I’ve been experimenting with Bardin’s arsenal lately, and found a glaring issue. In the current state, using the pickaxe is nigh-pointless, as it’s light melee chain has too much downtime between swings, rendering Bardin unable to deal with even small groups of rats without a very high risk of being hit. This is a shame, as I would love to utilize the weapon’s fun multi-stage charge attack. In the current state, both the Two-Handed Hammer and the Two-Handed Axe (even with the clipping issue) do everything that the Pickaxe does, but without sacrificing your ability to defend yourself.
I believe that it would be a positive change to reduce the time between light attack swings for the pickaxe. They don’t deal enough damage for this to break the balance anyway.
No, its not a “very good weapon” 2h axe and hammer are very good weapons, and they do pickaxe’s job better. Pickaxe is a nice weapon on slayer, but only because of the massive increases in attack speed he provides. And considering he also gets to use dual axes, the pickaxe charge attack is redundant on him, as it cant even oneshot stormvermin to the head except for the super heavy charge, while still being slower than executioner sword. Slower wind-up time, slower recovery time, less damage.
What pickaxe needs is some sort of gimmick to justify its clunkiness. I vote for being able to damage enemies through the shield or make it the only weapon that can destroy shield SV’s shield. By design, it should be the most anti-armor and shield weapon in the game, yet glaive somehow performs on par or better against armor, despite being a blade weapon. The longer the blade is, the harder it gets to penetrate armor, its simple.
Yes it is, but it’s not as self-explanatory as hammer or axe. It works perfectly fine on RV and IB. It could use some love for the heavy attack, it should deal a bit more damage considering how slow it is. The pick does have INSANELY good horde clear.
I agree, the pick definitely needs love. But it’s far from useless. As @Licious-D stated, the horde clear is quite excellent, the push attack is pretty nifty and it also staggers like a mama-lover. And a fully charged heavy attack can deal in excess of a hundred damage.
That being said, the heavy attack is way to slow to fully charge, so it’s not really worth it. The regular heavy is okay to two-shot storm vermin, but I agree that Bardin has other weapons that are waaaaaay better for dealing with elites in general.
Horde clear and stagger are what the pick is good at, enough in my book to make it viable.
But I agree with @Aisolon that a gimmick would be nice and his ideas seem solid. More armor/shield pen would be excellent.
To the people saying pickaxe is bad: Throw it on Slayer and switch to it during hordes. It’s basically the best horde clear melee in the game, effortlessly plowing through trash while keeping your ult active non-stop.
I agree it should have better armour pen and shield-breaking, however.
Its not all about cleave value, however. I agree, when the enemies are hyperstacked, its an amazing weapon on slayer. I use it exclusively on him. But as soon as they come staggered and fill your complete FoV, its attack angle, overall clunkiness and rather short range will lead to you getting hit Whereas with a 2h hammer, the wide sweeps take care of everything on screen, while literally sending enemies flying. The pick only staggers them around.
But thats only half of the weapon. The charge attack is unwieldy, slow and deals too little damage while also having rather short reach. Which is also part of the reason it works on slayer, because he gets to bring dual axes which take care of the pickaxe’s shortcomings on single target. It is very painful to use on RV or IB.
Final note, I never said its bad. I said its not a very good weapon.
I’d personally argue that the fully charged pick attack needs a lunge buff, it’s a massive burst attack, i don’t think it really should come out fast or excel at DPS, but with a speed boost as you are about to strike, it gains a lot of utility.
But then you might argue that it’s safer, as the 2h hammer can only cleave on it’s charged attacks, meaning if you are being pressured, you may be unable to even get the attack out. That said, the pick is a lot better at dealing damage in hordes and i’m skeptical of any range claims.
I do agree the heavy charge attack could do with some shield destroying/ignoring element but the horde clear is working perfectly. With the trait that boosts attack speed by 20% on a crit even a slow swinging IB can destroy huge groups using repeating light attacks. It’s certainly much easier to use that constantly charging heavy attacks with a 2h hammer. One mistime or block and your flow is gone.
I use pickaxe as my 2nd weapon all the time on Bardin and it’s deadly in legend too.
There is definitely an issue with weapons that have their sweeps on charged attack, since that can easily be interrupted. With the 2h hammer, it’s less of an issue since it charges rather quickly, it has good penetration and amazing stagger. It becomes more apparent with 2h axe, since it does seem to take a bit longer to charge, cleaves less and causes almost no stagger at all.
I’ve tried it on Slayer a few times now and still prefer 1h hammer by FAR for horde clearing. They have a somewhat similar move set and 1h hammer is better in just about every way. It’s better than pickaxe on slayer and works well with the other two subclasses, as well.
The two major points for me are:
With the 1h hammer, I’m near invulnerable in the middle of a horde as a slayer. Swinging around so quickly with a mix of light attacks and the push attack that nothing remotely has an opening to attack you. The pickaxe leaves you open to get hit, even on slayer.
The power attack, for how long it takes to pull off, seems much better on 1h hammer. It’s quite fast, pierces armor, and does nice damage/interrupt. The pickaxe power attack, if it was 2-3 times more powerful than it is now maybe would give the weapon some kind of purpose.
I don’t use the power attack on it either. Mainly because it’s terrible. But, also because I only used it for horde clearing. Just saying that 1h hammer does the same thing but better. And it’s power attack is actually viable if you need to bop a storm verm head real quick.
I suppose there is a small chance it just comes down to play style, but I really can’t find a reason to use the pickaxe. I really tried, too. I like to vary my loadouts since I play Bardin more than any other class and enjoy switching it up. For me, the 1h hammer does everything the pickaxe does, just better.
While the 1h hammer may be safer in hordes, it has to trade in a lot of actual horde clear for that, doing fairly low damage to a fairly low amount of enemies.
The pickaxe power attack, if it was 2-3 times more powerful than it is now maybe would give the weapon some kind of purpose.
I feel like one-shotting CW would be overdoing it though.
The 1h hammer does about 2/3 the damage and attacks at twice the speed (so about 30% more damage output over time for a rough estimate). The % damage drop per target while cleaving is about the same for each weapon. It cleaves really well and its push attack is vastly superior.