Mace and armor piercing

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Gameplay Feedback
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As we all know, mace has a very bad armor-piercing on regular attacks, mace and shield has even less of it. And it blows my mind in a bad way so hard, because it is so counter-intuitive and immersion breaking. In reality Mace was the best possible weapon for piercing armor together with War Hammer and Spear. But in Vermintide it’s regular attacks are inferior to an Axe, a Falchion and even a Sword, and even its charged attack deals as much armored damage as Kerillian 1h Sword, which means that a Sword and a Mace are somehow equally good against armor.

All this situation just breaks my mind, so i’d like to know what you guys think about it. Immersion-wise, not balance-wise. From the balance standpoint mace is pretty good, no complains.

Let me emphasize: IMMERSION-WISE.

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Don’t they sort of make up for it with easy headshots on the attack pattern combined with block resets though? That said I won’t disagree that Mace X shield feels terrible, if I play with a shield at all it’s always Sword X Shield, the mace X shield feels sluggish, some hits will actually lock you into the animation where the sword x shield doesn’t and the crowd management feels lackluster in comparison but I guess the nuance is easy headshots versus riot control.

Mind; I can only discuss on this, the only maces I play with frequently is bardin’s 2h mace and Sienna’s 1h mace (which I think is in an excellent state atm)

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For the balance, i agree. But historically the mace was never a good option against huge armor. It was used in the early middle-age when the armor was mostly midium, -gambison, sometime chainmail -, because the mace don’t have to pierce the armor to hurt the ennemy. Generaly broke an arm and that was the fight, (or just headshot with obvious result.). But most of the time that was leadding to internal hemorrhage.

As soon as the full plate armor was “released” the only way of fight was the 2 handed sword fight with a nail to finish a fight. The hammer was a solution but not like we think about (specialy in a warhammer world), with a very little area.

A full plate armor is really undestructible. And only the handgun change the meta of war leading to Renaissance.

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1h hammer/mace are in a very good spot and i would not change them pretty much at all. Mace/hammer + shield is a different story. 1h heavy hits might deal as much damage as 1h elf sword but keep in mind this is probably the fasted charged attack in the game and it’s super easy to hit the head with it.

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I don’t remember mentioning “huge armor”, a.k.a. plate armor.

Still, do you really wanna engage in a historical dispute. I mean I see a lot of logical mistakes already. For example:

So while body armor evolved from Chainmail and Lamellar armour to Full Plate, the helmet remained almost the same. It was already just a piece of metal. All that changed later on was the addition of the visor. So headshot option was as viable.

If the armor is indestructible, how does 2h sword help fighting it? Why use it at all then? Why not use a nail in the first place?

Moreover, if it was impenetrable, why did melee weaponry continued evolving. I mean it’s obviously useless against “huge armor”, why bother. Pollaxe, Ahlspiess, War Hammer, Bec de corbin - all theses weapons ere invented in late medieval times.

Why did they keep producing all other useless melee weapons, that you can now find in museums? Why do we see weapons other than greatswords and daggers?

How did British archers manage to defeat French knights at the Battle of Crécy in their indestructible armor?

Now let me show you how “impenetrable” fullplate actually is

As you can see- pretty penetrable. But the fun is, that is not important as much, because as you can see, and that’s more important, it is breakable. After several hits the armor gets crumpled, and any further damage will go through it, affecting the wielder directly.

I can’t find a video of a full plate knight beaten to death with a mace, but you can see how it works based on the example of a steel can

There is also a vid of a Lamellar armour being hit by morgenster.

Full Plate is more resistant to hits, but the principle is the same.

So in conclusion let me repeat once more: if melee weapons were not effective against medieval armor, they wouldn’t be used. And mace was one of those weapons. So telling that it was useless is absurd.

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@Guziol @Nova

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Well in that regard a lot of the ‘‘stabs’’ in this game, particularly 2-handed ones, are subject to this as well.
(which has always bothered me a bit, especially with so much armour spawning in this game)

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2-handed weapons do not have stab attacks. The only one is Kerillian 2h sword, which deals a decent amount of armored damage, especially when hitting in the head.

Well, there is also a spear, but considering how wide its edge is, I think its armor penetration is in accordance with its form.

As for one-handed weapons, there isn’t many stabby ones, but yes, most of them need some buffing. Though they all do at least some armor damage, while Mace, the ultimate armor wrecker, deals 0 on its regular attacks. And at the same time even Flail and Falchion deal some armor damage even with light strikes, not to mention the Axes.

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I MADE A MISTAKE : while saying iron i was mean steel, sorry for it. (late middle-age manage steel forged stuff.)

Blockquote
I don’t remember mentioning “huge armor”, a.k.a. plate armor.

Like there is only two armor kind (of what i have understand) i think armor piercing was against the plate of stormvermin and chaos warrior, so huge armor. I understand counter-intuitive like logical. So i try to explain why it was logical. Sorry if i get wrong and if i upset you.

Blockquote
So while body armor evolved from Chainmail and Lamellar armour to Full Plate, the helmet remained almost the same. It was already just a piece of metal. All that changed later on was the addition of the visor. So headshot option was as viable.

Sorry i maybe get wrongly understand. Even if you have a helmet you don’t have shock absorber so even with a full forged iron helmet if you take an head shot you are stun like hell.

You can try, it really close a combat.

Blockquote
If the armor is indestructible, how does 2h sword help fighting it? Why use it at all then? Why not use a nail in the first place?

If you think it’s like in the movie or “american” documentary (with so much accuracy), sorry you are totaly wrong. Between the late 14 century to 15/early 16 century there is a great discovery about how to forge iron, what we casualy call forged iron. It’s resistance is largly superior too simple iron.

The sword fight was more like greek fight. You can see example here :

Melee weapon continue to evolve slowly to only arrive to handgun army in late renaissance (excluding the saber fight which was less decisive than the ranged war).

This king of weapon was not useless, because a plate armor is really expensive and only very few can get it. Most of the middle-age army was made of gambison and chainmail.

And the long bow is one of the most powerfull ranged weapon. The squeletton of bowman is found with arthrosis on the bending arm, if i’m not wrong they can reach 100 lb even more. In close range and with percing-armor head they can go through full armor.

The celtic civilization use simple iron, largly less resistance than steel.

And sorry but you armor is not at all a fully plate made of forged steel. We really need to be carefull on bibliography, youtube made many mistake just to make more vew. A typical forged iron plate have a little bleu glow when you look at it.

So, i never say it was useless, just bad against plate armor which chaos warrior and stormvermin are stuff with.

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Other weapons with equal damage:
2h Hammer
Halberd overheads
Glaive uppercut
Axe charged
Notable weapon that does worse:
Great axe

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For real I hope the great axe gets some love soon.

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If you haven’t already seen this video, it might give you some more Information regarding longbow vs armour.

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Sorry i should make a post that actually addresses the topic.
In my opinion light attacks with the mace should not be armour piercing.
Heavy attacks headshots should be the way to go and should definitely deal more damage than 1 h sword or falchion.

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I think I’m fine with it. Beacause it’s light attack, i can imagine how they go off the plate, and not reaching thin spots. While with charged, strong attacks you can deform armor with mace and pierce with spear (as it was show in video that you provided).

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Hammer is supposed to be good against armor, so no problem here. Actually the opposite of a problem.
Axes are also pretty decent against it, so again no big deal.

But yeah, the fact that Great Axe deals less damage than regular one when they’re both used with 2 hands - that’s nuts. Dps-wise i think it’s the same, since Great Axe hits faster, but that makes it even less logical, cause it’s heavier.

So it’s ok that Flail, Axe and Falchion have armor piercing light attacks, but a bludgeon weapon does not? And it is ok, that a sharp weapon, 1h sword, can deal more dps with it’s light combo than mace - weapon invented exclusively for armor breaking?

It is relative. I could understand this logic, if cutting weapons like axe, falchion and even 1h sword behaved the same. But no, they do not. They pierce the armor, and pierce it good.

This line alone makes any further discussion pointless. This such an old myth, and it was proven wrong so many times by so many people, that it became basically impolite referring to it. I’ll link you the most scientific vid about the matter, but there is hundreds of vids about people trying to pierce armor not only with bows, but with 300 lb. crossbows, where they suddenly fail. Also @debito20091993 link.

So if you believe in such ancient myths, than I am afraid you might believe in anything. And I am trying to refer to common sense and logic here, not to the faith.

Stormvermin do not wear full plate. They are clearly using a Brigandine, I would say even Laminar Armour, and both of these are much worse than plate.

I can only imagine the sight of two armies colliding and starting greek-fighting. :joy: That would be such a great show, though! :+1:

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goddamn flavour of the month meta changers

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Well i think light attacks on Flail, Axe and sword shoudn’t be armor piercing either.
I have to say i never tried light attacks on armoured enemys with these weapons.
Didn’t even know they deal damage.
On the other hand i don’t know how good Stormvermin armour is lorewise.

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I am again not very clear. I will try to explicite all my thoughs. And close this discussion.

  • 1: You speak about the battle of Crécy, so i keep thinking that way. The battle was is 1346, at this time the iron was easy to product but not steel. Hence the long bow with special head can overcome armor. That’s an explanation why they keep shield, because te armor was not “unbreakable”.

  • 2: I speak about full plate steel armor because it’s the closest thing we have to compare with heavy armor of skaven and chaos. Even if stomrvermin can looks like wearing a brigandine or other, the scale of warhammer is so much bigger than ours. They have maybe 1 cm thickness plate. Human can barely wear it.

  • 3: The full plate steel armor begin to popularize during the very end of the middle-age, about 1450 maybe 1500. And the longbow was clearly not a good weapon against it, even with piercebolt head. Quickly the handgun was developped, and was of “cummon” use during 1520 (i’m not sure of this date maybe +/- 20 or 30 years).

Mookanana : I don’t really understand the meaning of your sentence sorry, but while i’m explaning every thing why stop^^. Meta just mean basicly the commun way of doing a thing, we just rarely use it. And if you want another “meta” changing of the way to do war, you can search on the celtic civilization which change the really slow war with “shield wall” to a fast rush, but i won’t explain more on it, i already overstep the limit.

Debito20091993 ; About the lore, skaven stormvermin wear a “heavy armor” which is the same class as full steel plate armor. Like the bretonnian who wear it. The empire knight get better armor because they are made of gromril (a kind of mix between adamantium and mithril made by the dwarf). It’s the same metal use by the iron-breaker. This is because of the very close alliance between dwarf and human thanks to sigmar. But it’s likewise the chaos warrior, which is normaly more armored than stormvermin. (I don’t think it is in the game).

To sum up : I think that armored guy in vermintide is closer to full plate than just heavy armor, that explain the no damage. But i think that it should stun more the ennemy.

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sorry i was trying to be funny, my meaning was that i felt that it was pretty fantastic that a single weapon type can change the course of warfare.

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I agree with the op.

The mace and shield should have good AP, but less crowd control (maybe slower than the faster weapon + shield) to balance it.

For dwarf its very tricky because changing hammer and shield like so will make it the same as axe and shield!