The former should be relatively self-explanatory, no? Damage is the number you see over the champ's head when the attack lands. The only thing you really need to be aware of is that damage to shield doesn't count as damage to the champ. So if it says "reduces max HP by 40% damage inflicted", and you do 10000 damage, you reduce max hp by 4000. But if you do 5000 damage to shield and 5000 to the champ, you only reduce max hp by 2000.

Critical rate is the probability of landing a critical hit. For same-affinity or void, it's simple - if you have a 50% chance to crit, half the time you do normal damage, half the time you do critical damage. Things get a bit more complicated with affinities, since strong/weak hits calculate first. IIRC, the affinity comes in first - so if you are weak affinity, you have a 35% chance of landing a weak hit. The remaining 65% of the time, you can get a crit - but that is also reduced by 15%. The reduction happens to the max value of 100% - so if you have 115% CR, you still only have 85% chance to crit on weak affinity. So all together, with 100% CR, 35% of the time you'll get a weak hit, 55% of the time you'll get a critical hit, and 10% of the time you'll get a normal hit.

Crit damage is the amount of extra damage you do on a critical hit. This one is simple. At base a crit is 2x damage. Crit damage adds to that. So if you have 50% Crit Damage, on a critical hit you do X * (1 + 0.5) = 1.5X damage.

Explanation video from HellHades. It takes 20 minutes to watch, but this 20 minutes will improve your Raid account much more than 20 minutes of dungeon farming could do (and you don't have to decide between these things, you can farm while you watch the video).

Odd  thing  with  this  game  too  is  some  characters  are  defense  and  if  you  look  at  their  skills  it  says  this  skills  damage  based  on  def  or  atk.  From  what  i  gather  def  characters  have  no  use  for  atk  as  their  damage  is  based  on  def  allowing  you  to  pile  on  more  def.  

Theres  hp  and  support  characters  too.  Im  not  sure  if  they  default  to  the  atk  stat  but  probably  good  to  check  their  skill  description.  Ive  even  seen  some  that  say  both  or  are  different  for  different  skills  like  pedyma but  i  think  thats  rare.

Support isn't a stat-line, so it's kinda the exception to the rule. Most Support characters technically scale on ATK, but typically their multipliers are so low you'd never actually build them as such. There are exceptions, of course - Sinesha is probably the best example. She's a support champ that can still hit like a truck, especially in a blender comp with Skullcrown and someone like Kreela.

The others all scale on their stat line, but some scale on multiple lines. Mountain King for example, scales on both ATK and HP.

If the abilities don't indicate it as such though, then you're correct. Most DEF champs, for example, will not benefit at all from ATK.

I have too many questions based on what you wrote so I will just try to tackle the real basic ones.

"damage over the champ's head"-- what color number do I need to look at?  How can I possibly tell damage to shield vs damage to champ?

"Critical rate is the probability of landing a critical hit. "-- This is what drive me nuts, "critical hit" is not defined, what does it mean, what does it do?  If it meant the number you need to defeat a champ, that would make sense but it does not seem to.  So that is my quandry. No matter what commentary I look at they all say the same but it means nothing.

What is normal damage vs critical damage?  

It seems like all the commentaries emphasize to have 100% crit rate on your champs.  I looked through all of mine, about 25 or so, and none of therm have 100% crit rate.  That seems very hard to do, even using crit artifacts I cannot get up that high.  I imagine you and hell hades have every champ known all L60 and all L16 artifacts, but that is not me. So if I do not have 100% CR what happens when I do battle, it does not seem to hurt anything.  Or what would happen different if I do somehow achieve 100%?

OK, enuff for now, I appreciate your knowledge, experience and time.  Was there such a thing as night school classes to take for this game? lol

Colours:

Blue: Damage to shield (note that if the damage is more than the shield, you won't see blue, you'll see red)

Red: Regular damage (note that if there was damage done to the shield, you won't see it, you'll just see the overflow damage)

Yellow: Critical damage

There's also two other colours I'm forgetting, for a strong hit and a weak hit.

Critical hit is a very common RPG term, which is why it isn't typically defined separately. I assume you are okay with the explanation of how a critical hit is calculated? If so, for all intents and purposes, just treat a critical hit as one doing critical damage, and a regular hit as one doing regular damage. There are certain special cases where extra stuff happens - Big'Un for example gets an extra hit on his A1 if the first hit is critical.

Normal damage is just ... normal damage. No special modifiers applied.

Critical damage is damage done as a consequence of a critical hit occurring. I'm going to give you a complex example to try and demonstrate all the possible outcomes. Suppose you have a champ with 50% critical hit chance and 150% critical damage.

Regular damage: 50% of the time you will hit for regular damage. Look at your champ scaling stat on the attack - typically ATK based champs scale on ATK, for example. Check the multiplier on Hellhades or etc. For example, Septimus A1 is 3.6x ATK. Then, take the modified ATK of your champ (IE, the number on your stat screen, increased or decreased by buffs, auras, etc), and multiply it by that multiplier, and then reduce it by the enemy's DEF (not sure the exact formula for this). That'll be the damage you deal on a regular hit.

Critical damage: The other 50% of the time you will hit for critical damage. In this case, take that same number from above, and then multiply it by 2 (base critical damage) + 1.5 (extra crit damage from items) = 3.5, to calculate your critical damage.

If you had 100% crit rate, all of your attacks would be the second case. If you had zero, all would be the first case. Somewhere in between is where you usually will be.

Critical damage: The other 50% of the time you will hit
for critical damage. In this case, take that same number from above,
and then multiply it by 2 (base critical damage) + 1.5 (extra crit
damage from items) = 3.5, to calculate your critical damage. 

Is that the case? I never heard of this "base crit damage" of plus 100%. As far as I understand it, the base crit damage is 100% (not +100% = 200%), to ensure you don't do half the damage while critting with 50% crit dam stat.

So in your example, with crit dam stat 150%, the damage should be 250% of normal damage with a crit (not 350% like you said).

I think we're saying the same thing? Base of 100% means with no bonus crit damage, a critical hit does 2.5x damage (100% base + 50% base CDMG). 150% CDMG => 100% base + 150% CDMG = 250% = 3.5x.

Ok, thank you, good job! No real experience with RPG games so this is it.

I will have to watch for the colors.  Blue and red I get. I think there is white for weak, maybe another one, and yellow is "critical damage." 

I am going to repeat to make sure I followed u right. Lemme know if I goofed up.

So regular damage, forgetting about figuring it from stats, is to look at the red value on screen (which is over and above any shield value), which I assume automatically figures in all the background effects and should be the net value. 

When I see a yellow number that means the game used the critical value for the non-normal time. That number also includes the  effects and gives a net value.

If I modify my champ stats in any way, I can do the same battles (eg arena) and see a corresponding change in the red or yellow numbers?

So, can I conclude that critical hits give more damage than normal?  I mean it sounds like it should, but it seems the only way to see this is as a formula rather than a definition, and I am ok with that.

So the emphasis is on crit rate =100% to always have crit damage, because of that formula crit works out more than normal.

Now, trying to achieve that crit rate is to run the artifacts through a blender to get every one having a crit sub stat, plus the gauntlet artifact as primary stat.  My concern there is with that focus other stats may be short-changed.

Pretty much correct. A good example would be comparing 6* Level 16 CDMG gloves (+80% CDMG) vs CRATE gloves (+60% CRATE).

If you have the base CDMG of 50% and the base CR of 15%, the two choices evaluate to:

CDMG (130%): 0.15 (crit) * (1 + 1 + 1.3) = 0.495 + 0.85 (regular) = 1.345

CRATE (75%): 0.75 (crit) * (1 + 1 + 0.5) = 1.875 + 0.25 (regular) = 2.125

So in this example it's clear that CRATE gloves are better. But suppose instead of the base 15% CRATE, you had 60% CRATE (from substats on items, masteries, etc...):

CDMG (130%): 0.6 (crit) * 3.3 = 1.98 + 0.4 (regular) = 2.38

CRATE (100%): 1 (crit) * 2.5 = 2.5 + 0 (regular) = 2.5

Now we're much closer to the CDMG gloves being better. The reason is because you're capped at 100% CR, so you're "wasting" some of the value from those gloves.

No, we are not saying the same. I disagree with "take that same number from above, and then multiply it by 2 (base critical damage)".

The base critical damage with a crit dam stat of zero (what doesn't occur in game, as all champs have at least 50% crit dam stat, so just for theory) is exactly the normal damage, not multiplicated with 2.

Normal damage 1000, crit dam stat 50%, crit damage 1500. No double damage for free. If a hit is critical, you get the critical damage on top.

Hm. I would like to know the answer to that. To me, that feels weird, but I could see that being the case.

I don't think that is so weird. All champs, even uncommen, have a crit dam stat of at least 50%. So in game a crit will allways deal more damage than a normal hit, even if an ungeared champ attacks, who has a crit chance of 15%, what is the base level of this stat. I think "you get the crit damage on top" is a simple and good game mechanic for critical hits.

havent  read  everything  but  dont  overlook  that  part  of  the  reason  for  a  high  crit  rate  besides  the  damage  boost  is  certain  debuffs /  buffs  only  trigger  on  criticals  or  some  other  special  action  like  an  extra  hit  or  a  hit  all  aoe,  or  one  character  has  an passive skill  enemies  under  hex  critical  hit  by  anybody  on  the  team  get  poison.  

getting  100%  is  tough  certainly  early.  I  dont  have  any  but  thays  the  goal.

Eventually I will better appreciate this numerically, but right now I am just wrestling with the concept but making progress. I am running some campaign tests with two champs of different Crit Rates side by side, and I can see that the higher CR produces more yellow hits than the red ones, with the yellow being higher. So with about 10 champs with woefully low CR's I can see I have some regearing to do, to get all at least 50%.

How close I can get to 100% is another story, but I have started a new champ which is up to 81% with more room to go, so I am encouraged.

Thank you, this is helping a lot.

At least initially, you should be able to get to 100% relatively easily with CRATE gloves. Even a 5* CRATE glove gives 50% CRATE, which puts you at 65% without any additional substat boosts. Add in Deadly Precision mastery for another 5% and you're at 70% already. 30% more from substats shouldn't be *that* big of a stretch - even without actually getting any upgrades on them, it should be easy to reach; one or two items that getting at least one upgrade probably gets you there from just those alone.

right, I am tracking along the way you say.  At least I have the 5 star CRATE glove and CR substats on all others but the boots. so it looks doable, but it helps to plan ahead as you go.  Trying to redo things after the fact gets costly in time and silver. With nothing else I am at 83% CR with 17% left on the upgrade to L16.

So if I follow u correctly on another post you said to not try to go over 100%, it is a waste.

Correct, there's no advantage to going over 100%.

Also one thing I want to be sure we're on the same page about - when I (and others) recommend you take items to level 16, especially early on, please please please be diligant about the items you choose to take to 16.

In all cases, never waste silver on a 3* item or lower. More than likely you shouldn't even bother with 4* items - 5* should be the minimum. Never waste time with common or uncommon items. Ever. Even 6* ones. Sell them instantly.

With the remaining items, upgrade just to level 4. If it's a rare item and the level 4 upgrade didn't hit a good stat (see below for more details on that), sell it. If it's an epic or legendary item and the neither the level 4 nor level 8 upgrades hit a good stat, sell it.

What that should leave you with level 8 items with at least one good substat upgraded. Next, go to level 12. For rare items, if the level 12 upgrade didn't give a good substat, sell it, or archive it for use later on champs that don't need super good items. For epic and legendary ones, do the same if the level 12 upgrade didn't upgrade a good stat.

Finally, if the level 12 upgrade was good, and it's a glove/chest/boot/ring/amulet/banner, take it to 16. If it's a weapon, take it to 16 if your champ is ATK based. If it's a helm, take it to 16 if your champ is HP based. If it's a shield, take it to 16 if your champ is DEF based.

What's a good stat, you ask? All of the % based stats for your champ's primary stat (ATK% for ATK champs, HP% for HP champs, DEF% for DEF champs), as well as ACC, SPD, CRATE, and CDMG. RES is very situational - for your stage of progression I would not consider it useful. All of the flat primary stats are useless.

One of the absolute biggest mistakes you can make in this game is spending silver upgrading bad items, especially if you take them to level 16. It can cost enormous amounts of silver to do that, and especially early, silver isn't a luxury you have.

A final note - as with everything else, I highly recommend you only upgrade items during artifact enhancement events. I would even argue you shouldn't bother with just any event - you should save your silver for artifact enhancement events that occur during fusion/fragments. That way you get triple the bang for your buck - you get the upgraded artifacts, as well as rewards for the event, and even better, you also get fragments or champions for the fusion.

In addition to the things kramasawamy said: you definetly don't need high crit rate on all your champs. This stat increases your damage. You should use the gear that enhances your crit rate and crit damage on your damage dealers. A healer, reviver, debuffer doesn't need damage on the first place. 

You wrote "so with about 10 champs with woefully low CR's I can see I have some regearing to do, to get all at least 50%." There is no need for that. If you gear a debuffer (for example Warmaiden) and you can choose between items with either crit rate or accuracy substat, take accuracy.

Of course more damage is allways good. If you have all other stats you want, it's a nice bonus to every champ. But in the reality of non perfect artifacts with only a few good substats, you often have to choose between crit rate or speed/accuracy/hp%. And for all champs that are not dedicated damage dealers, crit rate is less important.

so that brings up another question:  how or where are champs put into categories like "damage dealer" or "debuffer" or "healer".  Champs have a diverse set of skills, so how to you place a category on them? I am familiar with the categories of attack, defense, support, and HP. I have seen those other words used but not knowing of any list of such info.

My warmaiden has 61% CR, 75% CD, 194 ACC which if any of those should I tinker with? Personally I would call her an Attack champ.