Attack Not Affecting Dagger Damage?

Ok I'm a little perplexed. Last night I was just messing around in Xarcabard shanking Gigas (lvl 46 to 48 I believe) with my 75 Bard. I decided to do Soul Voice & Minuet 3 & 4 for S&G's.

75 Brd
Behemoth knife +1
Dagger skill capped at 242

317 Attack ----- with no songs active
536'ish Attack - with SV & Min 3 & 4

My normal attacks (including crits), as well as my Evisceration's did the EXACT SAME damage across the board. If I remember correctly I was doing 60 to 85 dmg per hit and 108 to 120 per crit and 480 to 660 Evisceration's before AND even after the song buffs.


So the question is this...

Does attack even affect dagger and is it just based off the Dmg of the dagger?

Or is there some sort of damage cap based off the level of the mob vs the Dmg of the weapon in use??

I'm not an expert on melee classes but I think there's a cap for single hit damage based on the STR of your character vs the VIT of the mob. Attack should just help you reach the cap.

Attack caps based on the defense of the target mob (twice as much attack as they have defense for one-hand weapons), so you were likely capping before the Minuets given the level of the mob. The guy above me is talking about fSTR, which has nothing to do with attack... though there's a decent chance that was capped too.

Pretty much this

Hmmm, that seems to make sense. Still seems HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE because it still takes me forever to kill at level 48 Gigas as 75 Bard with capped skills and DD gear.

/sigh

From my experience, though i've never done extensive testing/research into the subject, but there seems to be a point where your attacks cap out damage wise.

A few examples of this happening to me that i can recall:
When the 2 handed update first arrived, I went to Sauro on my 75 WAR for kicks, and I hit every mob for exactly 200 and some damage, with no variations.

And when I was leveling RNG, often my damage would always land for the same number, with never any variations.

But in your story, your damage fluctuated... so idk

So does this mean that even at the soon to be level 99 cap with lvl 90+ best of the best gear I will STILL be doing the same damage to these 46-48 Gigas as I'm doing right now??

/facepalm

Makes me want to go out to the Boyahda Tree and let the bunnies pummel me to death.

Well I'd guess that the only way to up your damage cap is to actually have a higher damage weapon (since Nightfyre corrected me, ty for helping me learn something new :P)

Pretty much, once you cap fSTR (lots of str) and pDIF (lots of attack) there is nothing more to add so the damage is capped. Unless you crit.

Although you will be using a level 99 dagger which will be have a much higher damage, so you will do more damage from that.

Not sticking to the title here but more on the part you said it takes ages to kill the gigas, eat a mithkabob and do 2 x march :) should speed it up.