In all seriousness though all they have to do is nerf it’s carapace damage the question is by how much? Personally I think by a lot make it perform like the heavy sword into crushers.
Edit: and boss damage
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I think that using a weapon should feel good at least in auric maelstrom, preferably at least be viable in havoc. If you think games shouldn’t be fun then I’m not sure what to say.
A game can be challenging and also fun, I just want my weapon to deal enough damage and allow me to evade damage as well. Using the heavy swords or tactical axes even chain axes, and shock mauls, they don’t meet that minimum standard, Its all just Sisyphean you see a hoard and its just “okay time to spend the next two hours bonking this crushers 7 trillion times on the head until they finally decide to die, then repeat that on this hoard for another half hour killing one at a time because my axe has the cleave of a pool noodle” its not hard, its just annoying.
I think the relic blade is the gold standard currently, all weapons should be about as good as the relic blade, maybe be a bit worse but be easier to use in some cases sure. Its good enough that it kills enemies reasonably fast, but it doesn’t kill enemies fast enough that it invalidates the challenge, its mobility is good enough that you can evade attacks but not so good that it makes it trivial. That is what all weapons should feel like, obviously not be direct clones, but they shouldn’t feel like strict downgrades in every way, I want every weapon to be viable and fun to use. Using a lot of these worse weapons is less a question about skill and more a challenge to your patience.
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Yes it does also need to be fun, it’s a videogame, not a professional sport or a second work.
Unfun challenge is just annoying and is, ultimately, pointless in the realm of videogames.
There’s a reason games like Dark Souls don’t make every single boss oneshot you with any attack, there needs to be a balance between fun and challenge.
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Wait, what? Do you not want to have fun while facing the hardest challenges? You want your video game to not be fun?
Odd take regardless of opinion on the DS.
edit - Just to clarify, I want challenge too, but there is a line between frustrating and challenging and it is the hallmark of a good design to not cross it.
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There’s fun, and there’s achievement. You can have all the fun you want in Malice. Knock yourself out. Achievement is deeply sabotaged when there are massive outliers in terms of performance, like the Dueling Sword. It trivializes challenging content, it is a crutch.
Then stick to Malice? It’s really fun. Why go higher? (BTW: Having led raids and done world firsts in multiple MMORPG’s, I can assure you that achievement in gaming is work, not merely fun).
I’m so with you on the riposte thing tbh! DSword and DClaw could have different versions of riposte at any rate, with the the former specializing in single target only, and the latter retaining its wide stagger & cleave for example.
In any case, replace the special with riposte, significantly reduce dmg vs. armor (at least carapace) and that’s that. It would still be a strong mobile weapon but not something that can do everything and all at once (often better than the weapons specialized in any of those things).
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BTW as a completely separate note while not browbeating you about the difference between achievement and fun, I completely agree with this statement. The relic blade is really well designed and requires skill to use.
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Okay look, I play very challenging games for fun, overcoming a fair challenge is fun. When it goes from fair to just annoying is where the line of good game to boring is.
I mean if you want me to just list my gaming credentials I can, but to summarize I have done plenty of things harder then havoc 40. I mean for one example ultra nightmare the two doom games, that’s hard, that requires complete mastery of the systems and a long period of attention and very few mistakes. In that way its fairly similar to havoc 40 in terms of the challenge it provides. Now imagine if ultra nightmare made all enemies have 10x more health. That is no longer about if the game is challenging or if you are good at the game, now its more about if you have the patience to slough through that nonsense.
If you enjoy completely unfair and boring challenges then you can enjoy that. But I think most sane people prefer a fair and engaging challenge, using the heavy sword is not a fair and engaging challenge, its the same as using the relic blade just it takes 10x longer.
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We have similar philosophies, but let me point out two issues here:
- Overcoming a ‘fair’ challenge is fun - until that becomes boring and you need more challenge. That’s sort of the point to Havoc - it’s unfair modifier on top of unfair modifier, it exists purely to be beaten. Auric Maelstroms after a H40 session are laughably relaxing.
- The concept of ‘fair’ challenge is highly influenced by how effective the tools you have available to you are. There are several very over-tuned tools that make H40 seem easier than it should be. e.g. this umpteenth thread about the Dueling Sword.
Typical attitude of someone who’s probably much worse than he thinks he is.
Having led raids and done world firsts in multiple MMORPG’s, I can assure you that achievement in gaming is work, not merely fun.
You fail to understand the difference between completionist gaming and making content accessible to the majority of the playerbase. Veteran raids in many MMOs have trifectas, but they still need to be balanced in a way an average player can complete it. The accolades come from speedrunning them, doing no death runs, etc.
Nobody’s stealing your accolades here, even if-- and that’s a big if-- the majority of people cared about them at all.
There’s leaderboards and youtube if you want to prove something to someone. I’m (and many other people) fine without it personally, and I see no need to balance the game around fragile egos where people need to prove in a every single match that they are the best.
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The issue of duelling sword comes from the fact, that it’s both an easy and a strong weapon.
It either needs to be easy and weaker than it is now, OR it needs to have more complex combos, be harder to wield. Basically, the damage should not come from a single heavy attack.
I’m okay with DS staying as is, if the current heavy attack that oneshots many enemies can only be accessed through 2 light weakspot hits or something.
But I also want them to rebalance all the marks, because frankly, mark 2 and mark 5 are kinda useless when you have mark 4.
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Lol, I’m an old man with sh*t aim (literally >2x the age of folks in disc I’ve cleared havocs with). I’ve still cleared it all, but I know exactly where I am. Good, not great. Which does not prevent me from being an objective commentator…
… and again, this thread is not the first ‘conversation’ on the topic. People have been calling for the Dueling Sword to be balanced for months.
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can we get a refrence? id love to see deimos with the buffs dealing with pogryn using an L1H2 loop
My definition of “fair” is just if I can reasonably deal with the threats thrown at me, in a reasonable amount of time and effort. If your havoc games take 6 hours to finish one mission, that’s not reasonably that’s just boring.
Frankly if you have a team with good skills. Like 2x chorus, 1x shout, 1x shield or 1x chorus, 1x shout, 1x shield, 1x vent. You just win havoc 40 if your team is coordinated. The only question is how long is it going to take if you are all running weapons that deal barely any damage.
Sure. Which brings us back to what is an appropriate TTK / balance approach for weapons. Thunder Hammer vs. Dueling Sword - why should they have such a disparity in high levels of play? You made the point Relic Blade is where you’d like to see weapons at, and I don’t disagree - but Dueling Sword is MILES above the Relic Blade in terms of performance. It’s not remotely close. (/back to main point)
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Honestly its not that different, they actually preform about the same, just relic blade takes way more skill to do well with. I’m all for a small nerf to dueling sword to bring it back in line a bit, I just don’t like how people complain about it so much.
Frankly a weapon being OP isn’t a big issue in a PVE game, so many threads complaining about it are just taking attention from the bigger issue of most weapons not being fun. If a weapon is OP and you don’t find it fun, you can just not use it. But when most weapons aren’t fun to use, that makes the game much more boring and hurts retention more.
Really I think all the people complaining about a lack of content and things to do in the game, are really just complaining about how stale the game feels. If you could actually use most weapons and talents in the game at high difficulties and have them feel good, then I really doubt most people would still be complaining about a lack of content.
I mean borderlands 2 still has a player base as big as darktide despite not getting any new content for 6 years, why? because you can just do a lot of stuff in it, there is always another weapon you can use or another build you haven’t done before, and a lot of them are actually viable and fun to use.
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Right up until you take survivability into account.
Right up until you add challenge-based achievements.
For the most part, you can. The issue is that outliers (dueling sword, combat knife) really skew your perspective on what good looks like.
You may also have an unconscious bias that everything needs to ‘feel good’ against everything. That’s just silly. Weapons should have strengths and weaknesses. The relic blade has, among its weaknesses, relatively low mobility and complex, slow attack chains. It’s still a great weapon - but a DS or combat knife is infinitely safer to use.
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I’d be happy to prove you wrong with my innate inability to hit headshots against even immobile enemies!
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Speaking about Devil’s Claw, if they would like to distinguish it more from DS’s they can add poison dot inbuilt or blessings, wich fits Catachan theme (just name it neurotoxin or smthg), add here poison dot is a thing in V2, but not in DT however. Furthermore can be something that applies debuffs unlike bleed, something like enemy movement/attack speed reduced, etc.
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Relic blade has a very long reach and pretty good stagger. It requires better positioning and timing sure, but a relic blade and a dueling sword both played at peek efficiency aren’t that different.
If your ego is fragile enough that people using a good weapon to get havoc 40 a bit faster then you is that big of a deal… Then I think that is more of a you problem. Its one thing if people outright cheat to get an achievement, but you still need to be good at the game to beat havoc 40 even with the dueling sword.
I mean people can just get carried to havoc 40 because their friends are better. Should we ban private parties and force everyone to play with randoms, or even better true solo so we can see who really deserves a arbitrary number beside their name?
Do whatever you find fun, I just want more things to be fun.
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