Melee critical damage or ability strength

[Sprigatito420]

With Archon shards, would it be better to increase 'melee critical damage' or 'ability strength' for frames like Baruuk/Excalibur(Umbra) where I mainly use their exalted melees? Either would strengthen their melee attacks, right? What about frames like Khora for her whip?

[The_Royal_Elf_Mika]

Excalibur: if you are using this:https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Chromatic_Blade then id do power strength, since it increases status chance from the mod

with Baruuk, his 4 is also effected by power strength and it increases status chance with this augment:https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Reactive_Storm , but id say you could go for flat out crit damage instead due to how high his crit chance is, that and he already changes elements to match enemy weakness.

 

Edit: also, excalibur's sword is more of a extremely high damage status weapon, rather than a crit sword.
 

also, Crit melee shards should effect khora's whip

https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Archon_Shard
" Affects Exalted Weapons of the appropriate class. For example, primary buffs will affect  Artemis Bow and secondary buffs will affect  Balefire Charger. Warframe abilities that inherit modded stats of melee weapons will also inherit Archon Shard buff (e.g.  Whipclaw and  Landslide)"

 

which i would 100% do crit damage over strength on khora unless you plan on doing things other than whip spam on her.

Whip claw builds usely drop strength to like 40% due to her whipclaw mod.

[(PSN)AbBaNdOn_]

Thats highly frame and build specific bro.    You named some frames I dont really use so im only considering your question and not which shards might actually be best on those frames....

In general I imagine  Crit Damage > raw damage.   Some nerd can math that out for you lol.    At some point raw damage + normal cd will overcome low damage and huge cd......   but the hell if i know where that is lol....

Exalteds already have very great base damage over normal weapons...  so I think giving them massive CD would help wreck stuff waaay harder....

The only question is does their 4th's get affected by CD mods... 

The only thing else to consider is what would more STR do to the rest of thier kit... enough to give it up massive crits??   I dont know Baruuk and Excal well enough to comment on this.   I use Excal but def not for his sword... 

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As far as Khora.... is this for a pilfer build or no??  If its for Pilfer then I would prob go CD.   If its not pilfer than prob still CD lol....   I dont think STR will help with her cage that much.   (Khora should heavily be considering energy orb eff or duration imo or even armor?)

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My Excal I think helminthed gloom over javelins... I never use this exalted sword but i kept it just cuz its his signature and javelins are such crap.   With gloom.... STR would totally help slow things down even more which would be great...   I do use melee though and would totally love CD and was totally considering that.  But again with gloom... excal would also love a huge HP pool lol.   Mine wrecks Steel Path as is with no shards right now so its all good.. but I havent made a choice for him yet... 

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Baruuk is cool....I've never taken mine into SP....    HP,  energy orb eff, duration all sounds like good alternatives to pure damage...   Make him tougher,  more effecient...  dont know... 

 

Excal and Nidus were the two i was thinking of using CD on but Nidus got smacked around by Thrax in SP Circ and im rethinking that plan lol.   I went HP on Garuda to and thats awesome.   im to scared to go offense lol.   (even though thats the main tenet of warframe only good way to stay alive is to kill stuff faster.  )

[Leqesai]

If you're using Kullervo's subsume then melee crit damage has compounding effects. 

with 100% power strength a 25% crit chance bonus on a weapon with 2x crit multiplier would result in a net .5x increase in crit damage (guaranteed 2.5x crits)

If you're running 200% power strength that 25% crit chance bonus would result in double the crit damage, from 2.5x to 5x. 

Basically, for every 100% power strength you'd be getting another 25% crit damage multiplier since crits stack and the crit chance from kullervo's subsume is a flat bonus on top of whatever is your melee weapon's current crit chance.

 

10% power strength, on the other hand, results in 10% additional crit chance. You'd have way bigger numbers if you stack melee crit damage using kullervo's subsume.

I know you specifically asked about baruuk and excalibur, but I feel it is important to note (especially to draw attention within the community) to the utility of crit damage on this ability. 

Kinda goes without saying, but crit damage is even more valuable on kullervo himself since he has 200% crit chance at 100 power strength and 400% at 200 power strength... so straight out the gate you're looking at a net 50% melee crit damage for a base red shard using his 1.

[PublikDomain]

For Khora, both Crimsons will work but Melee Crit Damage will almost certainly give more damage. Accumulating Whipclaw just gives so much Strength that the extra 75% probably won't actually do much. But the only way to tell is to run the numbers for your specific build. That said, you're probably already going to deal plenty of damage using Whipclaw even without those Shards so IMO it's better to give her other stats. Casting Speed feels nice for her 2/4 and whatever you probably subsume Venari for, and extra Energy/Health/Armor/Shields/Healing certainly doesn't hurt.

[taiiat]

generally speaking, these Warframes would be used with high Strength already. meanwhile the Crit Damage bonuses that we normally have are much smaller.

as a result, it's a lot more likely that boosting Crit Damage has a stronger effect, considering the relatively small values that Archon Shards offer. 
as far as raw Damage per attack goes. other traits that aren't just the Damage Number that comes off of the Weapon aren't things controlled by Crit Damage, so that wouldn't really be comparable.

[(PSN)Unstar]

I just want to add that it really depends on what you want your frames to do.  If all you care about is that their exalted melees do the highest damage, then listen to everyone else in this thread, they certainly know what they're talking about.  But if you also want more Strength for your other abilities (for example, so you can have more of Baruuk's DR-increasing daggers) then take that into consideration as well.