Mace and Shield: This is probably the worst weapon in the game, with its copy, Hammer and Shield. Its just bad at everything with the only upside of having a shield, which in current V2 doesnt matter at all.
Sword and Shield: Lacks in damage, cleave, armor damage. Again, the shield does nothing in the current way the game is played.
1h-Sword: Its useable, but is clearly worse than 1h mace simply for doing almost no damage to armor.
2h-Sword: All the downsides of a 2-handed weapon with barely anything going for it. Its damage is decent, but is non-existent against armor. Like in V1, Exe sword is a straight upgrade.
Repeater Handgun: Abysmal damage, vomit-inducing recoil visuals and bad accuracy with nothing going for it anywhere else. Brace of Pistols are better in every way, while not having to reload at all.
Bardin Goreksson:
Hammer and Shield: See Mace and Shield in Markus Kruber category.
Pickaxe: The normal attack is almost fine, It could need a bit less swing delay. But the charge attack does way too little for how clunky it is and how long it takes to go through the full circle of charge-up, hit, recovery time. And thats not talking about the super heavy charge, which isnt worth it, period.
1-h Axe: In a good spot, although I would make it able to hit two clan rats with one swing, which it doesnt currently.
Kerillian:
Dual swords: Horrible anti-armor is what kills this weapon. Sword and dagger does its main job, cleaving, just as well with the added bonus of the dagger charged stab as the second heavy attack.
2h-Sword: While better than Saltzpyre and Kruber’s 2h-sword, it still lacks behind the glaive in every way.
Swiftbow: It just doesnt seem to have a place outside of fun. Hagbane does horde-clear better, Longbow does anti-armor better. Or should I say, it does it at all. Swiftbow needs 5 charged arrows to the head to kill a SV, and the shots dont stagger. I think it needs some kind of gimmick or rework to make it a viable choice. And the ammo-hungry nature pretty much locks it behind waystalker.
Victor Saltzpyre:
1h-Axe: See 1h-Axe in Bardin Gorekkson category.
2h-Sword: See 2h-Sword inMarkus Kruber Category.
Brace of Pistols: Good weapon. The only problems it has are horrible monster damage multiplier and low ammo. I dont mind it not being able to kill CW. And complete lack of any synergy with bounty hunter crit passive.
Sienna Fuegonasus:
1h-Sword: See 1h-Sword in Markus Kruber category.
2h-Mace: The only gripe I have with this weapon is its weird attack pattern. Both normal and charged attacks want to do both single-target and wave clear equally. If you are not 100% concentrated, the weapon will fail you. And after all that effort, the damage isnt really impressive outside of a fully stacked unchained.
Bolt Staff: The charge-up time to reach maximum stage takes too long and has no clear indicator of when the final stage has been reached. Lack of zoom (even optional) and travel time remove its status as a sniper against everything that isnt standing completely still. The charged bolt creates too much overcharge.
Firestorm Staff: Its just a worse version of Bardin’s drakegun while retaining its boring playstyle and eyestrain for teammates.
Elf 1h sword is also so close to being very fun and useful and if you try hard enough you can make it work but it basically functions like a more clunky 1h mace/hammer with worse damage on light hits. I would also like blunderbuss and grudge raker to deal just a little bit more damage to resistant/monster enemies.
Dealing with armor is the primary reason for people not using certain weapons right now. Some times it’s just Chaos warriors (which, discounting a few specific ranged weapons, need to be dealt with in melee), other times Stormvermin too are troublesome, especially shielded ones. Both are quite ubiquitous especially in Legend, often enough found in patrol-like quantities as roaming enemies, so a good weapon setup will need to be capable of dealing with several of them, at least keeping them at bay for others to arrive but preferably slaying them in reasonable time.
Shields in general are in quite bad spot. It seems the only one effectively usable right now is Axe and Shield, and even that is often better replaced with another more offensive weapon. The reason is that while a shielded weapon has a good block angle and more stamina, they also have a huge mobility disadvantage, enough to actually reduce the defensive options when carrying a shield. As Maulers, CWs and bosses have attack that will smash through your stamina in one strike no matter how much you have, and bosses can damage you even through blocking, having a bit extra on that side is far less valuable than dodging, and actually renders the whole point of shields kind of moot. Giving a few special blocking mechanics for shields would mitigate this, such as even the heavy overheads (except maybe from bosses; those will push you far away anyway) not beating down your entire defense and, more importantly, at least reducing the amount of damage bosses can do through block. After that, individual weapons would be better addressed.
As for specific weapons, running on OP’s comments:
In addition to both my above comments applying, little crowd control beyond pushing and bashing, and weird attack pattern that’s hard to learn to use effectively. When still running Champ, I learned to use it somewhat effectively, but its capabilities are just not enough even after the pattern is learned.
Damage and cleave, even if not good, are something that can be dealt with, and Merc can compensate cleave with his own passive. FK, on the other hand, can add to the crowd control with his Career Skill. But dealing with armor is _really_troublesome with this one. The best attack against armor is the third fast strike, but good luck using that effectively, as the first two dont do anything to even Stormvermin. That is, no damage, no stun. Unless you can whiff those two on purpose, you’ll never get the third one through. Other strikes, while more usable, deal even less damage against armor and take forever to whittle down even one SV.
On Markus, even if it’s getting closer to being useful (and on Merc, it actually is, especially when combined with certain ranged options), gets lost in Markus’s other weapon options. Two-handed Hammer, Exec Sword, and Halberd all occupy pretty much the same niche, while being able to do other stuff besides. The Two-hander will need to be very good at crowd-clearing to have a definite purpose on Markus. Of course, it has troubles against armor, which doesn’t help the case. A bit more reach (10, 15%?) for safety in attacking would go a long way, I think, and changing one of the attack patterns (preferably the heavy) to include an overhead would help with the armor part.
Even if there’s nothing special going on with it, it’s usable. It’s a middle ground between the sheer damage the Blunderbuss does and the long-range sniping of the Handgun. It’s usable, but either of the specialist options are usually better options. I can imagine using it with, say, Two-handed Sword simply for better dealing with armor and specials than BB (hm, I actually need to try that combination), but you’d likely need a high-ammo sustain party as the rest to be able to maintain it. Certainly need something to be done, but I 'm not sure what.
Either of the charge attacks are usable if you learn it well, but it’s not easy. I’m not sure how it works on IB or RV, but on Slayer the Pick works wonders as crowd-clear weapon. Probably needs a bit more mobility and/or attack speed to be useful outside Slayer.
This is where I think different. the One-handed Axe needs either a better base damage to be capable of hitting certain significant breakpoints, namely against Fanatics and Stormvermin, or a better mobility to be safer from retaliation. Possibly both. It’s too slow to deal effectively with either as is. I’d prefer the damage addition, as I think that would better define its niche as a high-damage armor-piercing single-target weapon, but the mobility option would add to survivability when using it.
While DS’s capability against armor is certainly bad, I don’t know how it could be made better sensibly. An attack pattern change to allow easier headshotting and possibly better armor-piercing on one attack would probably be the best solution again, but it would run the danger of moving too close to SnD. Luckily, this can be somewhat mitigated by running longbow, but CWs are still extremely troublesome. Shade can certainly rock the Dual Swords, though.
Every way? Its crowd-clear is hugely better than the Glaive, similar to Dual Swords. It could use some tweaks to armor-piercing and/or headshotting, though.
On Victor, the Two-hander is actually in better place than on Markus. He doesn’t have really any weapon to compete in specialized crowd-clearing. While the Falchion can do it, and the Flail can do crowd control, and the Rapier is certainly comparable (or maybe even better) on WHC, their excellence lies elsewhere. Falchion is a generalist, Flail works wonders against armor (and Shields), and Rapier is a headshot and crit machine. Otherwise, the points stand.
While the projectile travel time is just something to be learned, it certainly needs a zoom option (I would prefer using Weapon Special for that), and better charge state indication. Faster charge time wouldn’t go unappreciated either. Overcharge, though, is quite fine I think.
It’s not a “worse version”, it works exactly the same. Which is kind of the innate problem: It sacrifices range for a huge hordeclear. Range being Sienna’s primary point, that’s a huge trouble for the staff’s usefulness. Added with heat generating quite fast, the power (well, duration of a fully-charged burst) being not quite enough to clear a single wave completely, and Sienna’s generally weaker melee options, it’s still lacking. I don’t think anything could really be done with that, as the staff fulfills its role pretty damn well already, and the perceived uselessness is innate to the design (and a bit of the problem being from outside the particular weapon).
The one’s I didn’t comment on are ones I don’t have enough experience playing, at least recently, to comment on, or ones I just couldn’t find anything to comment.
I actually really like the 1handed sword on elf xD The first heavy attack is pretty good for nearly any enemy. But the light attacks feel really slow, which I wouldn’t mind if they were side ways swipes. Just changing the light attacks to cleaves for left to right would make this my #1 weapon on the elf. Not to mention, it has a dodge count of 100… seriously, you can dodge 100 times before you lose distance lol
Sienna’s 2H Mace is good imho. 1x left click + block spam method is useful for SV and to some extent, CW. If there are multiple enemies, I usually do 2x left click (horizontal sweep) + block + hold left click (while blocking) for another horizontal sweep, all while dodging. The increased usage of blocking to cancel attack patterns increased my survivability.
Sienna’s Dagger needs some damage increase imho. Problem with the weapon is that it’s poor in dealing multiple enemies at the same time, and it doesn’t do enough damage to 2-3 hit some Chaos variants. I used to use this, but switched to Mace instead.
The heavies are definitely good but i don’t see the reason for 3rd one. It’s supposed to be cleaving hit but the angle of strike is so trash. Can’t really headshot and it’s hard to hit multiple targets. I’m mostly complaining about the normal hits being not very good. 1h mace/hammer fulfill similar role and they just feel better ( i know it’s different characters but i think it’s a good comparison ) In v1 elf 1h sword was one of my favourite weapons.
The dodge count is nice but I tend to space my dodges on every weapon anyway. You rarely hit the cap if you do it right and still are safe.
Yea, I only use the 1st heavy attack followed by a block to reset it. You can get them out very fast and keep dodging.
Yea, agreed, the light attacks feel really bad xD As I said, if they were cleaves, left to right, like the 2handed sword, it would be an amazing weapon. And since they are so slow, I don’t see why not. I mean, the heavy attack hits faster than the light attack. lol wut?
I’m a noob but to my understanding any weapon without a horizontal swing is kinda useless unless 1v1? Example the 1h axe, works well for some but it had no crowd control swing.
Wired the rapier seems to cut better than the axe?
Not really. Overheads and stabs can still cleave, even if setting enemies up for it is more difficult than good, wide swings. They’re also often easier to headshot with and, if fast enough (like on Mace/hammer or Elf 1-h Sword), can be used for precision targeting even in crowds, allowing taking SV and CW out more easily.
Two-handed-swords are actually pretty good weapons. I run it on huntsman and on zealot, and it’s an absolute murder machine if you have a ranged weapon to circumvent the lackluster AP (which is still better than it’s reputation. 4 headshots kill a stormvermin and with the attack angle, it’s not that hard to hit. It does have, however, one of the lowest crit-power progressions of any weapon, even with fully stacked crit power builds.)
I agree on the shield weapons, with the only one being okay-ish axe and shield. Mace and shield has no place, the attack chains being the most prominent reason. You get a light attack sweep and a heavy attack sweep with no armour penetration.
1h sword is also simply a bad weapon. The sweaps on heavy are okay-ish, but you get basically the same by spamming light light block. Also doesn’t helpt that the only AP attacks are the push-attack and the third attack in the light attack chain. Whomever thought this was a great idea: it really isn’t.
It’s unfortunate that Kruber has so few weapons to choose from. The halberd is far and away the best, exec number two, hammer a few notches below that, and everything else unusable in legend without being carried.
I would love for the 1h-sword to be good because I dont really like using anything else on huntsman thematically together with bow or handgun… The 2h-weapons and the shields dont fit his theme at all and the mace, why would a hunter need a mace. Its still a second choice on him, for me personally.
Kruber’s 2h sword is an absolute beast of a weapon and, sadly, very much overlooked by many a player. The only thing it truly lacks is reach, which currently prevents it from being a true powerhouse on Merc, since you do have a surprisingly hard time to proc your paced strikes. I run it on Huntsman and it very much outperforms the halberds in hordeclearing.