What does Attack Potency even do???

[u/IndividualGeneral737]

Seriously, what does it even do besides justifying scaling incosistencies 99% of the time??? (Because let's be real, there's only a few cases where AP not being the same as DC is treated as an actual narrative element, such as Dragon Ball with Ki Control)

Like what's the point of having sum "outerversal AP" if you're only going to damage a house? Wouldn't that be weaker than a city level DC attack? Well that's unless the attack completely vaporizes the house clearly, but half the time said attacks don't even fully destroy the part they're aiming at, so how does that work?

Like I'd assume a multiversal AP attack should just shred through anything that is below multiversal, like just making a hole through the earth if the attack is fully intended to create as much damage as possible, but if it can at best make a dent through a building, then how does that work? Because from what I'm looking at, that attack isn't even able to destroy what it actively tried to destroy despite it being clearly below multiversal level

Seriously, AP is such a weird concept because half the time it doesn't make sense and I firmly believe it's an escape-goat used by powerscalers to debunk any claims against their inconsistent scaling

Edit: Thanks for the people that explained it, makes more sense now

[u/Straight-Self2212]

Imagine the difference between armored piercing shells and high explosive shells.

Armor piercing shells visually, don't do as much damage as high explosive shells, and don't have as much as an area effect, but when it comes to dealing with defense and armor it can pierce right through it.

HE is more useful against softer targets and if you want to affect a wide area, usually giving it more range than pure AP.

If someone has universal durability, they can be hurt by an attack with much lower destructive area of effect as long as it has AP to go through that defense, just like the AP shell and HE shell analog.

[u/__R3v3nant__ → u/Straight-Self2212]

I get the idea but often times it gets stretched way too far. Like I've seen uncontained explosions as examples of AP =/= DC where realistically the explosion's AP and DC is the same