BUG: Incinerate does NEVER critical hits!

[Banshee-2189]

Wondering why I am doing so few damage After activation of the damage number displaying i observed that my main skill Incinerate is NEVER doing any critical hits!!
So never yellow damage numbers come up, only ~constant value white numbers
With all other skills critical hits are working and showing regulary yellow number!!
Pls. fix that instantly!
Don’t wont to count how much time this bug costed me already trying to burn down bosses with buggy Incinerate with not working crits!!!

[vylmen-2543]

You mean with Overheating aspect, cause yes, DoTs don’t crit.

[Banshee-2189]

Thx for reply but I double checked and definitely don’t have that overheating aspect active…
and even if there is no where written that crits are disabled then and this would render it completely useless when a main damage components like crits are disabled by purpose ?!

[vylmen-2543]

In Diablo IV, damage-over-time (DoT) effects, like Bleed or Poison, are designed not to critically strike. This is largely a design choice to balance DoT and instant damage effects, which makes sense for several reasons:

1. Consistency and Balance: If DoT could crit, it would result in high damage variance that would be hard to balance. DoT effects apply damage over an extended period, and critical hits would disproportionately increase the potential damage, leading to very high (or very low) spikes. This would also make crit-based builds far more effective on DoT classes, pushing them to prioritize crit chance and damage at the expense of other attributes that might better suit them.

2. Differentiating Play Styles: DoT effects are usually preferred by builds that emphasize sustained damage, while instant damage and crits suit burst-damage builds. By keeping DoT effects crit-free, Diablo IV encourages varied play styles and build paths, allowing for a distinct flavor between those that prioritize steady damage over time versus high-burst, crit-heavy approaches.

3. Scaling Mechanics: Instant damage effects, like basic attacks or abilities, benefit directly from crit chance and crit damage multipliers. When a critical hit lands on an instant damage attack, it applies a multiplier (usually based on the character’s crit damage stat) to amplify that attack’s damage in a single hit. Without the ability to crit, DoT effects instead scale with other stats, like attack power, elemental damage, or DoT-specific enhancements, keeping them competitive with instant damage in a different way.

What Crits Do with Instant Damage

When instant damage crits in Diablo IV, it simply multiplies the base damage of that hit by the character’s critical damage multiplier. For example, if a character has a 150% critical damage multiplier and they score a critical hit, the instant damage dealt by that hit will be multiplied by 1.5x.

So, while DoT builds look to optimize duration, frequency, or additive damage, instant-damage builds gain substantial benefits from crit chance and crit damage multipliers. This keeps both play styles viable without one overshadowing the other.