>>528055060
block gives a melee damage buff and lets you stagger everything with melee attacks and also gives a short ranged damage resistance buff and gives 1 armor. fencing staggers and lets you gunstrike but you can also 1 shot minoris and get an armor. balances is like a worse version of fencing, the timing is about 150ms after you hit the block button.

>>528057490
>because even certain classes are going to want a particular weapon
yeah the devs arbitrarily applies base stats to the weapons. like the block chainsword's stats are twice as good as the other variants, i would use it even if it was balanced instead of block