Guide - [ADVANCED] Best reforges and Maximizing YOUR Damage (2024)

TLDR (you won't get the best results by following this simplified short guide):
best reforges:
ARCHERS:

for armor

for epic and legendary and a combination of

and

on everything else (try to aim for 3 strength per 2 crit damage for roughly the best damage)

for bow (

,

or

for crit chance, depending on how much crit chance you need to hit the 100% cap)

MAGES:

for armor (

if you want better survivability, you lose 25 intelligence but gain 15 defense, smart is almost on par with wise), necromancer's brooch (necrotic reforge) whenever you have the money.

for all talismans

for swords

for bows

BERSERKERS:

for armor (

if you can hit 100% attack speed and crit chance without pure or spiked) and renowned if available

for commons,

for uncommons,

for rares,

for epics and

for legendaries (Again, aim for 3 strength per 2 crit damage and reforge accordingly)

for swords (or

for crit chance). If you have the money then go for a gilded midas (midas' jewel reforge stone)
If you really want to reach peak attack speed (100%) you can reforge some epic talismans to strange.

If you have the money you can replace reforges on common, uncommon and rare talismans with the silky reforge for crit damage (reforge stone from the tarantula broodmother) or bloody for attack speed and crit damage (reforge stone from dungeon mobs

CD=Crit Damage
STR=Strength
AS=(Bonus) Attack Speed
DPS=Damage Per Second
INT=Intelligence

ADVANCED GUIDE TO MAXIMIZING DAMAGE

Now that the reforge update is finally here, everyone wants to maximize their damage and there have been numerous guides and every youtuber has had some kind of a take on what reforges you'll want for your gear. And every guide and piece of advice I've seen has been in one way or another... wrong.

We've been wired to think that strength>crit damage. Attack speed is a huge question mark at the moment and nobody seems to see the potential it has. And I'm here to debunk some myths and help you dish out the most damage you can with math to back it up!

Debunking a Major Myth

Let's start with the simple. Strength is not strictly better than crit damage. To prove this we need to introduce a simplified version of the Hypixel Skyblock's damage formula and test subject Steve who wants to deal as much damage as possible.

As you can see, strength boosts your base weapon damage and acts as a multiplier whereas crit damage is only a multiplier. Strength would seem to be the superior stat but hear me out. The reason why we leave enchantments and combat level out of the equation is to make things easier. Most if not all enchants and the combat level bonus are multiplicative damage multipliers thus not further affecting our tests and calculations.

STEVE currently has a total of 1000 strength and crit damage combined. He can choose to stack 800 strength or crit damage to test how much damage he can deal with his newly bought hot potato booked Aspect of the Dragons (245 base damage).

with 800 STR (and 200 CD), Steve deals 11,070 damage
and 7,830 damage with his maxed out CD of 800

Steve now tries out something completely different and distributes the two stats evenly and, surprisingly enough, deals 12,600 damage, which is roughly 14% more damage than stacking as much STR as possible.

From all of this we can learn that rather than treating STR and CD unequally we should rather see them as two stats that support each other and it's best to have a good combination of both. MORE ON HOW TO GET THE OPTIMAL AMOUNT OF STR/CD FURTHER DOWN BELOW

Introducing Bonus Attack Speed

Keep in mind that Archers and Mages can't utilize attack speed the same as berserkers or pseudo-dps-tanks. I'd only recommend using AS if most of your damage is dealt with melee weapons. So any archers or mages out there can skip this part.

For what content is AS a great stat to stack?
- Slayers
- Dungeons
- Golems

When to avoid AS and spec STR and CD or INT instead?
- you are an archer or a mage
- doing dragons (you want as much STR and CD for bow damage and meleeing dragons is CPS capped and doesn't benefit from AS (correct me if I'm wrong on this))
- you have bad ping
- Can't maintain at least 4 CPS comfortably while tracking your target
- have below average tracking and can't consistently land hits on your target

There are great many reasons to sacrifice 100-150 STR/CD to get 100% AS and attack twice as fast.

Firstly, it's simply more DPS. Faster slayers, easier dungeons and better placement on golems, all great things. MORE, FASTER, BETTER!

In the next example we will be using the stats of an end game player using a 290 base damage MIDAS and 1100 combined STR and CD to calculate the damage the player deals with and without AS

Secondly, the magma boss and some dungeon mobs will feature a new mechanic. The damage dealt beyond a certain threshold will be significantly reduced (to 10% if I recall), which means that if you dealt 20,000 damage to a mob that has that threshold set to 2,000 damage will take 3,800 damage from your attack. This means that you will further benefit from attack speed and by now having 100% attack speed instead of 10% will almost double your damage on certain damage capped mobs. Remember that hitting more mobs results in more life steal meaning that attack speed will also increase your survivability and might just be the thing that keeps your dungeon team going.

Reforge strategies to get a good amount of AS

Pure/Spiked/Renowned on armor, strange uncommon talismans and itchy rare talismans and a Spicy/Fabled sword. This strategy will work especially well with a high level hound pet, since without it, you'd be around 55-60% AS.

Fierce on armor, strange uncommon talismans and itchy rare talismans and a fast sword. With legendary ender dragon and/or superior dragon armor this strategy will get you to a few percentage points away from the 100% AS cap.

Pure/Spiked/Renowned on armor, strange uncommon talismans and itchy rare talismans and a fast sword. This should only be used if you don't have superior dragon armor, hound pet or a legendary ender dragon. Especially good for revs, since reaper falchion gets epic reforges and has 10% less AS compared to AOTD, Midas, Pigman or any other slayer sword.

You should ALWAYS prioritize reforging uncommon talismans and rare talismans even if you use fierce armor and a spicy/fabled or even sharp sword, since you only lose 1 STR or CD to gain 1 AS.

Keep in mind that spiked and renowned are better versions of pure and are both relatively expensive. I wouldn't put renowned on any current gear (even superior) until we have confirmation on what armor will be the best after we get all dungeon floors. But spiked might be a decent investment to get a slight head start compared to other players as it doesn't cost fortunes and even then I recommend using those reforge stones exclusively on frozen blaze or superior.

HOW TO MAXIMIZE YOUR DAMAGE USING MATH AND A FREE ONLINE CALCULATOR

Will be tweaking the guide if something needs changing. Don't be afraid to tell me if something felt particularly confusing or if you think my math or anything else I wrote was wrong.