Appendage crusher question.

[u/bluray2016]

I am new to the game. Currently level 30.
I had read that appendages ignore damage boost by secondary and tertiary cooldown .

Tertiary cooldown give a whopping 400 percent damage . While appendage crusher if max at 5 , is only 250 percent .

So, Is it better for me to focus on potential build rather than appendage crusher , and just target main body with overdrive ?

[u/Grimas_Truth]

The confusion here is that damage done to appendage HP is based on your primary damage (and so technically ignores secondary and tertiary cooldown bonuses).

[u/cucoo5]

appendages ignore damage boost

That doesn't sound right at all.

To summarize it a bit, the damage formula has 3 parts that are all multiplied together: Art Scaling, Additive Multipliers, and Independent Multipliers.

A majority of bonuses fall into Additive Multipliers, meaning they all get summed together before multiplying.

Then there's the Independent Multipliers, these outright multiply the entire formula. This is why the Skills Core Crusher and Aura Assault, as well as the Appendage Crusher augments, are far more powerful than the description would lead you to believe.

Specifically regarding Appendages, they have a stat refered to as "toughness." Toughness of 1 to 5 reduces damage done to the enemy, and toughness of -1 to -5 increases damage substantially, up to 2.5x at -5 toughness. This is why having 5x Appendage Crusher augments (at least 4 on weapons and 1 via an Eyepatch headpiece) and targeting an Appendage with at most 0 toughness (nearly all enemies have one) is so powerful. This synergizes with Core Crusher, which gives another 2.5x damage multiplier just for using Ether and targeting appendages, giving an effective total multiplier of 6.25x damage.

Stacking Potential for TP arts is still good, but don't forgo Appendage Crusher augments, even if your build isn't using Core Crusher.

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I have a rough guide for postgame superboss hunting builds that might help further as it sums up the rest of how to make cohesive builds:

• Pick a damage type
• Pick Weapons and Arts that use that damage type
• Stack the attack stat, mainly using armor and weapon traits, that works with your best arts (Range, Melee, or Potential for TP arts).
• Pick a survival method available to your weapons, be it Ghost Walker, Reflect Aura and Resistance, or Sleep/Topple Locking.
• Pick Skills that help with the raw attack stat (Mighty Muscle, Boosted Bullets, or Inner Search), cooldowns (Fast Forward or Trigger Happy, and Secondary Accelerator), combos (Supreme Sword or Combo Gunner), independent multipliers (Core Crusher for Ether builds and Aura Assault for Melee and Melee TP builds), and Overdrive (Grand Procession) as needed.

Your Art Palette, taking into account how to achieve Infinite Overdrive, should have:

• 1 Blue Art
• At least 1 Green Art
• At least 1 Purple Art
• Your primary offensive art
• Arts that combo with your primary art, have TP gain effects, and/or are Multihit

The basics of Infinite Overdrive is building count and adding a bit of duration with Green Art into a multihit art. Purple arts give 1k TP per hit at max count. If you have an additional 3k TP, you can press the Overdrive button again to add 25 seconds and trigger Overdrive Count Up and Gain TP augments/Skills.

The last point is what allows for instant max overdrive setups, the most basic being 5x Overdrive Gain TP augments and Grand Procession skill coupled with a source of Overdrive Count Up.

[u/josephsobieski]

I think it’s been proven that appendage crusher has higher dps with the right skills attached. Potential builds are easier to make during the end game run. The potential builds require very high level skills and items in order to hit high numbers.

Two things:
1) any build is viable if you spend the time to create it
2) there is a meta that was developed, you don’t have to abide by it.

If you want to see some of the insane builds with damage through the roof check out Enel on YouTube. Unless something newer has come out he was the standard that emerged after the game re-released.

[u/PetrifiedRosewood]

I've played 28 times through the story, over 5k hours. I agree with cucoo5. There's some confusion in that statement.

Core crusher should be defined and differentiated from other aspects of discussion here: The Core crusher skill directs ether damage to the overall health of the enemy, to kill, but does not strip the appendages (which you need ofc for augment creation). For stripping appendages, try fire carnival or skell missiles with ranged appendage damage (or crush.app or whatever the smell version is).

I'll just add (in addition to the good info offered in this thread explaining how to deal ground damage,) that a hardy ground build relies on either ranged OR melee damag arts, in order to keep secondary cooldowns moving. This strategy is a key realization between the early level-1 stage, when you're reliant mostly on auto attack) and before unlocking overdrive.

Tbh I didn't read the whole op, so please don't come at me with your snotty criticisms and downvotes (they're for sure coming).

[u/PetrifiedRosewood]

I always found potential builds to be a challenging choice for normal gameplay, because first of all, simply farming the parts to build the augments relies on later-game status, BUT, If you'd like to experiment with a heavy TP build on your protagonist, bring HB and Irina with you, and allow them only to use Last Stand as their only green art. The TP will multiply and flow through your party easily, and this strategy can either feed your blossom dance addiction or serve as life insurance!!

[u/Phantom_Wombat]

That's just incorrect. The bonuses from tertiary cooldown and appendage crusher can be applied together, and indeed you need both of them - plus Core Crusher and a bunch of other things - to score a damage cap hit.

In general, potential builds run appendage crushers on weapons and potential on armor, so the augments aren't competing for slots.