Atk% vs. Crit Dmg%

[デービット（David）]

Is it better to go for pure atk% stats or get crit% and crit dmg%?

 

[Psyche]

Generally, it is better to go for atk.% when you have the choice.
However, there are certain exceptions: when a fighter has a Signature Ability that relies on critical hits (such as Heavy Reign, No Egrets, Bad Ms. Frosty or Parasite Weave) or something similar, you will want to invest heavily in crit rate to make their SA reliable. When this is in effect, it no longer makes a significant difference whether the supplementary stat is atk.% or crit dmg.% – although unless you have 100% crit rate, atk.% is the preferable choice of the two.
A side note that if you have one of these crit-reliant fighters, then you will have to be very careful whenever you see Twisted Mettle, Dreadlocks or That's All Folks! because those fighters can very easily be your downfall.

 

[cappatacus]

Generally, it is better to go for atk.% when you have the choice.
However, there are certain exceptions: when a fighter has a Signature Ability that relies on critical hits (such as Heavy Reign, No Egrets, Bad Ms. Frosty or Parasite Weave) or something similar, you will want to invest heavily in crit rate to make their SA reliable. When this is in effect, it no longer makes a significant difference whether the supplementary stat is atk.% or crit dmg.% – although unless you have 100% crit rate, atk.% is the preferable choice of the two.
A side note that if you have one of these crit-reliant fighters, then you will have to be very careful whenever you see Twisted Mettle, Dreadlocks or That's All Folks! because those fighters can very easily be your downfall.

I think it's important to note that even with characters like this, crit damage still scales with attack so it's good to have some of that on your character. Also, Parasoul's Marquee allows her to have either a bonus to crit rate or to crit damage, so if you have one of those applied, you might not want to focus /as/ much on those with your blockbusters and special moves.

 

[デービット（David）]

Okay ike i have several characters that seem almost like they should have completely different builds—and if you don’t mind i’m gonna say them:

Poltergust—(i’ve been going from crit rate and crit dmg, but now after what you told me i’ll go for attack instead+gauge)

Bio Exorcist—same as above but she’s confusing because i’ve been focusing more on long strings of combos and i don’t know what is more efficient to use. gauge at like 20% is enough to fill up and be used consistently after a combo so other than that i don’t know what to get

Diva Intervention—honestly stumped here (no gauge, main crit rate and crit damage but should i be going for attack?)

Blood rain—same as Diva

Hack N Splash—Crit

Primed—Crit (mainly)

i have more but this list is getting too long anyways, plus i’m not getting enough good rolls on moves anyways soooooo

 

[cappatacus]

Okay ike i have several characters that seem almost like they should have completely different builds—and if you don’t mind i’m gonna say them:

Poltergust—(i’ve been going from crit rate and crit dmg, but now after what you told me i’ll go for attack instead+gauge)

Bio Exorcist—same as above but she’s confusing because i’ve been focusing more on long strings of combos and i don’t know what is more efficient to use. gauge at like 20% is enough to fill up and be used consistently after a combo so other than that i don’t know what to get

Diva Intervention—honestly stumped here (no gauge, main crit rate and crit damage but should i be going for attack?)

Blood rain—same as Diva

Hack N Splash—Crit

Primed—Crit (mainly)

i have more but this list is getting too long anyways, plus i’m not getting enough good rolls on moves anyways soooooo

I think crit stats will benefit characters like squigly who have long combos or lots of hits naturally (like painwheel, fortune, squigly, big band). So it might still benefit you to have some of that on your Squigly variants. I think a good balance between that and crit stats are generally good.

I don't think your Eliza variants will benefit as much from this, but it's never a bad thing either. As for Primed, her enrage and Critical Mass has her covered on damage, so honestly do what you want. Any sort of damage stat will benefit her

 

[Brother Null]

Let's talk about Attack, Critical Hits and Critical Damage.

Attack is the easiest to understand. If I tap once, and my Sketchy pokes Beowulf in his chub, I do 100 points of damage for that attack. Your Sketchy may be different, but that is (for the sake of this demonstration) what my Sketchy does.

If I add a move that gives me +6% Atk, then Sketchy will poke Beowulf for 106 points of damage. If I add +50% Atk, then I do 150 damage.

Add to ATK%, you add to your damage for every attack you land. Easy. I am not talking about comparative defense, blocking, or anything related to that.

On to Critical strikes. At their worst, fighters start with a 5% Critical Hit chance, and +20% Critical Damage. If Sketchy is lucky, his 100-point attack will actually levy 120 points of damage on poor Beowulf. (Frankly, he had it coming)

Of course, we are not playing for first touch, we are playing to beat Beowulf into unconsciousness. We will be attacking often, and landing scores of hits. On average (and we will not be average that often, to be fair), we will hit Beowulf with a critical hit once every twenty strikes. That hit will be 120 points of damage, and the other nineteen will be only 100 points of damage.

If we sum up those twenty hits, we have done 2020 points of damage. If we average that out, each hit will be "worth" 101 points of damage (right? 2020/20 = 101)

Hm. Our 5% crit rate and our 20% crit damage... 5 x 20 % = 100% (Per cent - per 100). divide that by 100, and you get 1. 1 is also the extra damage that we have dealt (on average). This is not a coincidence.

If we have a 50% crit rate, and a +120% crit damage... 50 x 120 = 6000, divide by 100 = 60. half the time we do 100 damage, and the other half we do 220 so 10 x 100 + 10 x 220 = 3200. Divide by 20...160.

Yep, it checks out.

Your expected damage boost for Critical strikes is as follows: Expected boost/hit = (Rate * Damage / 100)

But, your expected boost for adding to your Attack? = Attack. The math is much easier here. Attack is a direct single boost to your damage, but Critical strikes require you to boost both rate and damage. Going back to our basic Sketchy example:

Sketchy has a 5% crit rate, and +20% crit damage. If we raise our crit rate by 6%, we go from 101 damage to...

11 x 20 / 100 = 2.2 bonus damage. 102.2 damage.

We boost our damage by one more point to 102.

Critical strikes are a nice bonus, but one should strive to boost Attack. If you have a character that triggers off of a critical strike, then pay attention to your Crit Rate. If you have a character that has a Crit Rate at or near 100%, then boosting Crit Damage is effectively like boosting Attack. Otherwise, boost your Attack. Always boost Attack.

 

[デービット（David）]

Let's talk about Attack, Critical Hits and Critical Damage.

Attack is the easiest to understand. If I tap once, and my Sketchy pokes Beowulf in his chub, I do 100 points of damage for that attack. Your Sketchy may be different, but that is (for the sake of this demonstration) what my Sketchy does.

If I add a move that gives me +6% Atk, then Sketchy will poke Beowulf for 106 points of damage. If I add +50% Atk, then I do 150 damage.

Add to ATK%, you add to your damage for every attack you land. Easy. I am not talking about comparative defense, blocking, or anything related to that.

On to Critical strikes. At their worst, fighters start with a 5% Critical Hit chance, and +20% Critical Damage. If Sketchy is lucky, his 100-point attack will actually levy 120 points of damage on poor Beowulf. (Frankly, he had it coming)

Of course, we are not playing for first touch, we are playing to beat Beowulf into unconsciousness. We will be attacking often, and landing scores of hits. On average (and we will not be average that often, to be fair), we will hit Beowulf with a critical hit once every twenty strikes. That hit will be 120 points of damage, and the other nineteen will be only 100 points of damage.

If we sum up those twenty hits, we have done 2020 points of damage. If we average that out, each hit will be "worth" 101 points of damage (right? 2020/20 = 101)

Hm. Our 5% crit rate and our 20% crit damage... 5 x 20 % = 100% (Per cent - per 100). divide that by 100, and you get 1. 1 is also the extra damage that we have dealt (on average). This is not a coincidence.

If we have a 50% crit rate, and a +120% crit damage... 50 x 120 = 6000, divide by 100 = 60. half the time we do 100 damage, and the other half we do 220 so 10 x 100 + 10 x 220 = 3200. Divide by 20...160.

Yep, it checks out.

Your expected damage boost for Critical strikes is as follows: Expected boost/hit = (Rate * Damage / 100)

But, your expected boost for adding to your Attack? = Attack. The math is much easier here. Attack is a direct single boost to your damage, but Critical strikes require you to boost both rate and damage. Going back to our basic Sketchy example:

Sketchy has a 5% crit rate, and +20% crit damage. If we raise our crit rate by 6%, we go from 101 damage to...

11 x 20 / 100 = 2.2 bonus damage. 102.2 damage.

We boost our damage by one more point to 102.

Critical strikes are a nice bonus, but one should strive to boost Attack. If you have a character that triggers off of a critical strike, then pay attention to your Crit Rate. If you have a character that has a Crit Rate at or near 100%, then boosting Crit Damage is effectively like boosting Attack. Otherwise, boost your Attack. Always boost Attack.

Does boosting your attack at 100% crit rate essential boost your crits as well or are crits seen as separate?

 

[Luke]

Does boosting your attack at 100% crit rate essential boost your crits as well or are crits seen as separate?

Not sure if your ask this
If you have crit rate boosted up to 100%
Then:
1)If you boost atk% your normal dmg and crit dmg will increase
2)If you boost crit dmg% only crit dmg will increase
(Crit dmg is based on your atk)

Now like ppl have pointed out, witch one u choose depends on the fighter’sa and your play style.

 

[Luke]

One more thing
RNG
Sometimes you have to build your fighter with the moves you actually have. For example:
My raw nerv painwheel she only have atk% boot and no crit% or crit dmg boost at all. So she become the one that faces all the other painwheels in pf, even thou she have lowest hp, but her high base dmg and base 20% crit% proc make her a good fit.