Melee weapon stats continue to be weird and backwards

[motorfirebox]

I made a post a while back about how weird and confusing it is that giant hammers have an 8x sneak attack multiplier, while a dagger has only a 2x multiplier. That was under melee 2.0, now the disparity is even larger and it's spread to new stats.

Why in the name of Hek does an HAMMER have a 24x stealth multiplier while a DAGGER only has 3.2x? What... what!? Why!? Why! This is absolutely ludicrous. The most famous use of daggers on the battlefield is at Agincourt, where they were used to finish off wounded knights—literally, finishers. Daggers are close combat weapons designed to be used in confined spaces, e.g. when you're right behind your opponent and you have to kill them quietly.

Meanwhile, the only way to get a lot of damage out of a hammer is to swing it as hard as you can. This is not stealthy! A ten or twenty pound block of hard metal or stone (or in the case of Tenno weapons, a hundred and fifty pounds or more) smacking into flesh and bone is going to make a pretty loud smack, even louder if the target is armored. Hammers are not stealth weapons. Yet if you're playing stealth, hammers are your best option. Just... why? WHY?

 

And the insanity doesn't end there. Check out the new(ly-exposed) follow-through stat. Hammers get 0.4, dual swords get 0.5, one- and two-handed swords get 0.6, rapiers get 0.7, dual daggers get 0.8, and single daggers get 0.9. So hammers, whose entire damage potential depends on momentum, only carry 40% of their damage through to the next target it hits. Meanwhile, single daggers, with their light weight and 8 or 12 inches of blade, carry 90% of their damage through to follow-on targets. Again: WHAT!?

 

These stats make no sense at all. Daggers, designed for close combat and restricted spaces, should have the highest finisher multiplier and the lowest follow through. Giant swords and hammers, which are designed to smash through enemy defenses through sheer momentum, should have the lowest possible finisher multiplier and the highest follow through.

Edited November 19, 2019 by motorfirebox