First, if the power sword now gets one swing per activation, but three with power cycler, it seems like you’ve just changed power cycler from a luxury to a requirement. This is the exact opposite of what needs to happen. And second, if the power sword retains its high stagger and good damage values vs harder targets, it still has the potential to be the one-stop shop solution against everything for people who do have power cycler, whereas everyone else will probably find the high number of activations required too prohibitive.
I’m happy that the power sword finally got addressed, but this is not the way I would have done it.
Honestly, I really appreciate these threads. It condenses otherwise long and convoluted discussions into some straight up statistics you can interpret in a glance. Cheers for that.
That’s the same logic as Psykers asking for Deflector to be baseline in all Force Swords
You have to make a choice, having to make a choice is healthy for the game’s diversity, and no, Power Cycler isn’t mandatory, just like Deflector isn’t mandatory
The real issue behind what you’re feeling is the lack of meaningful other blessings choices, many blessings are downright terrible, and some others redundant depending on the weapon
Fatshark designers need to go over every single blessing and their distribution, and overhaul them so they’re all attractive, so that players make informed blessings decisions based on builds and not on “taking the good blessings because all the others are garbage”
Sure, nothing is mandatory in the strict sense of the word. But it’s mandatory in the sense that no other blessings can compete. And the issue isn’t a lack of other good blessings either, the blessing pool for power swords has some very nice options in it. Anyone who has power cycler will want to run it. Simple as.
But it’s true that blessings in general are poorly balanced.
Power Sword has 3 + Cleave blessings which dont really matter at all
Brutal Momentum, Sunder and Wrath
Correct me if i’m mistaken but i don’t think anyone would want any of these on a Power Sword
And even if you did, why would you want Wrath or Sunder over or in combination with Brutal Momentum
It’s pointless redundancy and distribution
Just one + cleave is enough for weapons where you’d want it, we don’t need three variants
If there existed a +dodge/mobility blessing instead for example, some people would consider that instead of additional energized hits
I’d argue the mandatory pick is Slaughterer instead
Simply put the powersword was over-nerfed. Its not so much the damage or attack pattern as much as the lore-breaking system of re-charginging the blade. Im not exactly sure what the best solution would be, but as it stands powersword is in an “awkward” state.
Oh I’m sure there’s some chaff in there as well. That’s not the point.
There are other good blessings available for the power sword, and my guess is most people would still run power cycler over those if they had access to it. Incredibly, the percentage of extra swings you get by running power cycler now stands at a whopping 200% (from 1 to 3)! I would argue that this patch actually increased dependency on power cycler, which is exactly the opposite of what should be happening.
The poll shows a pretty clear consensus and matches my own thoughts on the matter. The power sword was OP pre-patch but the nerfs went too far.
IMO what they should have done is get rid of the extra heavy charged hit (I thought that was a bug tbh) and just standardize on 2 hits per charge activation. Any further balancing can be done by tweaking damage/cleave values. In particular I would suggest nerfing charged attack cleave as opposed to damage because it doesn’t need to be “effectively infinite”.
If you only get the one charge it kind of dumbs the weapon down to caveman levels where you just charge-whack-charge-whack single hits and never bother to combo anything. It also makes power cycler ludicrously meta because you can still get a better-than prenerf power sword if you win the lottery and get a t4-only blessing drop.
I’d like to aim this at @Reginald as well, I don’t understand why, from a pure gameplay perspective, Illisi getting one attack per activation is fine, but power sword getting 1, or 3!!! with the right blessing is “unplayably unpleasant” or whatever.
I get that you have much better mobility and general safety with Illisi but the main point people seem to be making is that potentially charging before every attack is tedious. Again if you want max damage output for Illisi you’re gonna want to be doing exactly the same thing. It feels like there’s a noticeable double standard regarding what is ok for other classes vs what is ok for Vet. I can only assume this cognitive dissonance is born from the huge amount of privilege Vet has been swimming in since release.
Because there IS a double standard. I know this sounds ridiculous but veterans are actually terrible at melee compared to the other three classes. They have no long distance movement tech other than sprinting, which causes them to take double damage. They have no talents or class abilities that improve melee attacks. They also have by far the slowest stamina regen delay after dodging and blocking. So once a veteran gets engaged in melee they’re basically stuck there unless they can kill their way out of the situation.
In contrast psykers have the fastest stamina regen, they start to regain stamina almost before than they can stand up after a slide and can dodge circles around enemies without ever running dry. They can block using peril instead of stamina. They can also boost melee power at high peril and brain burst enemies on melee hit with kinetic flayer. If all else fails they can also stun a whole screen of enemies with their conical knockback ult, possibly setting them on fire in the process. Hence psykers have options to comfortably deal with almost any melee situation, even a full surround or being trapped in a dead end.
The illisi isn’t a good comparison for that reason, it only has superficial similarities to the power sword. You have to balance class specific weapons in that same class specific context and the power sword is largely counterbalanced by being attached to the worst melee class.
Vet also has the best Toughness and toughness regen by a country mile but regardless I do agree they are the weakest class in melee.
Not too weak to still be perfectly competent there on Damn with a myriad of weapons mind. Anyone who says Vet can’t melee effectively in Damn has simply refused to learn to be actually competent at melee combat (understandable, Vet do be going brrrrrrrrr with guns). Stamina can also be largely mitigated with stam regen on curios.
Regardless you’ve completely ignored my point. I wasn’t talking about overall weapon balance but the disruption or awkwardness of losing powered state every hit. Nothing you said shows how it is particularly any more jank or flow disrupting for power sword than it is for Illisi.
Yea with the up to 25% from high perils and the 6 warp charge feat for another 24% Psyker is nuts. Tons of breakpoints for stagger damage in melee like you’re an ogryn. Run a limb splitter axe with this and the sport is gone vs elites, they get knocked out of everything. Veteran literally just has +15% weakpoint damage for melee. Not having a busted power sword does point out the huge gulf between him and the other 3.