they could carry over their BBB practice of adding crit to all uppercuts to apply to Bs&s, especially since the uppercut on that weapon is skipped over half the time for other combos
major issue with it though is that it’s angled too sharply vertical to be useful for hordes but it’s also useless vs elites. The Longsword doesn’t have this issue with its uppercut because it’s actually much more horizontal, going from lower-right to upper-left.
I can’t find it atm but I recall a thread about the push attack having less range.
Fun fact, pretty sure GK has a Sigmarite warhammer symbol on one of his… elbow pauldrons? 
(Edit: Couter I think?)
But yeah, they could make the standard mace/sword&board skins with a bret shield. Just the shield swap for one of the bret S&S would be enough for me.
It make sense that Bretonnian one slower than Imperial one.
But since longsword is bigger than just an arming sword that has a grip/handle that enough for both two hands, I think the damage of Bertonnian one should be higher.
And its attack chains/pattern need some change too, imo. Especially the angle of the sword’s swing.
The problem with the 1H Swords in this game is that their niche is mobility. Other Weapons that are more versatile (while also having decent mobility) and don’t struggle with Armour as much will always be picked over them.
On Kruber, there’s no real point in running it, when you can run Bret 2H Sword or Mace and Sword.
It would have been great if Huntsman’s Talents benefitted 1H Sword and 1H Mace more, but dual wield, Spear or MnS is better. I mean technically with 1H Sword’s finesse multiplier and 1H Mace’s overheads it does on paper, but then you can play dual wield with Stamina+Chaos and do one Push-Attack into Heavy over and over and never be in danger, while farming On-Kill THP.
The best way I can think to buff them is to give them more Elite cleave, which doesn’t make them insane at damage Elites, but more focused on dealing with a lot of enemies at the same time, like a mini Greatsword.
It doesnt have to a strong AP and could nerf the 3rd light. Just prefer a way to get better AP on demand… really with every weapon. Preferably by skillful rotations getting to 3rd light is a matter of cycling through every attack atm.
Stacking stam Regen is already a gimmick elsewhere don’t think it can get any more powerful then HMs tools. Having the tools is possible already with other weapons what kills an OP person is making mistakes not the weapon IMO.
Or inherent Crit% Could work for Elite damage too. It certainly makes 1H Sword on Pyro usable, and do a lot of Elite damage. E.g. light spamming SV heads.
I agree with the 3rd Light attack thing too. You have to do 2 useless attack, before your damage actually starts, and it’s dangerous too.
That would be kind of similar to Dual Swords, which work well. That alone would make it a good pick in my eyes for a mix of cc/mobility.
Personally I’d rather all of the 1h Sword’s skins to be replaced with a baseball bat and the stagger on heavies increased to stagger bosses.
Some ideas that are think are reasonable for the 1h Sword:
Push attack could also combo into l3, but I do visually like the classic X cleave pattern with push > l1.
Yes but with Practically guaranteed Crits everything CC works for AP. Makes Pyro so great at melee and BH at range
Yeah it’s a bit of a weird situation because 1h sword and 1h mace definitely have good synergies with Huntsman, but are both outcompeted by other options. I remember running 1h mace on him quite a bit before spear came out since it’s a very good stagger THP generator, but now spear can do that for him + more. Similarly 1h sword’s weakness against armour is covered well by his range options, but its weakness against shields and mixed hordes is still a bit too noticeable to feel like a good “safe” weapon choice for him.
I don’t think either feels bad on HS though, just not quite good enough compared to other options. Some armour cleave on heavies would definitely help, and I like @Velsix idea of making L3 knock shields away, since its weakness against them is definitely a decent part of what holds back its ability against Cata hordes. If heavy 1 → heavy 2 → was a bit safer and had a bit better control, I don’t think its armour deficiency would be as noticeable. A little bit of bonus crit would also definitely help, but wouldn’t really affect its weakness against shields, and generally having its cleave eaten in mixed hordes.
would be nice to have the arming sword (1h sword) get a anti armour bonus from push attack like the 2h sword. make the push attack animation the 3rd light attack vertical chop. fairly normal dmg but really high headshot dmg.
I really think the appearance of the Longsword nailed the doors shut for the 1h Sword to move anywhere. Granting it heavy linesman will pit it against the Greatsword. Adding armor damage and moves will make it collide with the Longsword.
I also kind of dont mind it being the supreme trash mob removal tool with great mobility, since its actually a really good weapon until cata opens the door of mixed waves and massive amounts of shields.
The weapon who fights for its life at the moment is the Hammer. Its basically a Longsword with far less mobility. The damage values are pretty much the same, as is the cleave and stagger, while chaining overheads with the Longsword will deal more damage to single targets than hammer lights, because you are required to block cancel out of the third swing. The third swing takes longer to be done and comes from Sigmar knows where instead of straight down for a headhit.
More Stamina, or in built BCR would help the Hammer find a place again. It was considered a defensive weapon in VTEndTimes after all. Atm there is no real reason to pick the Hammer, outside of it being a thousand times more visually pleasing than the plastic sword.
Buffing the Hammers armor damage would open a whole new can of worms.
I think it has a niche on FK as a mixture between CC and CW deletion. It still kinda takes a lot of investment though to hit stagger breakpoints like staggering plague monks with heavies, and the fact its heavies stop completely on CWs doesn’t help it a heap. If it were to be changed I’d rather double down on its current identity and give it more stagger and armour sliding. Then it wouldn’t be competing with LS as much, since it would focus more on control over damage, while still having better damage against super armour. That seems like a fine niche to me. Agreed adjusting its damage would be dangerous.
Though BCR or stamina would be nice, I don’t think they’d change much on their own.
Edit: I think it currently also has a stronger push than LS? Which does let it have a decently strong push with opportunist (can push SV out of your way, though I’m usually running staggering force as well, so not sure if opportunist alone is enough to do this).
So little wiggle room for balancing, yeah? That’s a result of a constant (but slow) powercreep imo.
With so much weapon variety, you need to have more imperfections to balance everything out and keep weapons distinct.
The drawbacks add as much as, if not more, character to a weapon, than its strengths.
Dodge distance & count needs nerfing on weapons that outcompete 1h sword and 1h mace in their role.
Also when SS exists, it puts slower 2h weapons in a such comfortable territory {for Merc & Hunt especially}, that again 1h sword and 1h mace lose their appeal with innately fast attacks.
Imperfect attack chains (like 1h sword L1-L2 -> L3 overhead for anti armor), need to reward more damage, while weapons that have easy access to any type of attack - its a strength so needs to be counterbalanced by something noticeable.
Its a shame that there’s a tendency and desire to streamline weapon attack chains, that every weapon should have instant&easy access for the right attack. I’m not saying that all, or even majority of weapons should have imperfect attack chains / attacks further in combo.
But that the imperfect chains - is an additional balancing field, different from mobility, control, damage…and you need as much of these fields as possible, with so many melee weapons added (they focus on melee with DLCs), and only 3 attack inputs (light, heavy, pushatk).
Its a field that also gives a lot of character to a weapon, more so than others.
/Rant, going back in my corner to cry about the halberd.
Eh, 1h sword is kind of where it needs to be. It’s the starter weapon spread across 7 classes. It only feels underwhelming on Kruber because he gets so many other options. On Sienna It’s different. UC and Pyro can clean house with it really well.
1h Sword is kind of a funny pick on Sienna. Firesword/Dagger are better for temp and overall safety, and staffs are always better for horde clear. It’s armour damage on Pyro isn’t as great as many make it out to be as it doesn’t have high crit damage.
It’s a real shame Kruber’s 1h sword can’t be given different values from Sienna’s.
It surely would not be unreasonable for the 1h Sword to have 4 dodges. I do agree that several of Kruber’s weapons are overlapping heavily with each other though. The 1h Sword is the only Kruber weapon that I personally find to be lacking too much.
From my experiences the 2h Hammer is pretty alright. It sacrifices a lot because it has high bodyshot damage. The Bret Sword’s damage on heavies is too high. A stagger increase on the heavies for berserkers would probably be enough to make this weapon safe against mixed hordes. It makes up for it’s weaknesses against CWs in the same way the Exec does - low safety but high damage, with higher consistency than Exec but less dmg potential.
I think with some changes to both the Bret Sword and the 1h Sword a balance can be achieved
Would make the Greatsword on Kruber obsolete, and the 2h Hammer too safe. Let’s not give too many weapons armour sliding vs Chaos Warriors. The 2h Hammer deals with shields pretty well, so we could double-down on that and make it take 1 less hit for it to open up the guards of shielded Stormvermin.
This would make it too strong on Slayer unfortunately, though I think that’s because Slayer is too strong himself.
Thinking about it, armour sliding on the 1h Sword would also probably be too much now that I’ve given it more thought.
Would it though? 2h Hammer has very low damage cleave, so it still wouldn’t kill mixed hordes nearly as quickly. I was just spitballing though, so if people with more knowledge than me think it would be too much I’ll take your word for it. It certainly is tricky to balance 2h Hammer since it’s very strong on Slayer, but just kinda mostly ok on Kruber. I mostly resent how much investment it takes to hit stagger breakpoints with it because, well, it’s a giant Hammer colliding with things, so it feels pretty unintuitive at times, especially with unarmoured berserker enemies, and its heavies’ aforementioned low damage cleave means it takes a pretty long time to kill a horde with it.
Anyway back on the main topic of the thread, I agree 1h sword probably also doesn’t need armour sliding. Giving it a bit more mobility and helping it out against shields somehow would probably be enough to let it have its own niche. THP on cleave for HS would also go a long way, since he’s probably got the best synergy with it, but his temp health options hold it back needlessly.
Greatsword would have would be 10% dodge distance, 1 more dodge, chaff dps and a better movement curve while attacking. 2h Hammer would be better vs shields and single targets by a lot. The 2h Hammer is better at making use of the extra dmg enemies take while staggered, both vs elites and hordes, while having a better push attack for horde dmg.
Max out cleave on Merc with the 2h Hammer + Stand Clear and it’s pretty crazy how safe it is against everything but CWs/berserkers, while still doing great dmg to them.
One of the few reasons the Greatsword is decent on Merc is because it has the highest/most consistent Paced Strikes uptime, even on maps like FoW. It’s also the Greatsword’s characteristic cleave identity.
More stagger on heavies would be fair, just not so much that it means Huntsmen can go around staggering CWs out of overheads.
I don’t think it can stagger a CW out of much right now even with opportunist + staggering force so don’t think there’s too much risk there. In my mind it would be fair if heavies could stagger berserkers with just opportunist and maybe minor power investment. It’s not like many people run opportunist on non shield weapons anyway. Thanks for the detailed weapon comparison, very informative!
On FK with Staggering Force, Enhanced Power, Comrades, 20% vs Chaos and 10% vs Armour and Oppourtunist it staggers CWs out of their overheads on heavy bodyshot. Disgustingly steep investment (same setup required for shield bash). At the very least the stagger strength should be increased so that it doesn’t require Comrades.
It does decrease as you hit more enemies. Breakpoint only works if the CW is the first enemy hit.