Am I misunderstanding Monk's Sixth Sense ability?

Question

I've been trying to set up a crit build on my Monk, so naturally, the Monk's Sixth Sense ability is somewhat attractive for me.

Your dodge chance is increased by an amount equal to 30% of your critical hit chance.

The clincher here though is that I've never been able to move away too far from the Monk's seemingly flat 5% critical hit chance. The only things I've seen that bump that up are:

1. Items. But that doesn't count for much -- the most I've seen so far averages at +3% (am at late nightmare).

2. The Scoundrel. An ability provides an easy +3% as well.

So far that bumps me up to about 10~11% crit chance, which is extremely meh for Sixth Sense, considering that something like The Guardian's Path autos a +15% on evasion off the bat (Sixth Sense pops at +~3% with the adds I've mentioned.

Now, I'm thinking: am I missing something here? Are there ways to increase my crit chance which I haven't discovered?

Or does Sixth Sense work exactly as advertised, off a flat Monk 5% crit chance? If so, I question the rationale behind offering such a skill, especially against something like the aforementioned The Guardian's path.

Answer 1

There are five defensive stat passives, and especially without a lot of crit gear, this one is by far the worst.

If you were really decked out with crit, and weren't dual wielding, this could become better than one of the other 3 available ones (Resolve, Seize The Init, One w/ Everything), and then you should use it.

I guess if you wanted to basically only get +All Resist rares with +Crit Chance/Damage, +Dex and +Dex/Vit, and one other stat, then this would become better than One w/ Everything, but it's a pretty hypothetical situation as you'd have to have ridiculously perfect gear to justify this setup.

Answer 2

Don't scoff at the extra +10-20% crit hit chance. You'll be pleasantly surprised how often it actually triggers. Now I'm not an expert at the crit hit field but to my understanding is the following.

Items 56+ have the opportunity to have up to 7% (highest I've seen is 6.5% so I'm assuming) Crit hit chance.

As of right now my CritHit chance is 21% because of the following: Bracer +3, Ring+3, Amulet +4.5, Gloves +5.5, Stock +5.

Which is more than enough, its based on every hit so if you swing once at a mob of 20 imps that's 20 hits... 5 of those hits are critical. Thankfully the game highlights all your crits in yellow so its easy to see the damage you're dealing.

Now with sixth sense its a whole different use for it. It affects your Dodge skill and the optimal use for this skill would be for the Mantra of Evasion (MoE) skill will add 15% dodge for 2 minutes and a 15% extra dodge for 3 seconds.. The final rune for MoE is called Backlash which Provides 50% weapon damage when a dodge is successful.

Since my Hit chance is at 21% 1/3 of that gives me an extra 7% dodge. So at MY dodge goes from 34.2% (no buff) to 44.1% (with MoE) to 52.5% (with 3 sec buff). If u notice it's not an exact 15% you receive and that's because it's based on your difficulty level and mantras are effected by it. It would be nice if the detailed information would be more accurate instead of saying its 15% all the time but that is not the case.

So in theory when you get zerged, and you say have 8000dps like me, 1/2 of the mob will receive about 4000dmg due you dodging half of their attacks, and 1/5 of that mob will get critical hit because of the 20% critical hit chance.

EDIT: You can also use Eternal Ally or Earth Ally (or any) and they also take advantage of your CritHit and Dodge so you can actually kite mobs and have your ally kill them if u have a moderate amount of spirit regen.

Answer 3

I don't think you're missing anything. I think this is just a completely underpowered Passive. Even a Dodge-optimized build would find better passives than this to use. Even at 21% crit, 7% dodge just isn't worth a Passive slot. Your crit % would have to be at 42%, just to convey an extra 14% which I believe is impossible in the current game.

There are so many better Passives to help the Monk's survivability.

Answer 4

Crit chance of 45% is possible. This adds a lot of dodge and when paired with MoE Backlash, is a big DPS boost. The problem is that it does not add the % advertised which leads me to believe that there are diminishing returns on dodge. I have 36.4% dodge currently without MoE or Sixth Sense. I have 32.5% crit chance. This means I should get 9.75% bonus to my dodge with SS. Instead, my dodge with SS on is 42.6%. I'm getting shorted 3.5% dodge. Even worse, when I turn on MoE, I'm getting shorted over 6% dodge from that not including the boost for 3 seconds. = ( No evasion tanks in D3 I guess.