There are workarounds to deal with all enemies. Bulwork for example, bait it to hit and counter attack. But Crushers have 100% armor. Weapons that can effectively deal with Crushers are very limited. As a zealot, if you don’t run power or chain weapons, you are forced to run Bolter (if you want to deal with Crusher). That’s very annoying considering it takes forever for the Bolter to fire its first shot. Unless you have high power grenades, the choices are pretty thin.
Usually I save Crushers for last because I don’t like running Bolter and Crushers are kite-able. However, in Auric, a gang of 6 Crushers can be quite annoying to slowly melee them. So maybe make the thighs unarmored would be nice.
So a lot of the zealot‘s weapons are pretty good against crushers.
Or the og ult with any full auto gun.
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There are arguments to be made that crushers should have flak armored helmets or other bodyparts.
But at the same time there are arguments against it, since such a change would significantly lessen the threat they pose.
Yes those rending and headshots work. That’s what I do. But I wouldn’t call it as effective as power/chain weps, Bolter, or Plasma. I don’t mind taking one or two Crushers down with knife. What I’m saying is Auric Shocktroop and Malestrom where you face with a group of more than 5 Crushers (not to mention several other elites at the same time).
Basically I don’t like the idea that it has armor all over its body.
While I think that including a worse armored spot on the crusher would improve their design overall I also think that the choice wether you add something that is good at killing crushers to your build or you skip that relying on your team to be even better at other stuff knowing that their might be situations where this decision bites you is one aspect that is interesting about creating builds.
That said there are many tools in the zealot’s armory that are ok at killing crushers but only few that are great.
All autoguns combined with chastize the wicked are able to destry a crusher for example - other obtions have already be mentioned.
the fact crushers exist force me to ALWAYS take them in consideration. This lead to the fact that several weapon find a true utility cause of this…
If you put a weakness… I don’t need to take the full carapace enemy in consideration.
Lot of melee weapon
2 true crushers killer for ranged weapons: boltgun and revolver (and the reason why I don’t want that revolver become useless against carapace)
But, you can also use an infantry gun (with ult it works… pray to not encounter a patrol of 6 crushers)
I hate how crushers were designed, but we’d need a time machine to fix that now. They went and added brittleness and rending to vets to compensate, and most of the classes now have a band-aid fix to the crusher problem.
If we’d caught this early, we could have built mechanics into the crusher to make them fun to deal with, like weakspots on the knees and arms joints, neck joint etc. They could have made special animations for the crushers to show those weakspot kills.
Then we wouldn’t have low caliber pistols, using onslaught, shredding crushers like they’re made of paper.
Having a well rounded build (or team) is part of the challenge.
However, I do agree because the solution to lot’s of carapace armour tends to be: Rending.
And that means everyone tries to get it whereever they can, and it’s far too powerful for its own good.
Handcannon on the Revolver is widely considered to be a tad strong (I and others would say “completely overpowered and mandatory”, but that isn’t everyone’s opinion), and f.Ex. “Rending Strikes” on the vets talent tree more than doubles the damage output of most ranged weapons versus crushers.
If there were less enemies where rending is basically mandatory, it could be weakened slightly and be a tactical option.
If they had worse armour in some place, I’d probably be maniac or unyielding at the back of their legs, though, aka, almost impossible to exploit alone.
Or a weakspot on their shoulders you can hit when they just did an overhead swipe.
On crusher
+75% damages increase if you make a critic (surgical strike)
+75% damages when you proc hand canon
In other words, hand canon and surgical strike give you the same damage bonus. However, adding both means that when you land a critic due to surgical strike you also triggers hand canon, meaning +150% damages.
About Rending and brittleness, they seems not to be really balanced yet.
Stub revolver
this is damnation level
duelist buffs weakspot and crit at the same time and well. I’m hoping your dodging as a zealot
desperation gives 20% when stamina is defeated (and considering zealot doesn’t loose much when stamina is defeated. its a good perk to take and easy to proc)
anointed in blood up to +25% if your close
without buffs it will take you 5 weakspot hits (no crit) to kill
with crits it takes you 2 headshots and 1 body shot
with buffs active, you can probably get that down to 2 shots from the stubby, crushers really aren’t a problem for the zealot at all
honestly i use my knife to kill so much in this game that. i barely even pull out my stub revolver, mainly just use it for maulers, crushers and raggers, snipers, trapper, ya know the stuff that can take you down in a single shot, or penetrate your toughness etc.
i don’t even have rending on my stub revolver, rending + surgical is what i will be going for in the future once i get the blessing
oh and for the other classes, psykter can 2-3 shot a crusher with a demos mk4 power sword
or just use lightning staff
veterans can just 1 shot a crusher with krak grenades
and ogrens well i have no idea never played an ogres, need to level them up
i think the bigger issue for players is, not knowing how to build really good weapons to deal with this stuff, and now knowing how to specialize a weapon to do one job really well
i see so many people running trash gear for no reason
put ordo docket perks on all your curios
buy white weapons front the armory
ONLY upgrade the good white weapons (stuff with high base stats or good base stat distribution)
prey that you get 1-2 decent perks
then put the 2 perks you WANT on the weapon to specialize in what your trying to do with the weapon
stop wasting resources upgrading random junk
stop running multiple hoard clearing weapons with each other
as a zealot you don’t need a flamer and a Cleve weapon at the same time
take something for hoards, take something for carapace
find out what scares you in game, and then make sure you have something to deal with that thing
because the combat knife can get 100% crit chance attacks fast as, gives you a massive amount of mobility, lets you regen your abilities fast af, stacks a ton of bleed, and lets you constantly regenerate your toughness to make you immortal
and if you don’t know what I’m talking about. you are missing out my friend
The Crucis Mk. II Thunder hammer can eliminate Damnation and Damnation Auric Crushers with two, thunder charged heavy swings. The first Thundercharged Relentless staggers it, the second kills it.
A heavy strike takes 0.5 seconds to accomplish. in two seconds you can kill a Damnation++ Crusher, with the help of a meta-weaponized team, you can kill them even faster.
With a knife, you have to nonstop click, or use an autoclicker. Waste more time attempting to kill a 2,000++ hp Ogryn with a weapon that does 40-60 damage. Your argument is invalid, you are intentionally misguiding uninformed audiences, and encouraging unskilled gameplay in absence of your inability to exercise patience.
Fun fact, the Crucis Mk. II Thunder hammer has guaranteed Relentless for Heavy Strikes, it has guaranteed strikedown for it’s light attacks. It is superior to all other Zealot melees, all other melees are inferior. There are only correct and incorrect options.
This is so true… when you see what people use…
My god guys, at least FS permits you to change both blessings… so, at minimum change them to something good… even tier 3
the kinfe can kill a reaper in 14-16 hits (4 seconds?)
a bulwark in 14 ish hits (4 seconds?)
a mutant in 9-11 hits (3 seconds?)
I’m being generous btw, dodging around hitting wherever not just standing and hitting the head
and you literally just. 2-3 shot the crusher with a stub revolver don’t bother using the knife against carapace
btw
BLEED STACKS
this is a single hit and this is ticking constantly
A Crucius Mk.II Thunder hammer can kill a rager in 1 thundercharged swing
A Crucius Mk.II Thunder hammer can kill a mutie in 1 thundercharged swing
A Crucius Mk.II Thunder hammer can kill a Bulwark (not at the shield) in 1 thundercharged swing
A Crucius Mk.II Thunder hammer can also do something that no other melee in this game (as of 11/16/23 sadly) guarantee Relentless heavy charge attacks. Like what part of “Who woke the hoard” did you not understand playing this game? News flash pal there are more than 1 enemy in any area, it’s wisest to use a versatile, staggering, high damaging weapon that can clear hordes and enemy Elites and above
You are arguing everyone should run a garbage build, with a garbage weapon, to kill 3 choices of enemies… when there is a weapon that can kill literally all of them, effectively, and quickly, with a team that isn’t incompetent. Math exists, frame data exists, the knife is inferior to all melee
(The Ogryn’s Slab shield has been reworked since 11/16/23, it does Beatdown, Relentless. Not Relentless, Relentless)
no I’m actually not arguing that everyone should run this good knife build
i don’t give care if you want to run the thunder hammer, infect I’m looking at making a thunderhammer build myself and trying it out, it seems like an interesting build, thunderhammer and flamer or whatever idk idgaf
i was never saying that anyone should ONLY be running a single build on zelot
I’m saying, people should specialize their weapons to deal with certain enemies
I’m giving an EXAMPLE of how easy it is to take down crushers
you DONT need to reduce their armor, on pretty much every character their are MULTIPLE ways to deal with them, I’m not sitting here saying the thunder hammer sucks, your build in invalid i don’t like the way you play blah blah blah, miss me with that BETA one track minded garbage i will play every and all builds in the game. i will give everything a go
if you don’t like the playstyle of the knife. so be it DONT run the knife. but don’t sit here and say its bad, or it doesn’t work when it clearly DOES WORK just because your so one minded. so narrow focused on your single thunder hammer build “ooh look at me i have a build and since i made it is the best and no one else build is good”
