phew maybe i'm missing your point but i'm really surprised to hear you of all people taking such a liberal approach to the devs' nerfs, and it seems to me like the kind of statements you're making could encourage the worst trends in the balancing team
agreed: there should be more of a variety in throwing weapons choices, sure. for the longest time there have been only about three or four throwing weapons that are really viable for PT-heavy builds and it would be awesome if there were more reasons to pick different kinds.
but trying to get variety through back-and-forth nerfing is a horrible method, especially for throwing which is already weak. instead of enforcing variety by worsening the best choices, they should just diversify the specialities of the different kinds of weapons.
for example, even though artie's notorious for his mw jarids, recently i spent a lot of $ on loompoints so i could get mw 4-point shurikens, because they have the fastest projectile speed and good attack speed; they chew up enemy archers who i dont want to waste jarids on. that's the way the devs should be thinking too.
my suggestions:
make the axes line all about shield busting, in both thrown mode and melee. increase each axe's damage by at least three cut. take franciscas back to 3 ammo per stack, but give them significantly higher speed and accuracy than throwing axes and heavy throwing axes. in compensation make them less useful than the other two in melee, but nevertheless the entire axes line should be the default throwing type for thrower/melee hybrids, far and away better in that role than the other choices. a mw HTA with enough PT should be able to single-shot a low-end shield. 3-4 of them should do the same to midrange shields, and 6 should be able to whittle down high-end shields used by high shield-skill builds.
make the throwing stars line all about projectile and throwing speed. go all shinobi on that shit. damage is fine where it's at, just wish they glanced just a little less though, way too many times i'll hit someone in midrange armor and the shuriken doesn't stick them...so maybe change from cut to pierce. makes more sense anyway right?
make knives/daggers all about accuracy. with enough wpf and pt they should be almost as accurate as xbows, but obviously with a far lesser range and projectile speed.
make spears/jarids/lances all about tincan popping. very high pierce damage, longer range than the other throwing weapons, but not nearly as fast or as accurate as knives and shurikens, nor even half as useful against shields or in melee as the axes line is. their throwing-side stats are great where they are but i think they should be fairly gimp in melee. they haven't been mentioned yet in this thread but a lot of people like throwing spears better than they like jarids for the extra ammo, so there's already decent diversity there. moreover i see a decent number of javelins about due to their lower PT requirement. i think this tree is pretty well balanced as it stands except lances need either an ammo or a damage buff.
throwing hammers and rocks are trickier. it would be neat if rocks actually had some use beyond novelty; maybe buff the accuracy? as for hammers i think they should be doing more damage. treat them like a blunt version of heavy throwing axes and balance them against those in the same way that melee blunt is balanced against melee cut.
obviously smoke bombs should instagib