It’s the same issue power sword has in terms of usability and feel.
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Well the Hellbore is definitely a balance thing, weapon absolutely tears in all situations and has a built-in between the eyes. However the Chain weapons are just bad, and not even worthwhile by comparison.
What if the special attack was your gorey strikedown for damage and sticky rev? And regular moves just did the whole chainsawing thing without sticking. Maybe make a heavy attack transform into a rev stick when charged, idk.
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But you know I’d love it if chain weapons were strong enough to be fairly compared to a helbore. Slowish to draw because you have to turn it on, but then you get to go to town on hordes.
Yeah, sawing through the hordes sounds badass. I remember someone else suggesting sticky attacks could cleave through an enemy if it died before the attack ended.
The way I keep picturing it is that the weapon cleaves semi-normally but has vastly superior damage distribution within its cleave limit, cuz the blades are spinning.
Leave the big sticky attacks for when you want to hate on a particular elite.
Full disclosure, I doubt fs would actually change the weapon special on chain weapons so drastically. Wish they would because I don’t see a fix that isn’t being able to que the rev attack forever and/or trash cleave so you don’t have to worry about a groaner diving to save a rager’s life.
Wouldn’t it be great if the chain weapons blood and gore would accumulate on you along the mission, and then you’d have a glorious close-up during the end cinematic?
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Tl;dr of what I think:
Boltor = lore friendly vs damage dealt and difficulty of handling (for regular people like us)
Hammers = very poor
All chain weapons = poor but especially the eviscerator that should gain like 1 meter of blade and hit harder at the expense of ease of use.
Not saying the other stuff needs to be nerfed NECESSARILY, but the lore important weapons need a buff.
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I’ve tried a bunch of damnation matches with the eviscerator and I agree it just doesn’t hold up at all. If you don’t have savage sweep then good luck, it’s insanely worse.
It feels GREAT in malice when you’re just cutting crowds literally in half, but anything above that it’s just disheartening that my (supposedly) 2 handed chain sword is slapping people around like a paddle while some dude with an axe is just mowing down hordes.
Just give me kruber’s executioner sword but in chain form pls
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To further expand the 40k RPG discussion from earlier, here is a table from that system including all weapon types (including some not yet in the game) you might expect to be particularly good against armour:
Weapons already in the game are marked by an * . Red are weapons expected to be exceptionally effective against armour, while purple are less effective.
Besides raw damage, qualities of particular note are:
(Click for more details)
Pen (Penetration)
Reflects how good the weapon is at cutting through armour. When a shot or blow from this
weapon hits a target, reduce the target’s Armour Points by the weapon’s Penetration, with results of less than 0 counting as 0 (i.e. the armour provides no protection at all). Then work out Damage as normal. So, for example, if a weapon with a Penetration of 3 hits a target with 5 Armour Points, the target only counts as having 2 Armour Points against any Damage the hit causes. Note that Penetration has no effect on fields, but it does affect cover.
RoF (Rate of Fire)
This tells you if the weapon can be fired either on Semi-Auto or Full Auto and how many rounds or charges it expends when doing so. A weapon’s RoF has three entries to indicate the modes a weapon can be fired in. The first entry indicates whether the weapon can be fired singly (with an S). The second entry indicates whether or not a weapon can be fired semi-automatically, and the number listed describes the number of shots fired when the weapon is used in this manner. Finally, the third entry describes if the weapon can be fired on full automatic, and how many shots are fired when this happens. Any mode in which the weapon cannot be fired is indicated with a “–.”
Some weapons can be fired in more than one mode. If this is the case, each of its different Rates of Fire are listed in its profile. Characters must choose which mode they are firing their weapon in before making their attack.
Semi-Auto Burst
The attacker makes a Challenging (+0) Ballistic Skill Test. A dice result of 94 to 00 indicates the weapon has Jammed (see Weapon Jams, page 255). If he hits, he scores a hit for the initial Degree of Success plus an additional hit for every two additional Degrees of Success. The number of extra hits scored in this manner cannot exceed the weapon’s semi-automatic rate of fire. Extra hits can either be allocated to the original target or any other targets within two metres, provided none of the new targets would have been harder to hit than the original target.
Razor Sharp
Certain weapons or ammunition have the ability to slice right through armour if they hit just right. If the wielder scores three or more Degrees of Success when rolling to hit with this weapon, double this weapon’s Pen when resolving the hit.
Tearing
Tearing weapons are vicious devices, often using multitudes of fast-moving jagged teeth to rip into flesh and bone. These weapons roll one extra die for Damage, and the lowest result is discarded.
Maximal
Maximal weapons have two fire settings allowing the wielder to either use the weapon at its lower setting to conserve ammo and allow a higher rate of fire or make single powerful blasts that require the weapon to recharge between shots.
Before making an attack, the user can choose to either fire the weapon normally, in which case it uses the profile detailed on Table 6–9: Ranged Weapons, or to fire it on Maximal. When the weapon is fired on Maximal it adds 10 metres to its Range, adds 1d10 to its Damage, and +2 to its Penetration. If it has the Blast Quality, then this is improved by +2; i.e., a weapon with Blast (3) become Blast (5). The weapon also uses three times the normal amount of ammo per shot and gains the Recharge Quality.
Melta
Using intense blasts of heat to excite particles and carve away armour, these weapons can slag even the hardest materials if fired from a close enough range. This weapon doubles its Penetration when firing at Short Range.
Feel free to make your own conclusions based on this, but I think it’s pretty clear that more mundane Chain Weapons should be decent at cutting through armour, but not stand up to weapons more specialized at the task.
The exception of this is of course the Eviscerator which should be outputting near Thunder Hammer levels of damage to heavily armoured targets. As previously discussed however, the Eviscerator isn’t currently in the game, and unfortunately I couldn’t find a profile for the Heavy Chainsword.
As for the Bolter, it should be moderately effective against armour, and comparing it to the Plasma Gun on this table, seems decently balanced against it currently in-game. Compared to the Thunder Hammer (and Eviscerator) however, it should be doing comparable if not less DPS.
The 40k TRPG’s are similar to Darktide in that ranged combat is much more safe than being up close, but you are appropriately rewarded in them for risking melee combat. Melee weapons in general out perform non-heavy ranged weapons in their time to kill and overall DPS, at least until you start factoring in specific class abilities and talents.
When it comes to horde clearing, melee weapons certainly fill this niche. But for individual targets, ranged weapons really are more effective on top of being more safe. I really agree with @Reginald that the few armour busting melee weapons in the game should be bumped up a bit to be appropriately effective at their role even before we factor in class bonuses and talents.
So, even if the new update adds some of these for the classes, the base weapons themselves should be improved. This is doubly true if enemy health pools are getting bumped up, as it’s been indicated they might.
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They aren’t fun but they are good, in the case of Eviscerator especially it is S tier. God tier
Ironically the 1hand Chain Sword is the most fun and the worst to solo with
Chain Axe’s aoe push and stamina efficiency is very good for smashing through crowds to get to objectives and teammates
For Eviscerator you just have to learn block canceling, and sprint sliding timing and technique, and general movement. These will help with all melee weapons as well
Then, Eviscerator is crazy good solo
But it is boring. So if in that Tl;Dr there in this thread, there is a good idea for a fun redesign, I am not opposed
While I wouldn’t put it in S tier, I’ve recently come back to the Evis (I always thought it was eh) and I’ve started to warm up to it. I’m currently using Flak/Infested and Savage Sweep/Bloodthirsty (although Rampage would be an alternative option)
Block Attack → Heavy → Light → Light → repeat gives good horde control and reasonable horde clear, while providing enough time for your stamina to replenish*. I haven’t figured out how the +100% toughness on melee kill is versus the 5% toughness regen near 3+ enemies, but the former feels viable for the weapon.
The special attacks are the special attacks; I can’t one-shot a mutant (haven’t tried with +Maniac damage) but I don’t have anything to add that hasn’t already been discussed heavily in the thread.
I don’t have any specific thoughts on how to tune it, but I’m beginning to wonder if it’s as bad as people make it out to be, or I’m missing something.
Funnily enough, it feels like a good counter to janky poxhounds; the weapon’s reach generally lets me catch them with a hit out of mid-air (and if its a revved attack, RIP)
*I am using a +3 stamina curio, which may influence this.
Pox walkers are the weakest of enemies.
Yet the strongest chain weapon cannot kill them even with the heaviest blow.
That cannot be right.
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Aren’t groaners the weakest, at 200HP/unamored? I think poxwalkers are 300HP/infested.
(personally, I’m not a huge fan of “Will it one-shot” as a measure of a weapon, since it ignores other valuable qualities of a weapon, but that’s just my opinion)
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Yes, you are right. My bad.
Sure, there are other qualities. Still, it’s sad.
I can tell you did your research one thing I can tell you is there is a difference between a space marine chainsword and a normal human one. Keeping that in mind, things like carapace would have a little resistance to the melee attack if there isn’t enough force put into the reving of the blade. There is a lot of history where chainswords also get gummed up after long period use and trying to cleave through enemies rather then make them bleed out through light attacks.
Besides the gummed blade issues… I feel they just wanted all weapons to be equal and have the option for different weapons while not having one weapon be too overpowered compared to the next. They are trying to keep things balanced so no weapon is useless.
Regardless of balance, the sounds and feel of the weapon are off I can tell you that much. While the weapon does seem to lack some damage most of the damage is rather fair for balance reasons. I do feel the light attacks should do more damage and be closer to the heavy swings.
In the end I can’t really say much. You want a lot of changes that could take them almost a full rework, and I feel compromising and understanding what the game is trying to achieve might allow them to implement a fix rather than spend days on trying to appease a full rework.
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The heavy chainsword seems to remain not an eviscerator in Patch 13 but the damage buffs to the weapons, on first look, appear quite nice. With the build i slapped together and the blessings i have my chain axe was dealing 600 total damage over 2 ticks and that was basically what i suggested.
From what i can tell the audio/visual issues i identified remain. But at least hitting people actually harms them now. I look forwards to exploring the changes in detail.
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Definitely needs more dismemberment and bodily damage when hitting with Chain weapons…
Now they feel like hitting with a metal pipe that makes sounds like a chainsword, while revving makes it an actual Chain weapon…
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What do you think about the current state of chain weapons after the patch, overall?
Personally I’ve only used the Cadian Assault Chain Sword with vet. It feels incredibly powerful right now especially when you use Bloodthirsty and Bloodletter. I’ve literally been able to solo bosses (yes chaos spawns too) as an officer veteran and commando veteran with it. It’s incredible fun, but I feel like it might be a bit too powerful, what are your thoughts?
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So far i don’t think they are necessarily OP when stacked up against the other options on the field. But its really early in the balance changes for me to say. There’s all kinds of silly crit builds going on too. I did dip my toes into that with commando vet with a shred/devstrike chainsword and it felt great but still weaker than my pretty mundane zealot build. My hot take, at this precise moment, is that the chain weapons are right around where I would want them to be from a balance perspective.
The special attack is high risk with good to great rewards, and while more powerful doesn’t seem to really hit that much harder than it used to on balance. The chain axe feels FANTASTIC and my build has seen numbers as high as a combined 600 damage on a mauler bodyshot for a well buffed light attack which is (notably) precisely what I proscribed in my big chain weapon video. I also like that its a bit more responsive while preserving the locking animations. The heavy attack changes are delightful and its been very fun to swing into hordes and not get stuck on the third or forth guy right away.
Heavy Chainsword is STILL not an eviscerator but it IS really good and strong now. It feels fantastic and is a blast to swing around. I crashed a basic damnation game with some level 60~ players and absolutely stole the entire scoreboard. That doesn’t mean its OP because it didn’t feel it to me. My build lets me run FAST so I kinda just ran ahead and solod like a jerk. But it definitely hits harder than it used to by a lot.
Overall I use the word “feel” here a lot because I am judging based on feel and general performance but I cannot really say for sure. I haven’t had time to preform my detailed testing, I hope to find that time this weekend.
Last detail here - most of my sound effects and visual effects concerns remain. Despite the higher damage and more satisfying kill capacity the weapons don’t hit right.
My final thought is:
I am really happy!
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TBF, Zealot is pretty gnarly right now though. I haven’t played much with mine atm, but I’ve been consistently getting folks in T5 runs that average out between 600 to 800k melee DMG, and can get more if they’re minmaxing. It’s not very fair to compare with commando vet, though he is viable at least, and relatively pretty powerful if you stack rending.
Anyways, I appreciate the nuanced take, and prompt response.
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Huh. How should I build around it? Heavy just felt… underwhelming, still, in Damnation, and I was running the maximum damage (left side of the tree) load out. Should I poke around perks and blessings instead?
