I took the bladesman perks for my one handed warrior, and my "Critical" strikes dont do anymore damage than a normal hit, and they do LESS damage than a power attack. i feel like thats 3 perks i completely wasted. shouldnt a critical hit be like at least 1.5x your total damage? at least? anyone else notice the lack of "criticality" in our critical strikes?

Critical strike only applies to the weapon's base damage - which means that on higher levels it's barely noticable, if at all. It's useful only at the beginning of the game so it's better to give up this doubtful advantage and spend the perks on something else.

I made the same mistake as you, unfortunately.

My criticals do a lot of damage.

you probably made it so, i assume you're a pc player

Someone in the mods section said the numbers might be mixed up. I haven't followed up on the thread so I am not sure if it was a mistake made or whatever but he/she said something about the numbers for damage and chance were mixed up. It was giving 20 damage instead of 20 percent chance and 1.5 percent chance instead of the damage. Like I said though, this may have been corrected and was just a mistake on someones part as I haven't looked at all the replies.

..no, I play on the 360. My greatsword crits one shot most bandits at level 52.

That's certainly a subject for an early mod, but also If true... (and if accidental), I think that stands a good chance to be fixed in an official patch; if it's mentioned enough.

How is 30x crit not critical?
You just did it wrong and invested in the wrong perks.

Like Rosveen stated, Critical Hits only uses a weapon's base damage as a point of reference making the damage very negligible if you have upgraded the weapon in any way or have enchantments to enhance your weapon damage.

If I understand the numbers correctly, Critical Hits inflict half the base damage of the weapon you're using. So if the base damage of the weapon you're using is 14, then you'd inflict 14+7 = 21. The Critical Hit becomes extremely negligible once 14 becomes much higher through smithing or enchantments. You're not going to notice the Critical Hit when the math is something like 500 + 7 = 507. The Critical Hit is dealing less than 2% of the damage you normally deal with your weapon.

I've come to the conclusion that Critical Hits will only be useful if they use your weapon's current damage as a point of reference as opposed to using a weapon's base damage as a point of reference. Same with the bleeding damage perks that work in a similar fashion.

you're referring to an assassin build with the assassins blade perk (sneak) and shrouded gloves; a build i mastered on my first playthrough. My post is referring to the bladesman perk of the one handed tree, which has no effect on daggers. try reading the whole post.

It sounds like Critical hits should have taken further influence from Fallout (1 & 2). In those, Criticals can ignore armor, knock down or knock unconscious, blind, maim, or kill instantly... and potentially do hundreds of hitpoint damage either way.

Meh, your post wasn't that interesting.

yet you replied to it...

I replied to the topic title, not your post.