Which weapon is better?

So I just got my wii u a couple days ago and have been loving this game and I am liking dual swords a lot so I did some research on them to see some weapons I am planning to get in the future and came across these 2 poison weapons:

Grimmest Noxwings
Attack:322
Poison:320
Affinity:0%

Alkaid's Asterism
Attack:350
Poison:180
Affinity:20%

so the Grimmest Noxwings have a bit less attack but way more poison damage while the Alkaid's have more dmg and affinity and a bit more sharpness and didn't know which upgrade path to take so if anyone can help me out that would be awesome. :D

Well, the sharpness change is minimal if you have the Sharpness +1 skill if you go that route when you get that far. Another thing of note is that the Grimmest Noxwings have 2 slots for decorations, allowing you to boost one of your skills if you need to, or get rid of a bad skill. I personally would go with the Noxwings, which also appear to be easier to make and have two less upgrades to go through than the Alkaid's Asterims. The only downside is that there is less raw, so monsters that aren't weak to poison will be harder and no affinity, so you won't have any hits with 125% damage. Also, I'm not the expert on the matter and I could be wrong in a couple of places. One of the other members could probably answer better than me, just thought I would throw in my 2 cents.

I'd personally go with the Alkaid's Asterism. That raw damage and affinity is will be helpful, but the thing that would change my mind the most is that the Alkaid's Asterism DS don't need Sharpness +1. They already have a fair amount of purple sharpness, and don't benefit from Sharpness +1. That allows you to get a lot more skills than if you had to get sharpness +1 and will benefit you in so many ways.

Alright thanks guys I think I might go into Alkaid's Asterism even though it does take longer to build since the raw damage will be extremely helpful for more than just a monster weak to poison and sharpness +1 wouldn't be needed and will allow for another skill instead.

blazingkyo wrote:

Alright thanks guys I think I might go into Alkaid's Asterism even though it does take longer to build since the raw damage will be extremely helpful for more than just a monster weak to poison and sharpness +1 wouldn't be needed and will allow for another skill instead.

Okay. You won't be disappointed with it. Although it will likely be a nightmare to make... Not needing Sharpness +1 could even mean obtaining more than just one extra skill, since Sharpness +1 is a harder skill to get.

Here's a mathematical approach to the problem:

The amount of damage from poison isn't that big. You can compare a full time-length of poison damage equivalent to an LBB. You usually get 3 sets of poison rounds in a quest, so that's 3 LBBs worth of damage. You clearly see this poison damage isn't worth it to begin with.

Now let's look at the raw damage. So far we don't know anything about this game in terms of multipliers, but that's all they are: multipliers. In the end, the raw damage presented in this game will be multiplied by hidden factors, so we don't have to worry about that. Let's look at the damage produced by both weapons:

Grimmest Noxwings: 322 damage

Alkaid's Asterism:
20% affinity. You can get full armor that has Critical Eye+3, such as Azure Rathalos armor to get an extra 30%, so the affinity becomes 50%
that means on average, half the quest you'll be doing an extra 25% damage. We can average this out by multiplying 50% affinity by 25% extra damage. That gives us a multiplier of 1.125

This DS then has an average damage of 394

Alkaid's Asterism will infinitely be better than Grimmest Noxwings.

Alright thanks man I used to play MH3 a ton and had basically everything but I feel like I've forgotten everything from it since I just got my wii u a couple days ago so thanks a ton for the help now to grind up the HR's lol I was also wondering about how elemental damage worked like if I have a weapon with lets say 322 raw dmg and 320 poison element and go up against a monster that has resistance towards poison will all the elemental dmg be negated or is it still there and still deals extra dmg or does the entire weapon deal less dmg? Or will it not even poison the monster at all?

Sai_ wrote:

Here's a mathematical approach to the problem:

The amount of damage from poison isn't that big. You can compare a full time-length of poison damage equivalent to an LBB. You usually get 3 sets of poison rounds in a quest, so that's 3 LBBs worth of damage. You clearly see this poison damage isn't worth it to begin with.

Now let's look at the raw damage. So far we don't know anything about this game in terms of multipliers, but that's all they are: multipliers. In the end, the raw damage presented in this game will be multiplied by hidden factors, so we don't have to worry about that. Let's look at the damage produced by both weapons:

Grimmest Noxwings: 322 damage

Alkaid's Asterism:
20% affinity. You can get full armor that has Critical Eye+3, such as Azure Rathalos armor to get an extra 30%, so the affinity becomes 50%
that means on average, half the quest you'll be doing an extra 25% damage. We can average this out by multiplying 50% affinity by 25% extra damage. That gives us a multiplier of 1.125

This DS then has an average damage of 394

Alkaid's Asterism will infinitely be better than Grimmest Noxwings.

I wish I could vote more than once.   

blazingkyo wrote:

I was also wondering about how elemental damage worked like if I have a weapon with lets say 322 raw dmg and 320 poison element and go up against a monster that has resistance towards poison will all the elemental dmg be negated or is it still there and still deals extra dmg or does the entire weapon deal less dmg? Or will it not even poison the monster at all?

Well, poison is a status, not an element to begin with. The raw damage will do the same amount, considering that you have full sharpness and regarding all hidden multipliers. When it comes to status, the applied effect does no damage at all. Status will only damage when the applied units reach a certain threshold. Since we don't know any quantitative data due to not being able to hack into the game, we don't know the specific thresholds of the monsters. So poison will only damage when it takes effect. Raw damage, status-effective damage, and elemental damage are independent from each other.

Some monsters are more resistant to status than others, but status will always take effect. The only monsters we know that can't be para'd, poisoned, slept, etc, are usually boss monsters like Dire Miralis. He can't be paralysed or slept; you get the idea. It just means that you can't utilize the effect of the status you are applying. This does not nullify your raw damage.

There're other factors to be aware of. For instance you planning on playing solo or multi? Poison is ok with solo runs but nothing to be exited about because damage increase is negligible as Sai stated above. With multi it's just terrible. But why stop here?

I'd say pretty much the same about para and sleep melee weapons. They can be really usefull in solo runs giving you 2-4 effects per quest, but on multi you're lucky to get 2 at max, 1 on average. Unless certain conditions are met like all 4p are using status weapons/KO. With good group, it's impossible to inflict more than one KO/para/sleep per quest, of course I'm talking about melee weapons. Even godspeed DS fails to deliver because of lowered HP of multi-quest monsters.

It's more like failure in game design rather than weapon properties. Everything dies so fast in Multi, so you better stick with old raw/element gear and go with the flow. Sometimes you even fail to KO monster with hammer because it died already.

I like to use para hammer because I can almost quarantee getting one para and KO per quest, damage wise it's crap, but it supports nicely. Also it's possible to lock monster in para-KO-trap-para-KO or para-KO-para-KO chain but in most cases it dies too quick to make it happen.

Out of 3 statuses I'd say para is the most multi-friendly. Poison - not worth it. With sleep people often don't know what to do/don't bring bombs/wake up monster.

I'm really curious though if we get any para Insect Glaive in 4U. WIth KO bug it may be possible to lock monster in infinite para-KO-ride-trap chain. Who knows.