Scaling weird or just messed up?

[Nonexistinghero]

Wasn't intending to do an NG+ playthrough, but I started one for some reason anyway. But here's something weird I noticed about scaling and I'm not sure if it's supposed to be like that.

I'm using the Pipe Wrench + Police Baton Handle and for my first playthrough I just used the motivity crank for the handle to bring the scaling up to A or so. After playing NG+ for a while with how easy it is to gain level ups (since required exp only goes up 1 per level after a while and exp amount keeps increasing), after reaching 40 motivity I decided to level up technique. When it was 20, I also found a new baton handle and I decided to check out the damage if I were to use the crank to get C/C motivity/technique scaling. Damage was exactly the same, but by leveling motivity I was only getting 1 attack, so I switched. Which was a good idea since I was getting 2 more atk instead of 1 for every technique level due to scaling.

Very soon after I decided to check the other setup to raise advance level which would make for B/D/D motivity/technique/advance scaling and... it seems to be a bit more powerful than the others.

But I think not all scaling is the same even if they have the same letter. When I had 20 or so technique, I was getting 2-3 attack per technique level raised. I had 10 advance when I started with this setup and it's now about 20 (not sure of exact level) and all that's happened is that I got 1 attack point for the arm per level, but main weapon attack wasn't raised at all.

So is the scaling glitched or is it just weird and working as intended? I intend to raise advance to 30 since right now I have motivity to 50 and technique to 30. The C/C setup seems to be weaker than the B/D/D setup once you level the other stats high enough, so I am pretty certain that at this point this setup for the handle is the most powerful one. It's just weird that main weapon attack doesn't seem to be going up at all when leveling advance since it supposedly does scale.

[Samseng Yik]

I think every stat has soft cap.
Reach that soft cap, the bonus gain per stat become very low.
I didn't research what is the current soft cap.
But 50 strength seems like over the usual soul like soft cap , so maybe around 10-20 points of your strength don't contribute anything much at all

[Nonexistinghero]

This isn't about soft caps though. My Advance was 10. That's not a soft cap. It's around 25 now and it was 10 when I started to raise it. Main weapon arm attack didn't go up once despite supposed D scaling for it. Arm attack went up by 1 almost every time, except for 2 level ups (so I guess it's like 0.9 per level).

The softcap for strength is much lower. I just went to 50 for motivity because I had 30 in technique. It started giving 1 strength per level up or so around 47/48, but started to become less than 4 around 28 or so.

[Baron01]

It seems that Lies of P has weapon scaling slightly off compared to Fromsoft games. Scaling just one attribute, even if it is A, will be weaker than having a combination of two stats at B & C or A & D. My reasoning for this is that in long run you will eventually reach a soft cap for single stat and start getting significantly less damage per point spent further. You might be better off to invest to the other stat even if it is low scaling, e.g. D, because early points will provide a lot of benefit.

I believe stat softcap is around 36 in a stat. You start getting a lot less return for your investment beyond. I was primarily Motivity build and any point spent past 50 was just adding 1 damage to my weapon with A Motivity scaling.

You also need to be careful what weapon blade you are using because of what damage type (physical, fire, acid, electricity). If you use a weapon with split damage, e.g. 50% physical and 50% fire such as one of the sword you get later in the game, you need to properly select handle that would scale both damage types. I used that blade with police baton handle that was straight A scaling in Motivity and it only scaled the physical portion of the damage (adding more Motivity only increased physical damage and never the fire portion).

[Nonexistinghero]

But like I said, it's not about a softcap. I was raising other stats exactly because I started to reach a softcap of sorts. Anyhow, I have Advance now to 30 and main weapon strength didn't go up once when I leveled it. Not a single time.

So basically, I can only conclude that the scaling is glitched. When I went for a B/D/D motivity/technique/advance scaling crank when my stats were 30/20/10 I had 5 extra attack compared to a C/C motivity/technique crank. After leveling a significant amount, it's still 5 extra even though it's 50/30/30 now.

Basically, the D scaling for Advanced for the main weapon either reached a hard cap when Advanced was less than 10, or it simply doesn't work properly. I'm suspecting that perhaps there's an issue when the game has to factor in the scaling of all 3 things instead of 1 or 2, but I'd have to modify some cranks and test them out with a few weapons to see if that's the case.

[Samseng Yik]

Oh yes, about the Advance stat on elemental weapon.
I notice the damage gain per stat seems like lower.
Probably due to the weapon damage split into 2 type.
Even S rank advance scaling, my weapon elemental damage gain is mostly 1 and 2 damage (majority 1 damage)

[Nonexistinghero]

Well, I reset my level and did some testing. Also leveled up the electric coil to level 10 and used an advance crank to make its handle scale to A for Advance. Well, for weapons without any elemental attack, advance scaling does outright nothing. It just gives a set bonus when you have the scaling active and that's it. Leveled all the way to 99 with the wrench and nothing happened. Not with the baton handle with D Advance scaling, but also not with the electric coil handle with A scaling for Advance.

With the electric coil head, I got more gains... but the gains are extremely poor. With the D scaling, you get +1 every few levels. So you get like 20-30 extra elemental attack from leveling Advance. With A scaling, it's better... but only about 2-3 per level at first and at some point it slows down of course. But it doesn't raise the non-elemental attack at all.

So long story short... Advance scaling is absolutely terrible. Don't invest anything in it, not a single point. Only do it if you're going all out on making a full elemental build it. Other than that it's pointless to invest anything. On my level reset I decided to ditch Advance 'almost' altogether. Did make it level 10 just because it looks nice to have a round number. But also at some point the C/C scaling of a motivity/technique baton handle seems to also outscale the C/D/D scaling of the motivity/technique/advance baton handle (probably since the scaling bonus for advance is set from the start and doesn't scale non-elemental weapons at all beyond that small bonus).