Its partly the attack speed but I for the live of me cannot understand why it needs to have 2H hammer levels of stagger/cleave on lights while just slapping executioners heavy profile for shits and giggles. To me the attack speed is just the icing on the cake and absolute middle finger after executioner was nerfed.
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I always love these kinds of arguments when it comes to game balance. “Hey, let’s not nerf the obviously overtuned thing because there’s another thing that is also overtuned that will replace it.” If that’s true, then nerf that thing too. Frankly elf has a few melee weapons that could use a slight nudge downward. All that attack speed, crit chance, and mobility on her weapons tends to be gasp overtuned…
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I agree with some parts of your list.
Although I do not view Bret Sword, Coghammer or S&D as balance issues.
Even cases like Bret Sword stagger, as comical as it is, don’t create any real problems in terms of balance
(I don’t have any strong feelings on that particular case though tbf - stagger bps/values are not quite as important balance factors to me as other weapon stats, at least as long as it’s not clearly out of line like Kruber Spear was around WoM release).
Things like Famished Flames Bw + Fire Sword being silly is not the fault of Fire Sword being op on its own.
Overall, the meta weapons on all characters are strong and definitely stronger than most other weapons, although exceptions do apply, e.g. Dual Hammers, Rapier, or
Yet, they’re not too strong and cause the game to be trivialized.
Even Billhook is fine in my opinion. They do not need nerfs.
Even though a nerf would probably not ruin these weapons, it would also not achieve anything positive either since they are balanced farily well as they currently are from my point of view.
Melee weapons should be damn strong in a “melee focused game,” especially so when the trend is going towards ranged and ult spam more than anything.
E.g. have fun trying to outdps a coru staff bw with a melee weapon.
Likewise, you’ll not compete against a SotT that only has to rely on her ult to perform vastly better than any melee weapon could ever hope to achieve.
Consequently, the base line for melee weapon power should be quite high.
I don’t agree with Halberd being a good base line, that’s too low imo.
Halberd isn’t even used much because it’s not that good.
That may be due to other options being better but it is probably more due to Halberd not having anything going for it.
It’s a neat weapon that allows for cool combos, its power level is lacking however.
If you want to bring down all meta weapons - because basically all meta weapons are jack of all trades weapons - then you have to go on a long nerfing spree for all characters.
That is bound to make the overall balance different but not necessarily for the better.
As an arbitrary example, imagine M&S and Exe got nerfed.
Then Gk might become less powerful to the point where he’s replaced by Merc with Spear in terms of ‘must bring’ option.
Or Slayer with weaker melee will be even more overshadowed by Rv, or SotT with her ult spam becoming even better than the rest of Kerillian’s classes since she does not rely on her melee weapons as much.
Keep in mind that most if not all major balance issues stem from sth. other than melee weapons.
If you change those + nerf melee, you risk creating a worse balance situation.
The actual balance concerns should be addressed.
Other than M&S, I don’t see any melee weapon being out of line or in need of any nerf.
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You think the spear is overtuned? O_O
Just what is a balanced weapon in your eyes? Krubers halberd that almost no fellows or fools except me uses? The elf dual swords and their armor damage?
The elf 1H sword that doesnt even kill unarmored rotblood marauders on a straight downward slam on their heads but has 100 dodges, most which never get used?
Saltz flail without zealot boosts?
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I’ve always felt that on anything that isn’t slayer. 99% of the time you just take dual hammers on everything else. Also, 1h hammer is kinda bad. Decent armor damage but very low horde dps.
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I agree cog is a little overtuned. But 2HH for example, is a meme level weapon on kruber. It’s legitimately one of his least picked weapons. That’s my main point about bardin. And it’s hard to tell how OP cog is when the next best weapon is 2HH or greataxe or something.
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Most 2hh weapon without some extreme gimmick seem to be on the low end of power. But ye I agree with your general sentiment.
Could probably just replace the heavy profiles with Flail heavy profiles and it’d be fine.
Would actually have reasonable horde DPS instead of just tossing them around.
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That’s true. The group of 2H weapons with low mobility need a ton of damage to compensate or they’re pretty meh. The more mobile 2H weps like g sword, b sword, spears, bill hook, etc are all pretty solid.
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Might help. Doesn’t really solve the issues with 2H weapons. Low attack speed and immobility are massive impediments in this game, for both offensive and defensive reasons.
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Plus b-longsword heavy movetech maybe?
Just because something doesn’t trivialise content on its own, doesn’t mean it isn’t at an unhealthy power level. This seems to be the core of our disagreement, where we put the baseline is sizeably different. Probably not much agreement to be had there. I will say I still think you’re making nerfing top performers sound way more complex than it is. You mostly describe what amounts to a meta shift, which is honestly a positive in my eyes. Of course there’ll always be something that’s meta, but exploring niche options tends to be more rewarding when there are less obvious “right” answers for weapon choice.
Also referencing things like coru staff doesn’t help your point terribly much. We all know it does way too much damage for way too little effort. The solution isn’t to raise everything to that level.
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Which is why I never suggested anything like that?
The point is that melee weapons are far from being too strong compared to everything else.
Stuff like Coru and SotT ult, even the nerfed versions in the tourney rebalance, are still way above what melee weapons can do.
Even a ‘base game’ Rv with grude will make melee dps look pathetic.
Your post did not provide a solution to that.
Those things should be looked at first.
Then we can discuss where the overall power of melee weapons should be and whether it’s even necessary to change that - which I don’t think it is.
Agreed, I don’t see any issue with the current power level of melee weapons except M&S.
That’s the upper limit in my eyes and the one thing that really needs to be dealt with.
Change for the sake of change is not a virtue.
Relates back to the different views on melee power level but if the current one is fine, then why change that. The current meta is good and a shift of any kind seems uncalled for imo.
Also, keep in mind that if you nerf the best option, then all you manage to do is make people play spear instead of S&D on elf, rapier or A&F instead of billhook on saltz, etc.
The same thing but in a different color.
Besides, if you have to rebalance
A) talents and ults or classes in general
B) ranged weapons
C) melee weapons
D) maybe traits and properties too, then you got a lot of work to do if you want to make sure the overall balance turns out well.
I have no idea how many more real balance patches this game is going to get and I would dislike it if it was left in a worse state than before.
This entire thread shows that it is not even crystal clear what the meta outliers are (e.g. you did not even mention billhook or rapier, others insist that everything that’s not on the level of dual swords is op, others have hardly any experience on a weapon and still want it nerfed).
And it’s even less clear how exactly any nerfs should look like.
Maybe make billhook l2 not cleave or sth? Would that be fair, fun, and balanced? Or reduce the damage of Bret sword - but by how much exactly?
Would nerfs like that turn 1h axe or 2h hammer into more attractive choices? - Hint: it won’t, niche options will remain niche if untouched.
Furthermore, how would that affect career viability if you factor in class and ranged weapon changes as well?
E.g. Shade relies way more on crits than SotT, Hm or Ws, so a nerf to crit chance will hit one class harder than others. The same applies to cases like Slayer and coghammer since Rv won’t care about such a nerf.
You cannot look at weapon changes in isolation, that is shortsighted.
I could be wrong and small changes here and there will not have much of an effect in the long run.
I just don’t think that the juice is worth the squeeze in this instance.
Do community modders have to do all that work again like with the last major rebalance or who should bear the burden of having to decide where the overall power level of sth. should be?
To me, the status quo seems good enough that it preferable to digging up the melee weapon meta again just for the sake of it.
I think rebalance efforts should primarily focus on ranged weapons and class balance, while improving the bad melee weapons via buffs.
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Since when is 2h hammer considered niche? It’s a perfectly fine and solid weapon.
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Then replace the word ‘niche’ with ‘bad’ or ‘mediocre’ if that makes it clearer?
I would not exactly call it a fine weapon and it’s definitely not a weapon that should be the base line for other melee weapons.
Weapons like that absolutely should be the baseline. It’s very good against armor and serviceable against hordes. To say it’s a bad or mediocre weapon is to basically say any weapon that isn’t great at everything is a bad or mediocre weapon. With the current weapon balance this is actually true, but the point is that it shouldn’t be. If people want to take a jack-of-all-trades weapon, they shouldn’t end up actually having a master-of-all-trades weapon. This seems like it should be obvious, but there are a fair number of posters here who seem to think master-of-all-trades should be the standard.
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Let me be clear, that was strictly a comparison between bardin and kruber weapons. I think 2HH is perfectly workable. It’s just not strong in comparison to most kruber, salts, or elf weapons. Weapon balance completely depends on where you think the baseline should be. 2HH is 100% useable in all official content, so it is balanced against the difficulty of the game. It’s just not balanced against the power of current melee arsenals.
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Kruber’s halberd is indeed my idea of a balanced weapon. Kerillian’s spear isn’t massively overtuned, but it is overtuned. What exactly are its weaknesses in your opinion? Because I can’t think of anything significant.
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It’s superarmor damage is pretty meh. Not a huge weakness, but it’s definitely its biggest one.
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And yet it still has no real issue against CWs, probably because its stab attacks are so good at getting head shots.
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