But let's run a hypothetical scenario with a Tier 1 glaive and a Tier 1 nano where you were facing a creature with AR 4-5, so around 10-11 percent collectively from creatures surveyed.
Glaive: You get Combat Prowess, which provides +1 damage to your choice of ranged or melee weapons. You have access to all weapons, which would include Medium (4 dmg) or Heavy (6 dmg). This is 5-7 damage default per hit, not including any special abilities that you may have as part of your focus, which should get past most 4-5 AR. This does not include the possibility for critical hits either.
Nano: You can only use Light Weapons (2 dmg), but you can pick a Tier 1 ability called Onslaught that does 4 dmg. It costs 1 Int to use, but as a Nano you have Intellect Edge 1, so the ability cost is effectively 0. If you get a critical hit on a 19, that's +3 dmg; or on a 20, that's +4 dmg. So that would still provide you 7-8 dmg to bypass 4-5 AR. Sure that requires a critical, but you had mentioned "even on a critical" you didn't do damage.
Now if we are talking about bypassing any AR above 5, then we are talking about 1.8 percent of all creatures in the books that I looked through above: the 2 core books, the setting book, and 3 bestiaries.
I appreciate all the work you put into this post.
I just want to say that in 2 out of the 3 situations, I was using pregenerated characters at a Con game (run by Monte Cook games). I had no access to selecting powers, abilities, or equipment.
So the issue is ... Even if I took a Nano with Onslaught, all I can do is spam that one ability in virtually every combat encounter. I can't do anything else. I would have like a 10% chance to damage it with weapons. I have no other abilities that can have any impact on the game.
Who thinks this is good design? Even 1st level D&D characters have more options.