I was doing some calculations for a comment on another post in /r/MonsterHunterWorld . I thought jho bow would be stronger than the vaal bow because of its massive raw damage vs the small difference in dragon damage. After doing calculations i came to an interesting conclusion.

TLDR: After doing all this math, turns out they literally do the same damage... so use whichever one you think looks cooler. Only argument i can make for vaal being better than jho is that it has a level 2 slot instead of no slot.... that literally it.

First of all -25% affinity is not that bad. Let's do some math.

even if you don't have any affinity on your gear (which you probably do but let's assume we have no affinity bonuses to cancel out the -25%)

we can average the true damage by doing the following calculations. 7.5 hits out of 10 will be 230 attack. So 7.5x230=1725. 2.5 hits out of 10 will be 173 (230x0.75 for negative affinity), 173x2.5=432.5. Now add these 2 together and divide by 10 to get the average damage dealt. 432.5 1725=2158/10 = 215.8 ~ 216. So the true damage can be averaged to be 216. so still 26 points over the vaal bow.

Now if you have the augment materials as you have stated. You can augment the weapon 2 times for 15% affinity. Putting your affinity at -10%. Attack 4 gives 5% affinity. so -5% affinity.

Now if we redo all the calculation we get 227 damage. Now if we include weakness exploit for hitting weak spots. that's 45% affinity. The calculations end up with 256 true attack. without including the 12 attack from attack 4.

So that's significantly more than the vaal bow. For reference here is the calculation of the vaal bow with the same augments and buffs so 20% affinity from attack boost and augments. and 50% affinity from weakness exploit. so 70% affinity. the true attack of the vaal bow is 223 including all the same buffs. That's a 33 true attack power difference.

Now 60 elemental damage difference is really only 6 damage difference because elemental damage calculation is divided by 10 right off the bat. so 60/10 = 6. Since sharpness doesn't exist on bows, the true elemental damage difference is 6.

Now let's take a real world example using motion values and weak spots. We can use the rathalos as an example since htey are weak to dragon. Rathalos head has a 60 shot resistance and 30 dragon. Meaning dragon damage is reduced to 30% of its value and shot damage is reduced to 60% of its value. Also we will use the motion value for level 3 charge shot which is 11.

Lets take the old examples of 256 true for jho and 223 for vaal.

Jho: 256x0.11x0.6=17 raw damage 210/10x0.3=6 elemental damage. total damage = 17 6 = 23

vaal: 223x0.11x0.6 =15 raw damage 270/10x0.3 = 8 elemental damage. total damage = 15 8 = 23

CONCLUSION wow wtf i did not expect this... BUT THEY ARE EQUAL...

LOL.. have a nice day.