I doubt anything will be done to rebalance the katana at this point because I have already suggested stats very similar to the ones provided by Kronic and it was shot down by Urist.
<Urist> the current katana stays at it is. you can try organising another, bigger katana model that would deserve your stats. maybe with 99 speed. that would then be a new item entry
While the weapon is, as Urist says, fine that does not mean it is balanced. The weapon only becomes good if you build your character around it, making it a niche weapon. I have to say that I am very disappointed at the reason I was given by Urist, which is that the weapon is too popular and balancing it would make it a regular weapon and they want to avoid that. There are many popular weapons but katana is definitely not one of them because you see a lot more great swords on the field, particularly Danish and German. I have played cRPG for over a year now and almost all katana users are from a clan with a Japanese theme, which is not surprising. Many clans have an European theme and use weapons such as Danish Greatsword, Longsword, Highland Claymore, etc, yet they are not deemed "too popular" and left untouched because they would become regular otherwise. I do not mind having to pay much more upkeep because they are supposed to be exotic weapons but they shouldn't be completely inferior to other choices in the field. As an example I want to point at the Nodachi, it is inferior to the similarly priced Highland Claymore but it is still a good weapon because it only loses one speed and thrust attack but still has slightly superior range. The katana, however, only has speed going for it and it is, without doubt, clearly worse in every other aspect to weapons in a similar and even much lower price point (bastard, heavy bastard).
If my memory does not fail me the only buff the katana has received since I started playing (more than one year ago) was the recent soak nerf for armors, which was not even targeted to buff the katana.
I know that Urist and the rest of the item (un)balance team are more than capable of doing their job right but I wonder at times if their dislike for Japanese items clouds their judgment when dealing with these weapons.
/end weeaboo lobby rant, no tl;dr version.
