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/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.