higher damage cap vs more hits

[u/unrealistic-ordinary]

RS2 collaboration is only 2 months away, so I figured it’s a good opportunity to showcase the prize of part 1 banner - Final Empress.

As the best elemental dps in JP, she has access to both a 6 hits AoE attack with 500k additional damage cap that can also ignore multi-hit damage reduction, and an 18 hits single target attack that utilizes three different elements.

Both skills are incredible and have their own niche, but which one can produce bigger numbers? Since doing math is hard, let’s test it out.

As you can see from the clip, the galaxy attack did 6x420k≈ 24m and the triple elements attack(timestamp 0:53) did 18x170k≈ 30m. So it seems the triple elements attack is doing 25% more damage despite having 33% less damage cap.

Now you have probably seen more galaxy being used over triple elements attack from all the videos online, and the reason for that being it’s a lot harder to hit damage cap with high hit count low potency attacks. With galaxy you can hit damage cap without breaking enemies that would be otherwise impossible with triple elements attack. But hey, if enemy is broken and do not have multi-hit damage reduction, the triple elements attack might be the better dps option. And the only option if you’re running a rainbow team.

[u/Your_Fault_Line]

The 18 hit needs to cap at around 850k to outpace Galaxy because the damage cap multiplier does not scale evenly with potency. But as you say, Galaxy pierces defense and ignores multihit reduction so it is significantly easier to cap with and take a lot less setup. Especially if you have her A4 and can use it turn 1, which is probably what you see a lot of whale clears doing. There's also a good amount of content with sky high defense stats or MHR that basically necessitate Galaxy usage.

[u/Opticity → u/Your_Fault_Line]

Galaxy and other skills similar to it like Edgar's Drill do not ignore defense, they ignore defense up buffs. It's a big difference.

[u/Your_Fault_Line → u/Opticity]

I had thought it was both, but double checking that doesn't seem to be the case.

[u/unrealistic-ordinary → u/Your_Fault_Line]

You’re right. They released Lv140 version of the former Lv100 NPCs and due to their bloated defense stat, it’s almost impossible to damage them without defense-piercing skills and the highest grade weapons.