Look I don’t have the stats on me but I’m pretty sure the movement speed profile is more complicated than that, and DS mobility is a LOT further ahead of heavy sword than you’re making out.
Regardless we can indeed agree that Crushers and Maulers are where DS gets most egregious. It’s a good place to start tackling the weapon regardless.
The sprint speed is significantly better, that is the only regard where it is extremely stand out, it should 100% be changed, but as is all it means is that you take a pistol when you use any other weapon. I dont think its game breakingly op is all I am saying.
False equivalence.
Relic Blade isn’t as safe as Duelling Sword because it requires skill to reach its full potential while Duelling Sword doesn’t. Relic Blade also isn’t consistently one/twoshotting Crushers on Damnation, while Duelling Sword is. Duelling Sword has both the safety and the raw killing power over Relic Blade.
Yeah you are entirely right in regards to crushers/maulers and really only crushers/maulers. Again my whole argument is about how crusher spam breaks the game’s balance and forces dueling sword into being too good of a option. When you look at any other scenario the relic blade does much better damage and with proper skill massively out preforms the dueling sword. Without crushers/maulers dueling sword is just worse damage for better mobility.
Ugh I should be asleep but I’ve been in bed reading this thread. There are a bunch of overpowered things that need nerfing before Crushers need a rebalance. Dueling Sword is top of the list, as are the top-2 mobility categories in general.
Then you have no idea what you’re talking about. The ability to chose your engagement is massive, kiting has been an OP tactic since at least Everquest in 1999 (or heck, Diablo) - there’s a reason they got rid of it in VT2, and I’m shocked they let it creep back into Darktide.
You missed the third part of why the dueling sword is overpowered - it’s brain-dead easy to use. So it’s top-tier mobility/survivability, brain-dead easy to use, and great against any target. When you combine that with kiting, you’re constantly facing a conga-line of stupidity that’s easy to lightning-fast heavy a few times and then reset. There is no skill involved. It trivializes difficult content.
Here are the weapon mobility modifiers:
| Weapon Group | Actual +Sprint Speed at 60-80% Mobility |
|---|---|
| Dueling Sword, Combat Knife, Laspistol | 0.80 - 0.89 |
| Bolt Pistol, Revolver, Dbarrel Shottie, Shredder Pistol, ReconLas | 0.40 - 0.60 |
| Devil Claw, Chain Weaps, Combat+Tac Axes, Shock Maul, Force Swords, Combat Shovel, Power Sword , Braced/Vigilant/Infantry Auto, Infantry Laz, Combat Shotties, Boltgun | 0.09 - 0.27 |
| Heavy Sword, Force Greatsword, ???Hellbore Lasgun??? | 0.0 |
| Relic Blade, Flamer | -0.13 - -0.02 |
| Thunder Hammer, Crusher, Force Staves, Plasma Gun | -0.20 |
Here are some enemy movement speeds:
| Enemy | Run Speed |
|---|---|
| Ragers | 6.2 |
| Chaos Spawn | 6.0 |
| Bulwark, Scab/Dreg Melee | 5.6 |
| Crusher, Mauler | 5.25 |
| Poxwalker | 3.5 |
Here are some example player movement speeds based off game file/logic:
| Group | Base | Base +5% Talent | Base +60% DS | Base +5%Talent+60%DS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zealot, Vet | 5.2 | 5.46 | 6.0 | 6.26 |
| Psyker, Ogryn | 5.0 | 5.25 | 5.8 | 6.05 |
I don’t claim to have everything perfectly right here, as I was perusing the game files tonight to figure out why some of the outliers were the way they were, but this completely backs up the statement I said yesterday before knowing enemy run speeds … around ~+0.55 sprint speed, the game starts to get trivial. There’s lots more movement modifiers (plus sliding) that make it even easier to create a gap, and as shown above it’s not hard to maintain that gap. As Reginald said, shouldn’t be able to outrun a chaos spawn indefinitely. It’s just dumb.
Remember, when you sprint away, they don’t all fan out and chase you at max speed. They form a conga line of stupidity. Which is perfect for the dueling sword.
Jesus yes mobility is good. I never said mobility is bad, but you can get the same effect by taking any of the pistols. Do people complain about the mobility being OP on pistols? Too be fair yes sometimes, and I think its a dumb mechanic in general, I never said sprint speed difference isn’t dumb. This post is talking about damage and how crusher spam effects weapon choice, mobility is a completely different discussion.
Is it dumb that you need to take a pistol when you use other melee weapons? Yes. Is it the be all and end all of chosing a melee weapon most of the time? Not really. Are there situations when it is? Yes of course sometimes you cant or don’t want to run a pistol or you are playing psyker. Its stupid, of course its stupid, but even if you made sprint speed the same across the board the dueling sword would still be OP because of crusher spam.
I believe we’ve gotten better elite times into ragers etc in other tests but our havoc test included a pack of bruisers so it really slows the DS4 down. So its genuinely top tier into elites. However what you’re saying here is basically correct. The issue is crushers, maulers and monstrosities. We need to bring that in line (not gigga nerf it!!!)
The DS being good to top tier at elites other than carapace is cool and thematic.
I didnt read the rest of the thread so i have no comment.
1 shotting elites is not mid
I would honestly prefer if the game was adjusted to be more similar to how it was at release while maintaining the improvements that have been made.
The moments I’m referring to were when Scab Stalkers were a threat and we, the players, moved across the maps more slowly and tactically because shooters would eat you for breakfast.
The aggressive elite/special spawn, which results in nonstop adrenaline shots, reminds me of playing a slot machine and makes the game a little too arcadey for my liking, making 1. The specials, such as Trapper, do not feel as intimidating because the director vlmits them out, and 2. instead of Darktide being slower/tactical and focusing more on the horror aspects, it has become more of a clown show, with our characters bordering on Astartes levels of power.
There must be a better way to make the game intense than spawning three Beasts of Nurgle, eight Ragers, five Trappers, two Bombers, and six Ogryns at the same time with a mixed horde over and over.
I thought our characters were more grounded, and they were until the spawn changed, but now we’re playing as if we were on Captain Titus Astartes’ team.
And I don’t buy the claim that “spawn changes are because patches made us overpowered”; instead, this is a Fatshark-created issue that they slapped a lazy bandaid on and simply buffed every enemy type while spawning four times as many of them.
Man I miss good old Hi-int Damnation and being afraid of being caught out by a lone trapper.
I still say it’s the console release that shifted the spawns to relatively fewer but more powerful units, i.e. elites.
1 shorting one elite with a dedicated stab vs killing 6 elites at a time with two or three heavy swings from a relic blade. That’s pretty much balanced if you ask me, it’s a dueling sword it does very good single target damage at the cost of cleave. At its core that balance is perfectly fine, just with the context of crusher/mauler spam, most weapons that would otherwise cleave through elites and so end up with better time to kills, no longer do.
Not all elites are equal. Not all weapons are equal. It’s a thin pointy stick - the relic blade has a power field. It’s light and nimble, the relic blade is anything but.
RE: your quote, in terms of armor type: If you’re talking Maniac, Unarmored, or Flak armor, I’m on the same page. If you’re talking Carapace or Unyielding, that’s where we diverge.
Kiting is a skill, not a broken game mechanic. Not every class is capable of face tanking obscene amounts of damage. It’s a good thing kiting exists, and most players don’t know how to kite anyway so it’s really not an issue.
That said, DS being able to one tap and two tap Crushers at the speed it can while also being tied for mobility with the most mobile weapon in the game is not good.
You’re still out here trying to defend the dueling sword lmao. My dude, it’s okay if its your favorite weapon and you enjoy using it. Just say so, no one is going to bash you and no one cares. You don’t need to try and construct these elaborate posts to try and undermine the fact dueling sword is indeed broken on anything outside of Psyker. No amount of BS’ing is ever going to change that.
did you read any of this thread at all?
I think this is a fundamental point of contention. The overwhelmingly vast majority of players aren’t at this level, much less beyond it. I’d suggest that balance questions at these highest difficulty levels, where only the tiniest proportion of players engage, should be be handled within their unique modes, as opposed to messing with universal enemy or weapon values.
That said Crushers and Carapace are a unique issue that does tend to throw off balance stuff. I feel like the game would have been better served had they been given Flak helmets so that they had a weakspot to engage for non-AP weapons with some element of skill, and then there wouldn’t be such a need for rending/brittleness, but short of another major rework I don’t think we’ll see something like that.
I skimmed through it - all I saw was your constant replies defending the dueling sword and saying it’s only overpowered because of insert excuse here.
So basically you didn’t pay any attention to the thread and decided to come in and be extremely rude for no reason. Got it.
It’s super broken on Psyker too. Don’t make me link that damn Tanner video.
let me explain this thread for you since I guess you cant be bothered to read. This is a thread talking about why the dueling sword is over powered currently and addressing it. I’m just paying more attention to the issue then just “nerf dueling sword hurr”, yes it should be nerfed I have literally never said it shouldn’t be. But only nerfing it doesn’t address the core issue that has made many other serviceable weapons bad.