Cleave - Cleave Damage vs. Cleave Targets vs. everything else?

[Arani]

Ok so I have so many hours in this game and I still don't fully understand how cleave works. I don't mean the general idea that cleave goes through multiple enemies, everyone knows that. I mean exactly what are the numbers, what's the math, and where do you find this out?

Namely:

• How can you tell how many mobs does your cleave go through before stopping?
  
• How much damage does a cleaving attack do?
  
• We all know mobs have mass and cleave seems to have maximum amount of mass it can go through. But what is the mass for each type of mob / armor / hit location?

How does the Cleave Damage stat work? For example, let's say I have a Heavy Sword IX. It has light/heavy attack dmg vs. First Target of *1.13, and Cleave Damage against Flak, Unarmored, Infested or 55%, 110%, and 110% respectively. Now let's say I do a cleaving strike against 5 unarmored mobs.

Does that mean that the first target hit takes regular attack damage vs. unarmored * 1.13 (+13%) damage, and all following targets get +10% of regular damage? It doesn't seem like this, cleaving damage always seems to be weaker than the first target. So is there some hidden modifier like cleaving attacks always deal 50% less damage, and then you apply the modifier (110% dmg) on top of that?

What about Cleave Targets stat? Light attack has a cleave damage & stagger distribution of 1.15, and heavy has 6.75. What do these numbers even mean? I could guess a number of things but there's no point, nothing obvious comes to mind. We all know light attacks have way more than 1.15 mass of cleave (otherwise it would only hit 1-2 mobs depending on how you count it).

And finally, some cleave weapons seem to have a cap of how many enemies they can even damage, but then they still continue to stagger beyond that. Where is this information, and how does it work and what stats affect that?

How do I find out exactly how much damage I will be doing and to how many targets with each cleave? Is this information even represented in the game?

[Flamma]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0js99vKx_g&ab_channel=cashcrop_
check out this guys guide.

[Arani]

These explain a lot! Thanks guys. I'll take a look at that video later today when I have time but it's great to finally get answers. :D