hah! i have the same weapon, got it yesterday. i have never tested it. thx for confirming my idea that it should be ok to use with the above blessing setup.
Regardless of what you think about how PS and Flamer were affected, this patch was an absolute hamm-fisted knee-jerk reaction to a loud vocal minority of sweat-lords on this forum. It drove more people away than it retained.
Focus on fixing game breaking bugs, and BOOSTING other weapons. This balance patch did nothing to improve the community outlook on darktide.
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i agree with you 100%, just fixing yhe PS bugs would be enough, seeing whats going on and then probably apllying 1 or 2 nerfs. not freaking 5 changes to PS in one patch
condisering that changes for all 5 things were not even in the same section of changelog, it makes me think that two teams working on changes were not even aware of each other doing
Weird. Steam charts say people did not care. But you must have some greater insight into that. Ofcourse.
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Finally can respond after playing and only thing I can add is : the third poll lacks option " itās in ok place from where it can be tweaked"
Well, I let you see what can we do with a PS that has PC
Here the video (only on youtube - lasts 1min48 - Hab Dreyko - Damnation difficulty)
Here the weapon:
Sunder and PC on one sword? Good lord man its been graced by the emperor himself!
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I strongly agree with this statement. I think its more ok for a melee weapon to be OP than a ranged weapon. If a melee weapon is being ātoo goodā it still can only kill things in melee. If I want to participate more I can walk 3 feet away and have something to hit. But with the flamer if/when it was OP thereās nothing for me to do but wait.
Frankly, the more I think on the power sword the more I feel that a reversion of the nerfs is the right call. It is INCREDIBLY powerful. Definitely OP. But Iād rather the power sword be OP than just āgoodā and Iād rather we look at how to balance it some other way than making it crummier to use. I also think that un-powered attacks should be just given the powered attack effects. One thing we could do is get rid of or rework power cycler to be less powerful. Its probably the biggest issue with the power sword from a balance perspective.
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The MAIN problem is that you have to use your special attack at all times to make it a good weapon. Forcing you to click an awkward button to in the middle of a fight. This game is supposed to be fun not annoying. It is a PvE game that has to many bugs to be balanced yet and making weapons FEEL bad is not helping. And stating things such as " But if you use THIS Blessing and This Blessing it will feel better." when there is a Crafting Lock with heavy RNG to get blessings, that is not an answer.
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Considering how many weapons are heavily dependent on good blessings to even be viable I agree and disagree with you. Yes, the weapon should feel good regardless. But also its a perfectly excellent weapon with good blessings.
Personally I think Iām just salty about the audio-visual and I literally think if they just set charged attacks at 2 (revert) and ditched power cycler, and made normal attacks appear to have the effects of powered attacks people would think this thing was amazing. Go swing a powered light attack at a poxwalker. It wonāt kill it. But does it feel good or bad? I think it feels good. If all the swings felt like that itād feel good all the time. Then just give it an āoverchargeā rather than a āchargeā and let it be a great weapon. Call it a day.
No you literally donāt. I use it unpowered on hordes all the time on Damn. My power sword has like mid stats and slaughterer 3. One blessing at a passable tier and mid stats and itās still functionally a better claw sword. If you canāt even bother slapping a fairly common blessing on your weapon I question why youāre weighing in on weapon balance at all.
I can appreciate arguments that people donāt like the feel of nerfed power sword. If you tell me you canāt use the sword at all when itās not powered you start to sound like youāre outting yourself to me if Iām being frank.
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There is certainly a limit. The Power Sword at launch was a good example of this. I remember getting the ākill 90 enemies in 30 secondsā achievement the first time I used it, when even the flamethrower couldnāt do that on T3/4 while I was still levelling my characters.
When it was nerfed, you saw a similar outcry to the current flamethrower nerfs. Thereās a kneejerk reaction from a group of people who liked the weapon, which quickly dies off once theyāve actually had time to play with the weapon and realise itās still very powerful. Catfish confirmed this in the Patch notes thread; this is why they wait a week or two before reverting big nerfs like this.
Iāve read through your thread (choosing which one of the 3 to post feedback in was a bit difficult), and I actually really like your proposed Rework 3. But considering weāre unlikely to see a change like that in the coming weeks, what can we do now to keep the weapon in a decent state? Well, letās look at why the majority of people are upset with the change:
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The weapon is not fun to use anymore, at least without Power Cycler or specific blessings. Constantly re-activating the weapon to be effective does not make for interesting gameplay.
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Power Cycler at least doubles the effectiveness of the base weapon and also pairs well with other blessings. Unfortunately it, along with many other blessings, are nearly impossible to actually get. RNG is not fun, but this is by far the single worst example of it in Darktide and highlights a problem with the system as a whole. This without even mentioning issues with taking the blessing away, considering the work so many people put in grinding for it.
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The weapon doesnāt feel like a Power Sword by the 40k lore, nor does it compensate (like the Thunder Hammer does in some respects) by feeling cool or powerful to use. While this was also true before the nerf, people could keep it charged long enough between activations to play pretend.
Note that none of these issues have anything to do with how powerful or balanced the weapon is. There are certainly people who are upset about these things, but itās unlikely they actually understand the mechanics behind the weapon and only ever spammed charged attacks.
However, how powerful people perceive the weapon to be is almost as important as how powerful it actually is. For them to be happy with the weapon, I feel like at least 2 of these points will need to be addressed.
I agree with parts of that specific post of yours linked:
For comparisonās sake, letās take a look at the damage profile of the Devilās Claw I vs the un-activated Power Sword, keeping in mind that both weapons have good attack patterns and a comparable attack speed with high finesse (although the Catachan swords do feel a bit faster.; if someone could measure this, that would be great!):
Dreg Stalkers represent unarmoured damage, while Scab Stalkers represent flak armour damage.
Looking at this, it becomes obvious pretty quickly that the uncharged Power Sword not only isnāt as bad as many of us (myself included) thought, and it actually fits the general idea of a Power Sword by lore quite well (significantly more armour damage and single target damage).
Going back to your post, I like the idea that the Power Sword would appear to visually be always on without dramatically changing itās damage profile. There are a few issues with this, unfortunately:
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Despite having okay-ish armour damage, an unblessed Power Sword is still going to feel pretty mediocre against armour at higher difficulties. Iād propose considerably increasing the damage done to both flak and carapace and/or making the Supercharge blessing apply the additional rending to all attacks, not just charged attacks.
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Ditching Power Cycler will rightfully upset anyone who spent time and resources to obtain it. Like it or not, weāre stuck with the blessing. That doesnāt mean it canāt be reworked to be less weapon transforming than it already is, though.
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Overall, the weapon has a bit of an identity crisis. Both existing Power Swords seem focused on horde clear (with their Cleave Damage and Cleave Targets modifiers). And, for a weapon which primary downside is itās mobility, it also has a Mobility modifier.
Power weapons are known for their penetration, and it does have decent armour pen, so why Penetration and First Target arenāt prioritized modifiers is a bit of a baffling design choice. Seems like it was designed to just be a flat upgrade to the regular sword. Maybe they wanted to differentiate it from the Chainsword?
Either way, I think a total rework to the weapon one way or another would be for the best, but weāre unlikely to see this any time soon. The Power Sword isnāt my favourite weapon to use, but I do hope it is adjusted in the coming weeks to be a bit stronger without Power Cycler and allow for more nuanced gameplay and build diversity than just spamming heavy attacks.
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Why not make the Powered mode on Power Sword give Rending rather than damage then(heck, make it brittleness so youād be more of team player)? Do away with Supercharge blessing giving rending and rather make it baseline. Then you can justify multiple hit activation over damage.
Then you can justify multiple activations when one button doesnāt give you 2100 bonus damage vs other activateable weapons way less or over way smaller window. And you can tweak weapon base stats to be less unwieldy.
Thatās actually not the worst idea. The Power Sword lacks Savage Sweep, but slap on some combination of Slaughterer and/or Rampage with Wrath or Brutal Momentum and youāve got yourself a high damage weapon with okay horde clear that can be powered up to take out a single, high priority target when needed.
I donāt think deleting blessings is the best idea right now, but changing Supercharge to give even more rending beyond what the activated attack gives would be a decent compromise. For those that liked playing with the weapon in itās previous state, Power Cycler could still be combined with Sunder to make it a very strong horde clearing weapon, and would limit the overpowered Power Cycler/Slaughter builds that were possible (if hard to get) before.
Weād have a variety of blessing combinations that would fundamentally change how the weapon played while hopefully keeping it a viable weapon thatās fun in its most basic form. It would also give the weapon a clearer identity. Since weāre unlikely to see the removal of weapon activations, I think this is one of the better ideas Iāve seen so far.
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Then the power axe, that should be OP as is the PS, should be exclusive to the zealotā¦
With their aptitudes and feats it would be cool
Even with the nerf, the PS is yet the most powerful melee weapon followed by force swords.
With right blessings, this weapon is really OP.
So reverting the changes? You cannot be serious.
Maybe little tweaks are needed (like what I proposed but there are others ideas) cause the PS without PC is boring as hell actually and the PS with PC is really OP.
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Thereās a limit how much rending you can capitalize. However, nothing stops it from being a contender against slaughterer. Make it extra damage. Not 300, rather 15-20% while power mode active. Or heck, make it conditional Limbsplitter. 50% more damage while making weapon unwieldy and sacking 10-20% attack speed.
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This is probably true. To be honest, I have a pretty limited understanding of how rending works beyond shooting a Crusher with a Shattering Impact Boltgun and watching the exponential damage increase per hit. From those tests however, it did seem like you still saw a significant damage difference with rending beyond 3-4 stacks (apparently it stacks up to 8 times?).
That said, it seems like the intention of rending as a mechanic is to add more damage to armoured enemies in general beyond the base weaponās abilities through Blessings. It seems more likely your change would be implemented to not add rending to the activated attack, but rather increase the damage profile of the charge attack against the appropriate armour types (likely flak and carapace). Additional rending from the blessing would then add additional damage to the same types on top of this.
I think this would also make sense since I think it would allow you to do more damage vs. flak than rending would allow, as rending seems to primarily benefit against carapace armour, a less than common armour type. Either way, Iām talking out my ass a bit here. I just like the general idea of your suggestion.
Theoretically should be 20, as 1 stack is 5% armor penetration. What they cap it, is different. Since my suggestion is to make Power Modifier work on Rending, you could probably have 0 to 100% rending on that modifier and get away with that.
Thereās also a lot of semantics fat shart ar obtuse about. Thereās Rending Shockwave, but it applies brittleness, thereās rending expressed as percentage and as stacks.
ThatĀ“s not entirely true. ItĀ“ll become way stronger yes, but the weapon is still in its core aswell. And as iĀ“ve said, i wouldnĀ“t mind to go for more swings but the damage needs to be tuned down. There are possibilities to go into one direction but, putting a drawback on top that matters, will keep it balanced.
Ofc this should change. The heavy reliance on blessings is a mistake anyway.
I agree with you about the PS non energized. You can do heavies that are really powerful.
I agree in the general vision that the PS does too much damages considering a balance of weapons (something several donāt want).
But, to be honest, I would not like that the damages would be nerfed.
And also, I think that the current PS is yet to strong (i wonāt repeat what I think about that, see above).
But, tbh, if I would be Fatshark, I would not nerf again the weaponā¦ It could really upset playersā¦ They are actually, but nerfing again would, surely, too much.
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