Is damage for Throwing bugged?

I made a Gargoyle Thrower/Healer/Discorder (called, of course, Disco). His throwing damage doesn't seem to be going up.  I've seen between 9 and 14 damage from his starting Boomerang rated at 11-15 damage.  His strength is currently 33, and both his Anatomy and Tactics have raised from 40 to above 52.  His Throwing skill is currently 45.2

Should I have not seen weapon damage rise during initial training, and hunting sessions south of the Trinsic gate? Foes have been ogres, ettins, lizardmen, and giant spiders -- all take forever to kill with low damage and mostly misses at his mid-40s Throwing skill. Thinking Discordance might be invisibly lowering my stats too, I tried fighting with no Discord, but there was no difference in damage.

Even if, as is likely, the low STR is having a negative effect on damage, I would think that his Anatomy and Tactics would have at least brought up damage to its full rated range.  BTW, STR is barely going up, but DEX has doubled to 60.  I started all 3 stats at 30 and locked INT right away. (One goal of this build is to be effectively manaless, until his skill is high enough for special moves.)

One positive is that Discord appears to hit every time on these admittedly mediocre monsters.  Sure, he'll play badly about half the time, but every time he plays well, the Discord hits.  Both skills were started at 50 points (which is he couldn't start Throwing at 50). I was expecting a success rate of 25% at the start (0.5 x 0.5 = 25%). It seems only the Musicianship (and barding difficulty of the foe) matter so far as success.

Update: No change after raising STR to 40.  I did actually see one hit do 15 (on an 11-15 weapon), but by the same token I saw an 8, which I don't remember seeing before. Most hits were from 9-11 damage. This is with Anatomy at 54.6, Tactics at 53.3, and Throwing at 46.8.

BTW, I gained STR by using a glass staff on a training dummy in Jhelom.  Gains to STR and DEX were about equal, and seemed quite slow.  Mace Fighting raised from 0 to 27.

Oh, now that is interesting. I just logged in an older character from another server.  He has 60.9 Throwing, 96.2 Tactics, and 1.8 Anatomy.  His STR has only made it to 49.  Since his weapons were much nicer, he went to Ter Mur and bought a boomerang from an NPC vendor. Then he went to the same hunting grounds south of the Trinsic moongate.  His damage results were virtually identical to Disco's, most hits 9-11 on a weapon rated 11-15.  He is a Mystic Paladin Thrower, but the tests were done with none of the support spells to buff the weapon.  The only advantage this guy has is his hit rate was a lot higher than Disco's due to the higher Throwing skill.

Conclusion: I think Throwing damage is bugged.  It doesn't seem to be influenced by Tactics or Anatomy, and barely influenced by STR. Neither of two characters are even getting rated damage from their store-bought boomerangs.

• weapon rating: 11-15
  
• observed damage: 9-11
• outlier damage: 8-15

Addendum: I realize that foes have damage resistance, which would lower potential damage from a weapon. But no change in damage was observed as on character advance from 40 in Anatomy and Tactics to low 50s, with simultaneous gain in STR from 30 to 40. And the character with over 96 Tactics and 49 STR did no more damage/hit.

What is your distance from your target? Read here about underthrow and overthrow https://uo.com/wiki/ultima-online-wiki/skills/throwing/

@Mariah, thank you for the link.  Is there a good way to judge one's tile distance from a foe?  Disco doesn't have a set distance. He will approach close enough to Discord, which does not aggro them.  Then he will double click the foe to cause the aggro. As the foe approaches, he will begin Throwing and get two to three shots in.  Then he backs off to avoid being hit, and repeats. It is likely that the first shot in a sequence is overthrown (less damage), but as the foe gets closer I'm sure it is in optimal range for at least one shot. Then he might get an underthrown shot in, with no damage penalty but a -12% HCI penalty.

I'll try altering his attack by guesstimating optimal range then backing off to match the foe's rate.   Step back, wait for shot, step back, wait for shot, etc.  In the south Trinsic hunting grounds, the relatively low foe density should usually allow this.

It looks like the problem is with the boomerang itself.  No matter the distance, I could never get it past its rated 11-15, and it still was usually 9-11.  A store-bought cyclone, OTOH, behaved much more as expected.  Its rated damage is 13-17, and at close range I saw spikes up to 20. The range seems screwy, though.  At the "ideal" range, damage was more like 11-14, but when the enemy got like to steps away, then I was seeing the damage peaks.

Conclusion: Avoid boomerangs. I was sticking to it for so long because its weapon speed was 2.75. The cyclone is a little more, 3.25, but the average damage is much higher, more than the rated damage ranges would indicate.

Disco spent some time nude wrestling (and healing & music) with the fine folks in Old Haven.  This got him up to a STR of 58.  With that and the spammed luting, his DEX is now 86. His stats are not embarrassing to mention any more.

It's working, there's a lot of variables like physical resist.  And it's RNG on monsters within a range.

A good way to tell distance in EC is the target window has a distance meter.  Otherwise, you get used to the tile distances.  Up is always a bit harder for me still though.

@Feigr, thank you for the distance tip.  I do use the EC, but I cannot find "target window" in the ACTIONS gump.  Do you mean something from in there?  Must be over 100 choices.  Could you give me the category, and an actual name, such as "Cursor Target Last" or "Smart Next Target"? If "Target Window" is actually there, I apologize.

whatever you last clicked on is your current target, that's the target window and has a distance to target shown above it

@Mariah and @Feigr, <two-handed face slap> I don't even want to think of how long I've spent looking at the UO screen and never noticed the "Distance: x" text. Thank you for being willing to state the obvious (well, to everyone who actually sees what's in front of them, anyway).

Disco is getting excellent damage now with his cyclone.  I even see damage up at 30, with the weapon rated 13-17.  That's an outlier, but it was still nice to see. Note that his STR is 60 now, and both Tactics and Anatomy have advanced as well. The optimal range for this weapon is supposed to be 6 to 9, but I don't see the really high damage blows unless distance is 2 to 3. That's actually fine for the relatively slow and non-numerous beasts south of Trinton.  When the foes become quicker and are packed more densely, 2 feet (yards? meters?) he'll probably want to keep more distance.

Now he has a different problem.  He is sort of forced into masochism to train his healing, because a ranged fighter normally avoids damage in the first place.  Maybe he'll head back to Old Haven and do some more nude wrestling with the volunteers there. His healing is currently about 52.5, but I don't feel comfortable until a chacter's healing is above 60 and he can begin curing poison. It shouldn't be too bad; he should advance fairly quickly in Healing, Anatomy, STR, Music, and DEX. He better not forget his towel (so he can cut it up and make bandaids).

I just noticed it myself, that's why I knew. LOL