Critical Hit

Critical hits are otherwise normal weapon strikes that randomly deal increased damage on enemies. The likelihood that an attack will be a critical hit is based on 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 similar weapons such as the  Redeemer), rolls its own chance to critically hit.

Various tiers of critical hits.

When a weapon deals a critical hit (or "crits"), the damage is displayed as a yellow, orange or red number on the HUD instead of the usual white coloring. Bear in mind that critical hits on shields are still blue and attacks benefitting from the stealth damage bonus are always yellow, even when they don't crit.

Critical Hit Chance

Each weapon has a base chance to critically hit, which can be increased through mods and various buffs.

• Rifle
• Shotgun
• Pistol
• Melee
• Gladiator Mods
• Arch-Gun
• Arch-Melee
• Companions
• Warframe Augment
• Weapon Augment

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Relative Increases

Most increases to crit chance are relative to the base chance. Multiple of these stack additively with each other:

E.g. putting  Point Strike and  Critical Delay on a  Braton results in:

Base Crit Chance × (1 + Relative Bonus)

= 0.12 × (1 +  1.5 +  0.48)

= 0.3576 = 35.76%

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Absolute Increases

A few effects grant absolute amounts of crit chance. This includes  Maiming Strike,  Arcane Avenger, Cat's Eye and  Covenant. These are applied after relative bonuses.

As an example, a Braton with  Point Strike (relative) and  Arcane Avenger (absolute) has a crit chance of:

Base Crit Chance × (1 + Relative Bonus) + Absolute Bonus

= 0.12 × (1 +  1.5) +  0.3

= 0.6 = 60.00%

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Blood Rush

 Blood Rush and the Gladiator Set Bonus are unique in that they are a relative increase applied after all others and even after absolute ones.

[Base Crit Chance × (1 + Relative Bonus) + Absolute Bonus] * (1 + Blood Rush × Combo Multiplier)

= (0.05 × (1 +  0.6) +  0.3) * (1 +  1.65 * 1.5)

= 1.3205 = 132.05%

Critical hit chance can surpass 100%, for further information read Crit Tiers.

Critical Damage Multiplier

When a critical hit occurs, that hit's damage is increased and the damage value's color is changed to yellow. The stat describing by how much a crit is strengthened is displayed in the arsenal as a multiplier.

• Rifle
• Vigilante
• Shotgun
• Pistol
• Melee
• Arch-Gun
• Arch-Melee
• Companions
• Warframe
• Warframe Augment

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E.g. putting a  Vital Sense on a  Braton will result in a multiplier of:

Base Crit Multiplier × (1 + Relative Bonus)

= 1.6 × (1 +  1.2)

= 3.52

Crit Tiers

Modded Crit Chance		Crit Tier & Coloration
x = 0%	No hit can crit	Tier 0
0% < x < 100%	Chance for a yellow crit
		Tier 1
x = 100%	All hits yellow crit
100% < x < 200%	Chance for an orange crit
		Tier 2
x = 200%	All hits orange crit
200% < x < 300%	Chance for a red crit (tier 3)
		Tier 3
x = 300%	All hits red crit (tier 3)
300% < x < 400%	Chance for a red crit (tier 4)
		Tier 4
x = 400%	All hits red crit (tier 4)
400% < x < 500%	Chance for a red crit (tier 5)
		...
...	...

When a weapon achieves a crit chance higher than 100%, every attack will crit but it also gains a chance to deal an even stronger crit. As the critical hit chance increases, the tier of critical damage does so as well.

Although the coloration remains red after a certain point, crit tiers continue to increase.

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E.g. putting a  Point Strike on a  Lenz will grant it a crit chance of:

Base Crit Chance × (1 + Relative Bonus)

= 0.5 × (1 +  1.5)

= 1.25 = 125.00%

This means it will have a chance of 25% to trigger an orange crit, while all other hits (75%) will yield a yellow one.

In addition, each mod of the Vigilante Mod Set has a 5% chance to increase a critical hit's tier by 1. This effect stacks with other Vigilante Mods installed, up to a 30% chance with all six Vigilante Mods equipped.

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The critical damage multiplier for these can be calculated as follows:

1 + Crit Tier × (Modded Crit Multiplier − 1)

As an example, an orange crit for the  Braton with  Vital Sense will instead get a multiplier of:

= 1 + 2 × (1.6 × (1 +  1.2) − 1)

= 6.04

Critical Headshots

This picture displays a headcrit dealing 4x regular headshot damage using an unmodded  Lex.

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 it receives an additional damage bonus. For yellow crits, this is another 2.0x multiplier on top of the location multiplier and the crit multiplier but in general, it uses the formula:

Total Damage = Damage × Headshot Multiplier

× (1 + Crit Tier × (2 × Modded Crit Multiplier - 1))

The Headshot Multiplier is 2.0x in almost all cases. The bonus damage from headshot crits is 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 receive any additional multipliers from a critical hit. The Jordas Golem, however, has a 1.0x multiplier on his engines, but still receives quadruple damage if critically hit. Corpus humanoids do not receive headcrits, instead only taking the normal 2.0x headshot damage even after their helmets are removed.

Patch History

Update 14.10 (2014-10-08)

• Changed Critical Chance logic by allowing it to occur on Radial Explosions (both friendly and enemy where applicable). This fixes an issue with the Torid’s gas cloud not allowing for criticals.