Do weapons that double damage on critical hits, fill the crit bar faster or restore AP with critical hits have any meaning if you never use the VATS (as I do)? Or, in a different way, are there crits without the VATS?

With Overdrive, and I assume it applies for sneak attacks as well.

Wrong.

As sneak-attaks are no crits.

Crits is just a V.A.T.S.-thing. If you don't use V.A.T.S. you can ignore everything crit-related completely!

Yap, that has been my experiance too, so far.

TIL. They were counted as crits in previous two games as far as I know though (as well as in Skyrim).

How do you explain the existence of http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Overdrive then?

Well, not now. If u use vats and trigger a crit sneak attack, u're doing waaaaay more damage than out of vats.


My guess is that it only fills the crit bar 25% faster.

Don't get your question. Every hit in V.A.T.S. has a chance to fill your crit-meter. With overdrive you have 25% increased chance for 8 minutes.

Judging by the fact that the game calls it a sneak attack and has a damage multiplier that can be further improved with a agility perk, its safe to say its no longer crit related.

Yeah, I was used to "sneak attack critical" and I don't really pay a lot of attention to these things. My bad.

I'm sorry, does "+25% Critical Chance" sound like "+25% Chance To Fill Your Critical Bar"?

I don't think that's rght, Overdrive clearly states 25% to do a critical, where as every hit in VATS does increase your critical meter.

I'm pretty sure I've seen a few enemies gib and I don't use VATS too often.

So crits don't happen outside of vats ?

There was a perk I've haven taken yet, Critical Banker, that said: 'Can save a critical hit to be used in vats when you need it the most', doesn't that mean that crits happen outside of vats too ?

In vats my char already saves critical hits to be used only when I press space, when I need them most on tougher opponents.

Yeah that perk allows you to store multiple crits in V.A.T.S.

Check further Ranks.

Sorry, I'm not a native speeker. "Enemies gib" doesn't make sense to me. What do you mean? The stumbling? That's cause of the "stagger" of some weapons. Shotguns causes enemies to stagger more often than a pipe pistol or a SMG.

Gib:

When you are killed in a FPS game viciously, sometimes you get gibbed.
Gibs are pieces of corpse that fly around over the scene after a brutal death.

I believe it originates from DOOM

Crit is devastating especially when you can bank it,

Crit is 100% hit even if you have 5% hit chance, do multiple damages to the enemy weak spot instaneously.

Even if you spotted by up to 4 standard legendary enemies, you can kill them instantly without chance to mutate.

2 crit to alpha deathclaw belly and a little more hit, he is down.

Ah..thank's for the clarification.

Nah those peaces of meat flying around are a result of the perk "Bloody Mess" and have nothing to do with a crit. Exploding heads also occur now and than without a relation to crits.

Crits are 100% just a V.A.T.S. thing. I own the survival guide, it's explained there

re: Sneak Attacks & Crits

All I can say on the topic is that my pip-boy Combat Stats page says "Critical Strikes 367; Sneak Attacks 367"

I've not taken any Crit perks, nor any drugs. Stat-wise, it seems that it's recording Sneak Attacks as crits.

I do kind of miss random crits.

I could swear i've seen a critical hit outside VATS

I thought you were able to get regular critical hits without VATS so long as you were aiming down the sight? Maybe that is the past game with the new critbar they took it away.

I've used overdrive and it does in fact make you do critical hits outside of vats. 25% chance to critically hit means that 1 in 4 hits will deal damage as a critical hit in vats would. Its especially useful when combined with jet and a powerful automatic weapon (or righteous authority).

I've been playing for about 50 hours now, and have yet to see a critical hit outside of VATS.

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Critical_Hit

You have to scroll down to the Fallout 4 section that describes Critical Hits. I don't think the wiki authors have it sorted out yet either, based on the last sentence in the quote "needs confirmation". Ha!

I agree. There is a difference in the sound of a crit strike and I hear it quite often even when not in VATS (and I certainly see additional damage on some shots outside of VATS).

Also, I think that Sneak attacks DO count as Crits (at least according to the game stats being recorded).

At this early stage of release (and nobody having access to the CK to actually confirm the game mechanics), take everything stated on any Wiki with as an educated guess.

As Kiralyn mentions above, the Stats section of the Pip-boy does count sneak attacks as critical hits (I too have a matching number of crits and sneak attacks, and I haven't used the new VATS crit system). Having said that, I don't know whether weapons with crit-related bonuses work outside of VATS. I have a few weapons that do extra crit damage, but I don't know if I'm hitting harder with them beyond the normal sneak attack bonus.

Ninja definitely affects crit hits ouside VATS

But I don't have bloody mess as a perk, just high luck. I'm certain there are crits as people just blow up with my lucky weapons outside of vats