Wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment regarding Power Sword. I believe it’s kind of a stomping weapon, though - outshines all other choices when things are going smoothly, but with your back pressed against the wall you’ll really wish you had something else. That does make it inbalanced IMO, and means that it should be tweaked a bit to make it less reliant on activated strikes, while making those less powerful in the process. But it’s certainly not the meta beast it used to be.
Most of the Plasma Gun downsides you mentioned are irrelevant - you can’t kill yourself with primary fire (and you should almost never use the secondary kek), it’s slow reload doesn’t matter because magazine size is so large you’ll be only doing it between fights (and can be mitigated with Weapon Specialist), ADS doesn’t need to be here because it’s perfectly accurate anyway, rate of fire is similar to Zarona Revolver but your magazine size is five eight to ten times larger.
The ammo economy sounds bad on paper, but if you minmax for ammo you will get ~165 in reserve and 25 per small replenishment (8+ shots). Zarona Revolver and Kantrael Shotgun get 10 and 11 at most, respectively - but Plasma Gun will get much more from ammo crates.
I’m not even gonna mention the ‘damage’ done on venting, the Veteran’s broken Toughness regeneration takes care of that hundredfold. You even pull it out at normal speed, unlike Bolter or Flamer.
The only real downside for infinite cleave, wall penetration, deleting Carapace Armor and one-shotting most elies and specials in the body (beacuse you’re running Gets Hot, as everyone does) is the trigger-pull delay. Here, I have to admit that since I don’t have the numbers on that one I can only rely on my own impressions - and my impression is: I’m yet to miss a shot because of that delay instead of me just having terrible aim.
So, I’d say Plasma Gun is certainly in a good spot. The best spot in the game in fact. As in: so horribly overpowered it’s completely safe from falling into obscurity.
IMO Plasma Gun should keep it’s power, tha’ts what makes it awesome after all. But it has to be either as clunky as a Bolter or have worse ammo economy to make up for it. Otherwise, there’s barely any reason to pick anything else over it on Aurics - save for personal preference, or just being bored of playing only Plasma Gun.
A ~50% chance to 1 shot some, if you are at high heat.
Pretty good, but not reliable.
The delay makes aiming more difficult. Might not make a difference for you, but it does for others.
The delay is also long enough, that a bunch of other options can kill the enemy before your plasma gun even fires.
If you have reasonably good teammates with good weapons, they will frequently kill an enemy that you are shooting at, before your plasma shot comes out.
If that was the case, it would be quite strange that the plasma gun is not used by most veterans in the auric playlist.
Coolumnus and zarona can kill elite gunners, shotgunners, flamer, trapper, bomber, sniper and dog before your plasma gun even starts shooting.
So no. Personal preference and boredom are not the only reasons to pick other weapons than the plasma gun.
Imo, if the plasma gun had to be nerfed, it should be done by
reducing carapace damage (and possibly cleave) on the primary fire (value shift to secondary fire)
reducing general bodyshot damage, but keeping the weakspot damage the same as it is now (this would be a nerf for scrubs who spam the gun, but would not really affect skilled players who actually aim their shots well)
I have no numbers on that, but from my experience roughly half the vets on Aurics run Plasma Gun. So I’d like to disagree here, but I don’t really think we can argue about something neither of us has any credible data for.
Or they can kill it slower because you actually need to hit headshots with them - the Plasma Gun’s TTK is roughly equal to the guns you mentioned if we count the shot delay in. Zarona can kill most high priority targets faster, but only in small quantities - and that does require good aim, so I’d say it’s fair. However, if elites such as Ragers or Maulers start closing distance you will actually have to switch away from Columnus or Zarona, while Plasma Gun will keep them merrily staggered for the entire five seconds they have left to live - since it will cleave through a pack of ragers no problem.
Admittedly, Columnus and Zarona can do the job better in certain circumstances - but that does require quick reflexes and great aim. Plasma Gun gives them a run without any need for that, while still outclassing them against mixed hordes and elite groups.
IMO the second of your proposals sounds good, but I don’t think it would be enough on it’s own - if the amount of shots to kill a rager increased from eg. 2 to 3, that’s still just one more shot to kill eg. four ragers, due to the infinite cleave. It’s just too spammable for what it can do, between the infinite cleave, high damage, insane stagger and (eh) wall penetration. I’m not sure how to nerf it exactly, but I think it has to be nerfed since the game doesn’t live just off of Aurics.
I’d usually agree but we’re talking about using the stab and strikedown attacks to armorpen. That’s universal logic for every weapon. On every single weapon in the game you want to use the stab or overhead moves to kill armor. It’s so fundamental that EVERYONE can be expected to know about this and make use of it.
Like this isn’t some top tier strat only well versed veterans abuse, this is on the level of “you can press space to dodge”. If someone doesn’t know that or make use of it, then the game shouldn’t be balanced around him and he should play on uprising.
Lots of people dont even know there is a push-attack combo. I dont remember it being mentioned anywhere. I didnt know it was specifically an anti-armour move on every weapon. Hard disagree on this.
Im also not talking about it being abused as a basic strat, Im just saying its more powerful than the other combos on the PS which surprised me. It could be toned down but Im not bothered if it isnt. Id rather FS just left it alone because they have a habit of destroying weapons they nerf.
For real? Its not explained anywhere, while the dodge button is literally in the controls. Even then, most people dont dodge that Iv seen. So again, hard disagree. This seems like hyperbole to me.
Tutorial tells you this and makes you perform it so I disagree, everyone should know this and people who don’t belong on game journalist difficulties and should not be catered to balance wise.
Same with anti armor moves. It’s in the tutorial. You can also literally check each moves armor damage in the weapon inspect which lets you compare between strikedown and sweeps and immediately lets you see that their armor pen values are bad. There’s also the fact that you can test in the psykhanium and you will instantly see which attacks do well or don’t, aswell as having characters and even enemies make fun of you for performing ineffective strikes on armor, and so basic pattern recognition forces you to recognize that stabs and overheads deal with armor better. There’s also the very basic logical aspect of “sweeps deal with crowds so logically the use of overheads and stabs would be to do single target damage” and sure enough thats actually how it works.
Again, if someone does not have this knowledge yet or is resilient to acquiring it, then the game should not be balanced around them and they don’t have to be playing the highest difficulty and the game shouldn’t be balanced around them on the highest difficulty.
For the record it’s fair enough if someone isn’t enough into video games or thinking in general to recognize these patterns on their own, thats why the lower difficulties exist. Damnation should not be balanced around players who can’t even utilize basic controls taught to them in the tutorial.
It is. It is also not that old. VI push attack is a very special high damage, but low stagger attack that basically no other weapon share, which was introduced with its soft rework.
VI has quite high skill ceiling and has many quirks that isn’t standard at all, and a high-damage push attack is one of these special things which is a great design decision, but neither obvious nor standard for an average player.
Every sword but catachan 1 has a stab or bonk for a push attack, to give them an alternative single target damage solution in a horde oriented moveset. In fact the power sword 6’s push attack combo does a lot more damage than the exact same push attack combo the Cadia 4 chainsword does, and that’s before you power it on and give it 11.7 hitmass instead of 1.8 and 8 targets hit instead of 2. And 2.5x the damage.
In general every sword weapon has that push attack, a lot of them having a second strikedown light combo as well, except force swords. But for the variety of actually using 2 power swords or even the rest of 6’s moveset this was a bad change.
It’s still a stab and an overhead. Basic pattern recognition would lead anyone to realize “that would be good for armor” even if it’s the first time they’ve seen it on a push attack (it likely isn’t, there’s other weps where this is true)
Hey now… that hurts! I got past the tutorial so long ago I cant remember it so Im doing ok
I honestly never thought to do a push attack and see if that armour pens better. Its been ages since I played the tutorial. I also dont see people doing it, most of the time most people just crumble to a group of ragers nevermind crushers.
So I kinda agree and feel that furthers my point that the PS is fine where it is, most people dont use these attacks, most people dont dodge, the game should deffo not be balanced around the highest difficulties or the small amount of players who can dominate the game at that level. Malice is a good place to balance around imo.
The only thing I completely disagree with is that its obvious to use this attack for this purpose.
This way of thinking is where you are wrong. Turns out anyone doesnt just realise. Whats obvious to you isnt to others.
I’m just coming from the direction that the average weapon uses heavies to deal with armor including weapons that have overhead or stab style push attacks. Maybe I’m missing some weapon where it’s similarly good compared to its heavy, but this is a generality.
This even includes VI before the soft rework, when push attack were dealing around the same damage (or less?) as Heavy Attack against armor and the only use for it (similar to III) to get an non-activated one-shot on a bruisers/shooters (or 2 in a row in the case of VI). Also, before soft rework happened block activation wasn’t a thing so going for activated push-attack wasn’t worth it in general.
You could honestly make the same statement about someone using an MK4 chainaxe and trying to kill crushers with heavy attacks.
It’s understandable to have that be the thing you try in the psykhanium first. It’s not understandable to never try anything else and not compare. At that point, that’s a player I don’t want the highest difficulty in a video game balanced around. It would be bad design to design a game where the game balance comes down HEAVILY to “know your toolkit and use it well” around players who don’t test their toolkits out and ignore patterns and gameplay feedback. That’s fine on lower difficulties, where you can totally be fine without doing it, but it’s fine to expect highest difficulty players to actually know what which move does to what armor, especially since as I said, there’s patterns and ways to test it. (and balance accordingly)
Fair point, but in case of Chaxe you have immediate feedback that you are doing something wrong (and heavy activated attacks deal more damage than light). VI has something that no other weapon share that you have to actively seek out.
I’m just not sure looking down on people for not thinking about this quite special interaction is right. Of course all us sweatlords who test a bunch of thing constantly know these things, but this is still something that’s the game doesn’t really teach you and quite unique. It’s not as esoteric as min pellet count stuff, but isn’t something obvious either.
That’s also fine, but currently the game is balanced in such a way that these things are possible. I mean seriously Ogryn is basically balanced around people with similar mental capacity.
There’s no more feedback than you would get from power sword light attacking I’m pretty sure. Unless you mean the weapon bouncing off which I don’t think really means anything is wrong, most armor pen attacks do that too.
I’m not really looking down on people. It’s inherently an elitist thing to say that highest difficulties aren’t for everyone, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. From a game design angle it’s fine to ignore certain players experiences and habits and design for the people who test their weapons, if you’re balancing for what is meant to be the challenge difficulty.
I mean that with Chaxe you’ll pretty quickly realize you are doing no damage with heavies and should try either activation heavy or spam lights, while you have to actively seek out on VI that going for a block-activation-push attack cancel+follow up is the correct rotation against armor.
Keeping your elites happy is something I consider important, what made me write the post was this:
Found these a bit harsh, considering what kind of attack we are talking about.
It’s only harsh if the person in question feels otherwise about his approaches and where he stands. There’s plenty of games where I just turn my brain off and play, it’s fine if someone does it with Darktide but then he can’t expect Damnation to be tuned around himself.
Effortlessly? it keeps you vulnerable for a time period & slows you down, and hey dont call it effortlessly when I stayed from November 2022-June 2023 just farming 1 blessing, that was a passive by default and got removed, and made a blessing.
Proof? what Difficulty? what perks? what skill tree?
you have power sword or krak nades as your primary?
Just to let you know, Fatshark fixed all “chained attacks blessings” but left power sword out of it. blocking for 0.1 seconds disable your chaining, getting hit disables your chaining etc.
you can check at bottom left of screen, the stacks of shovel chaining “Decimator” does not gets removed
no need to compare Powersword to any melee weapon mobility as its plain worse than them all.
so here is a comparison of heaviest infantry autogun of the series, against power sword.
you get better sprint speed, sprinting time and 1+ stamina
For my part, I don’t really see any issues with either the PG or Power swords. The Plasma Gun has a large magazine and perfect accuracy and amazing penetration, but terrible sustained fire due to heat (you’re cooling off as much as other guns reload) coupled with a default reticle that’s so huge and wide that it’s really easy to miss things at significant distances because you don’t have enough aiming granularity to make use of that accuracy, and the firing delay can really mess up aiming in frantic situations.
If there’s an issue with the PG, it’s that it’s really build agnostic, much moreso than most other weapons. It doesn’t really care about crits, doesn’t really care about rending, etc, so you don’t really need to bother investing in a lot of damage enhancing talents and can go more in on survivability and utility.
The power swords are extremely reliant on Power Cycler for effectiveness and the power-up delay can easily get you killed in the streets. Without PC, especially PCIV, I don’t think anyone would use Power Swords at all.
