Part of the reason daggers are so expensive. Best weapon and can be used on 4 classes, including the most doors melee class except for headhunter

Yet axes are starting to cost more since everyone wants both Axe/Dagger but the axes are in much shorter supply from over a decade of people focusing on collecting, muting, welling daggers

I'd just like to add something here about the ratios, damage ranges, and crit chances and uh, the "axe bonus."

Yes, generally speaking, daggers and clubs have the best ratios (90/10) which allows you to focus on just one stat and get higher damage. Swords/staffs have (75/25) which is less efficient for pumping a single stat, and axes are 50/50 meaning you need 45 str and 45 dex just to get the same amount of damage as 50 dex on a dagger or 50 str on a club.

However, there are some interesting differences between damage ranges and crit strike chances between the weapon types that factor into value for some.

In order of biggest to smallest damage range, it goes:

Sword (18% to 182% of the average)
Club (36% to 164% of the average)
Staff (55% to 145% of the average)
Dagger (73% to 127% of the average)
Axe (91% to 109% of the average)

In almost every case, smaller range is better (more consistent) since the average is the same for all weapons before stats are considered. More consistent means less overkill and less chance to get trolled by RNG. There are some reasons why a big range can actually be beneficial but for the majority of slashers, the pros of a big range are outweighed by the cons.

Then, crit...
For a long time we (myself included) said something like: axes crit the most, swords/staves crit next most, and daggers/clubs almost never crit... unless you add crit strike. We said stuff like, without crit strike the crit chances were like: axes -> 15% // swords/staves -> 7% // daggers/clubs -> 2% or so, as a rough estimate.

In the more recent past we did quite a bit of testing on crit chance and the results seemed to indicate to me that crit chance is modified entirely (or almost entirely) by "wrong stat." Wrong stat would be dex for clubs and swords and str for daggers and staves. For axes, both stats are "wrong stat" and contributed equally... actually you can add them together instead of treating each one separately and it doesn't make any difference for crit or damage.

Of course, we didn't collect enough data to really calculate the crit %s based on known stats and weapon type, nor were we able to definitively say if main stat was having an effect on crit chance. Enter Bigheaded who's taken up the reigns and is doing an awesome job taking that crit chance testing to the next level!

In any case, as far as crit chance goes, the order kind of goes like this:

Axes > swords/staves > daggers/clubs

One last little piece of info... Axes do significantly more damage than shown on their tooltip. Yeah... it's a thing. Even after considering mob physical defense, they will actually produce non-crit numbers with no armor pierce higher than the top end of the range shown on the weapon. So yup... that's there.

To sum up the ranking in each category contributing to "strongest hitting weapon" ignoring the value of utility on different classes:

Ratio:
1. Dagger and Club
2. Sword and Staff
3. Axe

Damage Range:
1. Axe
2. Dagger
3. Staff
4. Club
5. Sword

Crit Chance:
1. Axe
2. Sword and Staff
3. Dagger and Club

Doing Significantly More Damage than the Tooltip:
1. Axe

This post was edited by BWConformity on Jul 17 2022 12:31am

Just a small note for new folks reading this good information: stats on axes do NOT have to be equal/even. As in, you dont need the same amount of str and dex for max benefits. All you need is for the stat numbers to be EVEN numbers. You can have 200 dex and 20 str and still be fine.

Do they really have to be even numbers?? is that due to numbers being rounded down?

im not honestly sure. Thats just what ive been told by people who know WAYY more than i do. And thats what i do.

But wouldn't the stats stop increasing damage after 20 str and 20 dex?

Nah. I go full dex when i use my axes, and i have no problem with gaining damage.

200 Dex & 20 Str = 220 damage stat total. Hence even number.

Hmmm... okay I think that would be a crazy micro to make sure both are even numbers...

But yeah, unless there is some credibility to the "even number" thing...

Axes seem to use str + dex added together to determine damage and crit chance. So unlike other weapon types, it really doesn't matter which one you pump, as long as the sum is the same.