jamalabd 4 points 3 days ago*
I did some calculations to figure out which weapons work better with quality builds than with specialized builds. Basically my definition of a quality weapon is one that gets more damage per point from leveling its weaker scaling stat to 25 than from leveling its stronger scaling stat to 50. As such, here are the weapons we have data for, arranged from "most quality" to "least quality," along with the difference in scaling ratio between the weakest stat to 25 and the strongest stat to 50 (that is to say, positive values indicate that you should increase the weakest stat to 25 before increasing the strongest stat to 50, negative values indicate that you should increase the strongest stat to 50 before increasing the weakest stat to 25):
(I've moved the decimal for legibility)
Ludwig's Holy Blade 42.7
Stake Driver 27
Saw Spear 20.6
Saw Cleaver 12
Hunter Axe 4.7
Beast Claw 4.57
Rifle Spear -2.7
Burial Blade -5
Chikage -5.3 (str vs skill only!)
Tonitrus -5.3 (str vs skill only!)
Threaded Cane -13
Kirkhammer -17.7
Reiterpallasch -26.7
Note that this is strength vs skill only. I'm assuming that the Blade of Mercy, Burial Blade, and Logarius's Wheel never get enough arcane scaling to make leveling that stat more worthwhile than leveling their strongest scaling stat to 50. We have no idea how the Tonitrus works with arcane scaling at this point, and whether you want to level bloodtinge for your Chikage is a much more complicated question than one of simple scaling.
tl;dr - Ludwig's, the Stake Driver, the Saw Spear, and the Saw Cleaver strongly favor quality builds. The Reiterpallasch, Kirkhammer, and Threaded Cane strongly favor specialized builds. The Hunter Axe and Beast Claw slightly favor quality builds, whereas the Rifle Spear, Burial Blade, Chikage, and Tonitrus slightly favor specialized builds, though these last two are in point of fact better with bloodtinge/arcane than with any physical build.
