-With my Level 1 common Defender rifle, one bullet does 286 damage against a normal scar trooper.
-With my Level 45 masterwork Ralner's Blaze rifle, one bullet does 1184 damage against a normal scar trooper.
Given these numbers, you might (reasonably) assume that the MW weapon will kill enemies faster, since it does more damage.
This is NOT the case!
Going back to the scar troopers, the MW rifle takes 6 bullets to kill our scar friend. Given the damage numbers, our level 1 rifle should take around 5x more bullets to do the job. Guess how many it actually takes?
4
That's right. 4 bullets!!! Not 4x as many. Literally 4 rounds. Our level 1 rifle is somehow more effective than our level 45 masterwork, despite what our damage pop-ups are telling us.
I have tested this with various weapons and enemies, and while the numbers vary, the results are always the same: the level 1 defender rifle is by far the most effective weapon in my inventory. It melts literally fucking everything!
So, from this we can draw two conclusions:
1 - There is some buggy fuckery going on with the default level 1 rifle
2 - Damage numbers are meaningless and do not reflect the actual damage done to a target
