yeah but then you actually play the game or worse look under the hood and the need for objectivity collapses
mk3 butcher push gates the combo to single target which isn’t the end of the world with slam, but it still has 450 power scaling on that attack instead of the usual 500-525 so its still worse than Mk4. it just exists
rashad has finesse scaling giving it barely better damage and attack speed, on like the same moveset otherwise. achlys would be cool with sweeping moves but with 0.01 hitmass, its just working against you.
arb shield with bashes in the light combo (the single target light set up one) has enough cleave to fight horde on the light combo with their buffs, better access to the stronger heavies. I usually use the sweeping swing one but its kinda irrelevant when it comes to maximizing arbites’ sort of medium melee damage from shields.
heavy sword should literally only be used because it has first-shot target damage into two enemies on the strikedown swings, which the vertical swing can’t take advantage of nearly the same at all. and then one has better lights than the other, gg.
combat blade has no special combo, you just have a heavy attack you can hold after it. the only thing that keeps Mk3 in the game at all is that they put the power scaling of the other attacks on it and not H3. but combat knife is literally made to backstab in game, otherwise its worse dueling, so not using the one able to do that better is throwing. and 6.5 cleaving heavies that do basically the same-ish damage into everything is a lot better than 0.01.
Mk4 chainsword will literally take several additional revs to deal with anything, and it doesn’t have a strikedown heavy to at least chip for a bit stronger damage when revs aren’t available. it isn’t just a moveset preference thing, its just dumpster ass with the same special commitment time and basically 1/2 damage.
Illisi has only sweeps and nothing to lift armor hitstop like a power sword, its such a power man’s version it isn’t funny. and now just spamming lights with force greatsword makes this thing not exist, and it has the crowd-and-elites wave to charge up and can still dumpster crushers. though that’s me shading force greatsword. Illisi is supposed to still be a single-target oriented weapon being 1H force sword, but its just eggs at it and the special is stopped often by elites in melee.
even with hive scum’s push stamina I was having a struggle on the actual use case for Mk12 chainaxe because it ends up doing so much less damage overall besides like crits and thrust? its an oddball but you can fight hordes very comfortably (and kill elites with those same lights) so it isn’t all bad. its just when you are dealing with so many chainaxe-specific downsides already the light spam makes it much safer to use, for better results.
counters are pretty gimmicky vs actually killing besides the rapidly-attacking bosses/elites you can loop on. its just better to kill more efficiently with the same heavy move set up, have better lights and no need to worry about throwing out strikedown-esque moves (on something that rips like a blender it does help). the best note of the dueling 5 is mobility, at which point you’re actually directly comparing to the knife with another 0.25 sprint economy.
devil’s claw it basically doesn’t matter but as far as I remember one has better finesse scaling again, so really you should just do that one.
for the most part this system is an illusion of choice it’s up to the player to decipher. some of them are immediately obvious (scandar is just terrible achlys power sword), some might seem close but you find either a fat shark moment or gameplay flow requirement that doesn’t exist on the other variant. I don’t mind the guns because its actually multiple different weapons mostly, but the melee weapons have been such obvious bloat for forever and then they don’t even balance them internally either. and we’re asking for more class-specific melee marks which are the worst balanced ones right now (and why I focused more on those than the plateau of mostly mediocre weapons that are shared besides a few outliers).