How is the Heavy Sword? With the reduction to Crusher spawns, it’s feeling pretty nice when I run it. I’ve only been running it on melee scum so far, though, (having a blast with it) so perhaps it’s just Scum that’s making it feel good.
(I call it my “honest” build; no Pickpocket, no Shivs, no Tox nodes, middle capstone: Honest Rampage - Hive Scum Build for Darktide - Darktide WH40k)
The Heavy Sword was perfectly fine in Auric even before the buffs. It’s extremely strong against Maniacs, and with headshots it can one-shot Mutants and Ragers. While it often relies on bleed to finish them off, a critical Zealot build can still handle groups of five or six Maulers at once.
In Havoc, however, it has always been, and still is, basically worthless for 99.9% of players.
It’s decent, but I don’t like the weird attack angles on it. It has Deathblow, but good luck cleaving 4 heads with the goofy oblique swings. Devil’s Claw has better attack patterns and parry, while HS special is…10% brittleness? At least it stacks with normal brittleness, I guess? I think the reworked special attack was a missed opportunity to give HS more of an identity in the weapon roster.
HS6 is and always will be my favourite weapon in the game
There is a common misconception that IX is the best mark, people use, find out that it’s trash and say heavy swords are bad. They used to be pretty bad due to Crusher spam and low boss damage, while it’s true to this day, mark VI is amazing on crit Zealot with great horde clear and elite/special bullying. You have to use a very specific crit build (left tree essencially), and Deathblow + Chained deathblow. Heavy attack slashes have very generous hitboxes and Deathblow crit allow you to decapitate multiple ragers with one hit.
I haven’t used it on Hive Scum, so no comment on it.
TL;DR: IX is trash, VI and VII are great on crit zealot.
Why is IX trash?
It’s ok but it doesn’t feel as nice as pre enemy health buff heavy sword did imo.
I’ve been running IX and having a blast with it.
Horizontal heavies are very bad and chaining vertical with specials doesn’t feel good compared to heavies of VI
C-tier. Usable but mediocre except on Hive Scum.
the heavy strikedown has first strike damage into 2 enemies and like 12 hitmass before buffs (so very often enough to hit 2 elites it will do practical damage to). with the vertical slash this is way more limited.
Best thing since sliced bread
It’s horizontal heavies deal less damage than the diagonal heavies of the other marks while having less cleave (IX heavies have 9.5 vs 11.7 of the others) despite being classified as a vanguard attack.
I will say I haven’t played with IX in the regular mode for forever and I no longer remember if the horizontal heavies still doesn’t hit one-shot breakpoints. If it does than it should be better due to better attack pattern.
Amazing weapon and I wished Skitarii could use it.
It’s only problem is dealing with armored targets which zealots and scums can compensate and every time it’s dregs, it’s just slaughter, it’s 1-2 shots dreg ragers and mutants in aurics, multiple at once, it’s good for hordes, meh for bosses though.
The reason for that is that the cleave damage from the VI and VII stops almost entirely after the first 2 targets (so any target past 2 will take almost no damage and only get staggered). Meanwhile the IX has a profile that is almost identical to the devils claw on its horizontal heavies, including their cleave damage distribution, allowing you to damage many more enemies in a single swing.
This however doesnt make the IX any better sadly, due to the existence of Deathblow.
Haven’t played with it for a while, but it would be nice with a new set of blessings to spice it up.
With the right build it’s downright broken on scum even without taking tox from the talent tree, on zealot and veteran it feels a lot more balanced, on psyker I think you’re a lot more limited to horde and dreg enemies.