physical vs ranged damage mitigation question

[The Vagrant Knight]

I noticed that when I hover over a physical weapon in my inventory or at the blacksmith, it says "Less Phys. damage taken" in the bottom right, above the defence values. When I hover over a ranged weapon, it says "Less elem. damage taken".

I know bowguns and bows take more damage from attacks to compensate for their range, but now I'm wondering. Do they actually take less elemental damage? Does anyone know?

[PhantomΩ]

I assume you can do a small test on the quagmiretrice? Or training area, on the cat isn't there an option to have the dummy attack you?

[The Vagrant Knight]

Originally posted by PhantomΩ:

I assume you can do a small test on the quagmiretrice? Or training area, on the cat isn't there an option to have the dummy attack you?

yeah but the dummy only has the smash, which I presume is physical. Might try bringing a melee and ranged weapon to the quematrice to see if I can eyeball a difference in the elemental attacks, since there's no damage values for hits we take as far as I'm aware of.

[The Vagrant Knight]

Just did a very quick test with the quematrice's flame attack. used a greatsword and a bow at full health. Seems like the bow still takes more damage, so now I'm just confused why the text changes to "Less elem. damage taken" for ranged weapons, unless there's still a large physical part to the damage of that attack.

[The Debauchery]

Strange how they've moved the factors around to try and retain the effects.
It used to simply be that there were separate armour sets for Blademaster Weapons and Gunner Weapons... and the Gunner Weapons had half the armour value but slightly more elemental resistance. It isn't something you'd really want to wager your life on. The elemental difference tends to be minor at best.

As to why you'd take more damage from an elemental attack... probably because it has a physical element too. You're taking more damage from the physical part of the elemental attack.

[Netsa]

This was the case in World and Rise, too. I don't remember what the exact value was, but it was large, something like 20%?

I just remember the elemental reduction not mattering much (and take this with a grain of salt) because most attacks weren't purely elemental, so ranged weapons ended up taking more damage from virtually everything.

EDIT:
According to a random Redditor, elemental attacks still factor in your raw defense value, so ranged weapons still take more damage.

[Platapoop]

Originally posted by The Vagrant Knight:

Just did a very quick test with the quematrice's flame attack. used a greatsword and a bow at full health. Seems like the bow still takes more damage, so now I'm just confused why the text changes to "Less elem. damage taken" for ranged weapons, unless there's still a large physical part to the damage of that attack.

Yes that's correct. If you look at world's data, most elemental attacks (like rathalos shooting a fireball) is 50% fire and 50% physical.

https://mhworld.kiranico.com/en/monsters/BaYte/azure-rathalos (scroll all the way down)

The tl;dr is that melees will rarely get instantly clapped by an attack while ranged has a decent chance to get deleted from heavy hitting attacks.