I’m like 95% sure all of Psyker’s bonuses are purely damage, not power or stagger, so while Psyker’s global damage bonuses are undoubtedly really overkill at the moment, they shouldn’t be affecting stagger break points whatsoever.
Veteran also have more toughness and toughness regen from kill than Psyker so he’s more tanky if you could retain it. Psyker just fold like paper after get hit 2-3 times.
I always noticed that when I get grab by mutie as Vet and get slams I just shrug it off most of the time but I would scream when playing Psyker because I’m pretty much naked after that.
Also even with downside from hidden stat if you have some semblance of melee combat knowledge you could still get away with it quite easily even in Damnation.
In the first place, class that can dish out ton of damage at range having worse melee support than other class is pretty normal thing in most games.
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Easy, force swords never had the multiple swings per activation. You cannot say the power sword between before and after the patch doesn’t feel objectively worse than what it had before the patch, moreso if you don’t have power cycler. 4 to 5 times the busy work/downtime for the same amount of powered swings. The negative connotations of actually having something taken away. That’s just not fun.
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I called it dumbed down because that’s what it now is compared to what it was before the nerf. There’s nothing inherently wrong with single activations, I just think that’s a poor fit for the power sword because it’s blatantly obvious that it was designed and balanced with multiple charged hits in mind. The push attack, light attack and heavy attack all have different speed and damage profiles. When you had at least two charged hits to work with there was a bit of strategy to picking what combo of moves you intend to make after each activation based on your opponent. The other issue with having single charges by default is that it makes power cycler ridiculously meta, it is now +200% to the number of charged attacks(!), none of the other blessings even come close and this isn’t really what you want to see after a weapon “rebalance”.
If it were up to me I would standardize the power sword at two hits per charge. If the sword is then underpowered or overpowered I would balance it by tweaking the damage/cleave/stagger, but keep the same number of charged hits. I would also nerf power cycler to add just a single hit for a 50% increase instead of a 200% one.
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Honestly I agree fairly well with all of that, I just don’t think it’s that bad in its current state either. Your ideas are better than what they did I’ll give you that.
They are stuck there if they pick a melee weapon that gets them stuck. The Power Sword always was a win harder weapon. Not one that saves a run when guts hit the van.
I never liked to pick the PS up for that reason.
And now its killing power got neutered, without changing anything else. All I can say is that the current PS without Cycler is… Well… I rather bring a catachan than that. How it checks out with Cycler more lucky people than me have to figure out.
The only thing they changed was the number of charged hits. It used to be two, with a free third if you only used heavy attacks. In that sense Power Cycler is still a straight buff because three charged hits that can be light or heavy is more than we had before the nerf. Pretty silly way to “rebalance” things all told.
Well two things:
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I do not play Psyker very much and was leaving it up to the psyker players to tell me what was good or not. I haven’t rolled a decent Illisi and so I am not qualified to judge it. For all I know it feels awesome to use and has a sweet normal attack pattern that feels great and the force attack is a side benefit.
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Force weapons and power weapons are different classes of weapon. Its not lore accurate for a force weapon to cleave like a power weapon (to my knowledge). But I am not opposed to this if its fun and cool. So I was going to let other people talk to it until i had time to research it myself.
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Thank you so much for putting this together! Really helpful way to collate all the feedback. I’ll make sure to share this with the devs for consideration.
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A classic vt2 nerf. You’d solve all your problems fatshark if you just gave darktide players agency.
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Illisi can do well with one attack per activation, because it has the mobility to compensate. Furthermore put Slaughter on that thang and the weapon special becomes an afterthought.
Power Sword lives and dies by being able to clear stuff in front of it. It is hellbound on getting its activation of, but one swing is not very impactful and Veteran’s low stamina recovery makes having to dodge every 2s for a reactivation very tedious.
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I’m just putting out an idea that the dev’s might have already thought of, but I would like to maybe get some people thinking on it.
What if the Power weapons (Power Hammer, Power Sword, and Crushers/Mauls) had a time of use instead of a number of uses per charge.
Example: For the Power Sword upon using your weapon special you get 10-15 sec of charged hits with the weapon and a CD of say 30 sec before it can be used again.
For the Power Hammer it will be shorter because it is more for elite kills and have 4-5 sec of use with maybe 6-7 of CD.
These are just some examples because as of right now you have to spam your special button in-between attacks and it feels kind of clunky in combat and it kind of takes away from the lore feel of a special attack. this also make it so to you as a player must make the decision of do I use my CD for this hoard or save it for a emergency.
I agree with this and it doesn’t feel right for a power sword to be off most of the time its used. Its certainly not accurate to the lore and its not cool or fun. I think I said it in another thread but I am not playing Darktide to enjoy a perfectly adequate normal sword simulator. The other power weapons are in the same boat to some degree but i think its more tolerable in the case of the Thunder Hammer and Crusher given the damage boost scale and utility they provide. Though i will be proposing redesigns for those weapons in an upcoming thread. The power sword isn’t supposed to be hitting with the force of a 1000 suns its supposed to solve the problem of heavily armored enemies. And, as i see it, it was originally designed to be paired with a plasma gun for horde clear the same way the flamer was designed to compliment the thunder hammer.
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Power Sword was over nerfed. Compared to the low quality of power weapons for other classes, I’d have rather seen those and shared weapons brought up a few notches before we killed the PS.
Feels like the blessing was introduced as a RNG bandaid to repair a heavy handed nerf.
Build the other weapons up before taking a swing at the meta. It compliments the meta to fix struggling weapons and bring them into the meta rather than reduce a meta weapon to such an extent.
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I rolled myself a decent Illisi and have been playing it. I already had a good Deimos, which I like very much as well. Turns out my “for all I know” is exactly right about the Illisi. The illisi feels great and is super fun to use. Its normal attacks are really pleasant, I feel quick and effective, my heavy attacks are really good most of the time since I can bob and weave out of combat and I only use the force attack to go for big wins. The high dodge count and mobility makes it really safe for me to get in and out. I wasn’t shy at all about getting stuck in on melee just to test it out and, interesting to me anyway, I’m averaging about half or less damage taken as Psyker than Zealot. Which is putting me closer to 2-300 health damage taken in a given damnation run.
My powersword, which is a 358 with excellent distribution of stats, cannot one shot a poxwalker on an unpowered heavy swing. It cannot oneshot a groaner on a light swing. But my Illisi can. This thing is sweet.
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It should be able to on head shot with slaughterer. Illisi does have better first target damage for the swing but the rest of the damage cleave is pretty similar better them, it’s just that Psyker has pretty crazy bonus damage these days.
Huh what?, my uncharged Power Sword can kill 2 groaners and one shot pox walker with one heavy swing while having Slaughterer up. And it’s not even have max damage or anything.
Also PS can have Brutal Momentum.
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Here I demonstrated what post-nerf Power Sword can still do. I frankly don’t know how anyone can say with straight face that it’s unusable, trash or hot garbage now.
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And the some of the same people who cried for PS nerfs already start demanding illisi nerfs. Not so loud yet but give it time…
The main complaint isn’t the power but the fun. Yes you still can kill with it - but it isn’t fun to use anymore.
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The illisi can basically do this with no buffs at all. Its nice that slaughterer makes the powersword better but its incomparable how much nicer it feels to use due to its high mobility. The heavy sword is extremely blessing dependent so some weapons are like that. Is the power sword now such a weapon?
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