critical Strike Damage affects Critical Overpowers.
  • Few builds guarantee you Overpowers every single attack and for those that do, it takes quite a lot of investment to get there. It is unlikely you will take Overpower and forgo Critical Strike Chance.
  • Another way to think of Additive values is what percentage of the time the Conditionals apply. Vulnerable for example is pretty much 100% of the time for everyone. Getting to 100% Crit Chance is possible, especially in Seasons. If you have a 50% Crit Chance, your additive CHD can be though of as “half” averaged out. A 600% CHD with 50% Crit Chance is 300% CHD averaged.
  • Overpowers are almost NEVER going to be every hit and let alone receiving the full contribution value considering how convoluted it is. In your first example, assuming every other hit was an Overpower (unlikely), its Additive value is the same as CHD if Critical Strike is 100%. Keep in mind also your CHD is working for your OPs also.
  • Unless you have a build that guarantees OPs every hit, as an Additive Bucket, CHD is probably going to win out even when you are using OPs.
3 Likes
6

Overpowered critical damage, that’s what does the max damage. You must increase your critical chance and your overpower triggers.

7

Carrotfeets and BlackKnight, are you both also suggesting that the first one with 877.5% overpower is the keeper and get rid of the second one?

8

Whatever you do, ignore the Max Life entirely. There’s no way you need that 300 Life.

9

Figure out uptime% * damage = that is your actual dmage for each.

As carrot said…if you cannot trigger OP frequently the Crit Damage is better.
If you trigger it often and the damage is that much bigger than your crits, which usually it is, then keep the OP.

Personally I would keep the first one, if I could trigger OP every 3-5 seconds or sooner. Crit does more consistent dps…but if your trigger rate on OP is good, then it can clear screens. But your life value and fortify play into this.

Look at the section on OP here:

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10

Hi Irres,

That screenshot helped alot. Now I think I’m starting to understand. Since the overpower chance is 3%, the critical strike would get used more often. 3% compared to 24.9% of getting used.

Critical Strike Chance - 24.9%
Critical Strike Damage - 2,148.9%
Overpower Chance - 3.0%
Overpower Damage - 1,677.9%

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11

As everyone keeps saying, though, is itlf you have a way to trigger overpower beyond 3%, that overpower damage can really shine

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12

If you have no reliable way to trigger Overpowers, you can effectively ignore +Overpower and even x% Overpower Damage entirely.

If you are running Unbridled with Lucions and Banished Lords, you can guarantee Overpowers every single Core Skill. Investment into +Overpower Damage is your best Additive Bucket because +Overpower Damage is innately higher values than other buckets and it is triggering every hit.

Bash Cleaves with 100% Crit works similarly. The one thing that will kind of throw you off for Barbarian is Rupture since while it OPs every hit, the DD is very minimal that Rupture does so the OPs are small and not worth investing in.

2 Likes
13

Keep in mind if you have a way to increase the occurrance it can be worth it. Also if you have OverPower multipliers on gear…not sure if paragon has any.

For example my current Sorc build hits for like 20M-40M with crits, but when OP hits, it hits at like 2.5B, because I added a source of fortify also via aspect. So that number can get big when it happens. Now I don’t have any way to increase the occurrance…but I have a lot of conjurations so lots of hits. It’s like death by a million paper cuts. :rofl:

On my Druid (Glyphs are higher), it is similar the numbers are bigger (don’t ask me to quote the numbers that class was the first one I played so been a while) but on that my OP hits every 3-4 seconds. Because Druid has a unique ring called Hunter’s Zenith that guarantees OP every 30 seconds and that timer can be cooled down pretty quickly if you alternate between wolf skill and bear skill. So worth leaning into OP here for sure. Plus Druid has easy access to fortify while Sorc needs an aspect to really capitalize on it.

Banished Lord’s Talisman is class independent amulet that guarantees OP with 275 resource usage for your Core skill only…off the top of my head I am not sure if there are others. So look at your class aspects and uniques and see if there is one that can guarantee it a bit better. Also check paragon.