FatShark, adjust dueling swords

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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I’m getting bored that these weapons, in Havoc, are so common. Not because theyre strong, but because they remove the teamplay dynamic moreso than anything else and stop other weapons being seen. WhyDon’t I just ignore my teammates or better yet treat them as ablative wounds and take a DS rather than actively work with them to elimiate threats because thats how a team game should be. Should be the pivot point here to see who wants teamwork, and who doesn’t. DS currently are bad Intelligence. Tac Axes are irrelevant even with infinite dodge. Youve gone too far with the ‘player accessibility gateways’ like DS and the entire Ogryn class. Very bad Intelligence…

Gut their cleave, make them only hit one enemy with much less followup cleave. Trashclearer builds more commonplace now. Because a build excels at clearing chaff doesnt mean it can’t take on Armoureds.

Remove them from Veteran. This will give Zealot and Psyker their niche back slightly. Although this weapon is awful on Zealot. Veteran already has his shovels, make the altfire’s on them near instant but still require the micro and therefore better situational awareness.

ADD a new weapon - Short sword/Bayonet. Make it only available to Veteran and its basically the Reworked DS currently ingame with slightly less st damage and slightly more cleave than the Reworked DS mentioned above. Altfire can be a stagger still. Or buff PowerSword dodge.

Add the weapon as MTX. I said it. Now you fix 2 problems; DS and can add more weapons for MTX if you want. Or just add it for free.

It remains to be seen how Arbites will shake up the DS meta, it’ll be common so hopefully no access to DS. If its not common pick and DS is still everywhere you know you’ve karked up massively.

And while I’m at it give Plasma Guns a huge Cone of Fire so that they are innaccurate sometimes. I don’t use them because I dont find them enjoyable but other complain about them. Make them less reliable. I think theyre bad but theyre viable at least.

DT’s core gameplay is top notch and its near infinite replaybility comes from the teamwork aspect, not in spite of it. The current balance on weapons is throwing this off to the extent a new class might not alleviate the issue.

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No, its expressly because they are retardedly strong.
Cleave, Mobility, Damage, Attack speed, weakpoint damage, crit fishing, blessings.
They are best -in the best categories weapons need to be.

For 1,5?+ years we have a weapon in the ultra fast category that with easy to achieve builds, oneshots THE TOUGHEST nonboss enemy game offers.

And instead of fixing the weapon to NOT do this, Fatshark introduces a mode where its ABSOLUTELY MANDATORY to be able to deal with packs of crushers in seconds
(Thats why we have plasma, or Frag nade that STUNS them as well as deals 50%+ of their hp as for SOME REASON bleed stacks with rending …etc..)

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How painful it is for me to read another post about an IMBA WEAPON, so you’re asking me to fix it and reduce its effectiveness, but why? Did you really think that maybe the problem wasn’t that it was strong, but that there were no alternatives, or could they be counted on the fingers of one hand? Stop asking to dazzle a weapon that is good, when you need to demand to strengthen another unused one, so that people look at it and think about taking it, because it is no less powerful. Strengthen the weak so that there is a choice of good weapons that are strong in the hands of a player of any level, so that it is pleasant and comfortable for him to play with it. A dueling sword is just such a weapon.

Personally, my opinion is that adding it from psyker to other classes was a mistake, yes, I wanted to see it on Zealot by analogy with BT, but I would not have died if it remained exclusively on Psyker, because it needed such melee weapons, power swords are cool, but you also need something such a devastating melee for this class, and the Sharks couldn’t think of anything better to give it to the other two already strong classes, which just made them even stronger.

I repeat again if you are too lazy to read: strengthening other weapons to the level of a dueling sword = the best correction and improvement of the situation

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No, it is just that strong.
And Iam a person who left a negative review on Helldivers 2 for months when they were nerfing stuff instead of making it fun.

Its objectively correct when a game like this (or dakrtide) has good strong power fantasy weapons.
And it sgood to buff before you nerf.

But nerfs are also necessary and DS is so SO above and beyond (also knives, lets not forget them) anything else, you cannot do anything else BUT to nerf it.

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You dont ‘need’ to kill Crushers asap. YOU need to kill Crushers ASAP.

There’s a diffeence. Making all weapons Dueling Sword LevelTM will ruin the game. You only want whats easy, you dont want skill, and you admit it by saying to buff all weapons to DS level. Imagine a basic sword on that level, it’d be insane in the hands of a skilled player, and extremely fun. Thats not what we want, we want teamwork.

Classes are Kind of irrelevant as you can assign roles instead to the mechanic and do that role instead, but the classes DO those roles:
Ogryn. He tank. He brawls and has the talents to do so; tou regen/tankiness/ built in Rending.. Cant go wrong unless you have no awareness in which case team is correct to tell you to go back to Malice.

Zealot, he holy. He brings additional dps and utility. Mainly to fill in where the Ogryn and Vet and Psyker can’t. Hes the real flex class but most are total skillless and take a DS to fill in. Problem. When did you last see a useful Axe or Eviscerator Zealot that wasnt called Asrai? Also has same syndrome as Ogryn and same Malice cure.

Psyker. Space Wizard. Big blasts lots of utility. He cc’s and AoE’s chaff. Enough said, well balanced class. All staffs welcome if played well.

Veteran. Sharpshootah. He deletes problems fast or provides sustained automatic or semi automatic fire to control hordes and ranged. Has some useful melee to flex and utility in the form of Shields and either ST or AOE damage.

Give everyone a dueling sword and its just 4 bots donig the same thing in which case I honestly, TRUELY, would rather play a classless game where everyone just picks a few talents.

So what is it to be FS? Hows the dr00ling sword experiment going? Are the profits higher? Or are you making an inconic 40k game?

Strengthening all weapons is not the answer, not to mention the balance headache of reworking every single weapon you eprsonally isnt thinmk isnt on par. How do you decide that. Is killing a CRUSHER the metric here because if you dont kill them fast you need to engage skill; dodges, awareness, target priority, teamwork.

See the problem with DS deleting Crushers? Or perhaps we BUFF CRUSHERS to be more resistant to DS

DS isn’t strong and your team is far too often overrrun if theyre played badly or basicaly not at all by players that ‘use’ their team instead of ‘work’ with their ‘team’.

Youre hybridization of the game is splititng us, FatShark, will the Arbites class resolve this problem if left unchecked? What, if any, are your plans? Noone cares about winning or losing they care about the homogenisation of the game with your dueling sword vailability change that was called IMMEDIATELY at the time on Steam and now years later is still an issue and possibly the top3 problems with the game.

Arbites need strong disables and AoE aggro potential to alleviate the Crusher problem.

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Yeah in no logical world should a dueling sword have any cleave whatsoever. It should have a crazy high ‘first target’ stat to represent that quick poke/thrust into a soft fleshy vital area…but absolutely no cleave.

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You just described an Axe. Duelling Swords should be based on Saltzpyre’s Rapier, not an Axe that you jab with.

The REAL solution to balance Duelling Swords:
Reduce their Damage against Carapace, make the Special Attack not stagger Ogryn Enemies, and then curb their Mobility back to a level more comparable to that of other One-Handed Swords.

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No, an axe should have loads of cleave because it has huge force (weight) at the point of contact from a heavy swing and a curved blade designed to penetrate.

A dueling sword having cleave is complete lack of physics imo. If it is extremely powerful against non armoured parts of the body, as first target, then this follows the logical IRL effect of such a weapon.

Certainly agree RE the stagger. Of course a duelling sword should not stagger.

It should be extremely weak against points of armour.

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But having a lack of cleave and a lot of single-target damage is what Fatshark has deemed the niche of Axes to be.

Ah, yes. NOW we care about physics. Ignore the fact that Chainswords don’t become clogged with viscera on the first revved attack, Space Marines can still breathe despite having fused ribcages. Look, Fatshark has made it clear that, in their games, swords cleave and axes are single-target. I don’t make the rules of 40K physics, I’m just saying that Vermintide’s way of doing these sorts of Weapons is both the safest and the best bet.

Yeah, at least not against Ogryns. It’s ridiculous. On that we can agree.

Yes, but removing its Cleave isn’t the right way to complete this circle. Its Mobility is too high and it shouldn’t stagger Ogryns NOT BECAUSE OF “REALISM” but because it makes the wielder virtually unkillable. You shouldn’t be able to use THIS KIND OF WEAPON to interrupt a Crusher’s overhead, because that isn’t the niche it should cover as the spiritual successor of Saltzpyre’s Rapier.

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Ogrin = tank, yeah, well, then I suggest using this logic to remove all weapons except the shield, and remove the small arms, too, why would the tank need any other weapons?
Psyker and explosions? Similarly, after the 13th patch, everyone was whining about how strong he was, etc. well, a psyker should be strong, but now what? I’ll just say that this is a sport and nothing more, you don’t expect any results from it, just the role of saporta.
After all, this is a PVE game, I understand the balance, but first of all it should be fun, and do you know how much fun it is to play with a Katachan sword on a havok? But I know, I had a lot of fun, well, really. Have you seen a submachine gun for a long time? I want to try other weapons, but I’m don`t telling you to upgrade everything to insanely strong ones, but why would I use trash weapons?
Thunder Hammer, I’ve tried playing with it myself, I’ve seen other people with it, but it’s not a profile for me specifically, and maybe it’s not a profile for those players either, but when you look at the damage from the HAMMER on the boss, It’s just a disgrace.
The only adequate edit, if you don’t take the side of strengthening other weapons, is to return ds to psyker.
But wait, because then there will be another weapon, oh, yes, Plasma on the veteran, and what to do with it, well, let’s completely shut it down.
There is another, more favorite way for sharks, secretive, as they love to do: just leave all the weapons as they are, do not change them at all, and just adjust the HP and resists of absolutely all opponents, unscrewing them by an additional 100, 200 and other percentages.
All the requests to weaken something look cool, but it really won’t be enough for you, they will weaken, there will be a new meta and everyone will run with other weapons, let’s say a heavy sword becomes an imba and then what will we see? Weaken him, it’s impossible, everyone help him.
Players should have a choice between good weapons, not between trash and good weapons.

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Agree, DS should be the anti-human weapon.

Nuke it’s carapace and unyielding damage, preferably to around Heavy Sword levels.

Reduce it’s flak damage so it isn’t just one-poking everything that’s not an Ogyrn.

Remove all cleave from it’s heavy poke attacks. Light attack cleave should stay as playing a weapon with zero literal cleave is a terrible experience.

Exterminatus Uncanny Strikes. I’ll never understand why FS thought a blessing that lets you invalidate all armor resistance was a good idea. At the very least reduce the amount ignored and it’s uptime.

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nerf duelling sword, i know you have 4000 hours maining it but it needs to be nerfed.

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What?! We cannot have that. Havoc 40 was clearly optimised for DS Mk IV.

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Yeh, anything useful to add?

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if we’d go by RL standards absolutely no weapon would have cleave, you simply can’t cut through a whole man and just continue the cut.

imo cleave always represented the ability to not get stuck in the target, and in that regard swords are the best, particularly curved swords, it’s the main reason why so many cavalry swords are curved.

Now about maces and clubs, they should be the prime anti armor weapon (if no 40k magic is involved) never understood why they are a crowd control, makes zero sense as top heavy weapons

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Not really, sarcasm is the only thing I can muster at this point when talking about the DS and knives situation. Mk IV and Mk II heavy dmg vs armour is way too high. Mobility is another thing people often ignore. That’s pretty obvious. At very least they should copy paste the Mk V damage profile on Mk IV and II heavy attacks. This has been ignored now, for how long? A year? Longer?

Then we can start talking about Havoc silly difficulty modifiers vs the performance of all “non-Havoc-meta” weapons.

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Honestly, if they don’t rebalance at least DS and combat shotguns, Arbites will be just uninteresting.
Mace cannot compete against DS, except if they made them even more OP. Then it would be a total game failure.
Combat shotgun are actually one of the worst ranged option. Maybe the arbites shotgun will be better, but there will surely be only one modele and it would start to be boring fast enough to always use same weapon.
Arbites are about shotguns and maces if I have read well. But the actual game balance make them out before even here.

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Many people advocate for nerfing armour damage on DS, but most of them skim over Uncanny Strike which removes this balancing avenue - you could reduce the Carapace damage to literally one percent and, due to Uncanny Strike, actual DPS would fall by 20-40% tops because of how ridiculous Uncanny Strike is. In order to even have armour scaling as a balancing option, Uncanny Strike has to be nuked first.

So kudos for taking it into account, +1 from me.

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Yeah, agreed on AT LEAST nerfing Uncanny Strike.

Uncanny Strike and Agile are actually insane, the Duelling Sword has BOTH of them.

However, even without Uncanny Strike… a Duelling Sword is still killing Crushers faster than a Thunder Hammer.

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Yeah, it was with him that I played for all 1957318 hours, yeah. I like this sword on psyker, but I don’t consider it the best choice in this class, I didn’t play with it on zealot until the second season of havok, but in the second I don’t have the right distance from the knife, but I also lacked its mobility on, say, a two-handed sword or an axe.