What is happening with swords?

[Strength]

It has come to my attention that lower REQ swords have better base damage per STR invested than most of the higher STR swords.

Lower STR req swords                                                                 

Twin Blades (70 STR) = 0.357 base per STR                          
Religious Katana (70 STR) = 0.371 base per STR
Iron Scythe (75 STR) = 0.387 base per STR
Muramasa (80 STR) = 0.375 base per STR
Shirokata (85 STR) = 0.388 base per STR

Higher STR  req swords

Bandit Blade (100 STR) = 0.35 base per STR
Bone Sword (110 STR) = 0.327 base per STR
Blood Katana (110 STR) = 0.409 base per STR
Kyuketsuki (120 STR) = 0.35 base per STR.

Pure WM builds are already a rarity, so it doesn't really help that hybrid sword options are seemingly better than those which you use when you are pure WM. 

Bone Sword has arguably the worst base damage per STR out of all the swords which the attack speed makes up for, but Religious Katana on 70 str has good base damage per STR while also having attack speed that is not much slower than the Bone Sword. Blood Katana in my opinion is the only higher req sword which is properly balanced in comparison to lower STR swords.

There are some swords in the game which have really strong base damage for sure, but they are much harder to drop and have an insanely slow attack speed (and I don't know their stats to be able to compare them to currently known ones). 
It just feels kinda contradictory that hybrid swords have better base per STR when hybrids will rely more on their combos and use melees as a secondary way of dealing damage whereas when you are playing pure WM your only source of damage is your sword melee.

Either the base damage of lower STR swords needs to go down or the base dmg of higher STR swords needs to go up slightly.

 

 

[Ueda]

While some of these definitely need balancing. It's a strawman argument or selective data bias to pin point one aspect of balance and graph them this way without considering multiple other factors like whether they have abilities, their attack speeds, their rarities, their level requirement, their ryo value, their knockback chance, their knockback distances.

[Hao]

The 'Damage given per STR required' table is only illustrating one factor, and there are other factors to read when determining swords balance.
If you check my Shirokata post, I also have that same chart. Is that the only thing I used to convey my point?

To check a sword's value in Nin, you'd look at 3 attributes (there might be more than 3, but we'll get there):
- Damage given per STR required
- Attack speed
- Any other unique benefit

You can't just compared the first attribute and conclude a sword is weak. Bone sword has drastically lower damage than Blood Katana (another sword in its tier) because of the difference in attack speed.
With your approach, Blood Katana is the best sword in the game, and Dark Bandit Blade is also really good, right behind Bone, which we know isn't true...

The low-STR swords have very little unique benefit (attribute #3) and poor attack speed (attribute #2). So you see their first attribute being their strongest.
The high-STR swords (Blood, Bone, Kyuketsuki) have faster attack speed than the low-STR (except Blood), with Religious as an exception. They also have HP regen (aka, the unique benefit). Blood Katana doesn't have HP regen or fast attack, but its first attribute (Damage) is its best.
So you notice how all 3 attributes are considered in a sword, not just the first attribute.