AquaKnife is better than BlackShard
Okay so, something I picked up during the latest deltarune chapter is that each of the Flower Items (AquaKnife, SethSpecs, BlueShoes, O.Glove and ESPECIALLY BlueShoes and GreenApron) are incredibly busted... Except for, seemingly, AquaKnife.
AquaKnife definitely is a good item but it faced heavy competition with the BlackShard, through simple direct numbers you'd assume that BlackShard (+16 Attack) would do more damage than AquaKnife (+10 Attack) and this is also what I assumed until I began doing calculations relating to the power of each Flower Item.
I came to the fun conclusion that with the right build you can have a 541 damage RudeBuster (JusticeAx, O.Gloves and YellowHat) and an 180 HP Heal Prayer (BlueShoes, SethSpecs and YellowHat) but what kept gnawing at me was how seemingly lesser the AquaKnife was, so I did some more math.
How damage is calculated in deltarune is that you have your regular damage and your crit modifier (most enemies don't have a defense stat so thats not accounted for in any practical scenarios). It is your attack (so Kris' base Attack + any from equipment) multiplied by your critical bar then divided by 20, how the critical bar works is that it can boost or lower your damage by how well your perform but what matters most here is that if you hit a perfect crit the value is 150, near perfect is 120.
Now, this is what makes AquaKnife better than BlackShard. Because AquaKnife's special ability is it SIGNIFICANTLY increases the size of the critical range, making getting a critical much, much, much easier (like the amount of space you have matters a lot)
So! Let's assume our kris has a PowerBand (+4 ATK) and YellowHat (+4 ATK) alongside the base 17 that comes with chapter 5, if this kris was to hit a critical hit with the AquaKnife (which as i said, is much easier) the damage would be 35 x 150, which results in 5250, which after dividing by 20 is is a very good 262 damage.
Lets then do calculations using the BlackShard, but assuming you don't land a critical hit because they're not easy to, but we'll assume you land a near perfect. This results in 41 x 120, which is 4920 divided by 20 which results in a worse but respectable 246 damage. (Landing a crit has you deal around 300 damage btw)
What this means is that assuming you don't land your critical hits every single time (which you likely arent due to the precision required for the frames) with the BlackShard but do hit them nearly every single time with the AquaKnife (who makes doing so much easier), the AquaKnife will consistently do more damage than the BlackShard.
Now, of course this is ignoring the context in which you are fighting a Dark/Star opponent like a Titan or such- But it still applies. The BlackShard does less damage most of the time because AquaKnife gives critical hits out much easier than it!
andulkaphoto
gummygunk
stormborns
amandla
romaincrisis
theartofmadeline
gracieabrams
