Good to see you keep fighting the good fight.
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Absolutely loving the chainsword on my veteran (I am legitimately playing him more often than my others lately).
Only got bloodletter and savage sweeps on mine + vs maniac
Do I really not need the +maniac? That seems a little silly, but weâre so far from the previous iteration that was basically an angry club, I canât even be concerned about it.
I forget how many ticks the Eviscerator does on heavy attacks; is second tick Saw damage, or Rip damage? Iâd noticed Bloodthirsty proc on the latter (which explains why it doesnât work on Chainaxe, since it doesnât Rip on light attacks), but found it highly impractical to trigger in most cases, since enemies would typically die before the Rip damage triggered and anything that survived typically wouldnât survive until the Rip damage of the follow-up attack.
I canât remember if it was before/after the patch that I tested it, so it may be easier to trigger now, but it definitely seems more of a bug than anything else. And yes, I didnât write up a bug report because I was too lazy and it seemed like way more effort than it was worth to take advantage of 
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HVchainsword is 2 ticks. 4 for special. The rest i actually do not know!
Also: this thread has been inducted.
aggressive testing has begun. Chain weapon data probably by sunday.
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Initial horde data set is complete.
Obviously there is work to be done butâŚThe original testing from patch 13 showed promising results.
4 seconds is known to be within the margin of error. I had hoped we had landed on the inside track. Newer data using more rigorous conditions has expanded the gap between the Chainsword and the chain axe. The chain axe appears to be a deeply inferior weapon in horde clear conditions.
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Which would be fine if it actually excelled in a single target niche like it should. Look at this:
Max slaughter, thrust, damage rolls, and maniac perk and it still needs a headshot/crit or further Zealot boosting to kill a rager with a fully charged rev heavy. Come onnnnnnn. Ah well guess we just continue to abandon the rev heavies and ride the bleed wave with bloodletter. Not like Evic and Chord canât do basically the same thing and end up with basically the same single target damage (or in some situations more since bugged rampage lol).
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The light attacks feel soâŚweak too. Like theyâre okay when you hit that sweet sweet full stacks of slaughterer and every other buff in the talent tree. But before that, why am I using these keeps coming to mind. I want them to hit ludicrously hard because theyâre basically the âheavy attacKâ of the chain axe. The heavy attacks are the light attacks. Its a weird inversion weapon and that could be super cool if only it was implemented earnestly.
Light attacks do big single target damage only exceeded by the special, allowing you to choose how much time cost you want to invest in a target. Meanwhile heavies are for clearing chafe at a slow be reasonable rate. At least faster than the hammersâŚ
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Thanks for good insight as usual Deisu.
I landed a decent Chaxe on my Zealot and was also experimenting a bit. I hoped, that some of the stacking buffs (f.e. Headtaker) would synergize with Zealot talents related to stacking bleed&extra crit on bleeding enemies resulting in awesome boss DPS. Long story short they do not. I played few rounds anyway with the said chaxe with headtaker & bloodletter on it and while not atrocious, the weapon wasnât awesome either.
I am willing to give the chain machete a try, but RNG god isnât willing to provide (screw that crafting system, really).
Pity. Iâve soft spot for chain weapons since Doom.
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Huh⌠I didnât realise the Chainaxe heavy attack falloff still goes to 0 after the 4th target
I thought that all weapons had a non-zero minimum now 
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Bloodletter and slaughterer seem to be my prefered way to run it. Boss damage can be impressive for what it is. But happy to provide insight! I like the weapon, shame its so weak.
BonkâŚ
If they put 30 - 50% of 4th target damage as default target, Iâd be reasonably content. Iâd not noticed the lack of 5th+ target damage, since the heavies can now kill things on the first hit (so I see the red X and everything seems okay). It doesnât have to be on par with other weapons for horde clear - just comparing to the Chainsword on heavy attacks, chainaxe starts off rather nice, but⌠ye
Chainaxe does have big damage on the regular lights, but that has its own downsides. Revved light attacks vs carapace are the only revved attacks where the Chainaxe has a significant advantage.
What is the Chainaxe supposed to be good at? Besides making a lot of noise when you spam LMB 
Iâve always considered it somewhat more single-target oriented, but the Chainsword/Eviscerator can both do that better in most scenarios.
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âââbigâââ. For what it is it is still pretty pitiful imo.
This is a question Iâve been asking myself and I might even make a thread about it. Fatshark has no idea what they want to Chainaxe to be. CS is the light, spammy horde clear with decent damage and access to shred, and Evis is a big weapon thats good at pretty much everything. Chain Axe wants to fill the same role as the Evi imo but it just canât with itâs low damage and horrible attack speed.
So Iâm going to posit a few thoughts to the forums and let them cook for a bit.
- Light attacks need reliable stagger on elites. Like ragers, gunners, reapers, bulwarks (on flesh hit) maulers. But not crushers. Definitely on trappers, trappers need to be staggered on light hits from chaxe.
- Light attacks need excellent damage on elites and specialists and on bruisers. Right now the light attacks just start too low even if (with a million buff stacks) they get pretty good. Theyâre just too weak at start. It makes them feel awful to use until youâve killed a few things but then suddenly they feel really good right up until you get too much +Power and then they get confusing instead.
- Heavy attacks should be improved in damage to hordes a bit. Preliminary testing has shown that htis weapon is thunder hammer teir at horde clear, when it should be indignatus crusher tier. It shouldnât be a horde clear machine but it does need to be faster than the slowest weapon in the game.
- Shred attacks can be weaker than Heavy Chainsword against armored targets but should be better than chainsword.
I canât help but feel like fatshark preemptively nerfed weapons because of their blessings. For example, I just got back from playing some vermintide and I canât help but feel like the Great Hammer in VT2 is just miles ahead of the thunderhammer in everything except anti-monster damage and I canât help but shake the feeling that fatshark deliberately hamstrung the power of thunderhammer heavies because they assumed from square 1 that people would be boostmaxing them with Thrust IV, and the end result is that your THammer is anemic if you donât have thrust IV or donât have time to build up max thrust stacks.
Back to the topic at hand about the chainaxe, it feels like they deliberately set the baseline damage low with the assumption that youâd be rocking full stacks of Headtaker and Slaughterer, and kept the heavies weak because theyâre afraid of Thrust boosted heavies.
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I agree with you and I want them to take those blessings and delete them. The weapon just feels awful right now and thereâs no reason for it. Hammer too, theyâre actually so bad.
Patch 14 balance is shaking out to be kinda stupid in some ways. Like overall great, butâŚPowersword MK6 can two shot a crusher. You know what can also two shot a crusher? A thrust 3+ full stack + carapace thunder hammer Wow. Such POWA. One of these weapons has the fastest anti-horde TTK in the game and the other is a stick with slag on the end. Can you guess which one? Chaxe has the same issue. The other two weapons have great horde clear AND all the shred in the world from specials. The chaxe getsâŚwhat? Fun animations and low damage?
I honestly wish that every single blessing that is just straight up +power or +damage was removed. Theyâre just so polarizing and are obvious picks in 99% of cases. Vermintide sort of had the same problem with swift slaying, but I always felt that parry/opportunist/resourceful combatant were much more interesting upgrades. Even then, I feel like swift slaying was tame compared to the raw power boosts that blessings provide.
Iâm not sure what to do about the chain axe. I like how its lights bite into targets since IMO that really makes them feel like youâre using a chain weapon, but itâs also an objectively bad thing to happen to your character when youâre in the middle of a hectic fight.
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Its quite manageable even in hectic fights so its fine if it stays but its definitely an objective negative and thus it should have big rewards. If i have to do it three times on a dreg bruiser to kill it AND its objectively a detriment to me then its just bad. But if I can do it once per bruiser then we might have something. Or even once or twice on bigger targets. The time to kill needs to be dramatically reduced since its such a long and risky attack to chain.
On that note I had two ideas for it:
- Let special activation based blessings take effect on it. Bloodletter and bloodthirsty built into lights? Could be interesting. Maybe too strong but worth looking at it.
- Light attacks should not have headshot or bodyshot differences. Make light attacks do headshot teir damage multipliers on any strike. This isnât just a buff, its a mechanical choice. It means light attacks are treated as insanely dangerous to the enemy due to the shred behavior. It would increase their consistency too.
I just think fatshark needs to lean into light attacks. Its the most unique part of the weapon and people would enjoy it if it was good. I see the role of the chain axe as a hyper mobile elite sniping and specialist killing tool with a more defensive horde clear posture. So the lights need to be up to the task theyre designed for.
I feel like the biting attacks should either be more rewarding, or should be safer. Maybe biting attacks could innately inflict some bleed stacks, or maybe each and every bite could count as a hit for on-hit blessings? Those are thoughts for more rewarding.
On the safer end of the spectrum, what if the biting attacks innately had a suppressive effect like terrifying barrage? Thematically I think it makes a bit of sense that lesser enemies might be intimidated by more gruesome attacks. Although I guess thereâs room for debate there since one of nurgleâs themes is them feeling no pain or fear or even just being mindless.
On an unrelated note, I hate how Rev It Up only lasts for 2 seconds. If someone wants to give up offensively oriented perks for movement speed, why not make it more convenient with a longer duration like 10+ seconds? If they donât want the movement speed to persist through combat, then just make the speed boost end on attack (and maybe block/dodge)
Seconded on rev it up. I get that its for the actual rev but unless youâre memespeeding you give up way too much to take it.
I donât like the idea of melee suppression personally. At least not with the chain weapons. I see it floated for their special attacks too and all that comes to mind is that its not really much of a buff and kinda takes away some of the skill floor. Once you understand how and when to use these attacks it wonât be that useful and it does nothing to mitigate the actual issues the weapon has which is just beingâŚweak. Iâm not even arguing for huge buffs, it can still be bad at horde clear (though a bit better would be prefered). The light attacks just need solid base damage that doesnât take an age to get started.