I assume they must have tried a lot of different stuff that didn't work out for reasons that it's hard for players to understand without having tested it themselves, but it's truly wild to me that they aren't a little more flexible with how attack motion values impact elemental damage on heavy weapons. it is really hard to see the logic behind that decision
I also feel like the interaction between weakpoints and elemental damage is sort of mystifying. it's kind of cool to have them be so contingent on hitting weakpoints, but the payoff for successfully hitting a weakpoint should maybe be higher. like, what if heavy weapons got some big on-crit boost to elemental damage, so that using ele damage with a CB or GS would be like going double-or-nothing? the current system of non-weakpoints just totally canceling all elemental damage is real hard to understand
they also just extremely have to change how SAED works for ele phials. why on earth
It would be cool to have element weakpoint hits be the deciding factor right? So maybe you would consider using an element greatsword on a certain monster since its easier to hit the element weakpoint as opposed to the raw/slashing one
Something like that could make the lesser used weapons more viable. Even if its just for newbie players being given a more forgiving part of the monster to whack on