Combat axes are in a horrible state identity-wise, everyone picks brutal momentum, fundamentally changing how the weapon works, turning it into a head reaping horde clearer, I liked the axe in vermintide much more, it deals good damage against armor, but sticks to the first target you hit with next to no cleave, the weapon had an identity, unlike darktide.
In my dream world, the combat axes will specialize in dealing decent damage to most enemies, but excel against armored enemies, while lacking good cleave.
Brutal momentum should be a perk exclusive to weapons that already cleave, like heavy swords, axes could have a toned down version, cleaves 1 enemy on headshots instead of 3, but increases weakspot damage by 25% instead of 15%, this will allow you to make a choice, do I go for the power increasing blessings, or do I improve my cleave (by a little) and weakspot damage.
I tried using the combat axes without brutal momentum, they truly fail at everything, the damage is subpar compared to most weapons, and the cleave is too good for a weapon that nearly doesn’t cleave at all in its base form.
Also, the recent buff to carapace destroyed one of the best things about the axe, DS needs to taste the nerf hammer (for real this time).
DS aside (it is just stupid), I think that Combat Axes REALLY need a damage buff against Carapace. I think that if they were decent against it, they’d be in a good spot. Honestly, it’s the only change I would make. I know Brutal Momentum is an issue, but they’d be unusable without it in the current state of the game. At least they still require you to hit headshots to get cleave.
One of the most fun (Fun =/= effective) builds I made using a combat axe without brutal momentum was a combat axe + shotgun combo, axe for elites and crushers, shotgun for hordes and ranged elites, but it did feel weak, and my damage was laughable compared to the team’s.
There is potential to make a great single target damage melee weapon, I think the axes could do that perfectly if BM wasn’t a thing, or atleast toned down.
On Zealot and Arbites, Antax can be used without Brutal Momentum and both power increase blessings as long as you take the respective cleave talents. You still have good enough cleave to deal with Havoc hordes. Martydom Zealot can run duel Power blessing Rashad with some disgusting results.
I haven’t tried them since the Crusher buff, although Power maxed Marty Rashad is still good into them. At the very least you don’t always need to run Brutal Momentum.
On the topic of realism vs gameplay vs lore-correct performance of weapons.
From a lore perspective: Power and Force weapons should be vastly superior to anything else against armor, and not require a “weapon special activation”, but just be baseline anti-armor weapons. And have cool-looking always-on force and power field effects.
Mundane weapons should just be worse at everything compared to power and force weapons. Chain-weapons should be somewhere in between power and mundane weapons in terms of dmg and anti-armor ability.
The funny thing is that even with combat axes, the one you are most likely to see is the Rashad.
It is “good”, Heavy headshot staggers crushers, light staggers ragers.
The problem with the game in the end is that most weapons are indeed pointless to use, when a single weapon within a category gets picked half the time.
And lets not kid ourselves, we all like to use weapons that actually do something. Because it’s pointless to use terrible weapons. Mobility is king in this game and the 2 weapontypes with mobility builtin just happen to have uncanny ontop of it.
The Antax has been my vet choice of weapon ever since I worked out the powersword hit like a wet noodle. I don’t disagree with OP, but there are so many damned enemies now that you need a bit of cleave action on your melee to keep up.
Re: Shotgun as a partner. Surely a shotgun would be your mob clearing go-to choice of weapon? 12 gauge: wide spread. Put a load of enemies down. Nope: not in DarkTide! Even with that “tier 2” manstopper blessing.
A lot of these weapons actually have great mechanical depth to fighting elites. The problem is you fight so many elites at one time.
Like any weapon with a guaranteed stagger hit. When Crusher and Mauler recover from those and you are close enough they throw a punch or half-swing. You can parry that and force them back into stun, and that can be overwritten again with the stagger special without incurring the lockout Crushers normally have (doubled stagger resistance for 10s).
Obscure and fantastic mechanics for bringing up low armor damage weapons go entirely out the window when dealing with a blob of mixed elites being healed by some trash unit so squeezed out by the slot system he’s actually a backline support.
The double barrel is super good for horde clear on Weapon Specialist Vet. Getting massively boosted crit chance for only a couple of melee kills means almost a guranteed manstopper proc chance and will even rip through H40 moebians.
Still nosey around sometimes…