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Ge Gr
May 26, 2023May 26, 2023 azimuthalazimuthal 0 Comment

Grindstone

Grindstone is a unique building unit in Rush Royale that buffs the damage values of adjacent units. But it comes with various caveats, which are explained below:

  • Level: (Placeholder: Need further information on how the Level field affects the Grindstone unit)
  • Tier: This field affects the Grindstone’s performance when Level 15 Tempered Steel talent is enabled, affecting the damage buff it provides.
  • Base Damage Buff: The Level / Tier picker doesn’t automatically change the Base Damage Buff. You’ll have to check your game for the exact damage buff your specific Grindstone provides. A future update to the tool is planned to rectify this.

Talents

  • Unstable Overheat: When enabled, the Merges field becomes visible. You can input any value from 0 to 100 here. Even though the game allows unlimited merging, it’s unrealistic to reach more than 100 merges in a match. Increasing this number boosts the Damage Buff 100% of the time for the DPS value.
  • Triple Overheat: This talent automatically buffs the Grindstone by the talent amount. Note that the tool does not enforce the game’s requirement of having three adjacent Grindstones for this talent to activate.
  • Tempered Steel: This talent does not increase the crit chance of neighboring units, but rather, it boosts the crit chance for Grindstone itself.

Grindstone has a Crit Chance?
Yes, Grindstone does have a crit chance! In fact, all units in Rush Royale have a base crit chance of 5%. When a Grindstone is placed next to a damage dealer, it doesn’t just buff the damage dealer’s damage. It creates a new critical hit event! This means, in essence, you get additional critical hits from the Grindstone, separate from your damage dealer’s crits.

This leads to the critical role of the Knight Statue in boosting Grindstone’s crit chance. Because the Knight Statue doesn’t discriminate between its neighbors when buffing crit chance, it will buff Grindstone too! With a max level Knight Statue, Tempered Steel, and base crit, you can ramp up Grindstone’s crit chance to a whopping 32%!

Examples

Example 1: Critical Hits Breakdown

Let’s imagine a unit with an attack speed of 0.1 hit per second and a base 5% crit chance. That’s 10 hits per second, or 100 hits every 10 seconds. Of those 100 hits, 5 of them will be critical shots. These 5 critical shots are made up of two different types of crits: one from the damage dealer itself, and one from the Grindstone. Remember, these crit chances are independent, so it’s unlikely you’ll see the 5% crits stack on exactly the same shot. The result? For every 100 shots, 10 of them will be critical shots – 5 from the damage dealer and 5 from the Grindstone.

Example 2: Critical Hits with Tempered Steel and Knight Statue

Now let’s add in a max level Knight Statue and the Tempered Steel talent. The base crit chance for the Grindstone rises from 5% to 12% (7% from Tempered Steel), and the Knight Statue provides an additional boost of 20%. This means the Grindstone now has a crit chance of 32%! So for 100 shots, you’ll see a total of 37 crits – 5 from the damage dealer, and a whopping 32 from the Grindstone.

Remember, these examples are simplified, and actual gameplay may yield different results due to various factors. But this should give you a better understanding of how Grindstone can massively boost your damage output.

Additional Grindstone Facts

  • Witch will also buff Grindstone. If there’s a damage dealer between two different grindstones, and each grindstone has a witch and grindstone, the whole setup will self-optimize.
  • The damage dealer will combine the best buffs from any adjacent grindstones. For example, if your left grindstone has a witch and the right grindstone has a knight statue, it will take both buffs when creating its own crits. This has been personally tested.

Example Formation:

From left to right: Witch – Tier 1 Grindstone – Damage Dealer – Tier 7 Grindstone – Knight Statue

What will result from that is basically three damage streams at the attack speed of the damage dealer:

  1. Damage Stream 1: Normal hits buffed by the best tier Grindstone and Witch’s damage buff. For example, if the normal hit is 100 points, the Grindstone buff is 1000 points, and the Witch buff is 200%, then each normal hit would be 100 + (1000 x 3).
  2. Damage Stream 2: Damage dealer crits. In this example, the Witch isn’t touching the damage dealer, so crit damage doesn’t change. For instance, if the damage dealer crit chance is 5%, then the crit would be 100 x player crit damage (2000%).
  3. Damage Stream 3: Grindstone crits. In this example, Grindstone crits are combining the best crit chance from the Knight Statue, the damage from the Witch, and the attack speed from the damage dealer to create a damage output stream. For instance, the calculation would be (100 + (1000 x 3)) x player crit damage (2000%).

And this is without Witch and Knight Statue directly touching the damage dealer. In the third scenario, every instance of 100 in the calculation becomes (100 x 3), and then the crit chance for stream 2 changes when Knight Statue starts touching it.

Adjusted Formation:

Assuming the Witch and the Knight Statue are directly touching the Damage Dealer, we’ll see some changes:

The resulting damage streams would be as follows:

  1. Damage Stream 1: Normal hits are buffed by the best tier Grindstone, with the Witch’s damage buff applied only to the base damage of the Damage Dealer. For example, if the normal hit is 100 points, the Grindstone buff is 1000 points, and the Witch buff is 200%, then each normal hit would be (100 x 3) + (1000 x 3).
  2. Damage Stream 2: Damage dealer crits. Now that the Witch and Knight Statue are touching the Damage Dealer, the crit damage does change. For instance, if the Damage Dealer’s crit chance is 5% plus an additional 20% from the Knight Statue (totaling 25%), then the crit would be (100 x 3) x player crit damage (2000%).
  3. Damage Stream 3: Grindstone crits. In this scenario, Grindstone crits combine the best crit chance from the Knight Statue, the damage from the Witch, and the attack speed from the Damage Dealer to create a damage output stream. For instance, the calculation would be ((100 x 3) + (1000 x 3)) x player crit damage (2000%).

All of this is being calculated by the board tool and has been personally tested. Please refer to Discord, messages from me (azimuthal-observer), and search for the word “grindstone witch” to find detailed examples with play testing videos and screenshots of the formations tested.