ENDFIELD PROGRESSION: WHAT ACTUALLY BUYS DPS

With Contingency Contract on the horizon, the question filling my inbox isn’t “who do I pull?” — it’s “where do I dump my mats?” Everyone has a half-built roster and a finite pile of catalysts, manuals, and engraving tickets, and CC is the first content where the gap between a tuned operator and a lazy one is going to show on the timer. So I sat down with the community DPS spreadsheets, the Endfield wiki damage formula, and a lot of coffee, and tried to answer one thing: per unit of effort, what actually moves your damage number? This is my opinion on the ranking — the heavy calc lifting is community theorycrafting, the priorities and the hot takes are mine.

TL;DR - Key Points

• Full artificing is worth ~21% DPS on a typical operator — real money, but it’s the slowest-to-finish line, not the first
• Main stat on Armor and the kit’s 3rd line are your best artificing dollars — secondary stats are dead last, every slot
• 80→90 character level is ~6.7% DPS (or ~8.2% if the operator rides a hidden multiplier like Da Pan or Mi Fu)
• Going weapon 80→90 quietly unlocks essence caps (8/7/4 → 9/9/4) — that unlock alone is ~6.3% before the weapon’s own 90 level adds another ~6.4%
• Talents 9→M3 across all skills is ~27.3% on Zhuang Fangyi, and her battle skill alone is ~16.5% of it
• Artificing supports is mostly a trap — Xaihi’s Intellect gives ~3% team DPS, Perlica’s debuff barely ~0.7%
• Raw DPS-per-line is the wrong metric — once you factor catalyst cost and success rates, cheap substat steps can out-value expensive main-stat steps (more on this below)

Related read: my colleague’s efficient gear priority guide covers the resource-sink side of this; this piece is about the damage math underneath it.

Why I’m Ranking This Before CC

Here’s my framing bias up front: I don’t believe CC will be a stat-check. Endfield’s endgame so far rewards execution over raw numbers, and I expect Risk-tag CC to follow suit. But CC does introduce timers and modifiers that punish under-tuned damage, and unlike Umbral Monument you can’t just out-skill a 30% DPS deficit forever. So the goal isn’t a perfect account — it’s knowing which 80% of the gains live in 20% of the grind, so you walk in “good enough” and keep polishing during the season.

Everything below is measured against one baseline operator’s rotation. Your mileage shifts with team comp, but the order holds up remarkably well across kits.

Artificing: The ~21% You’re Probably Sleeping On

Let’s start with the big one. Fully artificing every piece of an operator’s gear is roughly a 21.4% DPS increase on a generic carry. That’s not a rounding error — that’s most of a character level’s worth of gain, hidden inside a system people ignore because the per-click percentages look tiny.

The reason it feels small is that artificing is time-gated, not sanity-gated. You buy catalysts weekly, you click, you wait. There’s no dramatic “ding” moment. But the cumulative ceiling is enormous, and because it doesn’t compete with leveling for sanity, there’s genuinely no reason to not be chipping at it in the background. For the underlying math on why these attribute gains compound the way they do, the attribute scaling and artificing breakdown is the deep version.

The Line-by-Line Priority Order

Not all artificing lines are equal, and the order matters because you’ll run out of catalysts long before you finish. Here’s how the lines stack up when you’re taking gear from base to +3:

Two things jump out. First, main stat follows Armor > Gloves > Kit every time — that ordering is stable, so memorize it. Second, the 3rd line is wildly character-dependent. On someone like Zhuang Fangyi, a Bonus-damage 3rd line can be oversaturated and worth almost nothing; on an operator carrying a rare multiplier (the Lynx Slab MA% case is the classic example), that same line jumps to the top of the list. Read your operator’s kit before you trust a generic chart — including this one.

The Catalyst-Cost Caveat (Read This Before You Min-Max)

Now the part I want to flag loudest, because a sharp commenter on the original community thread (shoutout to Celaeris) made a point I fully agree with and the raw chart above glosses over: DPS-per-line is not the same as DPS-per-catalyst.

The priority table ranks lines by total damage gained going 0 → +3. But the steps don’t cost the same. Pushing a main stat from +2 → +3 burns a lot more catalyst — and at a lower success rate — than nudging a secondary from +0 → +1. So a “weak” secondary-stat first step can easily be a better deal per catalyst spent than a “strong” main-stat final step, even though the secondary line ranks last overall.

Here’s how I’d reconcile the two views:

• If you’re a normal player building toward “good enough,” follow the line-priority chart top-to-bottom and don’t overthink it. The order is correct for spending a fixed catalyst budget to maximum effect most of the time.
• If you’re truly min-maxing, the unit you want to optimize is DPS gained ÷ expected catalysts to succeed, step by step — not line by line. That can mean grabbing the cheap early steps on several lines before committing catalysts to the brutal final main-stat push.
• Either way, the “right” order is team- and rotation-dependent. Oversaturated stats, buff caps, and what your supports already provide all reshuffle the list. There’s no universal answer, and anyone selling you one (me included) is simplifying.

I’m not going to publish a full per-catalyst efficiency table here — honestly, the inputs (per-step success rates, your specific fodder, your team) vary too much for a single chart to be honest about it. But if you’re the kind of player who wants to sweat that last 2%, build the per-step model yourself; it’s the genuinely correct way to spend a constrained catalyst pool.

Support Artificing: Mostly a Trap

Should you artifice your buffers and debuffers? My answer is usually no, and here’s the evidence. I looked at two popular supports:

• Perlica: artificing takes her Arts Intensity from 133 → 165, which bumps her debuff value from 25.8% → 27.3%. Run that through a Rossi + Tang Tang + Gilberta team and it nets about 0.7% team DPS. Realistically you won’t see north of 1% on any comp. That’s a rounding error for a pile of catalysts.
• Xaihi: artificing takes her Intellect from 608 → 776, pushing her Amp from 46.4% → 52%, which lands around 3% team DPS. That’s a genuinely respectable upgrade.

The lesson: support artificing only pays when the support’s contribution is a large multiplicative buff that isn’t already capped. Xaihi’s Amp clears that bar; Perlica’s debuff doesn’t. Before you sink catalysts into a support, ask whether their buff is big enough that a few percent of it matters to the whole team. Most of the time, those catalysts belong on your carry.

Character Levels: The 80 → 90 Wall

Going from 80/90 to 90/90 is one of the most resource-brutal steps in the game, so it’s fair to ask what it actually buys:

• No hidden multiplier (Zhuang Fangyi, Rossi, etc.): about 6.7% DPS.
• Rides a hidden multiplier (Da Pan, Mi Fu, Wulfgard, etc.): about 8.2% DPS, give or take depending on how much of their damage comes from Phys Statuses, Arts Bursts, or Arts Reactions.

That spread is the practical takeaway: operators who scale off a hidden multiplier get meaningfully more out of the level cap. If you’re triaging who hits 90 first, the multiplier carries should jump the queue over flat-scaling ones. For everyone else, 80 is a perfectly respectable stopping point until you’re swimming in EXP mats.

Weapon Levels: The Hidden Essence Unlock

This is the step most people misread, so pay attention. Taking a weapon from 80/80 to 80/90 does not raise the weapon’s own stats — what it does is unlock higher essence caps, lifting your essence levels from 8/7/4 to 9/9/4. If you actually have those essences slotted, that unlock alone is worth about 6.3% DPS. It’s a stat increase that comes from the essences, not the weapon — easy to overlook on the screen.

Then going 80/90 to 90/90 gives you the weapon’s own stat jump, worth roughly another 6.4% DPS. So the full 80 → 90 weapon journey is two distinct ~6% chunks: one that unlocks your essences, one that’s the raw weapon. Don’t do the first half and forget the essences are the point of it.

Weapon Essences: Line by Line

Essences are their own optimization layer, and the lines behave differently. Here’s the rough shape of the gains:

The main-stat line is the reliable workhorse — steady gains and a fat final step. The 3rd line is the wildcard: if the passive is strong for your operator, it can out-perform everything; if it’s mediocre, it’s your last priority. As with artificing, the variance lives in how much your specific operator values the stat or passive, so a generic ranking only gets you so far. For most carries: max the main line, then the 2nd, and judge the 3rd on its passive.

Talents: Where M3 Actually Pays Off

Talent (skill) levels are the highest damage-per-resource step in the game, and the numbers back it up. Taking all skills from level 9 to M3 on Zhuang Fangyi is about a 27.3% DPS increase. But the distribution is the real story: her battle skill alone accounts for ~16.5% — nearly two-thirds of the entire gain. The remaining skills split the rest fairly evenly.

That’s the pattern I’d generalize: most operators have one or two “primary” skills that carry the damage, and the rest are secondary. Pumping all skills to M3 blindly is fine if you’re rich, but if you’re triaging, identify the primary skill and M3 that first — you’ll capture the majority of the gain for a fraction of the manuals. Operators who deal a big chunk of damage through Phys Statuses, Arts Bursts, or Arts Reactions will see slightly less than 27% from talents, because some of their output scales off mechanics the skill levels don’t directly touch.

How I’d Sequence It by Player Type

The math above is universal; how you act on it depends on where you are. My honest recommendations:

The CC-prepping mid-game player (most of you):

1. Primary skill to M3 — best bang for buck, full stop
2. Main DPS to 90 (prioritize hidden-multiplier carries)
3. Weapon to 90 — with essences slotted, so the cap unlock isn’t wasted
4. Artificing in the background, following the line chart
5. Skip support artificing unless it’s a Xaihi-tier buff

The whale who wants the literal ceiling:

• Everything above, but switch artificing from line-priority to per-catalyst efficiency, model the success rates per step, and grab the cheap early steps across lines before the expensive finals.
• Re-evaluate every line against your actual team — oversaturation will reshuffle the order.

The casual who just wants to clear:

• Primary skill M3, character 90, and stop stressing. Endfield content has been skill-check, not stat-check. You can clear current endgame on +0 artificing with a clean rotation; CC will reward execution over a polished sheet.

Common Mistakes I See

• Leveling a weapon to 90 without the essences slotted. You paid for an essence-cap unlock and then didn’t use it. Slot first.
• Artificing supports reflexively. Unless the buff is big and uncapped (Xaihi yes, Perlica no), those catalysts belong on your carry.
• Spreading skill manuals evenly. M3 the primary skill before touching the secondaries.
• Trusting a generic 3rd-line chart on a niche operator. Oversaturated bonus-damage lines are nearly worthless; rare multipliers are top priority. The line’s value is kit-specific.
• Confusing DPS-per-line with DPS-per-catalyst. The cheap first steps are often the efficient ones, even on “weak” lines.

What Would Change This Ranking

A few things on my watch list that could reshuffle everything once CC lands:

• CC modifiers that nullify ultimates or cap a damage type would re-weight talents and essences toward whatever still works under the contract.
• New Lynx-Slab-style multiplier operators would push their unique 3rd lines and main-stat essences up the chart (and bump the Lynx Slab main-stat bonus past the ~12.5% noted above).
• Buff/debuff cap changes in a balance patch would directly change whether artificing supports like Perlica becomes worth it.
• CC reward economy — if catalysts or manuals get cheaper from CC shops, the whole “constrained budget” framing relaxes and you can just brute-force the chart.

I’ll revisit these numbers once we have CC’s actual contract tags in hand. For now, the CC test criteria breakdown is the best read on what the season’s scoring will reward.

Final Read

If you take one thing from this: skill levels and the weapon-90 essence unlock are your highest-value, sanity-gated steps — do those first — while artificing chips away in the background as a time-gated bonus that eventually adds up to a real ~21%. Don’t artifice your supports unless they’re carrying a Xaihi-sized buff, identify each operator’s primary skill before you spend a single manual, and remember that every “optimal” chart (including mine) is a simplification of a team-dependent, per-catalyst-dependent problem.

Walk into CC “good enough,” not perfect. The season is long, and execution will matter more than the last 2% on your sheet. If you want to pressure-test your carry’s rotation before the season, our Rossi team comp and rotation guide is a good place to start. And if clean execution is the goal, the one upgrade that lives outside your account sheet is your hardware: a mouse or headset that does not fight you mid-rotation (we cover the refreshed Razer.com direct-purchase perks separately).

FAQ

What’s the single best DPS-per-resource upgrade? M3 on your operator’s primary skill. On Zhuang Fangyi the battle skill alone is ~16.5% DPS — most of the total talent gain for a fraction of the manuals.

How much DPS is full artificing really worth? About 21.4% on a typical carry. It feels small per click because it’s time-gated, not sanity-gated, but the cumulative ceiling is large.

Should I artifice my supports? Usually not. Xaihi’s Intellect nets ~3% team DPS, which is worth it; Perlica’s debuff is ~0.7%, which isn’t. Only artifice a support when their buff is large and not already capped.

Why does leveling a weapon from 80 to 90 matter if the stats don’t change at 80→90 first? The 80→90 weapon path is two parts. The first part (to the essence-cap unlock) raises your essence levels from 8/7/4 to 9/9/4 — ~6.3% if you have essences slotted. The second part is the weapon’s own stat gain, ~6.4%.

Is the artificing line-priority chart always correct? No. It’s correct for spending a fixed catalyst budget on average. If you min-max, switch to DPS-per-catalyst per step — cheap early steps can beat expensive final steps — and re-check against your team’s existing buffs.

Which characters get more from hitting level 90? Operators that ride a hidden multiplier (Da Pan, Mi Fu, Wulfgard) get ~8.2% versus ~6.7% for flat-scaling carries like Zhuang Fangyi or Rossi. Prioritize the multiplier carries for the 90 cap.

What about the 3rd artificing/essence line? It’s the most operator-dependent line. A rare or unique multiplier (Lynx Slab MA%) puts it near the top; an oversaturated bonus-damage stat puts it near the bottom. Always check the kit.

Do I need a perfect account to clear Contingency Contract? I don’t think so. Endfield endgame has been skill-check over stat-check, and I expect CC to reward execution and roster flexibility over a maxed sheet. Aim for “good enough” and polish during the season.

Where do these numbers come from? They’re community theorycrafting built on the Endfield wiki damage formula, measured against a baseline operator rotation. The priorities and opinions here are my own; treat the exact percentages as well-reasoned estimates, not gospel.