User blog comment:Plexioth- xD/Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate/@comment-76.69.5.128-20111027063208/@comment-144.131.9.151-20111028212118

The only thing that makes, for example, hammers appear to have more raw that lances, is the class modifiers. Take the Deep Darkhammer and the Black Rain Darklance, for example. The game says that Deep Darkhammer has 1,248 raw, whereas the Black Rain Darklance has 552 raw, but in reality, they have exactly the same raw. This is because of the different class modifiers for Hammers and Lances. Class modifiers are a number that the attack value is divided by when calculating how much damage is dealt to a monster. The value is the same for all weapons in the class (i.e. an end-game G-Rank Greatsword will have the same class modifier as the great sword given to the player at the start of the game). Getting back to the point, the class modifier for Hammers is 5.2, and for lances it is 2.3. So, if you divide the attack value given in the game for Deep Darkhammer and Black Rain Darklance by the respective class modifiers, you get: Deep Darkhammer: 1248/5.2 = 240 Black Rain Darklance: 552/2.3 = 240 So the Deep Darkhammer and the Black Rain Darklance have exactly the same raw, despite what the game may tell you. All P3rd did was remove the class modifiers, thus removing an unnecessary step in calculating the amount of damage you deal per hit. Obviously, a superpound from a hammer will deal more damage than a poke from a lance (assuming equal raw), but this is due to the different "attack percentages". Without going into too much detail (look up the damage formula on GameFAQS if you're really interested, and I haven't put you off damage calculating for life), each attack has a certain percentage of damage that goes towards inflicting damage to the monster. Going back to the Lance vs Hammer comparison from earlier; the second hit from a Hammer's superpound has an attack percentage of 76%, whereas the first poke from an upwards stab with a Lance has an attack percentage of 28%. From this, you can determine that (assuming equal raw, sharpness, affinity and cutting vs impact damage) the superpound will deal 76/28 = 2.714 times the damage of the upwards stab. So despite the raw values being the same, "heavy-hitting" weapons such as the Hammer and Greatsword will deal much more damage per hit than "lightweight" weapons such as the SnS or DS. /longest comment I have ever written.