Damage Up

Damage Up increases damage of the player's main, sub, and special weapons by up to 30%. SquidForce gear has a 5x chance of rolling this ability.

In-depth Ability
Although having damage seems like it may give a player an advantage in combat, it is programmed into the game that no weapon can pass their innate "number of hits to splat" threshold. For example, the Aerospray MG has a base damage of 24.5, meaning that it takes five hits to splat an enemy Inkling. The game will not allow the Aerospray to splat in less than five hits. Therefore, Damage Up will cap the Aerospray's damage at 24.9, so it will still take five hits to splat. This rule applies to all weapons that take more than one hit to splat and deal fixed damage.

Use
Due to this rule programmed into the game, Damage Up has very limited use. However, it is possible for the ability Defense Up to actually allow an Inkling to take an extra hit from certain weapons. This makes Damage Up ideal for countering opponents with Defense Up, but only if the weapon the player is using is on the lower threshold of the "number of hits to splat." If the weapon is higher on that threshold, or if the weapon kills in one hit, then Defense Up would not matter anyway, making Damage Up useless.

Damage Up can, however, reduce the effort needed to splat with variable-damage weapons. For instance, it allows chargers to splat with less charging. For instance, an E-liter 3K requires an 100% charge to splat opponents, but a full set of Damage Up gear can reduce this to 65%.

Gear
Damage Up is the main ability of:

Calculating Damage
a = Ability Points of Damage Up = 10 × [Number of Damage Up Main Slots] + 3 × [Number of Damage Up Sub Slots] d = Ability Points of Defense Up = 10 × [Number of Defense Up Main Slots] + 3 × [Number of Defense Up Sub Slots] A = (0.99 × a - (0.09 × a) ^ 2) / 100 D = (0.99 × d - (0.09 × d) ^ 2) / 100 When Damage Up ≥ Defense Up Damage = [base damage] × [1 + (A - D)] When Damage Up < Defense Up Damage = [base damage] × [1 + (A - D) / 1.8]