This has been long coming, the great sword should not be so weak against armour, it is barely viable beyond Champion. Not asking for a huge buff just a minor tweak to armour damage, especially in the heavy attack. The britonian long sword is OP compared to the great sword.
Quite the opposite. It is barely useful below Cata due to lack of enemy density. It’s a pretty popular pick for modded difficulties (AKA above Cata). It scales well into higher difficulties and poorly into lower difficulties (but it kinda doesn’t matter since they’re, y’know lower difficulties, bring whatever you like there).
Greatsword is fine, it just got a buff recently it questionably needed. If there’s anything wrong with it it’s the largely superfluous light attacks and general lack of attack pattern variety leading to somewhat monotonous gameplay. Still one of my favourite weapons to play in Cata. It’s good on WHC, Zealot, FK, and Merc, which is a pretty impressive range of classes that can use it well.
Just modify the lights to be better at single target infantry damage (so good to deal with a few maulers/higher HP trash mobs quick) and make them more vertical for visual variety and it’s perfectly where it should be in my eyes.
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Modded difficulties are completely irrelevant in the case of balancing. You will always use your own mods anyway. In this regard I would say cata is an afterthought, too, because it’s just a secondary difficulty level, not available for everyone.
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Well I don’t think it’s bad on Legend either. Just doesn’t really get the density to show off its strengths. It’s just kinda the nature of a weapon that specialises in massive cleave. I don’t think it’s a problem that it feels eh below Cata. Don’t think it’s something you can really solve without doing different weapon scaling at different difficulties which seems unlikely at this point.
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It’s mediocre. Only the beginners and the bored use it.
For saltzy no AP on his greatsword and a limited moveset to snipe headshots means it just can’t compete with billhook and rapier when it comes to headshot sniping, and for sheer AP damage A&F and flail just has greatsword beat (hell even falchion can be a better option, you just lose out on some reach so you’ll need to be more careful). Special mention to flail as well being unhindered by shielded enemies, that’s insanely strong for making space and still can outdamage the greatsword. If you’re looking for those big wide sweeps and making space but still want good AP damage try flail out with flense and watch enemies melt.
For Kruber bret longsword’s moveset is what has greatsword beat. They have similar amounts of AP damage but the BL’s push attack and 3rd heavy attack allow for great headshot potential and that amount of headshot + minor AP damage just has the greatsword out dps’d when it comes to armor. Against unarmored they’re comparable, albeit the greatsword has a slight advantage with reach it’s almost negligible imo. Not even gonna try and mention Exe’s dmg against his greatsword it’s just a sheer win for Exe. Kruber just has too many other options that do the same (or similar) job as greatsword but better.
If you only know how to compare the single target damage of two weapons you’re going to get an incredibly inaccurate view on their strengths and weaknesses. I would strongly recommend looking at a wider variety of stats, including damage cleave distribution, stagger cleave, mobility, cleave modifiers, and stagger breakpoints if you want a more full picture of a weapon.
There are plenty of arguments on this exact topic from absolute top level players defending greatsword, I’d recommend doing some searching and reading around these forums. I’m too spent on this topic to keep repeating the same damn argument till someone new with 0 clue about the weapon comes along.
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Nothing i said is wrong. It’s not outperforming either the bret long/exe or pretty much any of saltz’s other choices. There’s not even content creators talking about it. I couldn’t find any but i’m not gonna say there’s NO solo cata runs with it. But i sure couldn’t find any. In fact i find videos and threads complaining about exactly what i mentioned. It doesn’t have enough AP to compete with other melee options. It’s a side-eye at best
Greatsword discussions are always frustrating because it always misses the mark on the weapon’s actual problems.
First you have to discuss the merit of a weapon that’s only useful in a single modded difficulty (you 100% do not need it’s level of horde clear in cataclysm).
Second and more importantly people seem to miss the fact that, viable or not, the weapon design is shyte. It’s literal entire move set consists of 1) the same side sweeps at different levels of intensity and 2) a push attack that helps it damage armoured targets. Objectively FS can greatly improve this weapon by changing its light and heavy movesets up to be a bit more varied. They did it with the spears.
And then you have people trying to defend that broken moveset with "bUT NEw pLAyeRs cAnNOt uSE wEApoNs wiTh MOrE INTereStiNG moVESet!" and the discussion ends up going no where.
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Probably that’s why I extended its light cycle in my mod. 
it was buffed several times form release, and now its at the point where i feel like its armored damage is 100% justified by strengths in other fields (mobility, armor cleave, stagger, horde clear).
Yeah, but on difficulties below cata, the armored elites die easily even to greatsword now. And because you have armor cleave and good stagger, its very safe too. Its only real weakness is monster fighting, or soloing chaos patrols.
i’ve seen zealots doing amazing with greatswords. If you min-max, of course certain careers (like WHC you mentioned) will have some optimal weapon choices, and choices that suit them less.
greathammer and greatsword are very 1:1 in power for me. Exec is potentially better damage-wise but loses a lot of safety and cc.
I have an explanation for this: content creators usually play twitch mode or solos, in case of twitch you fight a lot of mini bosses, the aspect that greatsword struggles most with (cleave stops at the monster, bad monster DPS). Its also a specialized weapon, not so good for solos. That leaves official difficulty pub gameplay, or modded difficulties (where it scales well).
It gives more than just horde clear, in a mixed elite+horde fights, it performs really well, thanks to armor cleave and stagger. Also i never find the horde clear to be excessive on cataclysm, but maybe its because i run all greatswords with opportunist, and not swift slaying. You can handle a lot of berserkers with that good reach and stagger.
I would disagree with this assessment, and you can read why i like the design here.
Also if you want to see greatsword be changed to resemble the bret sword, then why not just play bret sword to begin with.
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Yeah the stagger power is pretty underrated. It’s actually easier to build for monk stagger breakpoints on greatsword than greatammer. Merc and FK can both power stack to reliably interrupt all monk attacks with heavies, while having enough attack speed in their kit to feel comfortable foregoing swift slaying (can also double stack attack speed properties without losing important breakpoints. It controls and kills all elites without super armour very comfortably, on of the easier weapons to solo large groups of SV with without needing to kite due to large stagger cleave and relatively strong dodges for a two hander.
I really feel like it’s CW and boss weakness is fine for how well it handles basically everything else and scaling extremely well with density of mixed hordes.
Also just want to point out it’s one of the best thp generators out there with cleave thp. I wouldn’t argue it’s a top pick for WHC but it does abuse flense very well from memory.
I gave my suggestion towards the top of this thread for a change to light attacks, otherwise it’s fine.
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Exe and greatsword aren’t even close to a 1:1 comparison lol. I’d like to see a greatsword consistently 1-shot chaos warriors on legend like exe can. Again the issue with greatsword is it’s outshined on both saltz and kruber by their other weapons. If its combo got a buff to allow it to headshot more consistently then it would do much much better. But as it stands it’s best at killing unarmored opponents which isn’t something that’s particularly hard to do, but lacks the precision or finesse needed to deal with armored enemies.
Executioner heavy is properly balanced by its slowness, its not good vs many stormvermins or berserkers up in your face, or the same CWs if you’ve got a lot of pressure. Exec has worse dodge distance and dodge count too.
Is it outshined by 1h mace, 1h sword, greathammer, halberd, mace&shield, sword&shield, tuskgor spear, saltz flail, falchion?
You can headshot consistently with all greatsword attacks (against a single target), the hitboxes are good, don’t know what you’re talking about.
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Sure. Then in turn please show me the video of you soloing 30+ Cata SV with Exe, since it’s so obviously superior to GS to the point they can’t even be compared.
Outside of the single 1h weapons yes, Outshined by halberd, greathammer, tuskgor spear (especially on huntsman who likes extra stagger and AP/headshots on his melee) all outshine greatsword on kruber. Don’t care what you say, greatsword literally doesn’t hold a candle to any of those weapons. As for saltz flail is easily a better weapon than greatsword. Go ahead and give it a go, you’ll be wanting to spam heavies with it anyways and use his dodge ability. It’s way better and i can tell you haven’t put much time with it if you think greatsword is better than it lol. even if flail didn’t have ANY AP it would still be a strong pick for the sheer fact that it bypasses all shields. SV with shield? Not a thing with flail. Falcion i said was a comparible weapon to greatsword. I know you guys are rage reading but try reading what i said before slower. The main thing with flacion is it has an overhead hit but lacks the range so you just have to be more careful. But it plays very comparibly to greatsword but it still outshines because you’re more maneuverable with it… Ex’s “worse” dodge is barely noticeable if you’re cleaving through everything though i’ll admit it is a slight disadvantage it doesn’t nearly make it a Greatsword>exe in my book, it IS a little less safe but that’s generally why krubers like to take the ATK speed buff with it (on merc, the push attack one if oookay on footknight).
You quoted me saying it 1-shots chaos warriors and then showed a video of struggling to kill an SV patrol? That’s not a good showing my friend lol. SV patrols, while difficult, aren’t all that hard to kill especially since there’s a lot of room to move here. Use the halberd and watch you poke a SV in the eye and oneshot it from 10 feet away. Though since this video IS old the greatsword has improved a little but not nearly enough to say it’s better than any of kruber’s other meta picks. Again, you’re trying to make it sound like i’m saying it’s useless, i’m not and i’ve never said that. I’m just saying there’s better picks for cata and rarely will you be facing a patrol in a vacuum like you’ve shown here. Especially on cata where specials are spawning pretty much constantly. If you think the greatsword doesn’t need a change to its combo you’re delirious lol
I think you’re strongly underrating the value of the mobility and stagger cleave over the other two handers. But if soloing 35 Cata SV is as unimpressive as you say again I’m sure you can provide a video of someone doing it with halberd or exe. I think if you actually try you’ll realise how much safer GS actually is than those weapons at dealing with big groups.
I said I’d like the light moveset to be more distinct from the heavies, and that they should have more single target infantry damage. If you think more armour damage is needed to make it worth using in Cata you are just power gaming and want the game to be as trivial as possible. Greatsword is a very effective weapon for Cata if your brain can compute the value of more things than just CW/boss DPS.
My main problem with GS is the very slow reaction time to block during light attacks. IIRC blocking is slower than in case of any other weapon. Interestingly the heavy attacks don’t have this issue. There are many maps where we are surrounded no matter what. Like the final fight in dark omens. GS is too slow on those maps.
I never had any problem with its damage even before the buff.