After doing some thorough testing with all the Devil’s Claw MK variants I’m not surprised that the weapon is so unpopular. I will leave my notes and suggestions about them.
MkVII:
This variant is currently the clear winner of the 3 in both horde clear and single target damage against armour. This is mostly due to it’s light combo attack speed that is way faster than the other two and the fact that it has actual good combos to use. However, what I would change is that the L3 attack chains into the H2 attack. That would make it possible to keep chaining strikedown attacks which is currently not possible with any of the 3 variants yet so desperately needed.
MkI:
This variant got it’s light combo pattern changed some time ago that L3 chains back to L2 instead of L1, meaning it has a more single target focused combo. Problem is, that the attack speed is inferior to the MkVII, which means it’s not worth it. I would change the light combo back to a normal 3 hit cycle, but with two single target attacks starting with L1 Strikedown > L2 Vanguard > L3 Stab. The pre-changed Mechanicus Power Sword showed that swords with a single target light combo can actually work well. The attack speed also needs to be as fast as the MkVII and it too should be possible to chain heavy and light strikedowns into each other.
MkIV:
This one is a total beginners trap. While it has a 4 hit light combo that only uses Vanguard attacks for horde, it’s damage against horde is actually the worst of all 3 variants. This is due to it’s vastly inferior attack speed with light attacks. Not only is it slower, it has this weird delay after L2 and L4 for no reason. Simply reduce the delay and set the attack speed on par with the MkVII. As for the H2 attack, I would change it to have both heavy attacks to be a strikedown. While it would be the simplest variant to use of all 3, it’s also the first one players have access to. The lack of light strikedown attacks is also a disadvantage that justifies 2 heavy strikedowns imo.
In summary, the MkI would be good at single target with light and horde with heavy attacks, the MkIV would be the opposite and the MkVII would have a mixed attack pattern that needs more use of switching between heavy and light, while all 3 would have the possibility to chain single target attacks into each other.
Note: none of these changes would need new animations, as there are already two heavy strikedown attacks from both shoulders and the push follow from the MkVII is a stab.
You completely ignored the heavy attacks which paint a very different picture. Catachans all have very mixed optimal combos in contrast to the just light spam style of many other options
There isn’t a single way to combo only single target attacks on any of the 3 variants, without block cancelling that will loose you a lot of attack speed. So many other weapons can chain light to heavy and vice versa to get these optimal combos.
The sweeping heavies of mkI which make it not a single target focused sword but rather the optimal horde destroyer.
Push attack → light → heavy as single target combo.
Same on mk VII with another light before the heavy…
The move sets are very fine and give plenty of possibilities for all needs.
That’s exactly my point. The is always at least one horde clear attack in the combo or the need to do a push follow, which costs you a lot of single target damage. Let’s be honest, the Devil’s Claw is one of the least popular weapons in the game and it all comes back to it’s horrible single target damage especially against armour. That’s why I want it improved and my suggestions would only give better possibilities in combos.
Also it is clear that unless you’re using a specific build like you mentioned that some variants are just worse than others. There is no reason the MkIV should have such a slow attack speed compared to the MkVII. It’s just that they done it that way and nobody ever cared about it again, which is the point of my post.
Maybe when I have the time, I will list the DPS values here to show my point. I did a lot of testing with the DPS counter mod prior to this post and it was shocking how bad the MkIV actually performed against horde.
Dclaws are unpopular because too much of their power budget is tied behind the gimmicky parries, while having a pisspoor 5% carapace adm, not because of the combos.
And my suggestion for the attack pattern change would directly improve both things. Less reliant on counter with better attack combos against Carapace.
Hmm I don’t get it… It has good DPS on all amor types except carapace. Additionally changing the move set will grant a damage boost of below 10% while dumbing down the weapon. It is not really something to strive for …
Hmm I think this is the hot point where my opinion differs from the great masses. We have so many different characters with big skill trees and different blitzes and abilities. If every weapon would be a generalist weapon - good into everything - it would be utterly boring. We need specialized weapons to bring for certain tasks to round out setups.
For example I love to play electro kinetic staff on Psyker with focus on charged attacks. They have good single target damage with a whopping >95% armour pen. So everything big is managed but I give up horde damage which my class is supposed to bring. So I am in need of a melee weapon which does exactly that: delete hordes and nothing more.
And that is what mk I is for and I love that it exists. Let mk VII the more generalist version which is good into everything. Let mk IV be the one you pick up and immediately master, so you have an easy start into the weapon category. You can always later learn the more complex flow of the mk VII.
Edit: they all have a purpose. It might not be the one you want to give it, but they have their perks you can utilise on one class or the other.
It would be much more than 10% and it’s not dumbing down the weapon. It’s about that currently the weapon is simply handicapped from the lack of good single target combos and damage against armour. Last time you said buffing the weakest weapon even 1% would make less loadout options while I don’t see any point on having weak handicapped weapons that don’t bring strong enough advantages to make up for their disadvantages. The DC is exactly that, which is why it is so unpopular.
Let’s just say we disagree on our views and leave it at that.
its actually 25-50% ADMs into carapace depending on the move, with 7.5% for those anemic vanguard lights with mediocre cleave on top of their already sucky performance. so yeah being able to access the moves that aren’t completely useless for single target easier would make it a lot more useful and not a parrywagon.
But two out of three attacks already are strikedowns. So you would have an increase of at most 33% damage. If your attack then does double the damage you have a total increase of 16.6% and the difference between strikedown and vanguard is less then double the damage (afaik).