So far, in my testing, a CDEF pistol does same amount of damage as a DX-2 pistol.
Yes- try it yourself. A CDEF pistol with 5-10 max damage has just as much killing power as a T-21 Rifle with 675 max damage - in fact, the CDEF pistol is actually MORE powerful (more damage in same amount of time) because pistols fire faster than rifles.
If this is working as intended, as I fear it is, then all weapon choices are just eye candy. All weapons of same type do same amount of damage. So aside from looks, there is no difference between any weapon of the same type (all pistols are same, all carbines are same, all rifles are same, all melee weapons are same). The damage stats on the weapons are meaningless.
This means all weapon experimentation is meaningless. No reason to bother getting good resources or worrying about anything in weapons crafting - any old starter weapon works fine. Only reason to craft weapons is because you like how they look when equiped, or you want to decorate your house.
This is unconfirmed, but so far: There is no reason to do mustafar quests that give you weapons as quest rewards because those weapons do the same amount of damage as your starting CDEF weapons.
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UPDATE (compiled from posts through page 9):
So far in testing, it appears that if you are attacking mobs that are more than 10 levels below you, your damage is capped and thus you can use ANY weapon of same type and get the same damage. So, a CDEF pistol does same damage as a DX-2 pistol, a CDEF rifle does same damage as T-21 rifle, etc.If mobs are close to your Combat level or above, then damage stats on weapon do SLIGHTLY affect outcome. But, you really can use a CDEF pistol almost as well as any CL80-cert weapon. Difference is more pronounced with rifles because rifles have much larger difference between CDEF and high level (CDEF rifle is 10-20 damage, T-21 maxes in the 800's). So using Rifles you will notice more difference between weapons, but still it is very slight.
Special attacks are not dependent on stats of your weapons. So you will get same damage from specials whether you are using CDEF pistol or T-21 rifle or a wood staff. Timers on specials are independent of weapon choice- pistol, carbine, rifle, or melee. So refire rate on specials doesn't matter if you use pistol or rifle.
Pistols seem to out-damage rifles by about 2-to-1. Pistols are short range, but aside from that do MUCH more damage than rifles. Melee weapons seem to be as fast as pistols BUT you need to be in range and many NPC's and creatures try to run around or stay at a certain distance, so they are hard to hit. The /follow command no longer works for keeping yourself close to your target.
Red Damage numbers on screen do not seem to match damage done to opponent. They should not be trusted as there appears to be further modifiers that come into play.
Will update again as more is discovered, but at this point it I'd still say its a bug if you can use a CDEF pistol and out-damage a T-21 rifle.
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Wel ja.. waarom ook niet