Literally 80% of weapons were buffed or reworked because of playtesters and if something is OP or underpowered it’s because Fatshark just ignored playtesters’ suggestions.
2 Likes
Arrowhead has stated explicitly that the autocannon is the gold standard of their balance. I just think they’re using the wrong methodologies and looking at the wrong places for balancing.
1 Like
Of course it is banality, because it’s trival problem with allready existing solution.
The problem:
The truth is that Damnation is already absolutely hard.
The solution:
Implement some way of playing that is not absolutely hard.
Existing solution:
There is a way to play that is not absolutely hard.
???
6 Likes
Who cares?
On this, Fatshark has been pretty good on balancing for the major part of nerfs.
Still there were several mistakes, examples:
- shredder autopistol nerfed to the ground (and no, reverting changes on pinning fire is not a solution)
- BM that is still mandatory for CA (and so a problem) cause it makes this weapon really in the top weapons
- Power swords, still OP and still unsatisfying at using it
4 Likes
I rather think the Power Swords are in a good place rn. Still super strong & popular (if you have PCycler IV & Sunder/BM), but at a serious cost for mobility & defense. It’s a momentum weapon that shines when things are going in your favour, yet buckles under pressure when things go wrong. Which is why I haven’t used it in ages.
Agree with the rest tho. Also at least 2 other failed nerfs come to mind:
- Zelly flamer - Got its massive clip & reserve ammo nerf a long while back largely bc FoF let it burn everything including 100 crushers all at once. Already then the nerf was too harsh, but now since FoF was fixed & its ranged armor pen removed, flamers are the worst they’ve ever been.
- Zelly’s Invocation of Death talent - Nerfing it was the right move, how they did that was not. The game already heavily favours knives & fast weapons over slow cleavers, and changing IoD into “max 1 proc per attack” only made that worse.
2 Likes
There are ways to mitigate the downsides of power sword on Veteran, while really strong I can’t help but shake the feeling that the reason why it is not as game breaking as it could be is that the fact it was given to the veteran and not zealot.
Anything that can cleave through large hordes and rack up damage over time effects on them at the same time is not weak. It has clearly defined strengths and weaknesses and is working very well with in its niche.
I kinda agree on this, the old version gave a large effect on weapons that could cleave and hit multiple enemies for a great refund on ability useage. While I don’t want the old version to return, having a cap on more then one seems…bad. Increasing the cap (while alot of work, having different caps for different weapons could be a thing) but adding a internal cooldown to counteract the more faster weapon ability to regain cooldown could be a way to do it.
2 Likes
At this point I guess I’m not able to speak english
I didn’t say the game is too hard for me, I said the difficulty is already well balanced so there isn’t the need to increase it
Honestly? I didn’t think about it because imo it’s not a priority but we may start rebalancing the difference between light and charged shots
And still you can record 800k+ damages in an auric game just by melee with this weapon. Not me, but I’ve seen that 3 times.
What saves us is that everybody think that it is not a “meta” weapon.
And I used it pretty often… until I tried the daggers and until I switched, now, to shovels cause I like to change.
Between PS and daggers, PS is clearly above the daggers. Daggers have a problem only with stealth build on zealot… PS is strong with any build.
But sure, if you take daggers on vet it is, most of the time, cause of the mobility. Have rarely seen someone using it with a melee veteran build. And just to say it, this is really fun. Intense but really fun.
2 Likes
I disagree hard about most of that. It’s a good case example for why scoreboards are best left for mods though.
Power Swords are atrociously weak outside the special, and that special activation overhead along with its ridiculously bad defenses & mobility is why I don’t like it. As I said it’s a momentum weapon. As long as you have the time to pop the special before each combo (or the enemy are so few & weak you can afford to combo it in there) and can keep dodging & re-powering it, it’s going to be about the strongest melee in the game. And with lucky spawns or a great team enabling you, it can certainly make you shine on that scoreboard that’s true.
But the second that’s no longer the case and you’re forced on the defensive, your low & slow dodges and bad mobility and needing that special overhead to ever reverse the momentum will get you killed. A single errant block through a push-attack breaking your stamina, a random stagger from ranged or a hit to the back, a failed dodge on account of some trash spawning behind you or those typical pebbles or stairs, or just being surprised by too many elites too fast all at once… anything at all can interrupt that flow. When it happens and you don’t get to recover & power-up again, you’ll go down like a wet sack in an instant.
It’s the opposite of all that why knives are so strong, and why they are indeed a problem on every single class not just zealots. I mean heck, my strongest psyker builds all use knives.
Knives have double the usual sprint efficiency at 0.5 stamina/s. Every other weapon besides TacAxes (0.75x) uses 1+/s. Their movespeed, dodge speed & distance and dodge count are about all tied for the best in the game. They have innate +15% crit (most have +5% or less), crazy attack speed (so they proc those crits often), and insane finesse dmg bonuses. Bc all finesse talents & buffs apply to the portion of finesse dmg, knives though seemingly weak are often much stronger than they appear in practice.
And then ofc. there’s their unique blessings like Lacerate & Mercy Killer which together create a feedback loop where if you get headshots the finesse dmg will be enough for kills anyway, and if you don’t then the bleeds will stack up and kill them anyway 1-2s later. The bleeds also play into their mobility, since even a short exposure to melee often delivers lethal DoTs on top of your dmg while you can just slide away into safety to reload or whatever. This makes them fantastic boss killers for example.
Point is, knives supercharge your mobility & positioning, their dodges & dodge+slides are long enough to cover twice the distance of Power Sword’s. Between those, their attack speed and fantastic moveset like the push-attack headshots which can 1-shot most things especially on crits, it’s nearly impossible to get overwhelmed or outplayed with a knife unless you make a mistake.
And that’s why they’re OP, and why the Power Sword is not. Knives’ strength is not their dmg, it’s everything else.
2 Likes
You can spam the special WHEN needed. The weapon can also kill without it.
Not really. Dodge backward, activate, heavy hit and… enemies vanished.
maybe you should try to not follow the “meta”…
Try sunder + PC…
Knives are too good in the hand of a skilled guy that spam stealth, backstab elites and refresh the special pretty fast.
Out of this build, dagger are good at defense, but not extraordinary on damages.
Meta, meta, meta…
Did I mention that dagger are too strong with zealot stealth build? ah yes I did…
Also, let’s say it I use mercy killer on veteran to make the weapon good enough. Never used lacerate that I consider as a trap. Aiming body is a waste of time.
And considering how weak is this weapon by itself… if there was not this, there would be nothing that would incitate to use it.
that’s why PS is OP and knives are not…
PS is strong with any build, knives are only with just one build…
unless you play knife the proper way, with gun psyker, spamming the push attack, and then you can forget about butter knives / power swords comparisons
jokes asides i think vets got better melee talents than the whole zealot tree, for the sake of equity
PC & Sunder/BM is the meta, and they aren’t enough for the big T5+ elite spawns, which is why I said what I said.
This and most other points I already addressed in my post before.
Have you actually ever try using it unpowered? it’s actually pretty decent.
Honestly people should’ve try to use it in unpowered state more even, I keep seeing people dying when thing get out of control because they tried to activate their PS and get punish for it.
2 Likes
Exactly. And this part is not OP on the power sword. This is only the special that is totally OP and also insatisfying.
They should reword entirely the special of this weapon.
I’m gonna fall somewhere between you and @Ralendil on this.
I think you can build around power sword weaknesses pretty effectively, especially with both stamina regen delay nodes and attack speed from right tree, WS negates its mobility issues even further if you desire. VoC and frags make it very easy to avoid being cornered and repower without being punished.
I think it ultimately falls into an acceptable range of power, though definitely on the higher end. You can build it to be pretty monstrous but you do have to make real build sacrifices for it to hit that power level and even then a Zealot will generally be more flexible and durable. I don’t think it’s crazy out the box or on a build that doesn’t spec for it.
Do think you’re under selling it though even if I do ultimately agree it shouldn’t be nerfed.
2 Likes
I agree on this… cause not a lot of players use it.
I would have a total different opinion if all veterans would use it and would make playing zealot a shame.
i think if Power Sword needs to be in game it should be great and everyone should love playing it
2 Likes
Or stop trying to nerf the weapon that has already been the whipping boy for every small-epeen zealot’s inability to step outside of “knife is meta, must use only knife”.
Its a POWER SWORD. You know one of the few weapons, especially available to normal humans, in 40k weapon that can cut through most things including Space Marine armor that is on par with light tanks. It would be a real slap in the face if something like that was reduced to the point a fully-charged hit gets stopped by a pox walker that a knock-off knife cuts in half.
A better “fix” would be to drop the charge-per-use junk and give it a mindbendingly high-tech item called a capacitor. Then it becomes an activate once and you have X amount of time to swing how many ever times you can before the charge is spent and the matter-disrupting field drops until it can recharge. Viola, balance. And something both truer to lore and more interesting than just “hit X and get Y swings at full power”. To say nothing of allowing better perks that wouldn’t be must-haves but would make some fun times when everything goes right. Like changing power cycler from bland “+1/ +2 charges” to “5% / 10% chance to regain X seconds of charge on light attack kill, double chance on heavy hit kill”. And finally it helps the enviroment by reducing the number of mice that get thrown away courtesy of special attack buttons breaking due to overuse.
Heck that same system could even be ported over to chain weapons since they run off a promethium fuel cell. Just imagine how much more fun chain weapons would be if you could rev them up once then start actually cutting through a whole pack of ragers that bunched up a bit to close.
4 Likes
PS is pretty much OK as it is, the down-sides are worked around by good players and everyone else tends to suffer because of it, it’s mostly fine in my book but I’m likely a tad biased.
@Ralendil Sunder is absolutely the other “meta”, the better (though less popular) pick imho. The unpowered attacks are pool noodles mostly so IDK if they’re even worth mentioning.
And quite frankly the whole “don’t follow meta” or meta this meta that is being thrown around so much it’s lost most of its meaning.
1 Like
with light attacks, you kill groaners easily. And that’s worth mentioning cause, as Ashrad I keep seeing players taking damages cause they think that only special of the PS is worth using…
I hate meta… I would like that there is no meta cause all weapons would allow to play differently.
To be honest, I use PC + sunder since I play my veteran. I think it took me 3 months before I started to search power cycler. I have quickly found sunder (Melk’s shop) and crafted, soon enough after the release of the MK VI, a Power sword with PC IV. I was a little disappointed cause it was a PS VI and wanted the other MK (I use to craft what is above 370 and available in the shops and I had found only the MKVI). But, now, after so much time using it… I could not use the MK III.
This to say… I was using sunder when everyone was thinking it was garbage and all advised to use slaughterer.
I will repeat what I have always say. The special of the Power sword is not fun to use. At best, Fatshark should change how the special of this weapon works.
And I will say that this weapon has a true problem cause of power cycler. Without it, this weapon is not OP, just a strong weapon. I would even think it would need a buff in such situation.
And here the big problem of Power swords. The special. Power cycler changes this weapon from something not good to something totally exceptional and OP. I don’t think that sunder is really a problem in the current situation.
However, any weapon that has a mandatory blessing has a balance problem. Power cycler for the PS, Brutal momentum for Combat axes…
1 Like