Deadly Strike

August 30, 2026

Deadly Strike is a chance to double the physical damage of an attack. The doubling is applied after every other bonus has been counted, including Enhanced Damage, flat damage adds and the Strength or Dexterity bonus of the character.

Deadly Strike and Critical Strike

Chance from multiple items is added together, so 20% on a weapon and 30% on the rest of the gear is a flat 50%. Critical Strike does exactly the same thing, and the two do not combine: the game rolls Critical Strike first and only rolls Deadly Strike if that roll failed, so an attack can never reach quadruple damage.

CS + DS × (100 − CS) ÷ 100

combined chance to double damage
Critical Strike	Deadly Strike	Chance to double damage
0%	50%	50%
25%	25%	43.75%
68%	50%	84%

Deadly Strike is therefore worth much less on a character that already has a high Critical Strike chance from the Amazon

Critical Strike passive, a Barbarian weapon mastery or the Assassin

Claw Mastery. On an Amazon at 68% Critical Strike, 50% Deadly Strike only adds 16 percentage points.

Limitations

Only physical damage is doubled. Fire, cold, lightning, poison and magic damage on the weapon are untouched, which makes it close to worthless on an elemental build.
It is a per-attack roll, so it does nothing for damage over time. Poison and Open Wounds bleed at their normal rate regardless of whether the hit that applied them was doubled.

The full damage calculation covers where the doubling sits relative to Enhanced Damage and the off-hand multipliers.

Sources

A socketed Lo Rune adds 20% to any weapon, and a crafted Blood Helm always comes with 5-10%. Magic and rare items can never roll Deadly Strike, so every other source is a unique item, a set item or a runeword.