I am surprised about my high damage variance - despite my skill:

Highlander Armsmen lvl 50
Skill Slash 39+14
Pole 50+14
211 STR (130base,75items,6 RA)

Unstyled Pole Damage (16.2dmg, 5.8 speed + 3 STR relicts) against training dummy below.

average is 193, with lowest value 166- and highest 233. This is quite a large span of damage variance. (40% in total - 20% up and down from the average)
I expected with that skill a way lower variance. Do you have similar values?

Thinking about respec to 45 slash and 46 pole... Would this help? (6 levels more slash, and 4 less pole) to ease out the variance?

values...: 177,167,205,206,207,185,198,205,231,205,177,179,179,173,210,173,181,166,226,
215,177,171,166,233,207,223,187,186

You would miss out on that lovely backstyle if you did that

true I would lose the after "phoenix" style lvl 50. But I am using the lvl 44 after "phoenix" defenders revenge with a 9sec stun and a higher GW. So not that much loss.

btw: we play for keeps was looking for admins to invite toons - as the guild has many bounty points (holding high keeps secures relics). are you an admin in this guild that could invite, by any chance?

What pole do you use ?

I think that kind of variance is normal. According to following information the minimum variance window is about 50%:
https://talsyra.tripod.com/daocmechanics/damage_variance.html

If you have trained up to 2/3 of your level in your weapon, each swing may do 75% to 125% of X.
If you are trained up to your level, each swing may do 100% to 150% of X.

+Skill should be taken into account. So 39+14 puts you well into the 100-150% range.
low hit of 166*1.5 = 249 damage. That roughly fits to your max.
You would need more hits to get a better statistic and to see the real min/max values.

No I'm not,

Gil(Myth) is probably your best bet.

What I had always remembered was that spec'ing into pole raised the max damage of variance, and spec'ing into the sub spec (crush, slash, thrust) raised the min damage of variance (with an effective cap at 50.)

I've never done tests to verify any of that....but once the slow weapon bonus got fixed (2018?) poles felt right compared to foggy memories of the old days.

@fier - thank you that is helpful
@teri - 99% arcanium poleaxe