It depends on a lot of things which weapon is better, should win on some (if not most) scenarios.

Let's start with base stats:

A level 90 Albedo will have a base defense of 876, while only has a total of 793 base attack with a Jade Cutter at level 90. So Def% will net you more increased stats than ATK%.

And while Jade Cutter have more Crit Chance, HOD will deal more damage (assuming no other modifies on Crit Chace or Damage). Without over complicating things, if you deal a base damage with anything, HOD will deal 132 poits of damage while Jade Cutter will deal 125.

That, and considering that players should aim for around 50-70 Crit Chance, Jade Cutter has higher chance of getting values over that.

So right now HOD wins no matter what.

HOD requirement:

By far the biggest factor, but with the correct team mates and/or player skill, the requirement is not that big of a deal. In fact, with Zhong Li's shield and or Noelle's heals (as Main Dps), the requirement might well be non existant. Not even counting Crystalize shields.

If that not enough, having either one of those characters will grant you Geo Resonance, which is one of the only ways to reduce Geo Resistance. And comes with increased DMG%, the value which is the hardest to increase, while ATK% and Crit DMG % can reach over 200%.

So HOD team requirements are as strict as team requirements for Varopireze / Freeze comps with Xing Qiu. But yes, if you don't want that, Jade Cutter is insane.

Skill / Burst scaling:

People tend to think: "But... but... the scaling of the burst is higher, and therefore superior". But is it thought?

At level 6, the burst has a total scaling of 1220% of your total ATK, but that's assuming you hit every Fatal Blossom. And God knows that (almost) never happens, even while surrounded by a crowd of enemies. And the scaling only gets worse against fewer enemies and/or smaller enemies.

While a combo of E + Normal Attack + Q, you can get 7 ticks from the flower until the cooldown of the burst is... down. Netting a total, without the damage of the burst of course, of 1309% scaling of your total DEF. And with some points to consider:

• We are assuming an uptime of a 100% for the burst. For example, while anecdotal, am closer to 50% even when i used (in the past) Festering Desired and two Favonious users (Fischl included).
• With the previous points, for every 2 seconds late on the cooldown, the flower is scaling another 187.04% out of your total DEF.
• This is not counting the fact that you can every 4 seconds trigger the flower with another flower. And this second flower can tick immediately, granting between 187.04% and 561.12% extra scaling in those 12 seconds of cooldown, depending on your swapping.

Once again, HOD DEF% outscale Jade Cutter ATK%.

ATK% and DEF% sources:

While is true that HOD DEF has no use of the Plume artifact, the combination of DEF% Sands and Defender's Will represents a bigger porcentual increase that the combination of Plume (with Jade Cutter in consideration) and ATK% Sands.

And before you say: "But then i would have to use 2 pieces of 4* artifacts and that !"$@". You have to consider that DEF% rolls on 4* artifacts are the exact same than ATK% rolls on 5* artifacts.

HOD still winning.

Some love for Jade Cutter:

Jade Cutter has the edge here and there, but every single one has a (possible) downside:

• Bigger rolls for Crit Chance and Crit Damage on Plume and Flower because it won`t use the 4* versions. But the difference this makes is completely outclassed by previous points.
• Jade Cutter use 2-set Noblesse, aka, plus 20% damage on his burst. Unless you are also using Geo Resonance, this effect will be "neutralized" by the Geo Resonance of HOD. And even if you are using it, the rest of the points where HOD wins will neutralized most (if not all) of this bonus.
• ATK% have more sources, like Bennet; 4-set Noblesse (from someone else); Pyro Resonance; Jade Cutter itself; etc. But you have to consider that this combination of things have to compete with a (potential) huge scaling difference from HOD DEF%, and probably won't be able to outclass it. Not counting the fact that HOD can also have a 4-set Noblesse user and other similar sources.

And even if you, somehow, can outclass HOD DEF% skill damage with only this title, there is one more thing.

Understanding Optimazation:

In this game, optimize damage is like optimize the volume of a cube. If you have 3 factors (lenght, width, height in the case of the cube) that shares the same resources (total ft long for the cube, artifacts and abilities for Genshin) you will have a better end result if those factors are similar between each other. A very tall cube have does not have a lot of volume if it has almost no lenght or width.

So even if you by some miracle could have a bigger total damage in the spam of 12 seconds, you flower will do almost no damage. While HOD DEF% still uses the ATK% you have with Plume (if you translate it); Bennett; 4-set Noblesse; etc... Ending up with a higher combined damage.

Don't believe me? Let's take this:

• BaseDEF > BaseATK.
• x = Extra DEF. Will be slightly lower than the next value because it's a lower case and to give Jade Cutter a chance.
• X = Extra ATK. See above. Of course, you have to be realistic. HOD won in almost every category explained before, so do not choose x = 1000 and X = 4000.
• HODATK. Should be lower than both BaseDEF and BaseATK since HOD is a 3* weapon. You still need to add Albedo base attack.
• w = HOD Extra ATK. Should be way lower than both x and X since it only considers Plume, and stuff like Bennet.
• y = HOD build DMG%. Just like before, but with DMG%.
• Y = Jade Cutter DMG%. See above. And again, be realistic. Probably the only source of extra DMG% than Jade Cutter has is the 2-set Noblesse on Albedo. So something like y = 0.8 and Y = 1.0, and not something like y = 0.2 and Y = 1.6.
• z = HOD build Average Crit Damage increase. By this i mean the average between crit and non-crit hit. For example, we all know that having 50%Crit Chance with 200% Crit Damage average the same that 100% Crit Chance with 100% Crit Damage. This is also in porcentage. So 100% means 1.
• Z = Jade Cutter Average Crit Damage increase. Be realistic. While Jade Cutter have like 16% more Crit chance, HOD have 46.9% more damage. So don't think something like 50/150 for HOD and 70/200 for Jade Cutter.

So with all variables explained, calculate:

For HOD's build:

SkillTotalDMG * (BaseDEF + x) * (1 + y) * (1 + z)

plus

BurstBestPossibleDMG * (HODATK + w) * (1 + y) * (1 + z)

​

Against Jade Cutter:

SkillTotalDMG * (BASEATK + ZERO) * (1 + y) * (1 + Z)

plus

BurstBestPossibleDMG * (BASEATK + X) * (1 + Y) * (1 + Z)

​

That plus zero in the case of Jade Cutter should be enough to give you the idea that HOD will sum more damage. After all, optimized SkillDefDmg plus half-decent BurstDmg. sums more than garbage SkillATKDmg plus optmized-er BurstDmg.