My crit hit is currently around 27%. I am using 2 1hnd crossbows. What is a better passive for more crit hits:

10% from archery (37% total)
or
the increasing 3% from sharpshooter?

I am currently using archery, but what are your thoughts?

Archery hands down.

if you have 35% Crit Chance or more, SharpShooter becomes less relevant/useful, unless you kite several seconds between each shot.

Yea i agree for archery, especially with the quick rate of fire with 2 crossbows.

Archery for sure, the 3% per second from sharpshooter generally will only help with your first shot

Depends on your build. If you want a large first shot dmg or high ToC dmg, SS can be useful. Otherwise, archery is usu better if ur crit chance is over 30.

Archery is much better, at a high enough crit chance, sharpshooter isn't very effective anymore.

Archery. SS gets worse as you scale, meaning with semi decent gear it is a huge waste.

Archery is better if cc is over 35ish %.

Like others have said, if your critical chance is ~30-35%, SS doesn't have as much of a payoff (though the inflated DPS on player profiles never hurt the ePeen)

If you are using two 1 hands I'd suggest archery especially like people said ss doesn't scale well

Archery is must more consistent dmg IMO. I believe sharpshooter tends to become less useful the more crit chance you have.

At higher crit percent treat sharpshooter as a +3 to crit chance

archery is more stable

Archery easily. As you get more crit chance % from gear sharpshooter steadily loses value.

Archery. But what else are you running?

Archery is def better since you are using two 1 hand xbows.

I would use bow + quiver as archery scales a lot better with bows until you get a lot of crit/crit hit dmg later on.

you can calculate your average dps from ss at sharpshoot dps calc

i go with sharpshooter just because the diffrence between 50% crit damage and the minimum 3% crit chance isn't that much. Even if you are constantly critting, sharpshooter still gives you 3%. it only takes 1 seconds for sharpshooter to give more damage than archery for me

Posted by Venoom at 09/13/2012 03:45 PM

Archery hands down.

if you have 35% Crit Chance or more, SharpShooter becomes less relevant/useful, unless you kite several seconds between each shot.

100% agree with this. Unfortunately most DH's will keep sharpshooter on so they can look at higher numbers but it's not their real DPS. But yeah, archery definitely.

One of the oddities about Sharpshooter is that it applies for a full second after the first critical hit. 1H XBow DH's get off over 2 aps which means you always get 2 guaranteed crits off Sharpshooter against a single target. With perfect timing a 1H Xbow DH can get a Spike Trap - Scatter and 2x Impale - Grievous Wounds to hit in a single instance of Shapshooter. Assuming you can get all 3 Spike Traps to trigger together, then you get off a ludicrous amount of damage with your 5 guaranteed critical hits:

275% * 3 = 825% (Spike Trap - Scatter)
(265% + 100%) * 2 = 730% (2x Impale - Grievous Wounds)

(1555%) * Crit Damage Modifier

Dual Wield means an upper bound of 400% Crit Damage from weapons alone which equates to 6220% weapon damage within a second. That sounds crazy, but it's actually doable against certain bosses that have a hit box large enough to trigger all 3 at once. I know The Butcher, Siegebreaker and Azmodan all are. A pair of +11% attack speed 1H XBows gives you about a tenth of a second leeway on getting the Impales to hit at the same time as the Spike Traps. It's a helluva sight when you pull it off.

Overall, though, yes, Archery is going to be more useful if you choose not to go toe-to-toe with enemies. It's worth noting that Archery also affects your displayed dps just like Sharpshooter does so you have to "unequip" that skill to get a true read on your dps. There's nothing saying you can't run them both together, but it hurts losing that passive skill slot.

Thanks for the information everyone. I have switched over from sharpshooter to archery on my last few runs and it seems that I am more constantly crit-ing. I'm going to continue to test both still though.

@betwolf that is a very interesting calculator. It is actually showing my expected dps to be higher with sharpshooter than archery...hmm

@ecocd I might give that build a try just for the fun of it. Sounds like a very complicated combination to pull off. Especially when I have very little experience using spike trap or impale!

Thanks again for all the input!