I feel like blunt damage would have made more sense for MCH.

[Cabalabob]

So MCH dmg type is piercing, but I feel like blunt would have made more sense both from a lore and gameplay standpoint.

For lore, most of the guns we use clearly look like muskets. Muskets fire ball bearings which would be blunt, not piercing rounds like are used today.

As for gameplay it would have been nice to have MNK buff another DD other than itself and this way BRD would be buffed by DRG and MCH would be buffed by MNK, giving both support DD's a synergy with a different melee DD.

[AskaRay]

Those balls PIERCE though... personally every game that has pierce/blunt/slash damage has firearms listed as pierce, so it makes sense to me..

[Myon88]

I actually am inclined to agree with that line of thought.

From a thematic standpoint I can easily rationalize MCH projectiles as blunt damage. Now you may think bullets are obviously piercing weapons, but compared to a sharpened sword or an arrow they are honestly pretty blunt - it's sheer velocity that does the job in real life.

Apart from the musket thing, there's also terminology like Slug Shot - a slug is not something sharp by any definition, it's a solid hunk of metal.

Slug: "an elongated, typically rounded piece of metal", "the reactor uses embedded slugs of uranium", these don't seem particularly sharp to me.

From a gameplay standpoint it also makes the buffs more symmetric as you say, since you now have DRG-BRD and MNK-MCH, instead of DRG being highly optimum and MNK bringing little (?) to the table, who else uses blunt damage anyway?

[Lyrica_Ashtine]

Last time in CSI Miami:
-What was the cause of death?
-Blunt trauma to the head, caused by a bullet

[Attarik]

Musket balls -pierce- through armor, they don't hit and then bounce back as a blunt weapon would.

[Anova]

I think the damage type is not to describe the actual physics of the attack but the type of damage being inflicted. Try thinking about it from the actual type of damage and nature of the wound you receive from it.

Bullets do the majority of their lethal damage by penetrating in to the body to attack something vital (like a lung or your heart). The slug then shatters in to somewhere from a couple to a dozen shards in the body to continue gouging up any surrounding organs and tissues.
It does pierce through armor because it is a blunt object, but the actual damage is caused by the round being stuck in your body turning your insides in to sausage.
When someone dies, it's usually because the bullet pierced the something like the stomach so the acid and metal shards are eating out your insides while they rush you to the emergency room; not because the bullet smashed the kneecap (blunt) or grazed an arm (slash).
By the way, this is the same thing that happens with arrows. Hunters don't have to poison them, they just pierce the body at a good point and track the beast for 10 minutes for the blood loss and gouging to do its work.

That's why it's piercing damage and not blunt. A fist or a hammer does not break apart to get stuck in your body to do the same sort of damage a bullet or arrow would.

[AskaRay]

Now if we pistol-whipped people when close enough as an auto-attack, that could totally be blunt damage.

[SlyRoyale]

You know what would make a lot of sense? Doing blunt damage with ganja.

Piercing makes more sense for a bullet. It's what they do, really.

[Transfinite]

Or they can just retool "One Ilm Punch" and give it piercing resistance down debuff instead of removing one beneficial status from the target. Great if ur running a Monk/Ninja/Bard or Machinist/Black Mage or Summoner combination since the Monk now can substitute True Strike with One Ilm Punch which will boost the Range physical DPS of ur Bard or Machinist. Also if there is a Dragoon in the party with a Monk, the Monk can just ignore One Ilm Punch completely similar to how Ninjas can ignore Dancing Edge when there's a Warrior in the party. This will at least make One Ilm Punch useful again instead of just being a throwaway skill u'll never use and Dragoons will no longer be shoehorned in every single raid group just for their piercing down debuff.

[Myon88]

Bullets do the majority of their lethal damage by penetrating in to the body to attack something vital (like a lung or your heart). The slug then shatters in to somewhere from a couple to a dozen shards in the body to continue gouging up any surrounding organs and tissues.
the actual damage is caused by the round being stuck in your body turning your insides in to sausage.

That's why it's piercing damage and not blunt.

That's precisely why it's blunt and not piercing, the fact that it can get deflected and ends up bouncing around your insides. If it was truly piercing it would come out the other end in a straight line like a dart, and actually leave a very clean wound.

Saying it penetrates armor is not good enough, that's a very vague definition as anything is 'piercing' if you push it hard enough. If you threw a golf ball hard enough you'll give someone a golf ball shaped hole in their body instead of a bruise, that doesn't make it 'piercing' any more than a bullet.

Ah it really does seem like the obvious way to go, not only does it fit the class better it also makes MNK utility symmetric to DRG.