Sections:
1 - Introduction
2 – Current Balance
3 – Nerfs
EVERYTHING HERE IS MY OPINION. I’m open to discussion and my only goal is to signal that I believe this is a problem.
TLDR:
This weapon can’t be good at everything with this mobility. It should be nerfed against Crushers/Unyielding and Thrust. Uncanny, Agile blessings should be nerfed/removed.
1 - Introduction
So 3 days ago, after work, I was watching some tryhard darktide content (Tanner Lindberg) and I’ve heard the statement that the only weapon that needs nerfs is plasma. I strongly disagreed, updated the ‘solo play’ mod that I hadn’t used for the last 7 months, and went to play true solo.
This resulted in the attached video of me beating Carnival Damnation HISTG true solo on DS IV (3rd try) to prove my competence. (1075 hours on steam, account level 1110, playing since launch)
MY GAMEPLAY
1a – Should we care about balance in PvE?
The argument I often see on Reddit about weapon/smite balancing is: “Should we really nerf it if the game is PvE?”.
Yes! With the powercreep that is introduced to this game since the class rework (Patch #13) and increased with every following patch, we as players have much more power at our disposal. This makes it so the harder modifiers aren’t a challenge to experienced players and instead turn to dps rush to get that sweet orange ‘damage dealt’ number on the scoreboard. This statistic doesn’t track only the player’s ability to play the game but mostly the efficiency of the setup they’re using.
This becomes especially aparent if you are matched with a +500 level player that uses current meta weapon like plasma to evaporate every elite/special entity on the map through the walls. This can heavily affect other players’ enjoyment of this videogame, as they are no longer challenged by the gameplay, they are put in the passanger’s seat to watch the overperforming weapon in the experienced hands just trivialise the run.
Because of this, some high level players were complaining that they can’t increase the difficulty any further (which will be solved now by Havoc mode), and that the only effective way to increase difficulty now was to decrease the player’s power (as proven by content creators like tanner and telopots beating maeltorms without perks, blessings or/and curios (or just straight up level 1)).
2 – Balancing
How strong are the Duelling Swords? They are currently the strongest melee weapons in the game.
Why are they so strong?
There are 2 main categories I think are crucial when picking a melee for the build:
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Defensive – mobility, stamina, additional effects,
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Offensive – target selection, DPS.
Mobility – This weapon has the best mobility in the game, on par with daggers. The attack-slide tech allows you to ignore 95% of ranged damage, the dodge distance and speed are the best in the game and to top it off, we get a blessing that gives us virtually infinite dodges. I can’t understand how Fat Shark made the decision to remove infinite dodges from the mid mobility psyker melee (force swords) and give it to the two most mobile weapons in the game (t.axe is 2nd)!
Stamina – This might be an issue only on Veteran. Zealot and Psyker have extremely high base stamina regeneration speed. Stamina curios exist and stamina regen is a very strong curio perk. Psyker additionally gets peril block (and can spam push without any risk of being guardbroken), so it only affects Vet.
Additional effects – Special attack staggers Muties and Crushers. ‘Agile’ blessing exists.
Target selection – Some weapons struggle with certain enemy types. Some are weak against flak/carapace armor or bosses, but not this one. You can stab ANYTHING in the face (if it has one) and it dies in one or two hits if it’s not a boss. This weapon has no weakness when it comes to target selection
DPS – Is high. THIS WEAPON CAN 1 TAP EVERY ENEMY IN THE GAME THAT IS NOT A BOSS. This is the most broken thing about this weapon. The fact that we can do this amount of damage with this mobility and attack speed is just icing on the cake. This simply invalidates any other melee options, because nothing comes even close to being this effective.
2a – Comparing DS IV to other melee weapons
So let’s compare DS IV to other weapons that can 1-tap crushers.
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Ogryn weapons need special action, then they need to charge the slow heavy attack of slow Ogryn weapons, hold to get 3 stacks of Thrust and then they can kill one crusher.
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Thunder Hammer needs a special action that stuns you, has the lowest mobility in game and sometimes even fails to get the one tap even if you jump through all the hoops.
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Eviscerator – needs to rev up and ult to 1 tap.
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Dagger – should also be nerfed.
This creates a scenario where a group of weapons has a huge, absolutely humongous, disadvantage of low mobility, while gaining no real benefits over the DS.
As mentioned, weapons should only be nerfed if they affects fun of other players in the game. This weapon should be nerfed for exactly the same reasons as the plasma.
When you use it, you basically become a heat seeking missile that is always first on the target and has the highest dps to deal with it. And if the game goes wrong, you have the best ability to rotate out of the bad spot.
3 – Ways to solve the issue
Now, how can we fix this issue? How can we make it more fun for everyone? Yes, that’s the goal, to bring this weapon back in line and allow everyone to enjoy the game.
3a – “Back to square one”
Make this weapon psyker exclusive again. – I think it’s the worst option. It would be fair and balanced, but people have already had a taste of this on other classes and taking away their new options will only cause outrage (and as the past has shown with deserved nerfs, even review bombing (shout out to vets crying about power sword like a year ago)). We need another solution.
3b – “One step back”
Make this weapon available to psykers and veterans. – It’s just as bad as the first one, but it solves the issue of Zealot boosting melee to a totally different level.
3c – “A reasonable nerf”
Here comes the main dish of this post.
This is how I think this weapon should be adjusted to bring it down to earth while not killing it.
This weapon shouldn’t be as effective against everything in the game, so it needs to be weaker against carapace and unyielding. A 20% base damage nerf to both armor types should be reasonable.
Next, the blessings.
Thrust – should be removed, this weapon shouldn’t have so much power and 1-shot breakpoints,
Uncanny – should be lowered to 20% or 30% rending at max stacks level 4 (all brittlenes perks of weaker weapons cap at 40%),
Agile – should only restore dodges on weakspot kills or removed (as mentioned, Force Swords were “too op”),
Goal:
Is to keep the weapon good at dealing with ranged enemies, even flak armor and mutants, while encouraging us to bring an anti-armor secondary.
Results:
This will make people focus more on Riposte (crit on dodge) and Precognition (finesse on dodge), which I don’t think is a bad thing. It makes the weapon better at what it was designed to do. Rewards for high finesse play, headshots and crits.
3d – How to not nerf
The mobility aspect (other than Agile) shouldn’t be nerfed. I have seen some opinions that all mobile weapons are too op and should be slowed down. This is the worst imaginable scenario. This game was designed to interact with ranged enemies in melee combat and taking away the movement speed affects both the meta and fun aspects of the game. If I can’t dive into a group of shooters to tie them up before they split and take cover, then a huge chunk of the gameplay satisfaction is gone.
Additionally, there is nothing more valuable in this game than survivability. Mobility is a big part of this. Anyone who plays true solo will know how important it is to be able to kite through a huge horde of enemies. If you can’t kite, you’ll drown in a sea of crushers.
Summary
Mobility is the most important aspect of all melee weapons in this game. Having good mobility allows you to do some crazy stuff, like in my solo run, I was able to outrun 10 ragers for 2 laps around the colloseum just to chase some gunners, do objectives, heal. All of that was only possible because of the movetech and speed. Imagine playing in this scenario with eviscerator. Is it possible? Yes! Even comfortably, I love mowing down ragers with Evi, but it wouldn’t look anything like this! So mobility allows us to straight up ignore some of the dangers on the map and gives us some of the best advantages and at what cost? Currently none. Zero.
This is why I think high mobility weapons should have lower damage against carapace/unyielding.
Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.
