Following the push attack with the vertical heavy makes no sense and actually gave me ebola (real). Push attacks are for CC, which means that you want to be able to easily combo it into additional horizontal attacks to maintain the pressure on multiple enemies.
The ironhelm never needed access to a vertical attack anyway, since it already cleaves through non-elites when activated. Having it available as a finisher following two light attacks was good enough.
I was going to make a whole thread about this, seething in rage because I also (for real) caught ebola from this change. This change is literally idiotic. I mean that. Of the two hammers that needed easier access to a heavy overhead strike the Ironhelm was NOT it. I’m not saying I disliked the Heavy 3 on the ironhelm, it had its niche use cases. But as of right now its a hot dumpster fire.
I recenty tested this change over three games in auric and in the psychanneum and I can confirm that there are no breakpoint advantges to the push attack heavy 3 over the normal heavy 3. There are no advantages to the heavy 3 special over heavy 1 special. The Ironhelm has Heavy CLEAVE ON SPECIAL and did not need easier access to the overhead. The push attack was part of the weapons horde clear chain. It now feels like garbage to use. This change is a DISASTER. This change must be reverted immediately in the next patch.
What they needed to do, instead of this ebola thing (real), was to have the activation not interrupting the chain, so you couldhave access to the powered strikedown attack without the need to miss 2 hits.
This doesn’t make sense.
The challenge of using that weapon was always in avoiding the heavy 3 or the light 2.
For hordes, before the patch, I could heavy 1, 2, pushattack, heavy 2, pushattack heavy 2 until I was out of stam or there was a moment to reset the animation.
Now the heavy 1, 2, followed by light 1 and heavy 2 and light 1 combo is the only way to do it.
The new combo is slower due to the bizarrely long time it takes to play the animation, lower damage, less stagger and cleave. So, just worse all around.
If you push-attack you need to animation reset to not be locked into a vertical strike, which takes valuable time.
We need the heavy 2 to the pushattack or we need the fat trimmed off that animations transitions and the attack speed needs to go up.
For me I would usually do a H1, H2, P1, H2, H3, H1, H2, P1, H2 or something like that. I don’t mind slinging the H3 in there from time to time to reset the combo but man now I just have no combos on the weapon at all. It is pure garbage, brings nothing to the weapon, and entirely detracts from it.
From memory there are ways to weave activation in without breaking your combo chain. I’m pretty sure I’ve managed to do activation → overhead heavy there was just never a reason to do so before since it had the same damage profile as the sweeps. When I get home tonight I’ll try to remember how I did this and if it still works.
Posting to confirm for patch 14.
Light atk 2 → Charge up will lead into Heavy 3 (the overhead).
Heavy atk 2 → Charge up goes back to Heavy 1.
Push atk → Charge up goes to Heavy 2.
