And I thought the damage formulas for last update were complicated

[Arcwell]

The new shadow reaper weapon hits a bunch of different damage numbers, so here's a summary of how it all works.
Note since this is a beta it may be subject to change.

Here are the shadow reaper's stats:

• 38 physical damage
• 18 planar damage
• 1.1x physical & planar damage vs. lunar enemies
• 200 uses
• Can harvest pickables (grass, crops, stonefruit, etc.) in front of the player, reaching roughly 4 wall tiles in a 165 degree angle.

Equipping the void robe and cowl armor set also gives it:

• 1.1x physical damage
• +5 planar damage
• +4 planar damage per hit (including 1st hit) up to +24 after 6 hits, resets on taking damage or after 3 seconds of not attacking

.Here are all the potential damage numbers it can hit vs. various enemies, not including external modifiers like Wolfgang's mighty form or Warly's spicy jelly (note these modifiers only affect physical damage).

For those interested, here are the damage formulas for each:

• Vs. non-planar entity:          (38 * 1.1 + 18 + 5 + 4 * hits)
• Vs. non-planar lunar entity: 1.1 * (38 * 1.1 + 18 + 5 + 4 * hits)
• Vs. planar entity:                 (sqrt(38 * 1.1 * 4 + 64) - 8) * 4 + 18 + 5 + 4 * hits
• Vs. planar lunar entity:        (sqrt(38 * 1.1 * 1.1 * 4 + 64) - 8) * 4 + 1.1 * (18 + 5 + 4 * hits)

And the new scrapbook is just completely wrong about the shadow reaper's damage, it only applies while wearing the armor set and hitting exactly once.

[Spino43]

Other weapons is like "hey this thing deals x damage" and this scythe is literal quantum physics.

[goblinball]

This is very cool tbh

yeah the planar damage complicates things a bit but I’m a big fan of the system with the increasing damage thing

Gives the weapon its own niche as a high-skill/risk weapon. It makes it powerful in situations where you’re confident you won’t get hit, while also preventing it from replacing all other weapons (in a way which is not extremely artificial, mind you) entirely since it’s not very good if you do get hit. 

i wish it wasn’t tied to having the armor equipped. If it weren’t for that I’d say this is like one of my favorite weapons tbh

[Theukon-dos]

The Damage Ramp on this thing is actually pretty damn cool. I'll admit. But that table just goes to show that Planar Damage is still massive dookie. 

[Shosuko]

I really dig this item, and its an example of how Klei can creatively disrupt existing items without completely replacing them.  Its utility is top tier, making this a de-facto late game item for harvesting if you're not Maxwell.  Its damage is interesting, promoting a certain type of playstyle where you kite and dodge rather than tanking things, and get rewarded with higher damage numbers.  Take the whole planar thing out, and ditch the armor requirement, but keep its damage ramping, then something like ignoring non-electric damage mods to keep it from running wild on certain characters, and it creates a new late game damage option for NOT damage stacking characters to scale up into the end game and feel rewarded for their efforts.

[Theukon-dos]

30 minutes ago, Shosuko said:

I really dig this item, and its an example of how Klei can creatively disrupt existing items without completely replacing them.  Its utility is top tier, making this a de-facto late game item for harvesting if you're not Maxwell.  Its damage is interesting, promoting a certain type of playstyle where you kite and dodge rather than tanking things, and get rewarded with higher damage numbers.  Take the whole planar thing out, and ditch the armor requirement, but keep its damage ramping, then something like ignoring non-electric damage mods to keep it from running wild on certain characters, and it creates a new late game damage option for NOT damage stacking characters to scale up into the end game and feel rewarded for their efforts.

I suppose that is just the long and short of it, huh?

If Klei was really that desperate to make us stop using football helmets and Dark Swords, then they still could have done that just by giving the new items special abilities/attributes instead of hard walling everyone with Planar mechanics.

As you said, the scythe is a great item itself. Just remove the armor requirements for the damage ramping, and it's pretty much golden. A weaker dark sword that builds up DPS if you avoid getting hit? Sign me up! Wouldn't make it uneffected by modifiers though. Wolfgang's the only real problem child when it comes to DPS, so he should be the one getting nerfed here. 

And the brightshade sword could also get something that boosts it without directly upping the DPS. Maybe it could get a ranged attack on right click. Or some other form of CC to make it good against groups of enemies. That combined with it's other favorable traits would make it extremely appealing to choose over a basic dark sword. 

And then the armor could get some perks of it's own other than +defense to be appealing aswell. Brightshade looks pretty heavy, and has a lot of glass in it's design, so maybe it could get a recoil effect when hit. While shadow armor's really light looking, so it could get a Wheeler-style dash to help with dodging. You only need one piece of the armor to get the effect, but wearing both boosts the effect beyond just the two combined.