Addendum: Here are responses to your reply in yesterday’s reddit post: Strawhat yesterday.
In the time it takes to activate a mk2 thunder hammer, charge the overhead heavy, and release… a dueling sword can have already killed 2 or 3 crushers.
At least as I understand it, most weapons in the game are balanced along a power<—>speed slider, with (in theory) the larger, slower swinging/firing weapons hitting harder than the fast ones, which keep up in DPS through speed. The dueling sword, as it stands, invalidates at least half of this spectrum by out-damaging every heavy weapon against single targets, while also having best in class mobility. Something’s gotta change.
I don’t care about the duelling sword per se but it’s enraging that a foppish toothpick deletes crushers better than a fully-charged helbore shot
I just find it interesting that slow, heavy weapons are treated with the utmost caution (thunderhammer, ogryn weapons), while super fast, high-dodge, high-damage weapons just… get to be hyper-frenetic blenders. This was the case in VT2 as well. There has to be a tradeoff. Faster is always always always always always always ALWAYS an inherent advantage. It’s an offensive and defensive advantage, simultaneously, it has to be treated as one.
Everyone is running it, there is no downside to it. FS basically nerfed all other weapons by making DS and speedbuilds mandatory in “high difficulty” scenarios. There is no benefit in any of the other weapons anymore if speed +1 hit kills beat everything. While you stuck in 1x speed, zealots with DS or knife do like 2x speed about everythng.
Reducing its penetration, while in greatly increasing it’s critical damage would reflect that. Its high risk versus high reward. Some weapons are for sweaty, try-hards who put in a lot of hours, and I think there should always be those classes/talents/weapons that reward those players who “git gud”. I am not one of those, but I respect that effort.
The penetration needs to be reduced, and maaaaybe it should be worse at clearing hordes? Reduce boss damage too I think. That takes it from a generalist weapon that does everything to an elite/specialist slayer with good mobility and limited horde clear that needs to be paired with a crowd control ranged weapon (like the combat blade, but honestly combat blade needs to deal less damage too lol)
Duelling Swords shouldn’t be good against armoured targets, they should be great at taking care of non-armoured specialists/elites, great at dodging around, and somewhat average at dealing with hordes. Combat Blades have the same issue too, it’s just that the Duelling Swords have better reach and attacks in general, but Combat Blades should be about building damage over time and great speed, but they should be bad against armour. Both of them should have mediocre penetration, and to be honest blessings like Uncanny Strike and Ruthless Backstab shouldn’t give Rending, or at the very least you shouldn’t be able to get 100% Rending from them.
Better anti armor blessing should be on a TH meanwhile it’s on a DS… Look at thunderous on a TH. Nobody in their right mind is taking that on high havoc. Meanwhile DS does literally everything and better and faster and stronger from blessings
Saying that at this point is kinda worrying about the studios ability to balance this game properly. The DS IV has been broken for months with tons of feedback around it, and all FS has at this point is “we’re open to conversation.”
The Ogryn changes are great and well welcomed, but it’s still frustrating that so many cool special attacks and weapons exist and end up overshadowed by how the Dueling Sword just removes crushers and elites - without any preparation or build-up. Why bother holding down the chainsword, eviscerator or chainaxe special attack on armored enemies (and putting myself at risk) when the Dueling Sword can do all that without any risk at all? It’s so good that it just makes virtually all the special attacks that were designed for those cool moments obsolete.
It needs some sort of weakness. It can’t have top in-class armour and elite killing while also having stupendous movement and defence. My two cents is that it should somewhat mobile, but not nearly as much as it is now, and it should just deal less damage through armour and be terrible on bodyshot — Force it to hit the head to do anything. The Mk 4 is also the easiest to use and the strongest: It should be the easiest, but you should have greater potential on the other two, since they’re harder to use effectively. Up their armour piercing on the slashing heavies and lower the damage on Mk 4’s thrusts. Perhaps, since a ton of the issues are with Zealots and Veterans breaking the sword’s design, instead of keeping it locked to Psyker like before (which I don’t hate), perhaps keep it the same or somewhat similar on Psyker, while nerfing it on the other two — Which I’d propose being some new passive on Psyker that increases crit rate and/or movement speed and/or finesse damage on melee weapons. Nerf the sword by an equal amount to the Psyker buff, keeping it in the same state on psyker, but less dominant on Zealot and Veteran. This could also make Psyker more competitive with other melee weapons, as Psykers I see seem to pretty much exclusively take Dueling Sword or a Force Sword.
I don’t see the necessity behind having a conversation when it’s so obviously OP? Are you guys hesitant to do nerfs at all because some people complain massively whenever you nerf anything, or do you genuinely believe it’s not insanely overpowered at the moment?
That insane mobility stat has to be brought down to something more reasonable.
Take base carapace and unyielding damage down to 25% of current, for starters. Take a hard look at the overpowered blessings for rending and mobility. Decide on it’s role, right now it is FAR TOO GOOD at almost everything. Please nerf the damn thing, I hate seeing it every match - this game has so many great weapons but OMG EZMODE DUELING SWORD is all everyone runs because it’s RIDICULOUSLY overpowered. Hit combat knife (zealot synergy specifically) while you’re at it. Such obvious outliers that need addressing yesterday.
Please adjust the duelling sword. It outperforms every other ‘anti-armor’ tool in the game by a large margin. Perhaps also give the Tactical Axes some love.
This comment is hilarious, there have been countless discussions about dueling sword and after 6 months we are open to conversations around it
My thoughts are that the DS does so much so well, that it’s hard to justify using something else for efficiency. Buffs to other weapons in specific areas would be a great way to encourage more options. To get players to try them, maybe big buffs to change the player perceptions, and then nerfs a few weeks later so the total power delta to non DS weapons comes out to small buffs, but perception for the player base is positively encouraged to try them. Thanks for being a dope CM!
We don’t have access to the usage statistics, but from our end it sure looks like the higher you go in difficulty the more you see lobbies of four dueling sword users
+1 to a Dueling Sword + Knife nerf. Their mobility makes them too safe for the damage they deal. Having access to blessings like Uncanny / Precog pushes them to absurdity.
F the DS!! I rather let the whole thing removed if Psyker cant get full ownership again!! All hail Emperor of Mankind!
In the time I slowly walk and charge my branx pickaxe, the whole crusher horde got annihalated by a dualsword user. Branx in itself is a fine weapon, but the dualsword outclasses it in every single category. Branx is slow and clunky in every field, but has high single target damage. Slow sprint, high stamina cost for sprinting, bad dodges, slow attack speed, slow heavy attacks. Clunky but decent horde clear. Now we have the dueling sword running at supersonic speed, having endless dodges, one shotting crushers on a driveby in a third of the time, having instant stagger on demand on the special attack. Still good horde clear with its high attack speed and damage.
