Quick Hunting Attack Superiority (and Critical Hits)

Theris

I've heard often that, for hunting, faster and lighter attacks are preferable to slower, heavier attacks, and I understand this has much to do with critical hits (as well as ability to run/shield more often). I have no idea how Achaea handles critical hit calculations.

Could someone lay out the math of this for me? For example, say you have two attacks: an attack that hits for 100 damage on 2-second balance, and an attack that hits for 50 damage on 1-second balance. Factoring in critical hits, is DPS different between those two attacks? Or is it more beneficial to use the lighter attack because you're not wasting damage on overkill? I'm just curious about the numbers behind this.

Tagging resident quantomancer @Sena on this.

Sena

The raw DPS is the same. But the useful DPS is higher with the 50 damage 1s attack. This is true with or without crits, they just make it much more significant.

For example, say a denizen has 550 HP. Both attacks have the same DPS, but the faster attack will kill in 11s, while the slower attack will take 12s, because some of the damage is "wasted" on overkill. This is further exaggerated by the ability to sometimes do 16x or 32x damage, making the differences in overkill much greater.

The other advantage of faster attacks is that the criticals are spread out more consistently. Strong criticals make up a huge portion of your damage at high levels, so while a larger number of weaker criticals (because of the lower base damage) don't directly increase DPS, they make it more reliable, and again reduce the damage wasted on overkill.

Dochitha

@Sena Do you know if critical rate continues to improve after level 100?

Cooper

It does not.