Caliburs and Brandishes are supposed to be equal to each other; normal swords are not supposed to be weaker than other swords

It is probably a better idea to look at each case individually before buffing all damage numbers to those of Acheron.

You'd be making a similar argument as the one a lot of people make to defend normal swords being weaker than typed swords "because normal swords have always been weaker than typed swords that's how it must be". Note: I agree with you that that argument makes no sense, I also think that dread venom striker straight up outclasses flourishes, but I digress. To explain, if the Amputator's damage is off compared to status-brandishes, then that is where the problem is situated and you could elevate it to combuster's damage. But then its damage is no longer equal to CIV, so you cannot just say that CIV also has to be on that level or Levi on the level of Acheron, since they have been around for much longer. That said, you might be right that the Amputator's weird spot kind of proves the devs didn't really know what to do with it and that they probably should have done what you said, which is putting Amputator on the level of CIV and CIV/Levi on the level of brandishes/acheron. That would mean nerfing brandishes or buffing CIV/Levi. I think they didn't want to mess with that because buffing CIV/Levi to Acheron damage is scary, it would set the trend to buff all the other swords as well and then they'd simply have to scale up the difficulty to compensate. The other one is even scarier, because nerfing brandishes (or any piece of gear for that matter) is very very risky when a huge part of the playerbase has invested in them and many rely on their brandishes. If you take that away they will feel cheated and surely some will quit. So they went the safe route and added a normal brandish because players wanted it, but made it underpowered so it doesn't impact the game.

I definitely agree with you that it makes no sense normal weapons are supposed to be weaker. The only edge that specialised weapons have or at least should have is their ability to hit slightly harder on 1/3 of the enemies in game, equally hard on 1/3 of the enemies in the game, at the cost of not hitting hard on the last 1/3 of enemies. This can be compensated for by equipping 2 damage types, allowing the player to hit slightly harder on all monsters. And in fact many levels you can already hit for at least normal damage with just 1 specialised weapon. So yes, Amputators damage should be equal to Combusters damage on fiends.

Though like I mentioned earlier, before buffing anything I think it makes sense to look at each case individually. We do not want to buff swords to Acheron level because that is setting a dangerous trend and reverting buffs will never sit well with the community when they have invested time and money crafting a weapon before the nerf.

This is a side effect of split damage weapons being broken. There's a reason most got removed.

Edit: I got ninjaed by two other posters. But I think that they have missed the main point that you were trying to make.

Un-edited response: Thanks for your comments. If I understand your argument, it is:

A. Normal weapons tend to have similar damage output to non-normal weapons against neutral targets.

B. Monster-specific damage bonus is considered equal to status effect on weapons.

C. Therefore Amputator should have the same damage as status Brandishes against neutral targets.

This argument makes some sense. So why did Grey Havens balance Amputator as they did? Here's my speculation. The outcome of the gunner update was that Iron Slug is a very powerful normal weapon. Because of its charge attack style, it hits many targets, much like a bomb. And if you're going to hit many targets at once, then there is less incentive to have non-normal damage. So maybe the designers were trying to avoid letting Amputator dominate the status Brandishes.

That's my main response. Here are some other comments around the points that you've made.

The damage output of normal bombs and guns is the same as similar weapons with different damage types and similar special effects, against enemies that take neutral damage from them.

This is not confusing or problematic. Damage types incentivize the knight to specialize, by saying, "If you're willing to carry two or three weapons, instead of just one, and use them against the correct targets, then you can get a bit more damage."

So that's how 2/3 weapon categories work, and swords seem to be the exception.

Swords are a bit funny because most of them are normal+non-normal, while every gun and bomb is one damage type only.

If a monster damage bonus is considered on par with a status effect...

Status effects should be considered more powerful than monster-specific damage bonuses. Monster-specific damage bonuses are a relic from an ancient time, when blanket damage bonuses were much harder to get. There are a few recent exceptions, I admit: two shard bombs and Amputator.

It would make sense to crack down on this and remove split typing all together but then people would be upset their barn dishes got nerfed. So instead just make it a sword thing. I'll explain.

I wrote a bit about this a while ago- https://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/107003

My personal idea is to just make it so that other swords deal split normal and normal and sometimes in a set of three to five normals to get to their target damage at base and after buff to work out. I think this would be nice since swords that aren't barn dishes could use the buff.

As for amputator.

1.) 5x split normal hits = suddenly the slime high would make sense
2.) It should heart attack enemies on charge because that would be awesome

@Zincamania-Forum

Yeah, it might be better to look at each weapon individually. A reason for this post that I suppose I failed to communicate (my mistake), is that I was trying to follow Grey Haven's "logic" in balancing weapons, and came to a conclusion about how powerful the weapons are "supposed" to be if the weapons were actually made consistent with that logic.

I agree that nerfing the Brandishes besides the Amp would cause a large ruckus and straight nerfs to those should be kept to a minimum, and I would rather see Amp/CIV/other swords get buffed up to their level. Levi vs Acheron on the other hand, I would rather see Ach get nerfed to a level somewhere between its current state and the current Levi, and then buffing Levi up to that new standard (rather than making Levi a godsword like the current Ach). I don't think people *should* be mad if Ach gets nerfed because everybody should know it's overpowered and the nerf has been 6 years coming, but I know that people don't always have the bigger picture in mind and some would still be upset in the case that the Ach gets nerfed.

@Sir-Pandabear

Would be nice if GH either fixed split damage or otherwise finished the job; removing the rest of the split damage weapons ought to simplify balancing in my mind.

@Bopp

Yes, that is a great summary of what I was trying to say, thank you.

I see what you're saying with the Amp potentially being like another Iron Slug, although I'm a little miffed by the idea that Grey Havens would be so hesitant to make the Amp or other swords better when the Acheron exists.

And about the monster damage bonus vs status comparison, I failed to communicate in my original post that I was trying to follow whatever logic Grey Havens uses when balancing weapons against each other, and according to that "logic" the damage bonus of the WHB and status chance of the DVS are equally useful (even if that isn't actually the case in-game).

@Promos-Are-Content

If I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying swords that need to deal more damage should deal split normal/normal? As if they had two or more separate damage bars that all consisted of normal damage? That is an interesting idea, and I'm not opposed to it. My first instinct was to either fix the split damage formula so it didn't tack on extra damage for no reason, or just make the split damage swords deal pure damage, and buff the barn dishes back to a place where people were happy with them (and at the same time removing split damage ought to make it significantly simpler to balance all the swords with each other).

If Amputator inflicted the heart attack status...I've always been a heal/support oriented player and that would be amazing. A full team of Amp users would be hilarious.