Double post, but I seriously want to say something to the attack power junkies, especially you, who is wearing that full Rathalos+ armor, and if you use a slashaxe/greatsword/lance.
When you evolve a weapon, sometimes you get the choice of more slots/more base attack/more affinity. Most times, the affinity boost ranges somewhere in between 5% to 55% (all weapons I'm talking about here).
If your weapon has negative affinity, don't even read the rest of this, because no one wants bad luck, and I frankly don't care to give you or I a harder time.
Here is what I see. Affinity is the chance you have of your weapon doing 125% more than it normally does. Sounds great, but if your Affinity is like 10%, that only means you have a 1 in 10 chance of doing 125% damage. Great...sort of. Let's talk big numbers though.
There is an armor skill called Critical Eye, which comes in the +1, +2, and +3 form. Consiqently, it raises your Affinity by 10%, 20%, or 30%. To achieve something as massive as 30% though, you need 20 skill points on your armor allocated to Critical Eye. Wtf. The only way to get that many points is to use the Expert/Master jewel, which accordingly takes up 1 to 2 armor slots, and it (accordingly) gives you 1 to 3 skill pointsScrew
OR you can Get an armor with the Critical Eye skill. That's okay, this is why I talked about the Rathalos+ armor. It has Critical Eye +2 built right in. That's an instant 15 skill points right there, so if you wanted to bump it up to Critical Eye +3, you just need to add 5 skill points.
Moving on though, say you achieved that 30% Affinity boost. Now your weapon has a 1 in 3.333_ chance of dealing 125%. This sounds pretty nifty, but let's make it broken.
Think about a weapon with 10% affinity. Add it to the Critical Eye +3 skill. Now we have a 40% chance of a critical hit, or a 1 in 2.5 chance of dealing a critical. How about a weapon with 15%? Now its a 1 in 2.222_ chance.
20% + Critical Eye +3 = 50% = 1 in 2 chance
25% + CE+3 = 55% = 1 in 1.8
30% + CE+3 = 60% = 1 in 1.666_
40% + CE+3 = 70% = 1 in 1.43
55% + CE+3 = 85% = 1 in 1.17
And so on and so on. All the percentages I used are from actual weapons. (I left out 5% on purpose)
Now just remember, all of this is to see what your chances are of scoring a hit of 125% more than your base attack. If you are using mega demondrug/demondrug, talismans, other jewels, etc, t
his counts as your base attack at that very moment, but I will only talk about the weapon's base attack. Or better yet, a weapon.
The Doris Fellspear will be my example. Say that when I was upgrading my lance, I had a choice of one that did:
391 base damage with 15% Affinity
OR
414 base damage with 0% Affinity
I wont get into the actual weapons mechanics, because you all know that certain attacks do more than others, so lets just pretend that a single attack did raw damage.
The 391 lance, in 7 attacks, will do
2737 total, unless the affinity may kick in (1 in 6.666_ chance, critical attack would be 489), then it may do
2835 total.
The 414 lance, in 7 attacks, will do
2,898 total, for sure, no room for chance.
Now the affinity boost could give you 7 criticals in a row, or none at all. When talking about 15%, it's a game of chance that you will lose often. Why not just go for what is concrete and choose the weapon with higher base attack? Well that's why I've been talking about this mess for so long lol. When you raise your chances in the game of luck, you can profit so much more. The trick is to turn the word "can" into "most likely". Your affinity would already increase more with the Critical Eye +3 (by 30%), so you'd be playing with a 1 in 2.222_ chance. Pretty good odds, for a weaker lance with a low Affinity.
Now put this in your pipe and smoke it:
Sabertooth lance - 55% Affinity
Amber Hoarforst slashaxe - 40% Affinity
Nardebosche SnS - 40% Affinity
High Siegmund greatsword - 30% Affinity
Barbarian "Sharq" longsword - 25% Affinity
Devil's Crush (G) hammer - 20% Affinity
Add the Critical Eye +3 armor skill to the weapon's current Affinity. Think about their base attack, the new critical hit ratio.
The weapons here will be striking criticals ALOT. They will quickly do more damage than their brothers that only give the hunter a little bit higher attack power. For a greatsword that does 960 base damage, a critical of 1200, and having a 60% chance of that happening, it really makes the hits count. Don't worry, only the monster will feel it, not your partners.
So for you out there putting on your attack jewels and getting the weapon only with the higher attack power, you don't understand the power of a high luck ratio. Affinity (most likely if raised high enough) trumps out base damage. Like I said, these were stats WITHOUT other talismans and drugs.
Sabertooth lance with Rathalos+ armor bumped up to Critical Eye+3 will strike criticals 85% of the time. Gotta love it.
I hope this was informative. There is more math to be done when you factor in ___ attack you do with ___ weapon on ___ body part of ___ monster, but maybe another day.
Sidenotes:
- I did not talk about bowguns for the sole reasons that they dont really have Affinity boost past 10%, and that I don't have much knowledge on them with different kinds of shot.
- Affinity is also affected by sharpness, so that is one more reason it's important to have a keen blade.
- Ah, anywhere you see Critical Draw instead of Eye, it's a typo, get over it, im sorry lol.
- I only used a few weapons with high affinity for dramatic effect, although what I said was true. Most weapons have lower affinity rates, but that's not up to me what you favor, and I'm not saying to only use 1 weapon and one armor. Everything has it's uses (except insect husks...)
- Affinity, as far as I know, does NOT affect your elemental effect chance.
- I haven't even forged the Sabertooth lance or Rathalos+ armor. Idk why this idea popped in my head, but I think it was significant enough to share. If you didnt like reading all of it, then I'm sorry. Not really.
I did everything, I checked everywhere, and the only way I can do it is by continuously tapping Z and A. During the downswing, it switches. Or the sideswing Sword>Axe.
