I was wrong. Stagger thp is much better vs Beastmen and Chaos hordes because it staggers a lot of enemies, but against Skaven it kills too many and ends up being somewhat on par with cleave thp. Cleave thp is better for targets it doesn’t stagger consistently (with the exception of shields, which stagger thp is superior for), and helps FK out if they need to focus one down like a boss, especially with maxed out attack speed. Note that it’s still not going to generate much thp on a boss or any single targets with cleave, but what it does achieve is stopping thp decay.
It also depends on a team’s kill speed. If they have a high horde kill speed stagger thp will be less useful since the 2H Hammer will often end up dealing killing blows to a lot of enemies because of the team’s overall damage, and killing blows don’t grant stagger thp. Some enemies also can’t be staggered while knocked down consistently, like Marauders.
This was tested under ideal conditions with hordes all within reach of the 2H Hammer in an adventure map. Stagger thp loses relative value if it’s not hitting the max number of targets it can stagger (it can almost always max out the number of targets its damage cleave can hit though however).
Overall, I’d say stagger thp is better, except on Merc who would still want cleave thp over stagger thp with the 2H Hammer because Merc makes it cleave a fair bit.
Slayer is just a very fast brick, Ironbreaker is far more useful for 2 reasons:
Because he can pull all enemies towards him, which allows every other player to just go ham on the enemies while Ironbreaker soaks up or ignores all the damage.
I main bardin and I have the opposite feeling: for me he’s the character with the most varied melee options (I might be wrong here, but I think he’s got the highest number of different melee weapons, followed by Kruber). I also have a thing for armor piercing weapons, so it’s kind of a given I’m enjoying him immensely.
I play greataxe on ranger, greathammer on ironbreaker, coghammer on engineer. Oddly enough, I don’t want to use those options on the slayer, so I have a dual axes and pick build on him. Sadly, this is a suboptimal melee choice on cata, since I can’t get his stronger talent, and I’m currently struggling a bit with him there.
Edit: these are my favorite playstyles, but I’ve used a shield and axe to awesome results when I truly needed more protection (FoW and AQD), and I’ve got a friend who swears the single hammer is a godly clutch weapon on the RV. My prejudiced reply is that if I wanted small weapons I’d be an umgi. Or an elgi.
But still, these are all good different options. 1handers for dodges, 2 handers AP, shields, and finally a few different somewhat spammy weapons.
I feel like Slayer nerfs would just make him even more unpopular when compared to Zealot. During the WoM beta when the Oblivious to Pain talents got reworked and before he got his hp increased from 100 to 125, he was honestly Bardin’s worst career. Slayer feels good again but if you start taking away from his melee he has literally nothing to over vs Zealot or other Bardin careers, Zealot has incredible thp regen, a crazy failsafe mechanism and access to ranged that isn’t throwing axes. Saltz also has several simpler generalist weapon choices than Bardin as far as attack combos go (at least in my view), more if you can land headshots well. RV has delete patrols with the MW pistol and get ammo back better than Outcast Engineer can - or you can build him for Grudgeraker horde clear, IB has a great ult if you’re good at using it and can be built very very offensively considering how inherently tanky he already is, plus you can build him for horde clear too or take a special sniping weapon.
I honestly agree with frosty, dual hammers are just barely in the generalist category for me, they’ve got amazing horde clear and that alone can often turn a situation from horde + elites to just elites, but the time to kill is painful when you have a lot of armoured enemies - specifically chaos warriors - to contend with. One or two is fine, a whole patrol is very annoying to clear with them, even without other threats.
Cog hammer definitely works that niche better, from the limited time I’ve had with it so far (I just recently got the last few DLCs during the sale). Dual hammers are great, I love them as a weapon and always have, but the heavies are clunky and require careful timing and dodging vs numbers. On falch (except vs CW) and A&F you can pump out dmg vs SV and CWs much, much much faster. You can deal with mixed hordes better too.
I feel like you’re trying to push the other classes into a niche that isn’t really theirs, ironbreaker has a ton going for him. Again, you can afford to be extremely aggressive on him with how much inbuilt tankiness he has.
You are right that builds seem largely focused around coghammer/dual hammers or shield weapons now however. The others could use some lifting up, but not by weakening Slayer.
1h axe is just pointless on Kerillian, that’s more an issue of what it competes with. It can sometimes be okay/ viable on Saltz, specifically bh if you go for horde clear ranged (volley, Griffonfoot) and need a backup weapon that’s not just your ult.
1h axe on Bardin is bad. It just has too many glaring weaknesses for me to like it, even on IB, which is his most forgiving career, I’d rather take 2h axe for both elite clear and horde clear.
Part of the problem I guess is 2h hammer and 2h axe both have horde clear on heavies and single target on lights, getting interrupted vs mass enemies is a problem.
War pick could use some sort of buff so it isn’t a meme. The heavies are nice but the lights just don’t offer much at all. Perhaps some more utility to some of these weapons - like damage partly ignoring shields on the pickaxe or knocking enemies out from behind shields + staggering them more easily on lights to set them up for an overhead?
I’m kinda puzzled you don’t like Foe-Feller but then think moving the 7.5% AS from Slayer, a net 2.5% more vs Foe-Feller RV, to all Bardin weapons across all careers (excluding cog and dual) would solve the problem. Foe-Feller is almost the same increase as the one you propose.
That aside, you’re right, Foe-Feller is a bland talent (and I still to this day don’t like Last Resort, total gimmick/annoying playstyle imo).
Rune Etched Shield’s problem is that it is just underwhelming, you can either get an easy 5-10-15% more power infinitely just by being near allies with blood of Grimnir, which depending on how tight your team plays is easy - it even lets you pass some ranged breakpoints just having one ally near (with property investment ofc, but no enhanced power needed) - or you can take Rune Etched Shield and get at most 10% for you and allies for only 10s by sitting and blocking 5 attacks. If you/your team are controlling the enemies in front of you, especially on a weapon with a proper shield bash (which the talent seems to be designed for), you’re not getting hit much and thus not getting benefitting from it at all.
Either the amount of added power needs to be significantly raised, at least 2x as much, or it needs a rework - if they don’t want to tread on FK with his staggering, then make it e.g. enemies whose attacks you block take 20% more damage for 10s (inc bosses for their blockable attacks), basically like Off Balance but without occupying your melee trait slot.
Blood of Grimnir isn’t a bad talent imo, if a bit boring - and it sucks when you’re the last survivor - but it ties into the problem of weird melee breakpoints with the post-WoM stagger system. FK at least has a persistent 15% power on himself + the nearest ally as an option. Perhaps changing Blood of Grimnir to 5% power for each ally remaining to incentivize the IB role of tanking and keeping the team alive by doing so.
Vengeance - I have to admit, I haven’t tried this talent, but it doesn’t seem bad, just everything in that tier is completely outshone by Gromril Curse. Tunnel Fighter used to be the meta until Gromril Curse turned up. I’m not sure how to handle it. Tunnel Fighter isn’t a bad talent at all, it needs competitive alternatives or it’s an auto-pick, it might compete with Vengeance if Gromril Curse wasn’t in that tier, but as it is, Gromril Curse wins out, the utility it offers is that high.
Drengbarazi Oath is weird since IB’s career skill and the reason for taking him is largely to keep your team alive. Perhaps if it shared part of Impenetrable’s effect to teammates but removed the taunt? e.g. Damage taken is reduced by 25% not 50% and block cost is reduced by 50% not 100% (for Bardin and his teammates)?
Oi Wazzok is a bit weak too imo, since if you know mechanics you can get boss aggro at least relatively often, if not maintain it across the entire fight. A slight buff e.g. bosses take 20% more damage over its duration might make it more tempting.
I’m surprised you didn’t mention Dawi Defiance since I don’t think I have seen anyone running it. On the one hand it seems pretty powerful when it triggers, on the other, it is RNG, and blocking a mass of elites with it doesn’t help much if you or your team aren’t actually able to take them out. I only ever see Rolling Mountain or Miner’s Rhythm but maybe I’m overlooking something here.
IB does at least have Smiter which is good for breakpoints, if a boring talent - unlike RV - but frankly I do sometimes wish the thp and stagger tiers just included all potential thp and
stagger talents for each class (have each button be the same height as they are now but shorter length and in one row) as they are rather weapon dependent in terms of efficacy. Ofc since the thp on crit/headshot nerfs everyone seems to run cleave now, or at most thp on kill - and more rarely on stagger which only pays off on skaven hordes and/or if you can stagger more enemies than thp on cleave cap provides thp for.
The stagger talent row is still a mistake imo but that’s a dead horse at this point. Several friends of mine picked up the game again after a long hiatus and all of them were like ??? wth over that tier. It’s both bland and not particularly self explanatory for new players, they all just run Smiter or Assassin if they can - or Enhanced Power on most ranged careers (I guess the latter is good for shields too but I’m not sure how many casuals care even know the stagger breakpoints). I still wish we got a level 35 talent row unique to each career, not just the lazy stagger tier
Honestly I’d get rid of Last Resort and Foe Feller and replace them with actual melee talents that are good enough to compete with Master of Improvisation, cementing RV has a hybrid career with ranged leaning compared to Outcast Engineer whose talents are much more ranged oriented (apart from his one DR one). I’d also add Smiter as a talent to RV and take out Bulwark so he at least has the choice to shift from ranged breakpoints to melee ones and in general it’d help improve the feel of his melee vs elites. IB already has Bulwark and it fits him way better than RV.
With IB if they could move the drakefire talent elsewhere that could be his dedicated melee oriented row too, with a new third choice to enhance his melee options.
No its not just a matter of what it competes with, it´s straight up not usable on any of her careers except handmaiden if we look at what waystalker does to make it viable…which is using hagbane/swiftbow to actually do 90% the killing.
If she actually ends up in a melee she holds block, finds a decent spot and pushes enemies before starting to shoot again until maybe 1-2 armors are left.
Greataxe at the present doesnt really hordeclear without a lot of extra stats brute forcing it´s heavies into being able to do so. 2handed hammer meanwhile is pretty reliable for slowing and holding the front but…it doesnt kill things well.
The damage and damage-cleave are too low without help.As for pickaxe, i wont jump down that rabbit hole, there´s been a lot of discussion on it and i think everything that should be said has been said about it.
One of those prior suggestions did include the idea that it´s heavies be allowed to ignore shields entirely for reference.
Nowhere did I say that a moderate attack speed boost would solve the issue. I said it was a quick and dirty bandaid solution. And that I didn’t have great faith in Fatshark’s ability to address the individual problems in a timely manner. Because historically they have not moved quickly on balance and this same quandary has persisted largely uncharged since the dual hammers were first introduced 2 and a half years ago.
Beyond that, it should be obvious that having a bunch of poor-to-mediocre weapons a free attack speed boost would stack with any talents the careers might have. No matter what problems the weapons & talents have individually, more attack speed is just good on any weapon. And raising the power floor will allow said weapons to be more useful to more builds.
Um… you can learn to use other weapons?
I mean both your top picks are ok, I’ve like 30 hrs with coghammer on my OE, but it’s more of a necessity to finish those achievements, not that I disliked the weapon.
Slayer does not have anything special, sure those dual axes are nice, but since the latest rework I stuck hard to Greataxe and Greathammer, cause IMHO those 2 make you an invulnerable machine of destruction on par with GK.
All the weapons Bardin has have their niches or specialities, or you have not just uncovered their true potential.
Well maybe warpick is a bit underpowered, or that’s just me and coghammer does everything better/slightly faster…
I feel your confusion cause I’m really confused myslf. Vermintide is quite a deep game, mechanically. However most of the playerbase just passes it. And it’s not the playerbase’s fault. I have read and read and read about thp on stagger and thp on cleave and after hours invested I just chosen to ignore it and go for something more understandable - thp on kill whenever possible.
I think it’s a big thing that FS missed. I totally agree with their minimalistic GUI and that by default there’re no healthbars or numeric indication of how strong you damage stuff. I don’t use those mods that do it cause IMHO it ruins the atmosphere, if I could I’d supplant all the numeric displays like health, ammo, ability cooldown, ranged reticle with some in-game, on character indicators.
That aside, when you’re not running a map, I’d like to know how hard I hit and what this or that talent does to my breakpoints. If this weapon would be better to use as a thp on hit or cleave…
Breakpoints are another, completely separate issue of the game. I’m too dumb and lazy to peruse that excel doc…
I went and tried it for a while, fighting hordes, especially goats, was pretty miserable if i tried to favor melee.
Its not garbage but if you try to straight up melee a horde without any ranged/ability support then it´s not really good either. Its not a weapon you´d wana start with in the chaos wastes as your main anti horde one i´d say.
You can do that with weapons like rapier, SnD, Coghammer or Mace&sword though.
A lot of weapons are indeed a ton weaker at the start of the wastes but from what i can tell you just need 1 weapon at the blue tier to hit a normal level of hero power. At least i was able to raise elf longbow damage (stromvermin headshot) by 20% going from not killing it to killing it.
For reference even if i did headshot and then bodyshot before upgrading it would not die…and while i would assume not all weapons have such a straightforward scaling i think it´s safe to say that at 2 blue weapons you´d be rather sure that you are at a normal or even higher than usual level of power.
So beyond that point you are suddenly easily hitting breakpoints rather quickly.
That said the 1handed axes do not actually do a lot of damage do they? I wana recall that from my testings their heavies at least did not do well at all. Meanwhile the light attacks, on elf, have such poor angles you cant reliably headshot.
Being one of the dumbasses who use random melee shrines a lot i´ve actually had quite a few good runs with glaives in the wastes, just 10% attackspeed and a blue one and you can smash through infantry hordes surprisingly fast.
Berserker types and bosses are hella dangerous though.
Chaos Wastes point aside, I feel like you’re under rating the greataxe a bit there. It’s not a terribly safe weapon, but to my understanding its infantry DPS is pretty damn solid. It’s not a great weapon to be solo frontlining with (unless you’re Slayer obviously), but it’s a pretty great weapon for quickly annihilating a horde with a fellow frontliner nearby. It’s held back on RV by stagger talents (I reckon he could use it very solidly with smiter) but it seems very solid for IB. The thing cleaves pretty alright since the BBB buff, I don’t think it’s a good example of a lacking weapon in Bardin’s arsenal TBH
Oh right, the hero power level upgrade. I usually skip straight to orange or red, if I don’t spend too much on random boons (it’s an addiction okay).
But longbow is actually one of the ones I was thinking about. Another is repeater handgun, it is so ammo inefficient starting out I’d rather have the handgun which can at least reliably get headshots at longer range.
Their lights are good, their heavies are literally just slower, I think so you can alter your melee timing, their heavies are literally never worth using afaik. Their lights have good killing power even on unarmoured enemies but you cleave like one or two, that’s it. Hence, with SS 1h is not bad, otherwise they’re lame ducks.
Can work well with drake weapons (although I’d still rather take another weapon on Bardin), Saltz Volley Xbow or Griffonfoot. Otherwise I wouldn’t touch them.
Enough AS makes axes good vs hordes too however. But I believe glaive can actually start to cleave more with breakpoints - at least some of the CW boons give you more.
Yeah, great axe could use a bit of a buff, but on IB it can do good work. He has access to Smiter and is resilient enough to compensate for a lot of great axe’s problems. And he has Gromril Curse. Slayer’s uninterruptible heavies + 40% DR on heavies + Crunch Leap are the only setup that beats it out as far as safely using it goes.
Hence why I believe RV should lose Bulwark and get Smiter in its place. It’d cement him a bit more as a hybrid, contrast to OE who is meant to be ranged and doesn’t have Smiter either.
Just FYI the heavies have better dps against super armour and that is basically their only use. Funnily enough someone was using 1h axe as a comparison for infantry dps in another thread. Long story short its overall dps is not good, though that’s not to say I think it’s a terrible weapon overall.
Eternal problem with buffing dwarf weapons is they can end up pretty insane on Slayer. Greataxe is already a really good pick on Slayer, I’m not convinced it needs anything, though I will say I don’t like the lack of cleave on light 3. I wouldn’t mind seeing it being turned from a single target attack into something more akin to the push attack.
Yeah the damage is good but i was thinking from a more all rounder perspective, i do not like my melee lacking the ability to fight a decently large group head on given how often that occurs.
…And while it isnt actually far off from being able to do that i do think it is a bit short on its own, i have used it on slayer while stacking attackspeed which did work but that feels forced still.
Me spamming rerolls from blue and up until i get something good or fail entirely is one too
It´s a question of “how much” i´d say x)
10% is a fairly low bar to reach i´d say, one that can be missed but at the same time can often be cleared.
Sure, but I mean most Slayers I see use dual hammers or axes + a backup weapon. Great axe is good on Slayer but you mainly whip it out for specific situations.
Worst case they can always make adjustments to Slayer, but right now dual hammers and cog hammer (or shields) are all I seem to see on Bardin’s other careers. I’m not convinced a few buffs to the other ones would make Slayer broken OP.
You madman. Lay off the blue dust.
Could be worse I guess. At least it isn’t green like a gobbo.
I dunno what to tell you since this is all anecdotal, but I’ve had a different experience. Had a Greataxe Slayer hard carry Cata maps and as far as I can tell he had greataxe out the vast majority of the time. I think it’s a pretty versatile weapon on Slayer since his kit covers pretty much all of its weaknesses. Personally I opt for greathammer + greataxe (coghammer replaces greathammer these days) when I play Slayer and I find it a very strong combination for him. I probably spend more time with greataxe out than greathammer.
Coghammer is uhhhhh, very strong so I’m not surprised you see a lot of it. Not sure that says much about the strength of his other weapons. If we’re looking for Bardin weapons that unambiguously need help I’d start with pickaxe personally.
I’m just hopping in here but that title smells like bait.
I use 1h hammer on IB and 2h hammer on RV, and both are fine.
I think 1h Hammer is one of the most underrated weapons in the game.
Yeah. They share a damage profile with the 2H Hammer’s light attacks. For superarmour, the dps for lights at 100% headshots is about 50. For heavies it’s about 80. I think the heavies are also slightly higher on the Stormfiend’s armoured head (20 with heavies, 16 with lights, too close to be conclusive). Tested with UI Tweaks with Swift Slaying uptime taken into account. I wish the heavies were useful for more things though.
I think giving the heavies a small burst of movement, like the Exec’s heavies but less, and making the heavies deal with shielded SV better (something like heavy > light lowering a shielded SV’s guard) would be good. Then let lights 1 & 2 have DD light cleave and light 3 have enough cleave to cleave a single Fanatic. Maybe not all of these changes I just mentioned, but hopefully that would make the 1h Axe a nice pick on someone like RV. Edit: RV having thp on kill would help as well.
These changes are easy for me to suggest, implementing them is likely more difficult than I’m aware of.
I’d have said the same thing had I seen the topic 4 days ago.
I disagree with the title and the post, and I genuinely don’t think Bardin is lacking anything melee-wise…
That being said, I am of the opinion that 1h axes are not satisfactory to use, mainly because of their garbage cleave - regardless of whose axe we’re talking about. They’re bad on Bardin, on Elf and on Saltz.
And though I’m fine with the 2h ones, a counter-intuitive thing about them is that heavy attacks deal more armour damage than light attacks, so, at least numerically, I see no point in using the light attacks. They are simpler to headshot with, but it’s not like the horizontal swipes are any harder…
About this thread, I think Bardin’s weapon is just fine when you are in normal Cataclysm, RV can use 15% attack speed with his foe-teller, and weapon and charm, he can use any weapon he wants (for synergy, it’s good to be staggering or cleaving weapon), IB is just fine with shields and dual hammers, one-handed hammer can be generalist weapon you want too, 2-handed weapon can be dangerous when you play him in higher difficulty. Well Slayer can use any weapons he wants with his attack speed, and 2 slots as you said.
I normally don’t play RV in beyond level(moded realm, or something), IB only with shield or dual hammers, Slayer with 2, 2-handed weapon only,
so I can’t say Bardin’s weapon is viable anytime. And pickaxe is just meme thing and I don’t use this even with Slayer anymore.
What I never understand Slayer is OP, I believe, Slayer is just not bad career, but I won’t pick him on Deathwish onslaught, and C2, C3,
Slayer’s specialty is about killing elites and horde among his careers, but IB can bring drake gun for horde which is safer option, troll hammer for bosses, and patrols. His mobility is extremely important when the game is almost doomed which is in clutch situation, but he got no great ranged option to kill disablers interrupting you saving your allies, so he’s always far worse runner than Handmaiden.
So his specialty to kill elites, but RV can easily wipe elites that aren’t CWs with pistol, Engineer too, so his best part is killing CWs.
Even then, Slayer is far weaker than GK as pure(almost) melee with his ults and execution sword. Some would say GK has lower survivaltiy or something, then how can you even play ranged careers? His popular weapon combination M&S and execution sword and 10% movement increase his survivality pretty well. And M&S solve his lower horde clearing power well too.
In this game, the greatest threat is too many elites with disablers, and boss with elites and specials, GK is far more better to fix this problem than Slayer as pure melee. He can kill hookrat that you can’t tag because of masses of elites with his ult.
With his yellow potion, everyone knows yellow potion makes him far more superior boss killer, and help his teammate immense.
I won’t compare Slayer to Zealot since Drakonhammer compared already.
