Power Charge on Crit

Many spells have lower critical chance than some weapons (e.g. staff, wand); and they don't have much or any more passives either to buff it (both have passives unique to themselves and more importantly many shared ones that are good. Your point is not very valid.

Regardless if you're melee or spellcaster, it will only work well if one has lots of attack/cast speed and/or critical chance, and increased power charge duration and increased quality of power charge on crit and higher level on power charge on crit. It shouldn't be like that; it makes the skill only favor the rich and high-level, which is lame. The support should be effective at all levels and qualities.

Also, even if it was only effective for spells, why should it be? Why do you think that critical chance should only be a spell thing? Your argument is completely hollow.

Even if it was 100% chance to gain a power charge on crit, it would still make it hard to maintain without getting the increase power charge durations and rushing between combats. I don't really see why it should be different from all the other methods of obtaining charges of any type (frenzy, enduring cry, Voll's protector, power siphon, Blood Rage), where they have no failure involved. I don't see it being overpowered, or if it is, the issue is with all the other methods that give easy charges, not just this one.

Even later with this character with lots of critical chance and more attack speed and increased power charge duration, it's still quite difficult to maintain due to large gaps without any enemies present.

Instead of investing all the points into power charges and power charge duration and power charge on crit, I could get about +175% crit chance ALL THE TIME = 3.5 power charges (increased critical support with increased critical passives). For some builds, that number might even be something like 230% (4.6 PCs) because of requiring to spend extra points to get to the power charge passives.

That seems like the much better/reliable option since it will work on bosses and PvP where normally you'd be completely screwed and have to build up power charges all over again.
With 6 power charges (or 3 or 7), it's a fact that he charges just won't be maintainable all the time causing a large dip in effectiveness.


Aside from that there's still my original point as well: how this support is quite useless unless one has invested a ton into cast/attack speed and critical chance and power charge duration, and how gaining the charges seems rather ridiculous compared to other methods (blood rage, Voll's protector, enduring cry, power siphon, frenzy)

I don't see what's wrong with 100% chance to gain power charge on crit aside from the lack of level/quality progression which isn't a particularly good reason (even then, it could be designed so that a Q20L20 gem would be 100%)

They're fairly easy to maintain on FP or Spork in a build that has decent pre-charge crit (33% in my case). However taking the power charge nodes and giving up a support ends up giving a net DPS loss. So you trade DPS away for more crit chance = more consistent damage and better application of status effects. This is a fine trade in my books, but I don't see anything wrong with the the chance being 100% or near 100%. Raw power in PvE wouldn't improve much, and maybe the gem might actually be usable in PvP.

It is really bad in PvP atm. If you put it on your main attack, when the enemy jumps on you, you can maybe get 1-2 charges before the engagement ends, so it's a terrible main attack support. I've tried it on various secondary attacks but they all fail. Projectiles are too slow to hit enemies with any consistency whatsoever (sorry Ice Spear and Spark) especially since you have to generate these at max range so you can build before engaging. Arc is the only thing you can really hit consistently with at long range, but is totally worthless as a generator due to it's 4% base crit.

Does anybody know how it works with crits that deal no damage? I am running a totem build so my spells will not deal any damage. What would happen if i started using ice spear on mobs? Would I still hit, crit and procc charges? If so then I am very temped to get some power charge nodes and start using GMP + Pierce + Ice Spear just to get the charges

Edit: I found sources stating that I would gain power charges. Anyone who can confirm this?

why not just try it? you dont need extra charges for that.

but yeah..it is as you suspect, even with ancestral bond you can crit, and you gain charges as well. with 1 increased duration node (12 sec charges) its not always easy to keep them up, but you can get them back quickly.

So far, the best ways i found to build charges quickly are either Ice Spear(lvl1) - gmp - chain - pcoc or Spark(lvl1) - gmp - fork - pcoc. That is assuming you arent using a 5L+ staff.


@aimlessgun: If you dont mind me asking, how does it end up being a dps loss?
Sure, giving up the support hurts (totems are great in this regard because you can "outsource" power charge generation), but imo you save a lot of passive points by using pcoc.
On my current witch, the only crit chance nodes i have are the Arcane Potency cluster, 3 nodes in the Assassination cluster, and Doom Cast. Im at 36.7% crit chance with fp pre charges, 57.7% with charges, and 66.7% vs a cursed target. Picking up the charges cost me 3 points, plus 2 for increased duration and spell dmg per charge.

It would be hard to find enough crit nodes in the tree to get similar numbers, let alone the points needed to get to them.
And with good crit multiplier, nothing else come close to crits in terms of dps boost, so why is it a dps loss?

Some builds (like mine dagger-CI build) have free access to power charge nodes (i lose almost nothing for taking 2 power charge nodes).
I use this gem because it has low impact on mana cost, and because it's the only way to get 90% critical strike chance (Voll's dont count - it has too low amount of ES and decreases MP).
This gem definitely has it's uses, but i agree, that even if you have very high attack speed (i have 0.15 attack time) and critical strike chance (i have 60%+), it's still quite hard to maintain and charges fade often.
I think some improvements should be made:
1. Chance to get a charge for non-Q lvl20 gem should be increased to 70-100%, OR/and you should be able to gain any number of charges per (AoE) hit, not just 1 maximum.
2. Instead of increasing chance to gain power charge, quality for this gem should increase duration of power charges by 1% per quality.

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MortalKombat3 wrote:

Some builds (like mine dagger-CI build) have free access to power charge nodes (i lose almost nothing for taking 2 power charge nodes).
I use this gem because it has low impact on mana cost, and because it's the only way to get 90% critical strike chance (Voll's dont count - it has too low amount of ES and decreases MP).
This gem definitely has it's uses, but i agree, that even if you have very high attack speed (i have 0.15 attack time) and critical strike chance (i have 60%+), it's still quite hard to maintain and charges fade often.
I think some improvements should be made:
1. Chance to get a charge for non-Q lvl20 gem should be increased to 70-100%, OR/and you should be able to gain any number of charges per (AoE) hit, not just 1 maximum.
2. Instead of increasing chance to gain power charge, quality for this gem should increase duration of power charges by 1% per quality.

please note that two 15%'s are on the passive tree so that'll mean a 50% duration boost total which roughly means 15 or 16 second long power charges (vs 10 or 11 with no boosts) vs 13 or 14 with just passives.

i do however agree somewhat about progression. should be more like 20% to 60% for leveling up and quality remaining the same though OR 40% to 60% with quality giving 1.5% chance per point. meaning 80% limit of noticeable progression or 90% limit of less simple quality and overall higher than before chance, and of both not actually 100% (which is the point of support gem i assume to understand).

I may possibly be spammming just a little little bit, but will anyone enlighten me and tell me: if I link it to the firestorm, which will hopefully crit, will it provide me with a sufficient power charge source?
I was planning on making crit EK shadow build, but puting this gem on EK is a bit of a waste (even though you crit 10 mobs with EK, you can get max 1 charge per cast. Real shame), so I am looking for some other source of power charges.

Like i mentioned in my previous post, Power charge on critical gives you just 1 power charge per skill used.
So, if you use a firestorm once, you will never gain more than one charge. If you use a discharge with 7 power charges to kill a whole pack, you'll never receive more than 1 power charge (that's why all dischargers use Voll's Protector), and so on.

I see no reasons for it. This gem is TOO SITUATIONAL. Even if you invest points into power charge nodes and duration. Even if you have high critical strike chance. Even if you have 20/20 gem.

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MortalKombat3 wrote:

Like i mentioned in my previous post, Power charge on critical gives you just 1 power charge per skill used.
So, if you use a firestorm once, you will never gain more than one charge. If you use a discharge with 7 power charges to kill a whole pack, you'll never receive more than 1 power charge (that's why all dischargers use Voll's Protector), and so on.

I see no reasons for it. This gem is TOO SITUATIONAL. Even if you invest points into power charge nodes and duration. Even if you have high critical strike chance. Even if you have 20/20 gem.

I use it on Ice Spear with a high base crit chance to begin with
i get a power charge almost every cast its easy to maintain them
and use Cold Snap like it had no cool down and discharge now and then

great gem !