Discharge, jewels: spell damage or crit multiplier?

For Discharge shall we use spell damage or crit multiplier jewels? Is there some break point where crit multiplier is better than spell damage jewels or vice versa?

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Rexeos wrote:

Is there some break point where crit multiplier is better than spell damage jewels or vice versa?

Yes, for long-term DPS. Because of so many multipliers being in the game, players need to calculate the multiplicative effect of their choices, also known as "more damage."

The more damage equivalent for increased x% damage is relatively easy:

(1 + sum of existing increased damage modifiers + new modifier) / (1 + sum of existing increased damage modifiers), and then to clean it up for show you subtract one, move the decimal two places over, and call it a percent.

For critical strike (long-term), the idea is the same, but the calculation gets a little more complicated. Most people use a sort of alternate-universe type of method and I've grown to like it too. That is, you take the DPS multiplier of non-crit and add it to the DPS multiplier of crit, based on how likely it is to happen. You find the NewDPSMult with that and the OldDPSMult for that and you get the effect of crit on long-term DPS.

For a few example calculations, suppose you're playing Discharge with no added chaos damage, and the following stats:

150% increased spell damage
100% increased elemental damage
20% increased area damage

Then, the effect of getting a jewel with 10% increased spell damage and 10% increased area damage would be :

(1 (+1.5+1+0.2) (+.1+.1)) / (1 (+1.5+1+0.2)) = 1.054054, or 5.4% more damage.

or if you like algebra, (1+x + y) / (1+x).

Now, suppose your critical strike chance is 75% and your current critical strike multiplier is 300%. You're considering getting a jewel with +30% critical strike multiplier:

((0.25) + (0.75 * (3.00 + 0.3)) )/ ((0.25) + (0.75 * 3.00)) = 1.09, or 9% more damage.

or if you like algebra, ( (1-cc) + (cc*cdNew) )/ (1-cc) + (cc*cdNew), and note that you can change up crit chance (cc) as well here.

Based on your stats, one might be higher than the other. I've found that critical strike multiplier is usually higher, but this is not always true.

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Aside from long-term DPS multiplier, you should consider the practical difference between the two. Unless you have 95% critical strike chance (the cap), a great deal of Increased Curse Effectiveness, Cospri's Will, and Assassin's Mark, Critical Strike Multiplier will always be less reliable than spell damage. That is, spell damage always increases your damage, but critical strike multiplier only kicks in if you crit. I'm currently playing self-cast discharge and I've noticed it's quite annoying when I don't crit - it effectively functions like a "miss" against tough monsters. Kind of sad. Just a thing to keep in mind.