Seriously DS needs a nerf.
If you use a controller, you will get same disadvantage by using a combat axe than using a DS.
So the controller use has nothing to do with the balance.
DS is actually too strong. How can we see it? simple. Check the weapons picked by players and you see that the DS is largely preferred actually.
But there is no public data available to do this checks
your eyes are sufficient
Wrong
Didnât read the whole post if that was your conclusion.
A ton of players on this forum have already complained that a majority of melee weapons are complete trash. If you nerf the infinite stun-lock on the DS and make weapons a tad more usable the weapon will get selected less often.
Its not hard to imagine that human beings want to optimize things. Which is why they pick the weapon everyone else is using and calling broken to begin with. Its so funny to me that everyone just says âIts completely borked!â But fail to realize that it requires:
But because these players have played the game so often, they have plasteel that a new player wishes they had. And their relative effort to get this running isnât anywhere near what a new player is at.
People are plain wrong about DS and it shows when half the replies on my topic reply are personal attacks rather than anything meaningful to the conversation.
And to top this off I am predicting that half the hype around DS is more about seeing zealot have it rather than it being a problem. I used DS on psyker for a long time before zealot even had it. It was powerful then, and itâs powerful now.
Duelling Swordsâ current state is unhealthy for the game and your defence for that effectively translates to âI rely on this Weapon as a crutch and am blind to the fact it is blatantly OP and on its own tier of brokenâ when you actually take into context what youâre defending as a âbalancedâ Weapon. Crushers straight up shouldnât die to 1-3 Duelling Sword stabs, Crushers arenât that kind of Enemy and Duelling Swords arenât that kind of Weapon. Duelling Swords have no risk, no learning curve and yet all of the reward.
1: Post nerf the stunlock , yes. Weapons should feel rewarding to use. And most melees donât. without a wounds build or scryers gaze to begin with.
2: HMMMM⌠let me think about that one for a second. If bad players can use it well. Doesnât that mean that players who think the DS is a complete Braindead weapon would dare I say be wrong about their assumption? The amount of players Iâve seen use DS and be first to go down in a match isnât zero after all.
3: Thats putting words in my mouth and itâs NOT what I said. What I said was: Putting stats in peoplesâ faces and telling them itâs truth is foolish. Because its about the practical use case that arise in the real situation. Not necessarily experience, but of course that helps too. Thats how the human brain works. And what exactly does my bio have to do with it? Shoot, if anything its proof of what im saying. Spent 40k on a degree and I still donât know enough.
4: Where did I say this?
They arenât contradictory either. My point was that Itâs more skill oriented than people want to give it credit for.
But to be fair. Iâm over the topic. Once people have made up their minds (After someone else told them how to think) its impossible to shed some light on the situation at all without people getting offended. Iâm going back to using eviscerator lately and it has been no issue. I cant understand why people cry so much about weapon balance in a PVE co-op game that, when I decide to match-make for havoc, all my teammates die horribly within the first two hordes that come out
This statement is true, but I donât think the rest of the weapons are that bad.
My list of human weapons who need a touch up are chain weapons, thammer, shock maul, tac axes. Maybe Crusher.
Force swords need both a tune up and a tune down if you think about it.
Thatâs kind of it, i donât think the underperforming melee weapons for human classes are underperforming nearly as wildly as DS is overperforming. You know what Iâm saying? Like the DS is a whole ass 200% better than it should be, itâs an entity entirely separate from your build determining its own effectiveness by your ability to aim at a head and dodge. Meanwhile, its closest antonymous counterpart is the tac axe which just needs a little extra range and maybe maybe a touched up finesse⌠if it was no ass bottom of the barrel bad itâd be impossible to build around.âŚwait actually I just took my own criteria to heart and realized itâs Shock MaulâŚ
Not the worst horde clear in the game but not the best either.
Well getting that right is certainly not easy, but I think there are enough different enemy types and weapon parameters available to tweak that I donât think itâs unreasonable to want things within a reasonable overall power range of one another while displaying different strengths and weaknesses and weapon feel. Like DS would still be great and unique feeling if it couldnât make mince meat of carapace nearly as fast. Itâs still gonna feel distinct from chain sword, force sword, combat axe etc. I donât think we need to take such a defeatist approach to balancing.
Though fully agreed every change should be approached with some caution. If FS did much more regular, incremental balance changes, it would be much easier to be confident them getting things right.
I canât find it
Numbers and statistics are not magic.
The numbers of players using the DS cannot tell the devs the number of players using the DS despite thinking itâs OP. It canât tell them how many players arenât using it because they think itâs OP.
And the number of players wonât change whether or not it is actually OP.
While itâs obvious that choosing who runs a country is best done as a popularity contest, games donât have to work that way. There are real measures like time-to-kill, for example. There are also real characteristics that it can be difficult to assign a number to, like survivability. The devs could run tests and and get a number they can assign to âSurvivability,â but I doubt they have, and I doubt they will.
But there are players who have played many, many games. They have knowledge and experience, and can derive their own conclusions. If players come to differing conclusions it doesnât mean that players cannot discover the truth on their own. It doesnât mean they simply have different opinions. No, it means that some are right, and some are wrong. It means we have to do something that thousands of years of civilization have been trying to shield us from: We have to think, and exercise our own judgement.
I know it can be hard. But itâs not really harder than going up a difficulty and not using the DS. It can be done.
Itâs similar to how I often joke with you that the way to balance Darktide is to buff everything that I personally use and nerf everything else! 
Maybe not the dueling sword is OP, but uncanny strike.
I donât use uncanny on DS, and it is still too strongâŚ
I very much agree. Thats mostly the point really, that the weapon has no downsides⌠except for me with the constant tapping of my trigger to fight hordes. Its the main reason I dont use it.
Also, for me personally, the thing I found most broken is the âAgileâ blessing, which resets the dodge on a weak spot hit. I found I could just dodge almost forever and barely ever got caught by those pesky overheads (unless I wasnt paying attention), which is what makes me laugh so much when I see noobs using this and eating overheads 
. No real shade on them tho, they are probably seeing everyone talk about how it deletes stuff and ignoring that weak looking blessing.
It will be difficult for me to explain why itâs not entirely correct about âdonât have to work that way,â especially regarding your âreal measuresâ like âtime-to-kill.â Last one is extremely difficult to calculate from a developerâs perspective (Iâm a software developer). For example, the âtime-to-killâ metric needs a beginning and end on a timeline. Where the end is located is clear (the moment when the npc died). But from what moment should we start counting the beginning? From the moment the player switched from gun/staff to DS? Or from the first hit with DS? What if I hit once and then switch to my gun again and run for a half of map? Itâs may be easy to definitively determine such metric but itâs extremely difficult to design relative calculation methods and translate it to code.
As for my example âover the last six months, 70% of players only play with DS,â this metric is actually quite easy to calculate. Because we just need to record the entire set of weapons, talents, and other items just once. For example, we can take such snapshot once at every moment when all players in team have loaded in a map. And itâs extremely simply to code. And most likely this is already being counted/logged.
However, I agree with you that the figures obtained from statistics may not cover some parts of the community. And this applies to any similar kind of statistics. Here, FS really need to think carefully about how to inspect the data and how to interpret it. However, this is an analytical approach/task that is common for any industry. I hope you wonât argue with that.
Overall, I just gave an example of one sample measure/metric. To improve the statistics obtained, there are many other different techniques, and most likely, FS already know about it. For example, they could make an in-game survey for a specific groups of players. This would guarantee that the data is obtained from real players. Also, itâs not a ârocket scienceâ and it has already been done in many games. For instance, in Warframe, they periodically offer to complete a short survey on various game aspects right inside the game. Such a survey may launch for N new accounts, for M accounts who have been playing for 1 year, and for K veteran accounts (1 year and more). This way, you can almost guarantee that the feedback along with the statistics on equipment usage on game servers will provide a fairly clear picture. Itâs not a complete list of checks/tests/metrics and itâs impossible to count everything perfectly. But you can get close enough to it. This is a fairly simple survey form and such things donât require huge costs and months of development. And surely it would be useful not only for DS-like issues; I know there are many other heated debates on the other weapons and classes (Make Ogryn Great Again lol).
Overall, my position is that DS, in the form it exists, is an important part of my gaming experience. And itâs not just because I want to dominate anyone (how can you even dominate players in Darktide? Itâs not a competitive game lol, whatâs the point?). And if for some reason the entire gaming community decides to make my personal gaming experience harder, I would like to be sure that this is truly decision of the majority of the gaming community. But not just because some portion of overskilled veteran players decided they donât like this weapon anymore and it is a time to call developers so they tune some things for euphemeral balance and overall justice.
My big issue with the DS is its capability against armored opponents. That should just not be something in its wheelhouse of tools. A Saber is absolutely not a weapon to use against an armored opponent.
As I sit here typing this Iâve got half a dozen of the things sitting next to me, Iâve been doing Italo-Hungarian saber for many years.
Sabers typically come in 3 flavors. Cavalry, Infantry, and Duelling. Cavalry sabers most closely resemble the physical models we have in game, chunky heavy blades intended to be swung downwards from horseback. Infantry sabers are lighter, Duelling sabers lighter still (typically only intended to draw first blood, very fast, but the blades wonât take the abuse the others will).
Sabers are fantastic weapons against unarmored opponents. Theyâre fast, theyâre mobile, and theyâre versatile, and theyâre not terribly complicated to learn. But in no capacity are they ever intended for combat against armored opponents.
This is my great issue with the DS. The anti-armor capability just isnât something that should be in the wheelhouse. That not only throws off game balance, but itâs narratively absurd. For a gameplay perspective, it makes the DS simply far too versatile and effective and undercuts the reason for the existence of much more unwieldy weapons.
Yeah sure.
Started on one PC, I replaced the keyboard and mouse, upgraded my internet to 1gig fibre, completely reinstalled everything multiple times, eventually bought an entire new PC, new internal 2.5gbps LAN, had my fibre lines and router replaced, more new mice and keyboards, win 10, win11, PikaOSâŚ
I watch other streamers on Twitch with the SAME issues - I have people in my twitch chat seeing what is happening and confirming it happens to them too. It is far worse on EU servers than it is on NA East.
Itâs just me tho.
see my post above.