I’d rather have GS and 2H Hammer.
TBH, IMO the easiest and therefore likeliest change is still just increasing the headshot modifier of the push attack. Can’t be spammed unreasonably often and needs some skill to hit the head hitboxes.
Wouldn’t make the weapon OP, would not change its general role, it would simply make it less frustrating to use against single target enemies.
IMO Cata balance should be less important than Legend balance, since it’s the difficulty the game is balanced around as a whole and most players on official servers play on.
While I agree that’s the simplest and most likely fix, I disagree it’s a solution. The GS’s major issue is not its effectiveness, it’s a boring and overlapping moveset that leaves you spamming heavy attacks most of the time.
Also if we’re talking about Legend balancing it needs nothing at all. It already handles all elites other than CWs there very well, and even CWs are hardly a chore for it on Legend on any of the melee classes that can use it.
It might be more work but a light attack rework would be vastly more beneficial for the weapon. Again if we’re gonna buff the push attack I’d rather see a follow up attack added, since that also adds more animation commitment and would be visually much more pleasant and smooth than spamming push attack over and over.
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I would have agreed, it seemed unlikely we’d get new moves on weapons, but then we did get the push-attack changed on the Greatsword in the first place.
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XSword works well with Merc’s passive and with Grail Knight you can easily switch to a shield for some large stagger and then go back for an easy cleave or two while dealing with a horde. Not sure about Footknight when it comes to consistency of attack speed supporting the XSword.
Weapons may be more viable now when it pertains to certain difficulty levels but once you reach Cataclysm, Twitch Mode or other modded realm stuff then there is a definite fall off in usefulness due to how difficulty scales so poorly where shielded/armored enemies become so much more prevalent.
For me personally I see GS as the contrarian weapon to all the other ones. With Greatsword, you kill everything around the Chaos Warrior then easily finish him off albeit slowly. With other weapons like X-sword, you kill the Chaos Warrior first then clear out the hordes afterwards.
2 Likes
wait, what? when? Not with the BBB at least?
A couple years ago. It used to be that Greatsword didn’t have an overhead push-attack, it was just a basic sweep. Heavy sweeps also didn’t cleave elites.
So the moveset was light sweeps, heavy sweeps that didn’t cleave elites, and a sweep push-attack. Oh, and I believe it had 2-0 mobility.
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At least there is headshot damage.
I’m sure there is way to buff damage in such way, that some satisfying breakpoints will be possible to reach on all classes that have bonuses for Greatsword (attack speed foremost) without making it overpowered.
Like I said, I think the easiest way to change that would be to increase the headshot modifier for the push attack. Wouldn’t make the weapon any more powerful in those dense horde situations (like in cata), but also gives players with the skill to reliably hit headshots the means to reliably engage single target elites.
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I would like to come back to this, since after seeing so much praise for the Greatsword I felt like I had to try it out, and I love it now ; but !
I don’t see this.
GS is amazing at handling density and/or multiple elites, armoured or not ; it’s really not that bad against SVs, even lone ones ; and I’d even say it’s better against SVs than maulers.
And here’s what I don’t get, it might be great at cleaving plague monks and berzerkers, it is not a safe option against them if they target you. Its range and dodge allow you to keep somewhat safe, but then you’re only hitting one, or you’re cleaving them but you’re in the danger zone.
How do you handle a pack of zerkers with the GS ?
Same way as with every weapon, really. With Greatsword you just have the combination of highest cleave sweeps, good mobility, good range and high base damage. The DPS is easy to understand. The safety comes from the high cleave and good stagger with crits and power stacking, which can let you stagger monks, or with FK breakpoints. It’s also impossible to get obstructed when killing monks by other enemies, so it doesn’t matter if there’s Chaos Warriors in the way. Dodging back with the good range also let’s you avoid hits.
Just wanna point out that even if you hit the monk stagger break point you’ll still only stagger one if it’s the first thing you hit. Subsequent plague monks you cleave will receive less stagger, so it’s still not safe to engage a group that’s targeting you head on if they’re all doing their flurry attacks (they’re easier to stagger during other attacks so you may be able to stagger lock a small group that aren’t doing flurry attacks). So yeah like most weapons it’s a matter of block/wait/dodge then counter attack.
I think that it could use a stab attack bound to alt fire that would take a moment to charge up but would deal good AP damage and have decent stagger, at the cost of one stamina shield. Like a slower version of the billhook alt fire that actually does significant damage instead of just stagger.
Greatsword is the ultimate weapon. It’s only just the absolute pinnacle of melee weaponry, nothing less.
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Hey, what if on a special attack the wielder would take out a trollhammer and fire 10 shots - now that wouldn’t make it op, right? Riiiight?