General balance and feedback based on damnation

Most of this is around veteran and psyker as I have played far more of them than zealot and ogryn.

Melee:
Power Sword- The cleave when empowered makes hordes a joke and also allows for veteran to be better in melee combat than the zealot whose role is being the melee powerhouse.

Devil’s Claw- It just doesn’t have a purpose ATM, it has poor cleave damage and poor armor damage. It seems as though it is meant as a cleave weapon to be good with horde, maybe I’m wrong.

Axes- I don’t care for axes even in Vermintide but I’ve yet to see anyone use an axe in damnation or heresy likely due to cleave but that has always been the case with axes.

Shovel(Ogryn)- Can turn around bulwarks by hitting them at a very close(hitting their back through the shield) range with a heavy then using the weapon special (punch) to knock them down trivializing them.

Ranged:
Revolver- As of now it is a quick option for zealot or a melee focused veteran but lacks the damage to deal with threats in a quick manner despite the low clip and ammo reserve.

Plasma gun- The overheat and ammo consumption are very high. The bolters high damage and decent ammo is locked behind a long draw time but the plasma gun needs a long charge time to get high damage per shot instead of a long draw. I think it could be a good alternative as a special/elite killer with a bit less ammo consumption on charged attacks and less overheat to kill more than 2-3 specials/elites before reloading or taking damage from venting.

Helbore- While I haven’t used it much myself I also haven’t seen anyone else use it as it seems underwhelming damage wise and has sway despite not having a scope or great iron sights to help it.

Trauma Force Staff- The lack of damage outside of the center of the alternate fire to be a worse CC option without making up for damage when compaired to both the purgatus and surge staffs.

Primary fire on all staffs exept purgatus- The delayed fire makes it feel a bit more clunky than Sienna’s staffs with a small fire ball primary.

Ogryn ranged- The only ranged I see them use and use myself is the rumbler. It feels great and is a good spot but the other weapons just don’t seem to compare.

Enemies:
Pox Hound- Need to be able to dodge its pounce. Needs to not fly into the sky causing players to lose track of it and be unable to hit it with melee until it falls back down.

Pox Burster- The push is inconsistent as of now. It was consistent for a time but now it’s a roll of the dice if you can push it. Even if you push it very often it doesn’t move far enough away to prevent damage even if you push and dodge backwards.

Class specific:
Psyker- Headpop takes far to long to activate for the damage it does, especially when it takes 3 pops to kill some enemies. Scaling damage on higher difficulties would help to keep it useful and prevent it from being too strong on malace.

Veteran- They have an AMAZING kit with a lot of thought in it but currently are the best all arounder and intrude on the other classes’ specialties and/or do those specialties better in some cases. Horde and armor, use power sword. Gunner units, lazguns. Elites, bolter or plasma gun. Crowd control, grenades on 1 minute cooldown.

General:
We rely on luck (as of now) to get good base stats on weapons and curios. Not being able to share usable weapons and curios with applicable classes doesn’t add anything fun. Instead, it means more time checking the shop and hoping to find another good one and upgrade another.
Penances not saying what mission type you are missing for completing one of each type on X difficulty on X class.

I am very happy with the game outside of some of the launch issues like crashing and crafting. I look forward to what else is to come

Don’t want to go into full Damnation viability argument here but axes actually are meta (and Combat Blade) on Zealot with crit bleed build. Specifically the meta are tactical axe with Critical Bonus and Shred and best is MK II axe becasue of power attack pattern. With crit build you have high enough cleave (and one shot all trash) due to crits (crits have high cleave) + being very tanky. Though gameplay is very risky, aggresiv and high reward. Simillar to Zealot in V2 on cata.

So you may want to give that another go since Zealot on Damnation is pretty much either try-hard meta Tactical Axe or Combat Knife build or less optimal but still good Eviscerator build if you get good traits on Evis to help it with cleave.

Devil’s Claw is excellent on Zealot. With the crit build you have infinite cleave with basically full uptime and I have literally refilled my entire Ult bar in 2 seconds with it facing dense hordes.

I don’t have a max leveled zealot, my input on zealot is from zealots I play with and they all use the knife almost exclusively.

Yeah, becasue it’s easier weapon to use (not that it’s bad, I also prefer it more) vs Axe but MK II Tactical axe is also meta but is definitely harder to use than typical knife dive tank Zealot.

That plus Flamer as Flamer on Hi-Intensity maps is just *chefs kiss"