Spears

[Hermes Serpent]

@Elmoth, generally it's referred to as weapon Damage rating or Damage rating of the weapon so it''s usually clear when referring to a weapon. A hero's value is referred to as your Damage rating or close-combat/ranged Damage rating so it isn't really unclear. A different term might have been useful, but often what is a different term in English is translated into a single term in other languages which don't sometimes have the choice of words available to an English speaker.

[Angelalex242]

Well, fell/dour handed and giant slaying spear are significantly less powerful without adding to weapon damage, like grievous does.

Fell/dour handed, especially, get nerfed to the point of uselessness without having that damage being applied even on normal successes. Getting your weapon damage to 12 is worth a virtue. Having it kick in on great/extraordinary success only? Not so much.

[James Harrison]

I think they are still pretty awesome. As you get past rank 3 in a weapon you become highly likely to be scoring great successes. While Grevious is clearly better for a given weapon the rating increases can be excellent a)overall and b)in addition...

But the benefits are noticeable with low body characters; elves, dwarves beornings etc. that can be toting a body scores of 6 (or more) need not really apply; but a body score of 4 it's a 20% extra damage increase... and for that hobbit a 50% increase.

As for the Giant slaying Greatspear - I still think this is pretty awesome. Having an effective body of 9 to 11 when fighting a troll is very worth it!