Critical hit (XCOM 2)

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Critical Chance

First, you only check for a crit if you hit in the first place. If you missed, this isn't relevant no matter your % crit chance.

1. Your weapon has an inherent crit chance. Shotguns and swords get a 10% conventional / 15% magnetic / 20% beam chance. Snipers get 10%/10%/10%. Everything else is 0/0/0.
2. Flanking gives a +40% chance to crit. Looks like that's reduced to +30% in multiplayer? Huh.
3. Talon ammo gives you a +20% chance to crit.
4. Laser sight attachment gives you a variable chance to crit, higher as you get closer.
5. Some skills will give buffs or debuffs to crit chance. Squadsight has an innate 10% penalty to crit chance. Shadowstrike gives you +25%. Etc.
6. The heavy perk "Biggest Booms" has a 20% crit chance on grenades.

In theory this means you can manufacture 100% crit chances by combining various bonuses.

Warning: enemies often have an innate crit chance.

Critical Damage

If you land a critical hit, you add a constant number to the total damage. It's not a multiplier, it's a fixed bonus. This depends on the weapon. Also, Talon rounds add +1 to crit damage. Rule of thumb is that most weapons do about 50% bonus damage on crits, shotguns do a little more, Others do a little less. The heavy perk "Biggest Booms" gives a +2 for crit damage.

In the table, damage is written as X-Y +Z which is the base damage spread (for convenience of reference), plus the additional critical damage. So a conventional Assault Rifle has a range of 3-5 damage, and adds +2 on a critical. Values in parentheses are for XCOM 2: War of the Chosen.

Weapon type	Weapon upgrade tier
	Conventional	Magnetic	Beam
Assault Rifle	3–5 +2	5–7 +3	7–9 +4 (+3)
Cannon	4–6 +2	6–8 +3	8–10 +4 (+3)
Pistol	2–3 +1	3–4 +1	3–6 +2
Shotgun	4–6 +3	6–8 +4	8–10 +5 (+4)
Sniper Rifle	4–6 +2	6–8 +3	8–10 +4
Sword / Axe	3–5 +2	4–6 +2	5–7 +3

Flanking Critical Chance

Most characters have 33 or 40 from flanking.

Notes

100% crit chance is achievable with:

• Rangers with Talon Rounds ammo and Laser Sight weapon upgrades.
• Sharpshooter with Talon Rounds, Guerrilla Tactics School upgrade^{[explanation needed]} and Steady Hands perk.

Game files data

From defaultgamecore.ini:

• MP_FLANKING_CRIT_BONUS=30^{[explanation needed]}
• SQUADSIGHT_CRIT_MOD=-10^{[explanation needed]}