Since the damage type vs armor reduction mechanics of Mount&Blade aren't the simplest, this is occasionally a question people ask. In general, obviously, the answer is to use slightly lower blunt/pierce damage attacks to heavier armor, but how heavy? I did the calculations for both average damage, which indicates the damage potential and minimum damage, which indicates glance possibility. This of course
does not take into account speed bonuses, so even if your weapon might seem to be just above 0 damage you could easily glance due to negative speed bonuses. Another effect of this is that at least in my experience getting high (and low for that matter) speed bonuses with stabs is easier than with swings, so a stab could definitely be worth it earlier when we're comparing a stab and a swing instead of secondary modes.
This will only have some examples, partially because I don't have that many weapons from the market to see the secondary modes. Also, like I wrote at
http://forum.c-rpg.net/index.php/topic,23607.0.html, pierce and blunt are so very similiar damage types that I won't even bother to calculate the differences unless the weapon damage numbers are very close to each other and the weapon damage is rather low or rather high. You may reply to this thread with secondary mode stats and I might do the graphs for them too if I can be arsed though!
This is also with just PS 6, 7 and 8 and wpf 100 (and includes the damage bonus from strength). WPF100 vs 150 is 7.5% damage increase, ie worth a bit under one PS if you want to compare. I might do graphs with different stats upon request too if I can be arsed.
Whenever I write about glancing remember, this is with 0 speedbonus. If I say some mode is better to avoid glances at 70 armor, you should probably start using that weapon at let's say 60 armor just to be sure you won't have a chance to glance if you happen to get a small speed bonus.
Let's start for secondary modes that just change damage type. Here the only ones that actually need real calculations are those that have cut damage in one of the secondary modes. The other ones are quite obvious even without calculations.
Broad One-handed Battle AxeThis is quite an extreme weapon with primary mode dealing 35c and secondary 25p on swings. The statistics prove that at the tested values the piercing secondary mode is completely useless. Glance chance is the same or less likely for cut at every setup and average damage is higher for cut at every setup regardless of armor value.
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loginThis along with other polaxes is the other of the rare cut <-> pierce/blunt weapons. It gets 27b vs 40c. Huge difference. Damage output of the blunt mode is always lower than that of the cut mode, but due to blunt damage's tendency to avoid glances, the blunt mode might just have use against high armor.
At PS 6 and PS 7 glancing of cut attack starts at over 70 armor. Blunt wouldn't glance even at 80 armor. Due to speed bonuses and relatively low difference in average damage, using the blunt mode against 60+ armor might be worth it. The difference in average damage at 60 armor is from 1 to 2 points depending on power strike (8.7% to 17% damage reduction though, but absolute numbers are low)
If this secondary mode was pierce damage instead of blunt, it'd still do less damage and as a bonus it'd glance EASIER than the cut mode.
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loginMost of the weapons with this feature have the swap between blunt and pierce, and in those cases the secondary mode is penalized heavily enough for it to be worth it only with huge speed bonuses for blunt -> pierce in case of onehanders. That said, 30b is probably better than 30p on onehander except if you get enough speed bonus to bring total damage increase to 100%+ (~50% bonus at PS 7). Pierce -> blunt on steel pick is penalized too heavily for it to probably be worth it ever. With very low or no penalty it might make sense for very low PS characters against medium to heavy armor. Polearms suffer from the same problem. Using Bec de Corbin on secondary mode is just pointless pretty much always due to 7 points lower blunt than pierce.
The cut <-> pierce secondaries seem to suffer from huge enough reduction to make the pierce mode utterly useless, but the cut <-> blunt weapon Poleaxe (and probably Elegant Poleaxe too) might just barely have an useful secondary mode against super heavy armor, even if your damage output suffers.
...and now stabs vs swings. This section does
not mean I'm saying you should never stab even if stab damage seems lower than that of cut! Stab animations especially for onehanders and twohanders have huge reach and are easier to get a good speed bonus for, both of which are great reasons to stab at least once in a while.
Italian SwordItalian Sword has 30c swings and 25p stabs, being a fairly balanced but a bit swing orientated sword. Ignoring possible speed bonuses, it seemed that stab becomes equal to swing already against 25 armor for power strike 6 and 7. At power strike 8 the swings are more viable than the stab until 35 armor, when they are equal. The difference in average damage is fairly small across the board regardless, so wether you swing or stab doesn't matter considerably from that point of view. Stabs are worth it especially against armor higher than 55 for PS 6 and 7 and against armor 60 or higher for PS 8 though, since those are the points when swing damage starts to have a chance to glance even at 0 speed modifier.
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loginKnightly Arming Sword is very close to Italian Sword in terms of damage. It has one more cut on swings but one less pierce on stabs, making it 31c / 24p. This causes some rather interesting differences to Italian Sword. At power strike 6, your stab is better than your swing only against 80 armor and above. At power strike 7 your stabs are more powerful than your swings only against around 55 armor. This is a kink in the mechanic though, since at both 50 and 60 armor swings are more poweful. Finally, at 8 ps stab becomes slightly more powerful than swing against 60 armor and above.
In terms of glancing at PS 7 and above 55 armor stabs are less likely to glance and at PS8 and above 60 armor stabs are less likely to glance.
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loginI didn't actually bother to do the calculations with these. The stabs are never worth it in terms of pure damage and it's obvious. See broad one handed battle axe entry - two handed swords have pretty similiar difference in stab and swing.
Halfswording next. Here you really need to consider that halfswording does also use polearm wpf and the animations are shorter and thus more suitable for close quarters fighting.
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loginThis is halfswording pierce compared to non-halfswording cut to see if it is worth it for damage output. Obviously they do use different wpf and halfsword animations suit better for close quarters, but that isn't the point. That said, 40c vs 29p. The pierce is less likely to glance at PS 7 against 70+ armor, but that's absolutely the only benefit of it.
This is halfswording pierce compared to non-halfswording cut to see if it is worth it for damage output. Obviously they do use different wpf and halfsword animations suit better for close quarters, but that isn't the point. Unlike danish, here it's 36c vs 30p. Far more interesting. Simply said, if you are a 2h/pole hybrid, halfswording a longsword can really be worth it. The levels of armor at which the pierce from halfsword thrust beats non-halfsword swing are: 50 for PS 6, 35 for PS 7, 25 for PS 8.
I probably don't even need to mention about glancing here: obviously pierce glances less easily when it already beats cut in damage at rather low armor levels.
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login- Apart from poleaxe (and possibly elegant poleaxe) secondary modes that change damage type are pretty much useless crap. Even for poleaxe it's a very small niche.
- Stabs in terms of pure damage are for some more stab orientated weapons worth it at relatively low armor levels.
- Halfswording in terms of pure damage is worth it for at least Longsword, but not for Danish Greatsword.
But like I already wrote a couple of times, halfswording and stabs both have other advantanges and disadvantanges than different damage type, so this is definitely not a guide to start/stop using them.
