Is there any simple access to L4 on crowbill ? I like fire attacks on the fire wizard character, and I find this one a bit lacking.
I like how the crowbill and the axe are already more than decent at taking down armoured targets, but their lack of cleave is debilitating in a horde.
For crowbill specifically, I think giving a shortcut combo to L4 and granting the “fire punch” a bit more AoE oomph or boom (radius, cleave, stagger, low to no DoT) would put it in a good place.
Shortcut combo should be through push-attack, as this is being used quite nicely on other weapons to add a cost to the safety a shortcut to the horde-handling ability provides.
After having used Crowbill quite extensively the last 2 weeks, I think I’ve finalized my personal suggestions to buff the weapon:
All attacks get +10% crit chance modifier (including heavy attacks). This makes Swift Slaying activate more consistently, and frees up a property on the weapon for something else, like Attack Speed. Directly buffs damage, indirectly buffs attack speed.
Match dodge count & dodge range to One-handed Axe.
Buff Cleave:
Option 1 - Upping Damage & Stagger cleave to something like 7.6 would allow it to cleave 2 Raiders, 3 Clanrats & Fanatics, and 4 Skavenslaves.
Option 2 - Upping Damage & Stagger cleave to something like 4.1 would allow it to cleave 2 Clanrats & Fanatics, and 3 Skavenslaves.
I personally don’t like this cause Crowbill already has high attack speed. Buffing it any further would bring it into looney tunes territory. I suggest buffing its cleave by a bit just to make it a bit more versatile, and a little bit better at horde clear. If we were to buff nothing but single-target damage, it would have to be by an obscene amount to make it up to par, and we’ve seen what hyperspecialized weapons can be like in the form of Griffon-foot, and I don’t think it’s a bad thing that Crowbill is just a slightly different One-handed Axe.
I don’t think it’s a good idea, cause Crowbill just isn’t meant to be a crowd control weapon. The fire AoE on L4 just seems like a gimmick that would either be mostly irrelevant, or would become the defining feature of the weapon if it’s anything like Flaming Flail H1. Keeping it simple is good in this case, I think.
I play crowbill a fair, and I think just giving it’s first heavy and straight line overhead in the same vein as Sienna’s mace, and tiny bit more anti armour might make it’s niche a bit easier to reach. Pushing dodges up a bit wouldn’t hurt either.
You can keep yourself safe as Unchained by building to push igniting things and enemies on fire cause less damage, but it weakens Unchained a bit to give her survivability.
I’d like to be able to really pick out Armour and elites in a mixed horde and take them down in a couple of nicely timed headshots. Crowbill * should* be quite weak in a horde, so it should cause more damage when you throw a heavy overhead at something. Simply buffing vs armour/elites might make it too good at anti armour if it keeps the heavy horizontal swings.
I personally find option 2 preferable there. More cleave than that and it’s drifting too far into sword territory IMO.
I completely get where you’re coming from here. You’re probably correct practically, I just really don’t love the idea of homogenising crowbill so much with 1h axe. I would prefer more points of difference, what do you think of the shield piercing idea I floated earlier?
I got to play with it a bit in the CW, I remembered the angles to be better than they are. As of right now I don’t really get the intention behind the weapon’s design.
Horizontal “multi-target” (if they cleaved) heavies with stats to deal with armoured ; and vertical and more “single target” angles for the lesser damaging stats, more suited for infantry damage, and they all have the same cleave values.
At the same time, it might just be too insignificant of a change for it to actually matter. 1h sword would still have like 3x the cleave due to higher base cleave + 40% mass reduction from linesman, but it is possible #1 could overshadow some other weapons.
I don’t mind it personally if it stays as a slight variant of the 1h axe, but it’s true the weapon can be more unique than that. I’m just not sure how many good additions can be made to the weapon without steering it away from its role or feel.
It’s a decent idea, but I personally don’t like shield-piercing cause I like dealing with shields, so I’m a bit biased against it. It makes sense with the weapon, but by itself it’s not a significant buff, and it’d still be something the weapon would have to trade for, assuming we don’t want the weapon to be just a straight better 1h axe.
Eh, I don’t think the angles are that bad from a practical perspective. Maulers you want to bodyshot anyways, Stormvermin are hunchbacked and have their heads in front of their body, so it’s not hard to headshot with the heavies, and with Chaos Warriors you can either spam heavies and embrace the bodyshots, or do L1 → H3 combo and actually get headshots. It is true though that the angles seem weird for single-target attacks.
I think another thing the weapon could have is more flaming attacks? Right now it just has the L4 punch. Maybe have the heavies get it? Not sure. Maybe the heavies could get a moderate cleave buff together with the DoT, while lights could get the smaller cleave buff? Still leaves the moveset with similar lights and heavies, where both end up being roughly the same for both hordes and single-targets.
Fair. I guess I’m still salty since it was decided last BBB that apparently cleaving a single marauder was too much cleave for volley bow
Isn’t dealing with shields mostly just a lot of pushes? Have I been doing it wrong? And yes regarding it ending up as a better 1h axe, I meant that suggestion instead of some of your original suggestions (eg no bonus crit chance, shield pierce instead).
Like if crowbill and 1h axe ended up with identical stats, it wouldn’t be the worst thing, but I’d prefer that was saved as a last resort for balancing it.
Regardless I agree it and 1h axe need a bit more cleave or they’re basically unbalanceable, so starting there seems wise. I would start with the smaller cleave increase since a bunch of power stacking classes will already push that pretty far, then see how they both feel from there.
I like the idea that was floated of half cost pushes, but I’ll modify it with a new push attack that is a sweep and has cleave just enough to hit 2 marauders/gors. Maybe widen the push arc too so it feels closer to VT1 ‘pushes are your panic button’ deal. If it could throw out good CC to make up for its lack of cleave it would be a very unique weapon overall.
I have seen this suggestion for the 1H Axes and it is one of the few I actually liked because it gives the weapon control without unneeded increase of dps. Also slightly stronger pushes or wider arc, simply to give it more control. Crowbill could see similar changes. I more or less considered it as Sienna’s axe anyway.
However, both weapons work fine at the moment. Played Crowbill recently on Battle Wizard and it did what I expected from it and I actually felt balanced. Also played Elven 1H Axe on Shade and Waystalker which felt good to me. Actually tried 1H Sword and couldnt grasp it, so I changed back to the Axe. Hm, actually I have not tested the other 1H Axes recently. I have to do that somewhere down the line.
I agree it’s a solid idea, but I take some objection to saying a DPS increase is unneeded. I seem to remember @Velsix doing some DPS calcs for it a while back, and it was very much towards the bottom of the pack. Not specifically bad compared to the top contenders, but bad compared to the vast majority of weapons. Hopefully he can correct me if I’m misrembering this.
I’d also like to point out that since stagger and damage cleave are separate values, there’s room to improve its cleave without pushing its dps up too much.
I don’t know. Cleave somehow doesn’t fit with the axe thematically for me. Neither in a realistic sense nor in a fantasy world sense. I would like to keep the control by pushing. I would be even open for some more damage. Though, only in the form of some minor bleed. It would go well with a chop and push playstyle where you hit the enemies and then control them while they bleed to death.
I agree adding cleave is a dangerous game, too much and it’s not really an axe anymore. You’ll see I similarly rejected the idea of 1h axe/crowbill cleaving a marauder, since for me that’s about where the line is.
Bleed could be interesting, but I do wonder if it wouldn’t be fairly irrelevant with the weapon’s current cleave. I think the largely single target nature of the weapon wouldn’t leave much room for leaving bleed ticking on multiple targets.
Restricting extra cleave to just the push attack, paired with half push cost as @MarxistDictator suggests seems like one of the more elegant ways to go about it to my eyes for sure. Though I don’t think it would be enough on its own without some kind of dps increase. Still not sure how the best way to go about that would be though.
Opponents would die before the bleed kicks in.
I used 2h sword on WHC with flense, floating damage numbers mod and bots on legend. There were barely situations where I saw bleed damage numbers against hordes for example.
