Crit Cap: Demystified, Button Style

So Bell asked me to explain another of those obscure game mechanics only the truly mad seem to understand: this time, hit cap/crit cap. Bear with me folks, this is gonna get rough.

To first understand what the crit/hit cap is, you have to first understand what happens when you take a swing on an NPC, and that in itself is something of a headache. Okay, so imagine you have a 100-sided die. When you attack that boss from behind with white attacks, imagine that you roll that die. If you roll a 1, you miss (presuming you are hit capped). If you roll 2-7, the boss dodges. If you roll 8-32, you glance (remember, this is white damage). If you have 35% crit, subtracting the bosses improved defense against crits, if you roll 33-66, you crit. The rest of the die, 67-100, is filled with white damage hits.*

So, that looks like this:
1 - Miss
2-7 - Dodge
8-32 - Glancing Blow
33-66 - Crit
67-100 - Hit

Crits routinely push hits off the table, as the max % for any outcome of a hit made cannot exceed 100% (you can't roll anything higher than a 100 sided die every time you attack). So now we're getting somewhere: the crit cap.

The simple truth of the crit cap is that it is nearly impossible to reach. Prior to patch 2.1, the crit cap was a simpler matter, as the glancing blow part of the boss hit table was almost 40%...meaning less white hits and crits put together, meaning that the higher crit rate, the less hits, running down to 0 white hits and all crits. In 2.1 the glancing blow chance was lowered to 25%. Since hits fill blanks on the table, it fills in that extra 15%, needing an extra 15% crit.

So for a melee character, non-dual wield, to reach his crit cap, he would need (while hit capped), roughly 67% chance to crit in order to never again have a white "hit". Counting a bosses improved defenses again, he'd need closer to 68%.

Possible? Yes. Probable? Noooot really.

*All of this math does not apply to dual wield or to ranged attacks. For ranged attacks, there is no dodge, therefore their crit would need to be even higher.

For dual wield, your miss % is much higher, giving you a theoretical easier time at the crit cap.