Whether you’re playing a popular open-world RPG or a turn-based strategy mobile game, gearing up your team’s core main DPS always leaves plenty of players stumped when it comes to the main stat on your boot relic: should you choose speed boots or attack boots? Both are damage-focused stats, but they work very differently in different scenarios. Pick the wrong one and you’ll waste all the time and resources you spent grinding and upgrading your hard-won gear, while also cutting into your overall damage output. This guide breaks down the key differences between the two options and helps you pick the best fit for your main DPS.
Advantages of Speed Boots and Ideal Use Cases
Main DPS Characters With Speed-Locked Mechanics
If your main DPS’s kit is inherently tied to the speed attribute, that means speed boots are almost always the better choice over attack boots. This applies to characters that need frequent turns to stack passive damage bonuses, characters that use speed to speed up their ultimate charge cycle, or characters whose innate talents increase damage based on their total speed. Speed boots not only make your damage rotation far smoother, they also directly amplify your character’s built-in mechanical advantages, leading to a much larger damage boost than stacking attack can provide.
Long, Multi-Round Sustained Damage Fights
When you’re facing long, multi-wave fights like Memory of Chaos, the extra turns you get from speed boots add up to a higher total overall damage than attack boots can deliver. On top of that, most team-wide damage buffs have limited durations or activation counts. Higher speed lets your main DPS fit more full damage rotations within the buff window, pushing your total damage ceiling even higher.
Higher Marginal Gain After Full Gear Progression
When your main DPS already has perfect, endgame stats on all other relic slots, and your base values for attack, crit rate, and crit damage are already very high, the marginal gain from stacking additional speed will outpace the gain from stacking more attack. At this stage, switching to speed boots will give you a better overall damage boost.
Advantages of Attack Boots and Ideal Use Cases
Single-Hit Burst Damage Main DPS
For main DPS that rely on large single-hit burst damage and don’t need multiple turns to build up stacks or rotations, attack boots give you an immediate higher base damage boost. In environments that value a single strong burst round, attack boots will deliver better damage performance than speed boots.
Early Game Transitional Progression
When your main DPS is still unfinished and your overall damage base is still low in the early game, stacking attack directly delivers a far more noticeable damage increase than stacking speed. Using attack boots as a transitional option early on not only gives you higher immediate damage, it also saves you from wasting extra stamina grinding for a second pair of boots, letting you hold onto more progression resources for other upgrades.
Your Team Already Has Ample Speed Buffs
If your team already has support characters that can provide large amounts of speed bonuses, or you’ve already stacked enough speed through your relic set bonuses, switching to attack boots to add extra damage will deliver a higher overall gain than stacking even more speed.
3 Core Criteria to Make Your Choice
After reading through all the analysis above, you can use these three core criteria to quickly figure out which option you should pick:
First, start with your character’s mechanics: if your character’s kit is tied to speed and requires frequent actions, choose speed boots. If your character doesn’t benefit from extra speed and relies on single-hit burst, choose attack boots.
Second, check your team composition: if your team already provides plenty of speed buffs, pick attack boots to add extra damage. If you need your main DPS to take more turns to fully utilize damage buffs, pick speed boots to boost your total damage.
Third, check your current progression stage: stick with attack boots early game when your stats aren’t yet fully upgraded, then switch to speed boots after you finish gearing if it gives you a higher damage return.
To summarize, there’s no absolute good or bad between speed boots and attack boots, and you don’t need to blindly follow the crowd and pick speed boots every time. As long as you choose based on your main DPS’s kit, your team composition, and your current progression status, you’ll get the maximum possible damage output for your build.
