But thing is, I don’t care in the slightest for buffing greatsword. I am in fact against it. Literally the only reason why I’m asking for these changes is just so that there’s more visual variety with the moveset.
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Relevant tangent here: I run 1h sword on shade over dual daggers because of the moveset. The stats, dps, etc work out to be a bit worse but it’s just fun to use. I love the overhead heavy 1 to light stab combo, it’s so satisfying.
I’m considering running bretonian longsword on krubes because the power attacks also block and that’s way cool.
Executioner is cool because of how horizontal it is and the overhead chop is awesome. 1h sword attracts me on kruber due to its speed, but it’s not quite as cool a kerillian’s.
I love shielded weapons because of how invincible you can feel with one, and laying dudes out with a shield bash is so awesome on foot knight.
I love the flame sword because of the cool fire claw attack thing. Really makes me feel like a battle wizard.
So - to stay on track - as someone who pursues cool weapons, I have not been drawn to the greatsword because it just isn’t all that cool to me. Utility is important, obviously, but wide diagonal-ish sweeps and cleave alone will not draw me in, even if the performance is competitive. It’s basically like - tons of weapons have sweeps, but the greatsword seems like the only one with JUST sweeps, which isn’t all that exciting. Give me a stab or a pommel strike in there or something.
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Man after my own heart, @Philip. even if people have made compelling arguments that the weapon is apparently quite usable, it remains just incredibly boring in its style. I loved the Executioner Sword in VT1 not because it was good (it was considered kinda bad, as I recall; definitely not good), but because it was bad-ass having a huge sword designed to lop off heads. And that H1 to L3 combo on Keri’s sword IS great, I love that. XD
Which was my point with saying the GS is thematically bad; it fills a statistical niche but doesn’t have any of the fantasy of playing with a Greatsword. Generally, I think Fatshark often nail the feel of weapons, and it makes them not just play well, but feel great.
It’s why I didn’t suggest just, like, adding more armor damage on heavies or something. I still think that some massive crazy swing as a super-heavy attack would be good for the weapon, give it something with some flavor to play with, but half-swording definitely needs to get in there somewhere. After the push-attack makes sense, but I’m not picky here.
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WHC is the primary reason I want greatsword spiced up. The absolute raw sex appeal of Saltzpyre’s sword is too strong. Especially when you get a heavy crit headshot just right in a cluster of elites.
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Yeah? Well, ya know that’s just like, uh, your opinion, man.
All weapons are not going to appeal equally to all players.
I can tell from your statement that you disagree and are unable to see my perspective on this matter. That’s okay, however I think it’s inappropriate to reduce my assertions to such simplistic terms.
Surely you cannot believe that the goal of this discussion is to achieve some absolute parity of appeal across all weapons for every player. I hope you can see the innumerable degrees of appeal that are possible, and appreciate that there is a base level of appeal that can be reached for even a simple majority of players.
In our collective effort to better understand the issue, I hope you can also appreciate that we cannot really be expected to bring any opinion other than our own.
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That’s quite the extreme position to take from what I wrote, don’t you think?
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Yo you get the reference right? Seen The Big Lebowski? Don’t think Bongo was being too serious there.
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“Pro players” is like:
“OMG this weapon is great, you are just noobs”
And then they will use it only for the memes with 3 premades.
When your ally ask you to help with few CW chasing him and you are GS user:
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I’m all for more flavour to the GS, and I agree that it is a slow weapon, at least in regards to damage.
I’ve been playing it on Merc in Cata the past week and I’ve grown to actually love the weapon.
It’s not weak but it does have glaring weaknesses : Chaos Warriors and bosses take ages to smack down, and even its infantry-mowing light attacks take up to 4 hits to kill a slave rat.
More single target damage would be great – I can for sure imagine the light attacks be short ranged, slow half-sworded stabs (with finesse) [L1, L2] and pommel strikes (with higher armour damage) [L3] and some delay before being able to block again after the pommel strike ; bringing its single target damage up to Halberd level ; its block have a hand on the blade, and its push attack perhaps be its current L1,-- but then I’m afraid of fighting power-creep with buffing to power-crept levels.
The issue is that GS doesn’t need a buff but still is sub-par when comparing it to the rest of the melee arsenal, simply because it is one of the few that have one gaping hole in their versatility (others being axes).
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For Cata: Greatsword with Smiter, 4 stacks of MtM, 10% Chaos and Reikland Reaper takes 6 Push Attack headshots to kill a CW without crits (7.31s with no attack speed, this is without any stagger bonuses or crits). That’s a standard Merc build. Still a slow kill, but it still clears everything around a bunch of CWs, has high str pot synergy and does not need to kill CWs that quickly.
Rapier WHC with Deathknell + tag + 10% vs Chaos will kill a CW with 2 fully charged stab headshots + 1 partially charged stab headshot (3.3s with no attack speed). This is much faster, but it’s also completely single target. WHC with the same build with Greatsword requires 5 Push Attack headshots (6.09s). If it wasn’t for Assassin being busted and it was at a more reasonable 30%, the Rapier build would take 4 fully charged stab headshots (3.65s).
The reason killing elites first is important for most weapons is because they stop your cleave and lower your overall dps. The Greatsword doesn’t have to deal with that and cleaves past them instead.
Even on DWONSC3Plus Chaos Warriors don’t get spammed that much. The only time it’s an issue on official Cata is if a team aggros a Chaos patrol (which this weapon still fights very safely and easily), in Twitch mode (I don’t count Twitch mode personally for weapon balance) and if circle chasing for elite kills. It doesn’t come up in true solo much. It doesn’t require a premade to perform well.
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Elf greatsword could use a little love too, it’s heavy attack feels good, but doesn’t quite hit hard enough despite promoting headshots.
On topic, the GS on kruber and salt would be cool with some variety between the light attacks and the heavy, the light attacks seem pointless.
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Prior to this thread I’d always considered it a bad weapon and never went back to it since maybe my first 20-30 hours of playing V2.
After seeing a few people espouse its strengths and give build suggestions, I tried the build @Rebel linked (thank you) and I was finally able to clear Screaming Bell solo with bots on Cata. I find it accommodates the bot AI quirks rather well and covers a lot of their shortcomings, while still being capable of solo play if all the bots die.
I’ve tried both Mercenary and WHC for solo Cata with bots and both feel good.
Dropping to Legend difficulty to group with friends and the weapon starts to just feel slow and cumbersome, with lower density and generally fewer enemies to fight it just really doesn’t get much opportunity to shine. Although I’d imagine at lower difficulties it probably starts to feel good again, especially in Recruit and Veteran where it can one-shot fanatics and clan rats with light attacks and 2 shots monks and savages (and probably stagger them on those difficulties too).
It honestly just seems like one of those weapons where it is fine early on but starts to fall off as enemies get tankier without hitting that critical mass of enemy density that’s more common in Cata mixed hordes.
As others said the move sets do feel boring and even after pushing through for a few more solo with bots Cata runs, I still find it hard to tell light and heavy attacks apart.
An attack after the push attack in the form of a half-sword thrust would be great. A way to offer an extra single target attack without changing the other moves.
I think Elf Greatsword, like many other weapons have the issue of headshot detection being determined by the first point of contact, rather than “does it literally pass through the enemies head” which results in having to play around the hitbox of the attack, rather than the visual depiction of the blade. So with the Elf Greatsword, you need to aim up and left of any enemy’s head so that the hitbox doesn’t clip into their body/shoulder first denying you that headshot damage.
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Elf Greatsword is probably in a much worse state, but I find I still enjoy using it over Kruber/Saltz GS, because it’s at least got a more interesting moveset. People have argued very well how the GS does have a role (though the Interstellar meme did give me a good laugh), but yeah - dull.
I’d really like to see it become something where everyone easily agrees “that’s a great weapon”.
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I think if we put our different takes on how effective the weapon is aside, we seem to all roughly agree on what changes would be appropriate for it at this point.
Rework the light attacks to have a more interesting, distinct attack pattern that has less cleave but performs better again smaller groups of infantry/lone maulers than the heavy attacks. Potentially give a follow up attack to the push attack, something like a stab with a good headshot modifier to make fighting armour a little less stamina intensive, assuming you can create the space to get the follow up off.
As a side note this thread made me give the GS a try on FK for the first time. I thought it wouldn’t mesh that well with his kit but I was very pleasantly surprised by it. Opportunist, Have at Thee, Comrades in Arms + Bull of Ostland gives you a very nice mix of damage and control. Might be my new favourite non shield weapon for him. Having mainstay with his low cooldown stagger Ult also lets you do surprisingly good damage even against CWs with it.
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Playing with a SotT that doesn’t go Bloodrazor actually became very hard when playing GS.
The wall stops attacks and you suddenly end up woth no cleave at all when the thing spawns near you.
Confusing and dangerous.
I dont think so really
It is so ez to melt hordes with just lmb spam, it has high crit chance and good headshoting with heavy atacks. And Elf is so OP that weapon doesnt matter much. Of course it is not SnD lvl but cmon.
GS is just not Fun. It is like firesword. You just Spam heavy 1 most of the time. You pretty much has one atack. (exept push block of course)
One atack
Same atack but heavy
And two same atacks but in opposite direction.
And even animations are the same!
Compare it to BLS
You can light1+light2+cancel against hordes/
Against armor you can just use heavy spam BUT you can push block atack + heavy atack + ligh atack for 3 AP overheads in a row.
Feel the difference
Exec - should i even explain why it is funny as hell?
BTW was Halberd overnerfed? I am pretty sure that i have never seen Halberd even once for like half a year.
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Elf Greatsword’s upward attack direction makes headshots on hordes difficult, the heavy has deceptively short range and long build-up, plus it suffers like other poke attacks in that it’s easy for it to hit a body hitbox and not count as a headshot. It also doesn’t have as good a cleave as one might expect. I’m not sure if it slides past armor - I don’t think it does?
It can be made to work on certain builds, but it’s definitely sub-par to most weapons.
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Why use Greatsword with Kruber’s classes when you have spear/shield which fills the same roll when it comes to horde clear (what the greatsword only really does). Grail Knight you have 2 melee weapons and it’s kinda pointless to take Greatsword and not Executioner and something else.
Saltz I find that in general the Rapier outperforms everything unless you are playing Zealot who can get a ton of attack speed to make other weapons more easily used and in that case most likely you’d play with something that has armor pierce.
Kerillian you also have better weapons compared to Greatsword when it comes to horde clear capability + you don’t have to worry about armor since you have moonbow or javelin. Handmaiden has 2 talents that can boost attack speed making the Greatsword a fine alternative for horde clear while using the 2 aforementioned ranged weapons for armor.
The game has a number of balance issues and yea… weapons is one of them. I feel like GS works with Handmaiden rather well when it comes to horde clear.
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Greatsword doesn’t fill the same role as the Executioner at all. XSword is not fast enough to be safe against hordes - it’s generally for the charged attacks to deal MASSIVE DAMAGE to problematic armored enemies.
Balance is a problem, but I do think that more weapons are viable than ever before, really.
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