Critical Hit

Critical hits are randomly occurring strikes that deal increased damage on enemies. When a weapon critically hits (or "crits"), the damage is displayed as yellow numbers on the HUD instead of the usual white coloring (though crits on shields are still blue). The likelihood that an attack will be a critical hit is based off the weapon's critical hit chance, and the additional damage dealt by a critical hit is determined by the weapon's critical damage multiplier. Each attack, or each pellet in the case of shotguns and alike weapons, rolls its own chance to critically hit.

Contrary to common belief, melee attacks against unalerted enemies are not guaranteed to crit. Invisibility and Smoke Screen only grant a stealth damage bonus; actual crits when stealthed or attacking unalerted enemies will simply apply the critical damage multiplier on top of the stealth damage bonus.

Critical Hit Chance
While each weapon has a base chance to critically hit, there exist mods to increase critical hit chance. These mods add together to make a single multiplier to the weapon's critical hit chance; they do not give percentage points nor stack multiplicatively.


 * Weapon Crit Chance: Each weapon has its own listed chance to critically hit. Currently, weapons range from 0% (Miter, Panthera) to 50% (Amprex, Dread, Synapse).
 * Mod Crit Chance: This is the total of all equipped mod bonuses added together. If you have a Rank 5 Point Strike giving +150% (1.50) and a Rank 5 Critical Delay giving +48% (0.48) equipped, your Mod Crit Chance totals to 1.98.

This means that a hypothetical rifle with a weapon crit chance of 10% has a Rank 5 Point Strike equipped, its new crit chance is 25%.

Critical Damage Multiplier
When a weapon attack is determined to result in a critical hit, the amount of damage it would do is simply multiplied by the crit multiplier, which is calculated by a formula similar to the crit chance formula.


 * Weapon Crit Multiplier: Most weapons have either a 1.5x or a 2.0x damage multiplier to their critical hits. Currently, weapons range from 0x (Miter, Panthera) to 3.0x (Soma, Soma Prime).
 * Mod Crit Multiplier: This is the total of all equipped mod bonuses added together. Equipping both Vital Sense and Hammer Shot at maximum rank (1.20 and 0.60, respectively) will yield 1.80 as the Mod Crit Multiplier.

Crit Multipliers are applied directly to modded weapon damage in the damage calculation and all calculations, including elemental mod damage, occurs after this multiplier has been applied. Plainly and simply, a weapon's damage on crit is as follows:

"Red Crits"
If the critical hit chance for a weapon exceeds 100%, not only will every shot crit, but there is a chance for a "red crit" to occur. Red crits are randomly-occurring crits that deal even more damage than normal crits, and are called such because their damage is displayed with red numbering. The chance for a red crit to occur is equal to the critical hit chance of a weapon in excess of 100%:

The damage of a red crit follows a diminishing formula that limits it to never exceed twice that which you can deal with a yellow (normal) crit.

For example, a weapon with a 2.0x crit multiplier would have a 3.0x red crit multiplier. A weapon with a 5.6x crit multiplier (achievable by installing Vital Sense and Hammer Shot on a rifle with a base 2.0x crit multiplier) would have a 10.2x red crit multiplier.

Critical Headshots
Certain body parts on enemies, most notably heads, will receive additional damage when struck. This location-based damage increase is usually a 2.0x multiplier, but if the strike is a critical hit, then the strike receives an additional 2.0x multiplier on top of the location multiplier and the crit multiplier. This means that while a normal bodyshot results in your weapon's listed damage (before mitigation), a critical headshot from a weapon with a 2.0x crit multiplier would deal 8.0x that listed damage!

The headcrit multiplier seems to be specific to heads and not generalized to all special body parts. The MOA, for example, has a "fanny pack" which normally receives 3.0x damage, but does not seem to receive an additional multiplier beyond that and your weapon's listed crit multiplier when actually crit.
 * Critical Multiplier: This is what has been calculated in the previous section entitled "Critical Damage Multiplier". It is the combination of a weapon's crit multiplier and the bonus multipliers from installed mods. It will be listed when hovering over your weapon selection while in the Arsenal.
 * Headshot Multiplier: This is 2.0x in almost all cases, as damage dealt to enemy heads (except for the MOA and its variants) typically receive double damage.
 * Headcrit Multiplier: This is exactly 2.0x and is not subject to other changing factors.

Redheads are the culmination of all these possible multipliers. There is no additional increase in the headcrit multiplier; you can simply replace the Crit Multiplier in the previous formula with the Red Crit Multiplier result from the preceding section.

This means that a player wielding Dread with all related mods could deal up to 40.8x their normal damage, which is sufficiently high enough to merit taking screenshots and bragging to friends.
 * Red Crit Multiplier: This is double your critical multiplier, minus 1.00 exactly.
 * Headshot Multiplier: 2.0x, except against MOAs.
 * Headcrit Multiplier: Still 2.0x.

Effect on Damage Potential
The critical hit mechanic increases the average damage output or damage potential of all weapons capable of inflicting critical hits. The magnitude of this increase is dependent on your aim as a player, because headcrits provide a greater damage bonus than a headshot and a critical hit combined. Therefore, the higher your headshot accuracy, the higher the value of the crit stats of your weapon. This effect on your sustained DPS can be assimilated into the general damage gain by using an estimate of your headshot accuracy.

Recall the formulas above for critical hit chance and critical damage multipliers. Your damage per shot without considering headshots is equal to:


 * Crit Damage is defined above.

A good eye will notice that the above equation partitions the total average damage into two factors: damage that crits, and damage that doesn't. When crit chance is increase, a greater portion of shots deal crit damage instead of normal damage. When headcrits are included, the equation gets complicated because there are four different cases: headshots that crit, headshots that don't, bodyshots that crit, and bodyshots that don't.


 * Crit Headshot Damage is defined in an earlier section.
 * Headshot Rate is your personal estimate of how many of your total hits are headshots.
 * Headshot Rate is your personal estimate of how many of your total hits are headshots.

As an example, with a weapon of 100 damage per shot, 10% crit chance, and 2.0x crit multiplier, if you can land a headshot 80% of the time, your calculation is as follows:

So, your average damage per shot is actually:

This is 2.3x your expected damage without considering crits and headshots. For contrast, if you landed headshots only 20% of the time but kept all other variables the same, you would deal only 1.4x the expected damage before crits and headshots. Understand the magnitude of the interplay between critical hit statistics and headshots.

For advanced usage, this entire calculation and its difference from the original average damage per shot can be described as the critzone modifier. In the first above scenario, the critzone modifier was 2.3, and in the case where you only had 20% headshot accuracy, the critzone modifier was 1.4 instead. Mathematically, all of the above equations can be condensed into the following:

Calculating Red Critzone Modifiers
Perhaps unintuitively, calculating the redzone modifier is simpler than when critical chance lies below 100%. This is because the headcrit modifier applies to all headshots. This by no means relaxes the dependency of average damage output on headshot rate, though.

In this case, headshot accuracy and average crit modifier are indeed two independent factors and can be examined and treated separately, as:

For example, a weapon with 125% crit chance and 2x crit damage multiplier has an average crit modifier of 1 + 1.25 (2-1) = 1 + 1.25 = 2.25. At a player's headshot accuracy of 80%, the zone modifier is 1 + 3 0.8 = 3.4. Therefore, the combined crit & zone modifier is 2.25 3.4 = 7.65, meaning the weapon will on average deal 7.65 times or 765% of the damage before hit zones and critical hits were taken into consideration.

In this special case where critical chance exactly equals 100%, the formula simplifies even further, as there can only be yellow strikes--no white non-crits nor any red crits.

Benefit of Critical Hit Mods
When considering to install critical hit mods into a weapon, it is important to compare these mods' relative benefit as an increase in damage potential to that of other mods in question. The easiest way to do this is by calculating damage both before and after installing the critical hit mods in question, then use them with the following formula:

It is important to note that critical chance and critical damage mods show strong synergy, which means that using them combined will provide a greater benefit than the product of their individual benefits. It is therefore advised on any weapon to either use critical chance and critical damage mods together, or to not use them at all.

As an example, consider installing Point Strike and/or Vital Sense into the Vulkar, which has a 20% crit chance and 2.0x crit damage multiplier, and assume a player headshot accuracy of 80%. Using the previous formulae, the relative benefit of Point Strike alone would be roughly +53.57%, that of Vital Sense alone would be around +58.29%, and that of both combined would be close to +199.29%&mdash;which is significantly higher than if both would only scale multiplicatively with each other (that would only be +143.09%).