Damage vs elemental vs crit vs hybrid

[(PSN)ffaddict789]

I've seen a few guides about this subject and it still leaves me puzzled. I know to build a weapon based on it's strengths ( status, criticals, IPS) but when should mods like Magnum force ( I know the accuracy issue) and pure damage mods NOT be used in a build? Event mods are all the rage now and you'd think that whoever has them in a build would excel over all in the known universe. I'm tempted to slap the 120% plus whatever else I have to get those #s HIGH. I hear that this can be a waste sometimes and that hybrids or crit builds are choice and that pure damage builds have diminishing returns rendering it pointless because of limited mod space. I'm not saying that someone would need to be a pro to understand but there is obviously a deeper science going on here that eludes me. If anyone can enlighten me on this I would greatly appreciate it! Thnx Tenno!

[SquireAngel]

I'm no Pro, But I've been around long enough that I can lay some facts out for ya. So, first off is why crit out performs raw dmg most of the time. Crit builds usually have a wee bit of additional elemental dmg thrown in, but moving on, Crit dmg multiplies all dmg done, meaning that crit weapons with a 4.4 (a common number) multiplier, the damage being done is multiplied by that amount. There are a few very choice weapons, such as sancti tigris and kulstar, that deal enough damage to contend with crit weapons, but they are far and few between. Also adding to that, a large amount of crit build guns tend to be rapid fire, allowing them to quickly notch up a deadly number of critical hits. 

Now, the reason that elemental tends to outweigh the 120% is two reasons. For one, elemental damages and IPS perform better and worse against various forces types of shields, armor, and flesh. By using a variety, you provide a wide spread of unit types your weapon can rack up consistent numbers on. Further more, elemental mods add based on total damage, rather than one type of damage, as a 120% IPS only modifies a single type of dmg. Take the Mios, having 36 slash, 20 impact, and 24 puncture. 120% slash would push it to 80ish slash. An elemental, however, sees the 80 total dmg, and so adds around 70 dmg of it's elemental type. 

As for the rage over event mods, most of those being raved about atm are the shadow debt mods, like argon scope and body count. These are crit mods that can give higher crit based weapons the ability to hit red criticals, hence, the rage over them atm.

[DjaAkh]

I am not a person, who does defense missions for 100+ waves, so please, don't cite me on this, but my suggestion is to avoid crit builds unless you have a signifcantly high base crit chance. Personally, I dislike crit builds with base crit chance below 20%. Similarely with status effects. Beyond that, it depends very much on the mods, you have, but I think, Angel gave a rather good synopsis :)