Is there any reason ever to skip Headtaker if a weapon has access to it?
It’s really easy to get started and to keep up, you can multiple stacks in a single attack, one for each enemy hit.
It rewards you with strength (damage, cleave, and stagger), making it a really solid pick, no one will ever say no to any strength increase in Darktide.
there are other blessings that are basically a free strength increase with no real downsides, and they have the same issue, it’s mandatory to pick them if you don’t want to intentionally pick a weaker blessing.
I really do think it needs to be removed and replaced with a blessing that actually offers a choice.
Do you think that Headtaker is good design or bad?
Yes, headtaker is a solid choice, not a mandatory pick.
No, no one ever skips headtaker.
No, no one ever skips headtaker, remove it and increase the strength of the weapons that have it.
I don’t use headtaker.
Maybe I could on HS… I don’t play with TH. And for pickaxes I use something else.
For Combat axe, I prefer Trust + BM.
I don’t think Headtaker is the best choice. It can be useful for someone that starts, but in most of the weapons, there are better choices.
My opinion.
For CA, I must say that I use the Achlys… and why the trust.
For rashad / antax, I often opt for decimator. Like for tact axe, decimator is really better
“Yes, headtaker is a solid choice, not a mandatory pick.”
Means headtaker is fine, you can either pick it or pick any other available blessing and it will still be a good choice.
“No, no one ever skips headtaker.”
Means whenever a weapon has the headtaker blessing, it’s a must pick, otherwise you are missing out on the best available blessing for said weapon.
“No, no one ever skips headtaker, remove it and increase the strength of the weapons that have it.”
Same as the above, but with the addition of suggesting it should be integrated into the weapon itself (increase damage, stagger, and cleave by 25%, and 40% for heavy swords), and have the blessing removed, since picking headtaker is a no brainer, I added this option to avoid forcing people into adopting my opinion 100%, which is removing the blessing completely.
You can simply comment it, I do not believe anyone ever skips headtaker, if you do, i suggest testing weapons in the meat grinder with your current blessings, and with one of them replaced with the headtaker, you will see how it elevates any weapon’s performance.
You never tested other options.
For CA (rashad and antax) try decimator.
Sure, try it and try also to adapt to this blessing (you have to always hit something to keep it).
Once you know how to uses it you can get up to +50% strength
Compare this to the +25% strength for Headtaker…
I keep decimator.
Decimator has way less uptime compared to the headtaker, also slower weapons take a while to build Decimator stacks, it can only gain one stack per attack, compared to headtaker, which can gain a stack for each enemy hit, Decimator loses all stacks if you miss an attack or not attack for a second or so, I’d say headtaker is a much more relieble blessing, while the Decimator is what headtaker should’ve been, which is a power increase tied to the condition that you keep hitting stuff, or risk losing all stacks and having to build it up again.
Damage blessings have always been problematic tbh. Would’ve preferred if weapon blessings were more focused on utility than being straight damage steroids
It’s inevitable that one option will be better than other blessings, even ever so slightly. You remove or change it, the next damage blessing in line becomes bis. You remove all strength blessings, suddenly crit or brutal momentum become “mandatory”.
Being “mandatory” would mean that weapon is unplayable without the blessing. Decimator and even brutal momentum are stronger. Even then, almost every weapon in the game has 1 and sometimes even 2 blessings that play to their strengths the best, because they either 1) improve inherent strenghts of the weapon further; 2) give the weapon something it lacks.
If you want to make a thread like that, you should have went after Thunder Hammer. There’s only 3 blessings ever worth using on it-- Slaughterer (better horde clear), Headtaker (more boss damage and mid horde clear) and Thrust. At least on TH it makes sense calling “Thrust” specifically a “mandatory” pick.
Uptime doesn’t matter on tacaxe, it takes seconds to go over Headtaker’s 5 stacks if you’re using Decimator. It gives way more damage against bigger targets, Headtaker by itself only helps to achieve more consistent 1-2 shots against horde enemies, which isn’t that big of a deal for a weapon that doesn’t limit your movement.
I use Shred/Decimator in one of my Arbites builds, and I can 3-shot Crushers with Tac Axe.
True again, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to balance or even outright remove boring “mandatory” options, when I say mandatory, what I mean is not that the weapon is unusable without it, rather that if you don’t pick it, you are voluntarily putting yourself at a disadvantage compared to other players’ power.
I really think all the blessings in the game need a balance pass, the choices are really stale, I have multiple copies of each weapon for each class to make different builds, but I always end up using the same blessing combination I came up with long ago.
If weapons/marks had their own innate utility property that would differentiate them a lot more between each other, for example, run’n’gun on laspistols, deflect on certain force swords, bleed or brittle on axes or chain weapons, etc.
Imagine if blessings were true utility passives, like a % of blocking an area with cadavers, dropping ammo crates on elite kills or a significant sprint boost upon multi chained kills…
One can only wish, I truly think we would’ve been better off without any damage increasing blessings, maybe one or two that are extremely conditional, like extra weakspot damage only next attack after a weakspot kill.
