im looking for advise on crit strike vs armor rending

[Ach Chuu]

I am trying to figure out what makes Armor rending weapons so popular i have tried AR and CS swords and AR and CS bows i find that with alot of what i hunt i do more dmg on average with the CS weapons is this only because im not hunting lvl 150+ monsters yet are there key monsters that a AR weapon does better on

i posted here hopeing that the buyers and sellers actually know why they are buying and selling these items and the main reason for for there value differance

[Podunkmer]

It all depends on the types of monsters, not necessarily their armor levels.

For example, when imbues first came out, a guy did some pretty detailed damage tests of AR vs CS against tuskers. He found that AR was generally more useful (ie did more damage overall) on monkies starting at Rampager and going upward. That is, of course, on unvulned and unimperiled monsters.

In a more obvious and notorious difference, AR is always less effective than CS on Crystal Golems and Crystal Lords. Why? Because they have negative armor level, so the AR actually reduces the damage that a negative AL would normally allow you to do.

I find that while Virindi are pretty much equally vulnerable to fire and slash, my AR fire dirk can take Inquisitors down much faster than my CS slashing dirk. Of course I have to cast Imperil VII and Fire/Slash Vulnerability VII, but the Inquisitor's armor is still high enough that AR is better.

In Death Valley, my roommate always uses CS with his archer, but I think that's because he likes seeing the big numbers of the criticals coming often, rather than the elevated regular hits with AR. However, there are a few monsters where CS is significantly better, notably Drudges and Lugians. That's because it's pretty much assumed that you're going to have mage support, and those two classes of monsters go into negative AL with an Imperil VII, which translates into humongous damage from a CS weapon, and only just really good damage from an AR weapon.

But in most cases, AR works better than CS out in Death Valley because of the high AL of the monsters.

Also, AR is heads and shoulders better than CS when fighting monsters with shields, UNLESS you can lure the monster's shield enough to go negative. And luring shields is only worth the time on Death Valley Tumeroks and Undead. Regular tumeroks and undead go down quick enough with a regular AR weapon that luring is usually unneccesary.

So, being a low-strength dagger char, what do I carry around? CS slash/pierce, AR fire, and sometimes an AR frost, though I just got CS on a frosty, so I'll probably switch to that one. That does well enough on about 98% of the hunting I do.

[Jothony of Eastham]

I did my own test recently. I took an AR xbow 148% dam. and a CS xbow 150% dam. and hunted Tuskers in the Armory. On a run of 10 monkeys each, the AR averaged 7.5 shots to kill each one, the CS averaged 8.2. I didn't use any vulns/imps.

I assumed that they would evade equally against both bows, but I didn't count the evades to verify that. My figures reflect only the shots that landed. My Xbow skill was buffed to approx. 365. Both bows had BD/Def/SK 7 on them. I definitely saw more crit. hits with the CS, but the average dam. was much lower.

I still have both bows, and would be happy to repeat the test on a diff type of creature if anyone is interested in further experiments.

[Taten-Jinmu]

i have a CS and AR bows........glacial golems is what i tested on (thats what came up in my mind in an instant) the AR bow 128% mod and CS 104% mod, no debuffs on the golems definately saw a big diff even tho the bows only had SK 7 on them the AR was doing 100-120 damage while the CS was doing 50-100 on crits......the biggest Ar crit (no buffs on bow) was 175 points no de-buffs (on golem) no buffs( on bow)


that was my test...... lol

[Trekman]

Primarily I hunt solo - which means unvulned/unimperiled monsters.
I prefer AR bludge (Olthoi, various Golems, even Lugians) and AR Fire (Tuskers, high Drudges, high Tumeroks,....).
AR Fire is my primary/default weapon nowadays although I only hunt on AL sporadically or on Bobo Quest.

CS Slash only for real slash-lovers like Grievvers or in the rare cases I have an Imp/Vuln mage aside.

I did not try AR slash yet...

AR seems to stack with Imp/Vuln - my AR Fire has better damage per hit and higher crit than CS Fire on imped/vulned monsters. I did not check yet whether that compensates for the far less criticals compared to CS.

As Frost I only have CB which is commonly assumed to be the worst imbue. But it has a special touch to one-hit-kill an unvulned/unimperiled Vapor Golem

[Compadre]

back when the imbues originally came out I thought CS was way better than AR.. however, as my skill progressed, AR definately became much better. So, I think skill has something to do with it. as you get higher AR becomes better