Dueling sword and Issues with carapace/finesse/elite spawn rates

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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A lot of recent discussions have made me think. When it comes to havoc and auric maelstrom a very large part of your weapon choice, especially in regards to melee weapons. Is if you can kill crushers and to a lesser extent maulers/ragers. Mostly in the context of mixed hoards.

Many weapons in the game are perfectly capable of holding their own through most combat scenarios. Weapons such as the heavy sword, tac axe, chain sword, shock maul, shovel. All preform completely fine against average hoards and even a handful of elites. Really most of these actually out preform the dueling sword in 90% of scenarios especially at lower difficulty levels.

But then 8 crushers and 4 bulwarks and 9 maulers all surrounded by 20 scab raggers spawn and you are screwed. This is less of a problem at lower difficulties, playing through even auric damnation you have enough ammo or even krak grenades that you can just shoot these enemies with something like a bolter. But beyond auric maelstrom there are just too many, you absolutely need to be able to handle these enemies with melee, especially when you consider the havoc ammo nerf. (Havoc ammo is a completely different issue that I wont get into here, but I think that also over centralizes the meta in a lot of ways)

So what happens? Everyone takes the dueling sword, or maybe relic blade, rashad, or force sword. The viability of a weapon at higher difficulties is directly connected to how fast it kills crushers and if it can (or at least close to) one shot headshot melee elites.

If all weapons did any damage to carapace then this wouldn’t be a problem. But many of these weapons do nothing to crushers. If your team doesn’t bail you out, you are just screwed, Hitting a enemy in the head for 100 damage doesn’t feel good in any way, especially when there are 6 of them.

Solution? Honestly this is a difficult thing to think about, on one hand you want weapons to be unique and have their own things they excel at. On the other hand, when the thing they excel at is exactly what is mandatory to compete at higher levels… Well then you end up with the current meta. I see two ways to fix this in regards to crushers.

1: Nerf carapace. Instead of many weapons being completely deflected by it, just make carapace twice as effective as flak. If a weapon looses 20% damage on flak then it looses 40% on carapace. In the process buff crusher health up a lot, probably double it. Currently crushers have the lowest health out of the ogryn and that is half the problem, if a weapon negates carapace then it kills crushers instantly. Making more weapons deal damage to carapace but also making crushers have more health would still allow things like the dueling sword to kill them quickly, but not to the extent that it completely trivializes them as enemies.

2: Buff ogryn and spawn less of them. Turning ogryn into mini bosses would be more fun in some ways. In a lot of ways this is how they felt on launch, a crusher shows up and its a big event you need to focus on. The current method of just spawning 20 of them at a time makes them into a standard enemy that if you cant deal with you just cant play the game. So if they were buffed up but only one or two spawned at a time, and very rarely. Then I could see many people deciding to use builds that don’t have a crusher delete button.

A similar issue is with finesse damage. This is more of a ogryn issue but it applies to many other weapons as well. Finesse in general is very odd in a FPS, this feels like a mechanic from a MMO or something. The fact that hitting a enemy in the head with this knife does 2x the damage, but hitting them in the head with this bigger knife does 1.2x the damage is just absurd. Headshots in this game are a very central mechanic, some weapons just not getting as much bonus damage from headshots and crits is weird and makes many weapons much worse then they would be otherwise. Prime example: Ogryn knife.

And of course in regards to melee elites like ragers and whatnot, making headshot damage consistent across the board would mean that many weapons can just kill them with headshots. Currently a large part of what makes the dueling sword good is the fact that its finesse multiplier is 3.6x. A dueling sword and heavy sword with their heavy strike down attacks both do around base 350 damage against flak, but dueling sword headshot does 970 while heavy sword headshot does 660. This essentially means that many weapons are strict downgrades in the hands of experienced players who consistently land headshots, you just aren’t rewarded as much for your skill with some weapons. I think the variance in finesse should at least be lowered, since this would make many weapons feel better to use. Hitting headshots should just be rewarded across the board not just on some weapons.

So Im curious what people think of all of this

Finesse

  • Make finesse identical across all weapons
  • Lower variance in finesse multipliers
  • Finesse is fine as is
0 voters

Crushers

  • Buff crushers and lower spawns
  • Nerf carapace
  • Crushers are fine as is
0 voters
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I think it is that worst case scenario people are building for:

  • Lots of armour to deal with
  • You’re alone and everyone dead
  • You can’t kill them all but you need mobility to get to door and survive on movement than sheer brute force

So then Fast attack weapons, single target.

Combat blade, Combat Axe, DS. Coincidently the same weapons offering higher mobility at the same time to minimise risk. Another bonus - simple movesets.

Zealot skill nodes for CDR reduction and damage buffs - A lot are based on executing hits and not amount of damage, so favours higher attack rate weapons to build stacks faster. Maybe zealot needs nodes based on damage build up than simply stacking swiping hits to encourage heavier weapons use.

Other weapons have good burst damage but slow follow up like crusher or hammer. Then the others feel horde/specials only because more effort chipping crusher heads.

Single target weapon can still be very much horde effective.

Horde/special weapons different story like heavy sword, devils claw, tact axe. Feels like you’re giving up way more single target than the horde benefits.

People simply know you don’t have to kill everything to progress. Just fast enough to get to next door.

The logical thinking was DPS but now mobility first then high enough DPS. Hence you get people speed running around the place like sonic hedgehog.

Guarantee if DS was changed to be horde effective only. Going to see increase in knife runners using heavy swing as infinite stamina zipping around as next survival choice. The era of DS will end, but something worse might come out of it.

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Part of what you’re describing is power creep that AROSE from player power being higher in the first place. When the game came out it didn’t have to spam

because average player power was lower. People ran loadouts that could barely deal with carapace and it was fine becuase you have other strengths and if you really have absolutely no carapace removal on your team, the game didn’t spawn 8 crushers, maybe 4 in a patrol and you could still deal with that if you were good and knew how to dodge while fighting them.
Now player power is so high that 4 crushers are a sedition tier joke.

Power creep has totally transformed this game. Havoc is a great demonstration of that, horde clear is so obnoxiously strong in this game now, even when using mediocre hordeclear weps that the only way to reign it in was to give each enemy like double hitmass and HP. And now? People just use infinite piercing AoE options, which for some reason exist, to sidestep that attempt at creating a challenge entirely.
The same thing with crushers. Since p13, everyone basically just gets to kill crushers like they’re clanrats in VT2. The solution? Throw out 20 of them I guess. So now you run into the issue of your weapon being literally too slow to deal with 20 crushers before they box you in. The solution? There’s a few, but the most popular one is the dueling sword, which is basically the only weapon fast + high armor damage enough to kill them before they can become an issue.

That’s me going on about Havoc balance, but I feel like it demonstrates well why it’s an issue. You can literally not buff a thunderhammer to perform like a duelist sword unless you actually honestly want the thunderhammer to oneshot like 4 H40 crushers per swing. If you had that, you’d probably still just play the dueling sword because it doesn’t require any setup and the special attack staggers a crusher. Plus more mobility. So unless you completely change how the hammer functions fundamentally it will literally never be on the same level. And if you did change completely how it functions fundamentally you effectively lost weapon variety because now you have two dueling swords.

The broader solution to this problem is to bring the power creep back in line. Did you know Auric Maelstroms with Scab only & Melee only used to actually be considered the most difficult modifier? Ever since dueling swords got popularized, they’re considered the easiest. The modifier didn’t change. Auric maelstrom spawn behavior didn’t change. Nothing changed, except players got more OP, and suddenly the challenge and fun of the mode is gone. The only way to bring this back is to undo what caused it. You can’t just add more crushers to it because it’ll just cement the dueling sword even more.

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I understand the mobility argument but I personally don’t see it as that big of a issue. You just take a higher mobility ranged weapon like a bolt pistol. Bolt pistol relic blade seems to be one of the most popular builds currently, and really that is just because the relic blade kills hoards very well and also kills crushers and elites very well. It doesn’t need good mobility as well.

Though really sprint speed probably shouldn’t be effected by your weapons, I mean why does having your giant thunder hammer in your hands lower your sprint speed but not when its on your back?

I think the problem is a little more complex then just player power, I mean we haven’t really gotten many big buffs since the class overhaul people have just gotten better at the game. These higher difficulties spawning so many crushers and especially havoc limiting ammo has essentially forced the dueling sword amongst a few others into being the only viable options.

The core of the issue is how centralizing carapace is in general due to how common it has become to see hoards of crushers, the fact it completely negates many weapons makes it a extremely meta centralizing force, your weapon can either deal with it or it cant. If it can deal with carapace then its viable if it cant then its not. Hence why my two suggestions are to either make crushers much rarer or nerf carapace so all weapons can deal damage to it.

On paper dueling sword isn’t OP, maybe the mobility is a bit too good. But outside of the context of havoc or auric maelstrom it doesn’t really out preform most other weapons, its fine in terms of balance for standard damnation.

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I’m specifically saying it’s the class overhaul that powerspiked us. In the case of the dueling sword it’s a little more complex. Psykers at large basically just didn’t know how to melee, but it already totally trivialized scab melee only when it was on a good one. By giving it to other classes where players usually know how to melee, it started absolutely pooping on the game. Giving it those new blessings also contributed

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We had no rending talents before that, and I remember exactly what you’re referring to. You raise some very interesting points in your previous post.

I can vividly remember the first time I saw a 5+ crusher pack.

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I know what you mean. If an Ogryn has a pickaxe and grenade launcher but switches to medkit he can sprint faster :smiley:

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Maybe though I don’t think characters are that insane in terms of power scale. Sure we have a few pretty OP talent paths, mostly in regards to zealot. But even if you nerfed all the classes massively it wouldn’t fix the core issue of weapon balance in regards to carapace and elites.

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i doubt anything would change even if they did something to that one. were not even supposed to get bulwark patrols anymore and they still happen

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That’s because all of this involves a multi-step process. Player Power needs to be nerfed in order to make certain Enemies being less numerous but more individually threatening actually work. This is the only way we could see the return of Pre-Patch #13 balancing in Darktide.

You can’t have this:

… without this:

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???

How on earth do you figure that?

@Reginald can you get in here with your charts to clear this up?

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On paper outside of the context of crusher/mauler spam it doesn’t perform any better against average hoards and even light mixed hoards. Its only real bonus outside of killing crushers and maulers is mobility. Its only completely OP in the context of current havoc/auric maelstrom.

Here is the datatide spreadsheet from reginald.

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To me, it was changing the hordes to be longer with smaller ‘waves’ led to them trying to preserve difficulty by spiking elite spawns.

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It has best in slot mobility AND kill times against basically every target type. These are like by far the most valuable traits.

And it pays for this by being… not amazing at horde clear.

Yeah I think having top of the line time to kill while being arguably the safest melee weapon is pretty far out of line.

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Its mid against elites and not very good against hoards. Its only OP in the context of crushers. Yes the mobility is good but again you can just take a las pistol or bolt pistol for sprint speed. I dont think anyone would say that +15% sprint speed is OP by itself and plenty of weapons have 5 dodge limit, catachan, force sword, heavy sword.

The mobility ends up being +10% sprint speed +8% dodge distance. Is that OP with no other context? Not really, its good sure. Im not saying the dueling sword is bad outside of the context of crushers, Im saying its balanced outside of the context of crushers.

Without the context of crushers its just about as good as many other weapons at killing elites, while being bad against hoards, and it has good mobility. That seems balanced, its only when you take into account the fact it deletes crushers that stuff gets out of hand.

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It’s “mid” against elites only in the way that it doesn’t cleave so has to dedicate a heavy poke to each one. Sure that limits TTK, but between the special, the mobility, and the one shots it’s still one of the safest and most brain dead weapons to fight a group of ANY elites with. That isn’t limited to crushers.

Hordes are a joke in the current game state. DS could be twice as bad at horde clear and most people would barely care.

Yes having top tier mobility, allowing the easiest kiting or just straight up running away from threats whenever you like is extremely powerful. There’s a reason VT2 went to great lengths to try to make it more or less impossible to just straight up run away from enemy groups.

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Exactly. Let’s compare Halberd and Tuskgor Spear from Vermintide 2.

Halberd has REALLY good raw killing power and its moveset is more straightforward compared to Tuskgor Spear. HOWEVER, Tuskgor Spear is a MUCH safer option on Cataclysm due to its higher Mobility and Stamina to account for its passable killing power and harder-to-master moveset. It’s your choice, Halberd for raw killing power and an easier moveset but less safety OR Tuskgor Spear for safety but comparatively less killing power and a more difficult moveset.

I use Halberd because I’m good enough at Tide to a point where my Weapon’s capability for safety isn’t a huge priority for me, but a LOT of Players prefer Tuskgor Spear because they rely on the safety measures it provides. There’s a completely valid reason for using either of them over the other as neither of them are superior to the other.

Let’s circle back to Duelling Sword VS anything else in Darktide’s arsenal of Melee Weapons… yeah. Duelling Sword needs a proper weakness.

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Again, not saying mobility is bad, not saying the dueling sword would be bad if crushers would be removed. It would just be a side grade to the heavy sword without the context of crushers.

Heavy sword does a bit more damage and cleave while dueling sword is a bit simpler and has better mobility. Both are 5 dodge limit but dueling sword has +7% dodge distance, dueling sword has +0.8 sprint speed but that is the same as the las pistol and bolt pistol so its not that big of a deal. Essentially it just boils down to dueling sword being the easier and safer option.

Then you look at crushers and this entire concept of balance is thrown out the window.

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This is literally the same argument between relic blade and dueling sword. Dueling sword is just the better option because it can stagger crushers and kill them a bit faster. Beyond that relic blade is the far better option for good players who don’t need that instant mobility as a crutch. But then yeah crushers and the balance here is thrown out the window.