Having used the Relic blade near exclusively since it’s release on Damnation difficulty (which should be considered the standard) and occasionally dipping into Auric Damnation, I feel confident in giving feedback on it.
The weapon itself is flawless in it’s design.
It’s an extremely balanced multi purpose tool that can clear hordes extremely effectively and has decent single target damage.
The power activation is smooth and much better than the previous method of single swing usage per activation.
The way it holds combos for longer is extremely useful and with the ability to activate the powered state mid combo and resume where you were is very fun.l and useful.
The sprint attacks are amazing for either wiping out lighter enemies in your way such as Poxwalkers or for quickly closing the distance and taking out a specialist with the heavy attack.
There’s only two bad things I can say about the weapon and neither are to do with how it functions, but rather design elements around it.
Firstly, there’s the blessing pool. It’s not good, it’s pretty awful actually.
Out of the seven unique blessings only two are actually worth using, Cranial grounding and Syphon. Out of it’s total ten blessings, only four are really worth considering. Syphon, Cranial Grounding, Wrath and Rampage.
Energy Transfer is already awkward enough to use with it’s Perfect block requirement but the cool down on it completely kills any possible viability it could have.
Counter Attack suffers from not offering enough, having a Perfect block requirement and on top of that having a cool down. The duration on it’s effect is also ridiculously low.
Devastating Strike is simply pointless on a weapon that has access to Wrath, with two swings Wrath provides a better bonus.
Overload doesn’t seem to work, no matter how much I’ve tested it nothing has happened. No explosion nor any knock back of even basic fodder enemies. Even if it worked the effect simply isn’t good, it’s too little for a blessing slot.
Heatsink is almost a usable blessing, however it’s functionality being locked to when the Relic blade is unpowered hurts it significantly. Especially when it’s competing against Cranial grounding which does a very similar thing except it works whilst the Relic blade is powered and gives extra damage.
Energy Leakage simply sucks on the Relic blade because unlike the Psyker’s version it can’t ping pong Peril, or in this case heat, as easily. Theoretically you could combine this blessing with Heatsink to maintain it more easily however giving up both blessing slots to make one of them more manageable doesn’t seem worth it.
I think that these blessings need improvement namely additional effects and in the case of the Perfect block blessings, a removal of the cool down. Unfortunately all of the good blessings only reinforce the Relic blades strengths as opposed to shoring up a weaknesses, there is room for the blessings in need of improvement to have their own niche in this regard such as improving the Relic blade’s dueling effectiveness or making it better defensively via better blocking.
The second issue with the design around the Relic blade is it’s variants.
Both are extremely similar with an almost identical moveset, the only real difference is that the MK X has two sweeping light attacks followed by a thrust on the third, whilst the MK II has two overhead lights followed by a sweeping third.
The Relic blades don’t follow the standard variant differentiation of light, medium, heavy (blue green brown) and instead opt for move set preference.
This leads to the MK II being completely pointless due to being objectively inferior.
Whilst the MK II would in theory have the better single target damage, this is not how it functions in reality.
It’s single target combo is light 1, heavy 3, heavy 4 repeating heavy attacks until the target is dead. This takes four hits in total to kill a Crusher with +25% carapace damage and Cranial Grounding.
The MK X’s single target combo is heavy 1, heavy 2, light 3. You repeat this combo until your target is dead. This takes the same four hits to kill a Crusher on the exact same Relic blade.
Whilst the MK II’s heavy 3 has the highest damage attack between the two variants however this doesn’t matter much because ultimately the MK X has the better combo with a comparable kill time.
The MK X can easily hit an enemy in the weak point with all three of it’s single target combo, whilst the MK II suffers from it’s fourth heavy coming from below and thus being more difficult to hit a weak point with.
The MK X even has better horde clear, it’s light attacks will mulch basic fodder far quicker than the MK II can even with it’s easier to access sweeping heavies. Even against a mixed horde with Rangers or Maulers the MK X is just as good.
So ultimately, what purpose does the MK II serve other than looking far cooler than the MK X?
Ultimately the Relic blade is an amazingly designed weapon and the gold standard for what a new melee weapon should be. It’s balanced and fits the Zealot perfectly. The problems it faces with it’s variants is not unique at all, although it’s underwhelming blessings are an outliner. (Bring able to specialise such a versatile weapon with different blessings would be nice.)
Although the Psyker’s Force great sword needs far more attention between the two weapons.