Elemental vs. Physical?

[Spanky McGilligan]

Is there any benefit to elemental damage over physical damage?
i.e. say you're attacking a Kingtusk on the leg with a bladed weapon.

Would a physical, bladed weapon that does 400 damage do the exact same as weapon with 200 physical and 200 fire?
Bladed and fire both do 4-star damage to Kingtusk and 3-star on his legs.
Is there an innate physical resistance where elemental will output a little bit more if you're hitting non-weakspots.

Every guide I see just says to use physical because the weapons often end up having higher overall damage. If it's the case where elemental and physical do the same damage then elemental weapons in the tree only serve to be something to prepare to bypass right away since it'll only ever result in you doing less damage to some kemono.

[Neptune]

I have tested this with cannon in the past, so i can only comment on this weapon.
Elemental does do more damage but only by a few points on both weakspots and non weakspots.

[Spanky McGilligan]

Did the elemental cannon have higher combined damage than the physical weapon counterpart?

[Hank]

I would post my in depth testing on elemental vs physical, and explain why Elemental never feels good and never gets close in damage with fully optimized setups. BUT the devs have shown with the last patch they prefer to nerf rather than buff, so I'll keep silent on this one,

[Jarol]

Mostly depends on their weakness rating and factors such as element wilt chance (which is a % chance to gain a boost to element weakness by making it a tier higher?), but generally its just easier to go with physical and ignore the elements entirely. You don't have to aim for wilt or food buffs and can double down on things like raw atk buffs and utility skills.

After building nothing but element weapons my entire way through, I feel as though I could've saved myself time had I done so sooner.

[Spanky McGilligan]

Alright. A bit disappointing, however. It feels like there should be some real benefit to making specific weapons for each type instead of using the single default raw weapon.

[Neptune]

Originally posted by Spanky McGilligan:

Did the elemental cannon have higher combined damage than the physical weapon counterpart?

Yes, 1022 (630 raw + 392 fire) vs 910 raw.

Fire cannon did +3 more damage on non weakspot, +1/+8 on weakspot (hit different ones)
15% fire boost added +3 damage and when wilt activated i would do another +3 damage.
As Jarol said, building for physical is easier.

[Spanky McGilligan]

Aye. The elemental weapon had higher overall damage anyway. So that likely played a part.
Unfortunate. Hopefully they modify it in the future, because it would be a lot more fun investing time into alternate weapons instead of just the one for everything.

[Indure]

Originally posted by Spanky McGilligan:

Alright. A bit disappointing, however. It feels like there should be some real benefit to making specific weapons for each type instead of using the single default raw weapon.

Maybe, but crafting 1 endgame weapon is a time-consuming accomplishment. Having to craft 5 would be worse than the cladding grind.

[Spanky McGilligan]

Then why have elemental at all? If the aim is to have one weapon then the leveling process is only hindered by there being elemental options since you can only cause yourself to do less damage to certain monsters.
Raw weapons don't have to be useless but making elemental have value means there is something to work towards while fighting things instead of just being... done.

[Indure]

Originally posted by Spanky McGilligan:

Then why have elemental at all? If the aim is to have one weapon then the leveling process is only hindered by there being elemental options since you can only cause yourself to do less damage to certain monsters.
Raw weapons don't have to be useless but making elemental have value means there is something to work towards while fighting things instead of just being... done.

I don't disagree that elemental weapons should have a place (as far as I know they are the best in slot against kemonos with the right weakness, although not by much), but since a single endgame weapon is ~50k gold and +10 hours of kemono grinding across pretty much every kemono in the game, I would be totally fine if the inserted elemental damage into weapon creation in a different way.

[DragonLight]

It's really a pain to farm to make weapons for every element, even worse then grinding for cladding, just not worth it in the end. Easier to build for raw damage and call it a day.