Chain Weapons are just wrong

[Reginald]

I suspect this thread is about to get a lot more relevant as veterans try to replace their newly bricked power swords. I welcome you to my humble domain. Help me make chainswords and chain axes feel cooler.

[alsozara]

@Reginald

their newly bricked power swords.

No power swords were bricked the blessing balance hardly changed if at all.

Edit: I know you were probably just being cheeky but there’s enough of this mentality in earnest going around.

[Reginald]

@alsozara

No power swords were bricked the blessing balance hardly changed if at all.

Edit: I know you were probably just being cheeky but there’s enough of this mentality in earnest going around.

Fair point. Yes i was just being cheeky. But i do want some love for the chain weapons! They don’t slap hard enough aside from the slappy paddle sound…

[alsozara]

Meant to say earlier but your PFP change is fire by the way

[MadCowMilk]

Psykers don’t make sense either, lets remove them. Fhe god emperor doesn’t ether, lets remove him too. J/K
Seriously though, this is a fantasy world, don’t apply logic too much when heavy metal esthetics are concerned. Those are universe immersion aspects.
The OP has things on point, FS needs to make the chain blades have more of a place, and more impact for the prep and animation lock you get for reving-up the blade.

[MadCowMilk]

I think one good starter is just roll the bleed effect from the blessing into the chain weapon automatically with reaving it. Perhaps less if not reved up.
As for the Eviscerator, it should be able to get through the bulwark shield when reved up and heavy swinging.

I have a list of several small things I’d like to see done to help the Eviscerator out, but these two things should do for a small and easy fix in the short-time.

[Reginald]

@MadCowMilk

I think one good starter is just roll the bleed effect from the blessing into the chain weapon automatically with reaving it. Perhaps less if not reved up.

I really think this is a strong idea. More stacks revved, less stacks unrevved. Improved audio/visual for some attacks.

Personally i still favor a better damage profile for these weapons in general but if we could get headtaker and/or slaughterer on the chainsword and eviscerator it’d at least be competitive. Kinda wierd to require blessings to be good though.

[Reginald]

I kinda wana keep this conversation going. But I want to add my updated view of the Chain Axe as well. So far I don’t have enough game time to pick out what is wrong with the Chainsword and Eviscerator. But the Chain Axe is actually in a good place. With the right blessings (much like many other weapons) it is actually excellent and it does great damage on light attacks, heavy attacks and special attacks. Its fast and mobile. Fun to use.

The Chainaxe just needs two things:

1. Better VFX/Audio on heavy attacks
2. it needs to not stick to hands, legs, or model origin point on light attacks/special attacks. This is what causes the (now rare) camera flail issue. Otherwise its latching is fine.

[Reginald]

played a hi-int shocktroop this evening. Was using the chain axe. There’s something funky about the blocks and blockpush attacks, like a weird delay that shows up sometimes where I’ll try to do it and maybe it comes up late or not at all. Despite having stamina in the bank. I just checked and I tried two blocks/shoves that did nothing despite having 30% stamina and at least 4 bars left. Lots of little interactions like this really hurt the experience. Dunno if its the weapons or the servers eating my inputs.

[Reginald]

Thought I would stop taking over the other thread with my Chainaxe ramblings and come here instead.
I prefer to play zealot and prefer the Chaxe on zealot, it has a good feel there with faster attacks. But it still is fun to use on Veteran. However one of its big failing points is it doesn’t really get going or do particularly well until after you start racking up buff stacks. It seems a bit on the weak side to start out with especially against poxwalkers.

I think it performs well enough in game but note the first swing and how unimpactful it feels (like all Chaxe heavy attacks).

Intentional Overcommit

Edit: I suppose this shouldn’t surprise me. The base heavy attack damage on the Chaxe is only like 146. My numbers are about 158 on body and 212 on headshot with my veteran’s chainaxe. it looks like I can get adequateish cleave damage on these swings at 5 stacks of +12.5% power

A quick test of full stack slaughterer 3 on heavy swing into a horde group looks like this:

287, 166, 109 and 90. 0 killed. I’d have to try this against my heavy sword or catachan sword for context. Maybe someone who knows how to use that fancy breakpoint calculator can shoot me a link and we can compare better than psychhanium tests.

This is a direct comparison of a combat axe with brutal momentum spamming lights vs a chain axe.

Chain Axe vs Combat Axe

What are my take aways? Chain axe heavy attacks are just ok and really require buff stacks to be decent. Probably becomes decent with headtaker, rising conviction and slaughterer. But otherwise they feel pretty lacklustre compared to other options. Handy for their high stagger. How are lights in a horde? Perhaps I will install the damage number mods so I can see.

[Reginald]

Given my enthusiasm for the Chain Axe I have been hard at work discovering all the little weirdnesses of this weapon. I’m going to say a few things:

1. Its one of those weapons that has blessing dependencies to even be useful. Like the heavy sword.
2. It has weird behaviors that once you get used to can be good rather than bad. I like this.
3. Light attacks can hit as many as 3 targets, possibly 4, once on high buff stacks and are useful in groaner hordes
4. heavies are useful against hordes and tightly packed bruisers/shooters when stacks are high
5. This weapon feels like someone’s crazy experiment but I’m here for it. Wherever you are you madman I had fun with your weird idea.

Here’s some issues I still have:

*I still think its a tad on the weak side. I’m only really competing with other zealots using Antaxes and Heavy Swords because I run slaughterer and headtaker 3 on my axe and have invested quite a few hours into learning the weapon. The fact that I can get both of those blessings is cool. I worry that the effectiveness loss of trying to run Rev it up or bloodthirst really would make the weapon feel a lot worse however. And by worry I mean I’ve played like that and its not abysmal but it does feel weaker.

*It mostly feels weak before you start getting +Power buff stacks. The added cleave, cleave damage, hitmass adjustments, damage increases, are all required to make the weapon feel good and it sorta has this curve where it starts off kinda weak and then climbs into a berzerker fury. Is that a good or a bad design? I can’t tell. On the one hand its cool and I like it, on the other hand when you are at a cold start and hit some chaff guy 2-3 times with a CHAIN AXE and he’s still alive that feels pretty dumb.

*Heavy attacks still have insufficiently chain-weapon-y SFX and VFX and could really use more VRRRRR and GRRRRRR when swinging them.

*Lights and Revs feel and sound great and I love using lights, after I taught myself how to swing them properly.

*Lights still latch on hands or on the model origin sometimes and that feels like a crime against my camera. The camera should always latch on body or head even if the weapon latches on an arm.

on a related note to this thread topic:

Petition to rename Eviscerator to Heavy Chainsword

The Tigrus MKII Heavy Eviscerator is improperly sized. It doesn’t have the right VFX and SFX. It sounds pretty good, aside from the paddle lights and maybe better audio mixing on heavy attacks. It also hits too weakly to really scream “eviscerator” let alone HEAVY eviscerator. I hereby petition to change the name of this weapon to reflect its true nature. Heavy Chainsword. In lore and in my 5th Ed rulebook he Heavy Chainsword is a 2 handed chainsword. The Eviscerator is an even bigger even mor…

[Alan91]

I feel you man. I try to used the chainsword for few months but i had to abandon it for other melee weapons, which ironically should be inferior due to the lore. LOL

[Ryshek]

Ugh, what you just said is so accurate it hurt me irl. The chain sword should feel amazing but it’s just clunky and low dps

[Reginald]

I know there’s a patch coming soon so whatever balance decisions that have been made have probably already been committed but after much thought, discussion, and play testing I’d like to weigh in one last time on the Chain Axe.

I think the chain axe is a good, even great, weapon with Slaughterer and Headtaker (both). I think it is OK with just one of those (headtaker for vet is required really). I think it is a bad weapon with neither. The reason for this is low base damage. I enjoy the cleave effects and weapon changes that +Power blessings give to the chain axe now that I understand the mechanics. But the low base damage makes this weapon feel bad in the hand any time you’re at a cold start. There’s a moment every time I start building stacks of buffs where my light attacks start reliably 1 shotting bruisers and shooters with a single two tick latch attack and that feels really fantastic.

Due to the plus power buffs available on the chain axe it may be hard to balance this right so I propose the following:
a moderate buff to light attack base damage. Not a lot. Just like 1.5x damage total (distributed between first and second tick). I think this would allow the various buff stacks to hit that feel good point faster without becoming some godslayer weapon that needs to be heavily scaled back. Notable a minor buff to base damage would allow latching attacks to hit those points of effectiveness on single target latch attacks sooner and more reliably before those +power blessings push their cleave into the weird-zone. (a zone I find useful in hordes and have no complaints about). This would make the weapon feel more reliable in general.

[alsozara]

Yeah this is pretty much exactly my position on the chain axe after using it a bunch (on Zealot for context). It’s a cool weapon that can do cool things, especially when your combing Thrust with Zealot Ult it’s a rather lovely, albeit high skill floor, elite killer. My only problem with it is precisely that the light attacks don’t quite have the oomph they ought to for their animation commitment. This makes picking off shooters in particular with it rather awkward when you don’t have the buffs up yet.

So yeah TL;DR I agree 100%. Just give it a nice light attack boost and it would be pretty much perfectly balanced in my eyes.

[Lt.DavinFelth]

I don’t get it. There are weapons that can do their job and there are weapons that cannot when you’re up against raw powers of Choas. Why couldn’t we have weapons that are made for levels like Sedition/Uprising and different weapons for Heresy and Damnation? You don’t try to destroy a tank with a pistol…

This whole talk about balance is just pissing me off, when at the end of the conversation waits castration of iconic weapons.

[Reginald]

Wanted to add an update on the Tigrus MKII Heavy Chainsword. I have been experimenting with a few builds and I have come up with a gimick that does work…though it does not impress me much.

Here was a random run comparison to a scoreboard I hard stored.

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This is a near perfect 1-1 I performed today. Two autopistol vets. Same ogryn both times. Only difference was a Purgatus psyker for Chaxe run and a Tacaxe zealot for Tigrus run.

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And this is just one more test run on Hi-int Chasm Station. I didn’t bother to keep a close watch on everyone’s weaponry but both Ogryn had Bully Butchers.

Here’s its basic performance against groaners. Obviously you can see the problem it has. Its decent for psuedo-powerswording but has all the same annoyances + its big and slow comparatively.

Bloodthirsty Eviscerator Test

[Archaon400]

Have you looked the critical damage on heavy cleaving attacks? It’s not very high. This is not the good use of the “bloodthirsty blessing”. Against a horde you are better off using the “heavy 1 - light 2” or “block attack - heavy 1” combo: it’s much safer and probably even deals more damage to horde than making those slow critical cleaving attacks. Bloodthirsty is for chaining special/elites kills with revved up attacks. I have it too, and don’t even use it tbh it is not that good, i’m instead running “savage sweep” and “rev it up” on my eviscerator and it is very solid! I should post a video of me using this build to show people eviscerator is in a perfectly good spot atm.

Also about perks eviscerator with good penetration roll already has good innate dps vs flak armor I would suggest putting infested instead it will help against poxwalker hordes and occasional pox hounds that can be tricky to target efficiently with this weapon.

[ssss]

@ssss

You should be able to cancel shredding with a block. That would make the weapons instantly more usable on Damnation.

Here’s another idea, though I’m not sure if it’s good:
Add “area suppression on kill” to chain weapon special attacks.

[Archaon400]

@ssss

You should be able to cancel shredding with a block. That would make the weapons instantly more usable on Damnation.

Not a fan, especially because the block push attack when the revved special is on is very effective at shredding a bulwark when he starts lowering his guard.
If you want to quickly cancel the revved up attack just switch between your ranged weapon and back to eviscerator, two rapid clicks, it’s almost instantaneous.