As it says in the title, the majority of Bardin’s arsenal of melee weapons feel like complete rubbish on all but one of his careers. On the majority of RV, IB, and engi builds I feel compelled to choose between only the dual hammers and coghammer. These are the generalist weapons that can excel regardless of other considerations. They have the innate combination of safety and damage that players are looking for in weapons.
This is quite the opposite of most of the other characters. Kruber can utilize spear, spear & shield, bret sword, and mace & sword effectively on all careers (that can use them). Saltzpyre has rapier, falchion, axe & falchion, and billhook. And the less said about the elf the better… Sienna has a similar issue, but she’s also got way fewer melee weapons to start with so it feels less egregious.
Slayer gets around this problem by just having a boatload of attack speed & extra damage built into his kit. This allows Slayer to use every weapon competently, even stuff like warpick that is generally seen as one of the weakest weapons in the game.
Conversely on something like Ranger Vet or Ironbreaker your only melee damage boosts are from talents. Talents which are either generally weak, inconsistent, or have poor uptime. What are you to do in such a situation? Well, most players I see just fall back on the generalist options: dual hammers & coghammer. It’s really boring.
So what can be done about this? Imo, the easiest attempt to remedy the situation is this: remove the Slayer’s passive 7.5% attack speed buff and apply that increase to every other dwarf weapon except the coghammer & dual hammers. That would raise the floor for the other careers, wouldn’t harm Slayer very much, and wouldn’t require the amount of dev time that devising more elaborate, specific buffs would take.
Slayer is already far from overpowered and should just not be nerfed, even if the dwarf´s weapons could use some love here and there.
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Come to think off it, but dual hammers is not a generalist weapon…coghammer is to a degree but not the dual hammers. What they are though, is a potent melee anti horde tool, but not against mixed hordes with elites in them.
1handed axe´s are crap in general, takes way more to make it “generally viable” than that if we just look at what handmaiden pumps into hers. And even if you buff those weapons as such it wont change the game any noticeable way when it comes to lasting effects of diverse builds.
The problem lies with the dwarf’s weapon being niche, each weapon is good at one or a few things but have a glaring weakness or several as well which means they will struggle in general play more. That isnt something you solve by making them better at their niche, at best you just end up making a weapon that is like keri´s pre nerf glaive.
What do we get if we give greataxe better hordeclear via faster heavies? Coghammer but with a different flavor.
What do we get if we make 2handed hammer better at stunlocking hordes and crushing armor? Still a weapon that sucks against bosses and actually killing the hordes except on slayer.
Bardin is already great at whatever he wants to accomplish in my experience with him so there is no need for much change (exept for maybe one handed axe but that goes for everyone’s) you want to use dual hammers slap some trollhammer torpedo for anti armor and boss damage and watch that CWs fly. if you have minigun even better. you want anti armor melee? go with shield and axe or anything that deals armor damage and get the grudgeraker or drakegun if you’re using ironbreaker. he exells at many things very well. I havent been able to do that efficiently with other classes yet exept for Elf which I heard is not so surprising for Elf. my point is you can make it work with any weapon with bardin if you equip a good range weapon which he has plenty of choice. I even played with 1h axe for a while.
They still wont feel good, and if they actually do, like say greataxe starting to clear hordes, then they are effectively working the same as coghammer.
At that point you can just ask yourself, why ever play slayer? The other careers wont have any significant enough shortcomings in melee and he´ll still have the ranged problems. The one argument i can buy is letting IB get some manner of melee buff.
You can already get 5% attack speed buff on RV with foe feller. Attack speed isn’t what prevents him being good with 1H (or 2H) axe, it’s his lack of access to Smiter and THP on kill. The IB has both of these talents and 1H and 2H axes are perfectly fine on him.
Having both THP on stagger and THP on striking multiple enemies is stupid; as is having both Bulwark and Mainstay. This is the real problem, limiting the effectiveness of some weapons. You have the same problem on Unchained with a dagger.
Admittedly I don’t know what the coghammer is but I really enjoy the 2 handed hammer for its wonderful cleave / stagger / armor damage, and the hammer n shield for all the great benefits of having a shield with a weapon that staggers well.
The great axe is pretty viable too, the problem is always attack speed but if you get into a rhythm it works well.
I find a place like cata expeditions to be pretty much sad slayer noises right now, while all other of Bardin’s careers have a much easier time, particularly in the beginning. On RV & OE I usually run an oppo 1h-hammer. That being said, I agree that there’s a problem with Bardin’s melee arsenal overall, but I don’t think attack speed is necessarily a fix. I think it’s more of case of most weapons lacking mobility and those 2 careers in particular being severely wanting in terms of staying power.
I’m extremely confused by this OP.
All of Bardin’s melee weapons are viable with all his classes.
I use the warpick on ranger and I’m completely fine. I can use 2H hammer on Ironbreaker without taking any damage at all.
Engineer coghammer wrecks face.
Where is the issue?
The better fix would definitely be sprucing up the weapons individually and addressing the talent issues. But given that it was stated last summer that there was supposed to be a BBB in the winter of 2020 that never materialized… I’m not holding my breath for any big changes any time soon.
More attack speed is just a shortcut bandaid, but at least it could be applied swiftly and without many knock on effects.
The question remains: why would anyone want to? Just for memes or because you’re bored of the better alternatives? How’s that any good? It’s the swiftbow problem writ large.
The reason why I’m using the warpick exclusively on ranger is because it’s the weapon that fits that career the most, nothing more to it. There’s also no reason not to use it, because it is objectively a good weapon.
I believe it’s safe to say you’re in the extreme minority with that opinion. I can’t imagine a good reason to touch the thing outside the modded realm, but more power to you.
I agree with the rest of your points but I don’t understand this one at all. Stagger thp makes him extremely safe with shield weapons, which is a great option to have, and cleave is the most consistent and widely useable thp talent in the game. The only Dwarf weapon I can think of that would benefit more from on kill is 1h axe. I’d rather have cleave thp with greataxe any day of the week.
I don’t see how you could have better weapon coverage than stagger + cleave. Replace either one and he’ll lose more weapon viability than he’d gain.
but if you take the attack speed out of the slayer and put it on to every other weapon there is nothing left that makes him special anymore. might as well make dual axe available on everyone and delete the career.
