Perhaps a silly skeleton question...

[Necrochild313]

You know, I couldn't help but notice that when skeletons hit a monster sometimes it shows the "critical strike" animation on the monster, it could just be me, but do skeletons have a chance for critical/deadly strike?

I just took a skelemancer into a game with one skeleton and found that occasionally the little yellow "spark" thing will occur when the skeleton hits a monster. Has anybody else noticed this? Since it seems to only happen occasionally I'm having trouble rationalizing that it's just an "animation" like the crushing blow animation takes place when a pally hits an enemy with charge, as that animation takes place every time the pally hits, whereas this animation does not.

I'm sure that even if the skeletons have a chance of critical strike it is somewhat low, but it does seem to still be there.

I suppose bringing this up may arise some questions, perhaps it is granted by mastery for some reason? Is it a hardcoded % chance like skeleton's with shields % chance to block? Or am I misinterpreting something?

[Mad Mantis]

Normally I don’t look at my Skellies when they are killing stuff. I’ll keep my eyes out for the yellow spark.

If somebody could confirm this by examining the code it would make things easier for us. It is pretty hard to set up a test that proves conclusively that a Skellie has CS.

[Myrakh-2]

Hm... Skelly warriors have a very narrow damage range. Critical strike doubles the damage.

So, how about this:
- to see whether a skelly hits, cast life tap on the monster
- then just count the number of hits it takes to kill the thing

If you do this "enough" times (if the CS chance is pretty low), and sometimes it takes fewer hits than it should...

Maybe use a poison mage to get healing out of the equation, or PMH with a low damage weapon.

Just an idea.

[prion]

i've seen this too, and i think it also happens at low levels. you might be able to test a level 1/1 with players 8 in the black marsh or somewhere

[Necrochild313]

It does happen at low levels, I tried to test it but its very difficult to test it because it only seems to happen about 1/10th-1/20th of the time and it's only up for a few frames it's very difficult to test and capture with a screenie :(

I will try to get a screenie of it when I get home.