The combat in Diablo 4 has seen some new additions to its usual formula—this includes Lucky Hit Chance, a relatively simple mechanic that's ironically easy to misunderstand. Its effects aren't as apparent as some others, but players never find this stat useless as long as they know how it works.
Many of the game's builds will play out just fine even without paying Lucky Hits any mind, but this stat still has a big part in Diablo 4's build crafting considering how omnipresent it is in gear, skills, and effects. Here's how it works.
What does Lucky Hit do in Diablo 4?
Lucky Hit Chance (otherwise known as Proc Coefficient) dictates how often an attack triggers an on-hit effect. Unlike Critical Hit Chance, the odds of getting a Lucky Hit are tied directly to skills and not just the player character's stats. Most offensive abilities in the game have their own base Lucky Hit Chance; slower attacks tend to have higher base values compared to faster ones.
Lucky Hits won't do anything on their own regardless of character class. Players need to have a Lucky Hit Effect from an item or skill node for their proc chances to have any meaning. These effects also have base chances of their own, which means that triggering a Lucky Hit won't necessarily mean that the effect itself will apply.
Basically, this two-layered RNG system means that players will have to roll the dice twice to see if their Lucky Hit actually does anything. Thankfully, players can have multiple Lucky Hit Effects on their character at the same time. Each effect will roll independently of the other, which means there is a chance that multiple Lucky Hit Effects will trigger simultaneously or that none will trigger at all.
Mixing in Bonus Lucky Hit Chance is where things start to become confusing. The game says that this stat increases the odds of triggering effects. This implies that the Base Lucky Hit Chance of skills cannot be modified, which means that all multipliers will go to the Lucky Hit Effect instead.
For example, if the player has a 10% chance to inflict Vulnerable on a successful Lucky Hit with a Base Lucky Hit Chance of 50%, then the actual chance to inflict Vulnerable will only be 5%. If players manage to get an extra 50% Bonus Lucky Hit Chance, then their actual proc rate will increase to 7.5%.
It's hard to justify a build that revolves solely around Lucky Hits unless players can get the actual effect proc coefficients to decent levels. In most regular builds, it's usually better to just have several different effects at the ready instead of actively going for gear pieces that increase their proc chance.
Diablo 4 launches on June 6 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.