COUGH
It’s actually a fantastic weapon. I cleared havoc 40 and true survivor with it. Though I won’t argue that it could use a bit of love…
yes the game could use a balance pass in general.
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The helbore is currently my preferred veteran weapon in auric maelstrom. I haven’t tried it in high havocs yet but I’ll get around to that at some point.
It’s magnificently weird. You have to learn to adapt to it rather than force it to adapt to you. There’s no point comparing it to a plasma gun, and that is a balance issue, but it’s stronger than something like an infantry lasgun. Not meta but certainly not weak.
If you are struggling with it I would suggest trying the following:
- Don’t use the slow brown helbore mark. It has its fans but the bayonet is useless and the charge times are everything the haters say they are.
- Don’t assume that the gun with no sights and a rager countering bayonet is designed to hang back and snipe. It’s even got a movement tech.
- Use the fast blue helbore (Mk V). It can’t one tap crushers like the slow one but it is easier to play with and it has a better bayonet.
- Surgical and shock trooper. It’s not quite ammo neutral but I’m not sure there is any other gun family that comes this close.
- Armourbane on the fast mark. Let’s you kill anything. I also find it easier to shift my aim while charging if the rate isn’t constantly changing like it does with weight of fire which is the other good blessing.
- Start charging the shot while shifting your aim to the next target. Don’t aim and then charge.
- If you must use the slower marks learn to fire partially charged against weak enemies and uncharged shots when a target just needs a nudge to finish it.
- Learn to use the bayonet! It has longer reach than a rager and is fast enough to staggerlock maulers. The damage is great, even destroys bulwarks. It’s weak to crushers but with practice you can kill groups of any other melee elite. Secretly one of the better veteran melee weapons. (None of this applies to the comically bad slashing bayonet).
- Take the weapon swap speed talent. Makes life easier but it’s not compulsory since you should learn to only switch to full melee as a last resort if you need block pushes for big hordes or to melee carapace. If my numbers are up to date the talent reduces the draw of the helbore to just below one second; it feels like any other rifle sized gun.
- If you are happy using mods you can change the sights. I’m personally okay with just a dot and box sights.
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Helbore is actually one of my favorite Exec Stance weapons. It pairs well with the iron sights and since you can use the good bayonet to deal with trickles and mobs that get through the melee frontline or flank it’s actually incredibly good for sustained ranged fights.
I use it in a keystoneless build alongside frags and whichever melee has my fancy at the time and it does pretty well.
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This post made me testin out helbores again, let’s see xD
Edit: Okay, I see the appeal of the fastest helbore mark. To me, its still a bit clunky to use and not a playstyle which i’d prefer HOWEVER it’s unironically a better infantry lasgun…
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This is the way. If FS had the focused application of effort of Arrowhead, a 60-day plan like move to rework balancing more or less from the ground up based off this idea would do a lot to fix most glaring issues with the games balance.
But alas, I dream 
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You can just say “I’m ok with it”. But let’s be a little more objective. It can kill a horde and ordinary enemies just fine. When a crowd of elites comes at you, you can’t do anything and are forced to throw grenades, switch to a second weapon, etc.
The numbers show that it is hopelessly inferior to, for example, a battle axe. And a chain axe too.
But I like it. And I want to play with it normally. That’s the purpose of this topic.
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Care to share a build if I may ask?
The more I think about the solution, the more I worry a balance patch is now out of reach. So many new guns, new variants, each introduced without balancing what’s gone before. Jurassic Park syndrome.
IDK; maybe the most sensible first step is just to get the marks within each weapon family on roughly a par. At the moment, they’ve not even managed that in a weapon family.
Then I think I would deftly remove some shared weapons. The dueling sword for example will now be a shared unlock (else - the complaints); but now the Psyker gets a foil, the Zealot an epee, and the veteran a sabre. And they can have their own damage/strike profiles.
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I really think that they should proceed by little changes. Or they will introduce more problems than the ones they would solve.
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Sure. Mostly the usual picks plus trench fighter to maximise melee performance. The lasgun is a Mk V with surgical, armourbane, elites, maniacs and dumpstat stability.
I’ve probably taken more toughness recovery than other people would, especially Catch a Breath, but I prioritised toughness gating vs shooters.
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Oh, you poor sod. You mentioned Jurassic Park around ME, the local 24-year-old Forumite who’s still somehow into Dinosaurs and Transformers.
Hot take of mine… NONE of the Jurassic Park films actually lived up to Michael Crichton’s original Jurassic Park novel.
The 1990 novel wasn’t a toned-down family adventure like the 1993 film turned out to be, it was pure sci-fi horror.
Compare Dennis Nedry’s Death in both:
1990
1993
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Typically a build I could use.
No keystone and all talents I usually take. I am not even sure it is not my current build.
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As a once child-savant of Dinosaur lore (as in I knew the latin names of most known species), I will not accept any JP slander around me unless it’s JP3 slander because that one genuinely was bad. 1 and 2 are goated. The JW trilogy is not canon and does not exist lalalalala I can’t hear you.
Anyway, game balance can of course be fixed but I think we’re past the point of half-measures and incremental band aid solutions if we really want the issue to be mostly put to bed. In my humble but Primarch powered opinion, they should take the time to do an all encompassing rework of it it so the bulk of the issue can actually be addressed.
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Oh, yeah?! Then what’s the name of the Dinosaur that the “Velociraptors” from Jurassic Park ACTUALLY are?
The answer’s “Deinonychus”!!! Sorry, I got excited and blurted it out…
VERY fair.
Universal trying to hype us up for another Jurassic World film that nobody f*cking wants:
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I would absolutely love this. Completely reworking everything with a focused and sustained effort. It’s not like Fatshark has monthly battle passes and stuff that the player base might complain about - a two month gap is actually fast for updates.
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Ranged:
-
Shotguns
All variants should do their special activation as baseline attack. Special attack should just be regular flashlight or push.
Slug variant should have more dmg than zarona revolver - the anti armor mid range special snipe variant
Flame variant should stack burn and absolutely demolish hordes.
Basic variant should shoots flechettes in normal spread that stack bleeding. -
Lasguns - all should have overcharge mechanics
Kantrael headshot with no blessings should kill all specials except mutant, and with 1 perk oneshot gunners as well.
Hellbores charged should pierce by default, reduce swap animation by 80%.
Slowest variant should chunk even crushers. (why playing hellbore when tehre is plasma?)
Accatrans are fine-ish but they have 1 build so … would be nice if they werent just for crit. -
Autoguns
Headhuners suck, one handed revolver CANT be doing more damage in all aspects than 2handed gun which by looks is shooting .308+ (if not 0.50)… and yet it is.
These should be THE PREMIUM anti everything but slow and low ammo
The fully auto variants on psyker or merc arent bad, they just have abysmall controll and even worse iron sights (for real now those sights even when you mod it they shoot wrong) -
Pistols
There is one weapon here and that is zarona. Others are either meh or bad.
One handed ranged weapons should have an innate passive that melee weapons get +10% attack speed if you have one handed ranged weapons equipped.
Until a method is found how to dual wield both - when you RMB with a one handed rnaged weapon and have 1 handed melee weapon THEN you are blocking as you ADS= you can whip out pistols in melee and tap maniacs/specials.
Melee
This could be a whole tangent but tldr.
Two handed weapons should have more damage accross the board to compensate for slowness.
Thunder Hammer should be THE PREMIUM weapon against crshers, armor and monsters with VERY good horde clear with abysmall dodge, sprint etc BUT with longest reach.
Knife should be the opposite, shortest reach, no NO NO!! cleave, I repeat NO CLEAVE (maybe the variant with sweeping heavy can do 2 basic trash). Otherwise it can stay.
Dueling sword can stay but reduce damage to carapace by 75%, oneshoting twoshotting or even threeshotting crusers with DS is just bullsh-it. (need changes to rending strikes and etc)
Unpowered weapons - axes, tac axes, swords
All of these have at least 1 variant that is good - absent dueling sword or knife.
BM on axes is pretty much the best thing to take to a point - why is it not basline feature?
Tac axes should be higher damage less attack but more range variant of knife - they are just worse now
Devil claw should take some of its poewr off the parry and put into basic kit, as it is now the weapon is best just spamming the parry
Heavy swords arent bad, but bm axes outperfomr them. Some buffs to special attack could be nice.
Chain weapons
They should stack bleeding by default on ALL attacks, revved or not (blessings that stack bleed on special should increase this on all attacks)
Revved up attacks while looking good should not lock you onto a target, imo the best would be = activated attacks should work as chainaxe attacks (that it drags on targets).
You would sacrifice cleave for DAMAGE and STAGGER with all damage instances would count as stacks for X blessings
And its easy to balance as well, chainsword deals low tick damage but its fast (and the tick speed would SCALE WITH ATTACK SPEED) meanwhile eviscerator deals ticks slower but they are much stronger.
Power Weapons -
There is ONE power weapon with a good mechanic (its not a very good weapon tho) and that is the new zealot sword.
Thunder hammer is slow, Power sword is annoying, crusher is somewhat nice but either you build it to spam it or never use it.
TLDR ALL power weapons should have GOOD stats for basic attacks and POWER mode should change the stats of normal attacks but ITS UP TO YOU to swtich these modes.
- TH loses all its cleave but gains extreme damage and pen (you can bonk bonk crushers one after another, as DS is doing now but slower)
- Power sword looses defenesive stats and attacks speed but gains extreme armor pen (the weapon gets unwieldy, you sacrifice mobility to cut through sh-t)
- Two handed PS just gets better overall (this would be a good weapon if stats wer ebetter AND some blessings too)
- Crusher works the same as two handed PS, its jsut better activated until it overheats (honestly crusher would work best if there was toughness regen on zealot that isnt SUPER HARDCORE favourable to fast crit weapons. And no spamming ulti isnt toughness regen, that is spamming ulti)
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Yeah, there are so many clear examples of “forgotten” Weapons when it comes to balancing due to how infrequently Fatshark tends to release Updates.
Combat Shotguns, Infantry Lasguns, Rumbler, Shredder Autopistol, Vigilant Autoguns, literally ALL of Ogryn’s 1-Handed Weapons, etc.
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60 days is obviously not a realistic timeline for FS to do anything like this for whatever eldritch reasons but honestly if they spent 6 months working on only that and dropped it I’d be happy.
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Don’t mind me, I’m just using EVERY possible opportunity to flex that I’ve read the original 1990 Jurassic Park novel. No reason, either. Just for the sake of it. 
Of course, I won’t dwell on it much more for the sake of staying on topic and all that.