Neutralizer's charge is stronger than Biohazard's, yes. Supernova's expanded shots are also stronger than Polaris'.

Even against poisoned enemies, Neutralizer will still be stronger. You really only get Bio if you value having stronger regular attacks against slimes, which you shouldn't.

Type advantage is well and nice, but catalyzers is one of the worst weapons you could possibly use against gremlins. I'd rather have Callahan or even Iron Slug. Stacking up charges on a gremlin mender is a nightmare, and pretty much the only way to consistently do it is to have them backed up against a corner or something, and at that point you could really use whichever weapon.

As for how much it matters, well...

Biohazard vs neutral (depth 23): 336
Biohazard vs effective: 397

Neutralizer vs everything: 366

Biohazard is 31 points of damage stronger against gremlins. It's not even 9%. Wasn't that the kind of damage difference that poison debuff was so insubstantially making for Blitz charges in that other thread about poison? Meanwhile, if you pick Biohazard you won't be able to use it against the most ideal catalyzer target: zombies. Zombies are slow, numerous, easily kited and have high amounts of health. They're perfect for Neutralizer.

@zeddy
that can't be, specialized damage should be doing at least 30% more. And that's not even accounting for the poison. As for zombies, that's what I have Electron Vortex for. And as for menders, all it takes is 3 charges to kill any gremlin mender (less in lower depths) before it has a chance to throw up its bubble. It's also fantastic against Slimes, which is safer than using Gran Faust.

@seiran
Yes, that's always been the case, as far as I know. And the "radius" you claim, is actually just the monster itself, you don't have to aim for the charges directly.

Ah, yeah, you're right.

So the charge on the other monster ("target B") has to be close to (or pretty much touching) the monster you're detonating ("target A"), regardless of where the charges around target A are.

So then it's less potent than I thought it would be, since basically all the charges that detonate will still be just the ones directly around the monster you're shooting.

Thanks :;

I have an extensive topic on the subject of enemy defence, but you can go to the wiki and compare the numbers for yourself.

You'll notice that large or small, the damage difference between neutral and effective for a depth is just about constant. For depth 24, it's around 65. For depth 28, it's around 82. A flourish does 193 neutral damage at depth 24 without damage bonuses. 65 is way more than 10% of 193, and that's why specialized damage is useful. In comparison, it barely matters at all when it comes to something like the charge attack of Divine Avenger: 545 vs 611. (66 damage difference).

I believe the intention of special-damage weapons is to let the user deal competent amounts of damage without having to wear gear that increases their damage bonus. This allows the user to focus on ASI over DI while remaining effective. In contrast, the purpose of normal-damage weapons is to be used by a wielder who focuses on damage bonus over ASI, letting them deal large amounts of damage to all enemies at the expense of attack speed.

In practice, people just max everything and use special damage anyway.

I can tell that gremlins have shadow defence for a few reasons:
-If you poison a gremlin, they will take more damage from shadow weapons. If they had no shadow defence, this would not have been the case.
-If you attack a lost soul or a homing howlitzer with a shadow weapon, they will take more damage from the weapon than gremlins. 65 more damage on depth 24, to be somewhat precise.

Trust me on this, I've been researching it for quite a while now. If you have any data to refute my claims, I'd love to hear it.

Ideally, biohazard's "low" damage SHOULD be compensated by the combination of poison affliction and the fact that (one way or another) some monsters are weak to Shadow.

In other words, given the specific criteria required (enemy must be weak to shadow, poison must take effect), biohazard SHOULD be dealing MORE damage than neutralizer on advantageous targets. And if not, then OOO needs to rebalance them..

That said, in a comparison like Deadly Shard Bomb vs Deadly Crystal Bomb, which are identical in every way except damage type, I would expect both bombs to deal exactly the same damage to neutral targets, or perhaps even DSB should deal more, given that even that extra damage makes it virtually useless against slimes and constructs. Basically the fact that you can use DCB against anything is offset by the fact that it's slightly weaker on neutral targets

Again, I would like to reiterate, this is not necessarily how weapon types DO behave (Also it's hard to determine what damage "nerfs" are justifiable for given status effects), it is how the SHOULD behave, and if not, there are some serious balance issues.

Also I'll post here what I posted in DragonFaku's Status Effect Guide:

"As for poison, I've been hearing reports about what "lowers defense" REALLY means, but in the end, I've never dealt more than 15% extra damage, which is really just pitiful. I see no real reason to use poison except if there's menders around.

Also it's a bit misleading (in-game), if poison "reduced defense to 0", you'd think any attack would kill them in one hit, right? But in PvE, the "defense" stat is really screwy and hard to determine (if I what I heard is accurate)"

I definitely think poison (and shock, and to a minor degree, stun) need to be fixed.

Also sorry for the wall of text.

TL;DR:
Normal damage weapons should be equal or lesser than specialized damage to make up for their "all-around" usage
Weapons with status effects will naturally be slightly weaker, but should still account for the strengths and usefulness of the status
Poison is nearly useless.

Defense is screwy because it's unpredictable (between the many MANY enemy types, not to mention depths) and misleading.

Lost Souls hardly appear anywhere, and Howlitzer heads don't stay around long enough to really experiment on (plus they're always moving, good luck trying to kill one with a sword)

All those situations you mentioned that poison is great in have one thing in common: healers. Sure they're abundant in arenas, but most levels only have a handful here or there, and it's not worth wasting a weapon slot when most of the time you can just kill the healer first. Gran Faust kills most Gremlin Menders in two hits as long as they're not surrounded by other enemies, and blitz needle or BTB makes silkwings a joke. As far as reducing damage, weren't you the one telling me good players don't get hit? And pvp is already so unbalanced and different from pve that it's irrelevant.

As far as I'm concerned, poison is the LEAST useful status effect. Even shock still adds up on clusters of enemies...and Sleep may only come from vials, but it makes enemies completely harmless! No other status does that.

Oh boy....here goes Batabii....again....

They're the same three values for each depth. If a wolver has 65 piercing defence, then so will fiends. On the same depth, gremlins and slimes will have 65 shadow defence; while undead and constructs will have 65 elemental defence. They'll all have 130 defence against stuff they're neutral to.

You don't have to memorize defence values any more than you have to memorize the damage numbers of your weapons, but they can be nice to keep in mind if you wanna mess with defence debuffs or poison or think about how effective weakness weapons are compared to neutrals. In stratum 6, enemies start at 65 base defence on depth 24 and it scales linearly up to 82 base defence at depth 28.

I would also recommend Stagger Storm for the greaver wave. It gives you a lot of time to interrupt the greavers before they bite you.

OK I have a problem here.

I went to a t3 GTH to test the benefits of type advantage.

Sentenza (pure shadow) does 76 damage on the construct bag, and 137 on the slime bag (All of these are with chaos set btw), a damage boost of ~80%

Yet rocket hammer (pure elemental) does 324 on slime and 385 on construct, a damage boost of ~19%.

How is this possible? Neither of these weapons has a damage bonus (other than sentenza vs gremlin, which I didn't use), so why is it so inconsistent? Even looking at my equipment screen, there's no reason sentenza gets such a huge boost vs rocket hammer.

[wtf this forum needs a delete button]

I thought linear was a nice word for it, but I suppose fixed is more appropriate.

In any case, it's not an append, it's a deduction. You're making the common mistake of assuming that a weapon's base damage is the neutral damage it will inflict, and that attacking a monster weaker to it will apply a "bonus" to that damage. This is not the case.

The raw damage of a weapon can be observed on Howlitzers and Lost Souls. Yes, that's tricky to get, but don't worry: I've got you covered.

On depth 24, a wolver has 65-ish piercing defence and 131-ish neutral defence. This means that piercing weapons will inflict 65 less damage than the base and neutral weapons will inflict 131 less. It's a very simple formula for what is, at its heart, a very simple game. The Castlevania games treated defence in this manner as well, and I wouldn't be surprised to find that other action-RPGs worked the same.

In case you're wondering why I'm so sure that the Lost Soul damage there is the true damage of a weapon instead of the neutral one: compare base damage to max damage. The difference is 24% in every case. You won't find such a neat relation between damage bonuses in normal cases.

I think it adds some depth when you're aware of the system, and it's definitely been kept in mind for most of the weapons that have been designed. You say that specialized damage is basically pointless in the case of Divine Avenger. So which is better? Divine Avenger or Sudaruska? DA has the drawback of being weaker to gremlins, but the base damage is higher and it swings faster. In addition, most swords are half normal, which means that attacking resistant targets doesn't incur as big of a drawback as it does on pure weapons like the rocket hammer.