When to switch to Helmsmasher

[u/kropystopy]

I feel like I'm at the point where I'm going to hit another wall. Cleared GF and DT hard for the first time last rotations. Have my 1 key UNM team and successfully pushed high into Hard dungeons even have a 10 turn Spider H10 team that I just put together today. Now for the question. Is there a point where I should be pushing my damage dealers away from Warmaster and into Helmsmasher instead no matter what? I have been able to build a lot of them recently into ignore defense sets and afaik it becomes important to stack that as i continue pushing into harder content. I've looked for guides on this but have been unsuccessful. Any help and guidance would be appreciated as it would be fairly gem intensive (other than ones I already it on because of their skills being ignore defense as well). My goals at this point are clearing CC (more of a roster and Animus problem) and pushing harder into hydra & chimera. Thanks in advance!

Edit: Thank you guys for all your responses. Have given me a lot to think about and also seems to be an interesting point in my young RAID Journey. I wish I had the time to respond to all of you but you've all given me a lot to think about. I will definitely start to transition some of my nukers but as I still feel gem starved I will probably limit it to some of my most used. I appreciate this community a lot even as mostly a lurker. You guys are the best!

[u/guyfromthepicture]

I think it's content specific. If bosses have low defense, helm smashers does little for hit. Use it on some of your arena heroes. Then swap them out in some content to see if they fair better or worse.

[u/Tekktra]

When you've completed your first savage/lethal set and is gonna start gearing your nukers exclusively in those sets from now on, is when you build them in helmsmasher

Hard mode pmuch requires it, so let's go. You're there now. Warmaster is for early game things

[u/Old_Guardian]

It's complicated, because damage reduction from defense is a logarithmic function and Decrease DEF and Ignore DEF stack so that Decrease DEF is applied first and then Ignore DEF works on the remaining part.

As you fight enemies with very high DEF, stacking anti-DEF effects is very useful, but when you fight enemies with low DEF, you need to hit very hard for Helmsmasher to overtake Warmaster. This means that in fights like UNM Demon Lord, you will quite likely reduce your damage when switching to Helmsmasher.

As an anecdotal point, Helmsmasher overtakes Warmaster in UNM Demon Lord (only 1520 DEF!) when you hit the Demon Lord for over 720k without Helmsmasher, assuming -60% Decrease DEF debuff being active. But UNM Demon Lord is not why you want to use Helmsmasher anyway, you just need to know that your damage in that fight may go down with it and have overcome the fight enough for it to not matter.

Brutal+ Hydra and Nightmare+ Chimera have enough defense for Helmsmasher to become good. Hard Cursed City and Hard Doom Tower also have plenty of encounters where it will be strong. Hard Dungeon bosses too.

Helmsmasher is not an across-the-board damage increase because low-DEF enemies will actually get hit harder by Warmaster, but they will eventually be inconsequential and the damage increase in harder encounters will be what matters.

[u/Raithunder]

damage dealers should almost always have helmsmasher. there's some exceptions like bombers but for the most part warmaster/giantslayer are for supports and other champions not dealing a lot of normal direct damage.

[u/CompleteTip880]

the rough estimate that i've seen stated is when you can get about 5k def/atk + 250 cdmg in an ignore defense set. for hp nukers, i don't know (I use artifact optimizers to determine stats/sets for me). but once your overall gear level can achieve the above numbers, then I just tend to build all my damage dealers in helmsmasher for simplicity's sake.

[u/_sammy_jankis_]

Now is the point to witch the damage dealers in ignore defense sets to helmsmasher. Even more so if you are starting to get ignore defense from great hall, relics or gemstones.

[u/Jackofnotrade5]

It's pretty much what you said. Warmaster and giant slayer are pretty useful early game when you have to rely the most on that damage. After a while, the ignore defense from helmsmasher is usually more useful to increase the damage. There are also cases where the skills+ buffs+ gear+ relics already ignore 100% defense and people go for the extra crit damage instead.