I think you are making some assumptions about how things work/should work, and
your post doesn't give quite all of the information needed (for example your
skill %'s). First, I think you are assuming that marion axes should be much
better than spider sabres, but they're really not that much better, marions
are nice for mid-range solo axes because they are light and hit "okay" for
their price, don't expect to be doing uber damage with that type of a weapon.
Next, i think you are assuming that a tear is a tear is a tear... but that is
also not true, 2 people can both hit only cut and tear and yet have vastly
different amounts of damage done... the damage messages cover wide ranges of
actual amounts of damage... for example (note these are just randomly chosen
values and do not represent the actual damage amounts) cut might represent
between 15 and 40 damage, tear 41 to 55, incise 56 to 70 or something like
that... so while you're still just cutting and tearing you could conceivably
be doing twice as much damage as someone else who also just cuts and tears
depending on what %'s of the hits are cuts and tears and where within the
ranges most of your hits are falling...