Problem of Inconsistent Weapon Damage based on Weapon Types

[HeatAndRun]

So, it's been a while since the Gems and Anomalies beta concluded, and I think it's a good time to discuss general stuffs related to balance or something like that. In this thread, I'll talk about the inconsistency of "Weapon Damage".

Then, what is "Weapon Damage"? I usually don't do the "data-mine" things or decrypt lua files, so I'll explain it based on in-game experiences I had. From what I understand, the weapon damage is a hidden stat of the amount of weapons' strength. It is different from the attack power of your weapon which you can see in town or pressing Tab. It's only affected by the weapon's upgrade level, and other variables and damage bonus from your armors, gems and powers cannot change it. In other words, the final damage you deal to enemy Rots are the multiple of your weapon damage and damage multiplier from your armors, gems and powers.

Basically it is not easy to know the exact weapon damage. But there are some ways to figure it out. Examining some powers like Big Stick or Thin The Herd can reveal the weapon damage you currently equip. For example, in this image below my Long Arm of the Claw's weapon damage is 165 according to the description. Plus the attack power of the spear is 40.

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So, what's wrong with the weapon damage? The problem is, the weapon damage differs when the weapon type changes, even though each weapons have the same attack power. Check these images below.

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As you can check in those pictures, my Colossapphire Bow's weapon damage (251) is 1.5 times bigger than my Colossapphire Spear's weapon damage (168), despite both weapons' levels and attack powers are the same. 

This is the exact size of weapons damages according to each weapon types :

Spear (100%) < Cannon, Hammer (120%) < Strikers, Bow (150%)

It doesn't matter that much in the case when the player directly hits enemies with those weapons. Because each weapon types have different multiplier of weapon damage for their attack movesets including most of light and heavy attacks. But things go wrong when using other damage sources - Skills, Armors and Powers. Their multiplier with weapon damage is the same regardless of the weapon types. Check these videos below.

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Both case uses the same level 12 Yammo weapons and do the same thing. But the damage outcome has severe difference, soley due to the difference of weapon types. Briefly, you should do 1.5 amount of attacks when you're using a spear to do the same thing compared to the bow's case. The difference is so huge that you basically have 50% additional damage for skills and specific armors / powers, from the beginning of a hunt when you're using a bow instead of a spear.

Strictly speaking, it has a bigger impact on the final damage : Let's assume you can choose between : A spear with 50% damage bonus and a bow with no damage bonus, at the start of a hunt. The spear's base weapon damage is 100 and bow is 150. They have the same attack powers. During the hunt, you aquired a power that provides 100% damage bonus. In this case, the bow gains more benefits again. It's because the damage bonus caculation of Rotwood is based on Sum operation of other damage bonus, not multiplication operation of them. So, the total damage of spear is 250 ( = 100 * 2.5 ) and the bow's one is 300 ( = 150 * 2.0 ).

To me, this difference of weapon damage feels somewhat unreasonable. It makes the overall gameplay less consistent and predictable. Forces the players to pick a specific types of weapons when make their builds that focus on some specific skills or armors that have attack functions, limiting the combination of equipments as a result. In conclusion, the weapon damage should be same between the weapons with same attack powers! (Of course the damages of direct attacks including light / heavy attacks should remain after.)

Back in the day of the April, lots of people were using Floracrane's Divebeak skills, and they were using Strikers to do so because the strikers have the highest weapon damage than other weapon types. These days quite a lot of people are using Gnarlic Head Stalk or Snortoise Armor, but almost non of them are using those armors with weapons that is not a bow or strikers due to this issue. Current version of Rotwood has more than 10 damage-dealing armors 17 attacking skills, so this topic is more meaningful than it seems. It will be possible to see more variaty and diversity in the choices for weapons with this change.

To be honest, this is not the first time I mention it, but I think it's a quite important problem so I decide to bring the conversation again, and made a seperate topic only for it. It would be welcomed to see a positive change about this problem in the future!