The Paired Transonic Blades are interesting, but the stance switch is essentially useless as is due to the long animation time, how easy it is to interrupt, and the fact that using it means being stuck in the other attack mode, which is almost always inopportune.
A simple fix here would be to offer the stance swap a genuine utility value beyond just changing from sweeping hits to stabbing hits. Namely - make the stance swap be a parry for the swap duration, in addition to still swapping stances on use. Triggering the parry would do the special attack for the stance you’re swapping to.
This would make it much more practical to use since, the only time you want to swap on the fly to actually use the special combos is to kill an armored unit in a horde, then back to cleaving the horde still surrounding you. Right now, you eat a ton of unnecessary hits to do this, and you might as well just toss some rending/hit mass reduction to the cleaving swords instead and call it a day.
A parry on the other hand retains the same flow the weapons were clearly intended to utilize, but resolves the antithetical use case of swapping stances in combat being so needlessly perilous.
Sounds kinda badass but I don’t agree. The swap combos well (does it block? Can’t remember), and would be weird to utilise as a parry because the moveset change is already insane utility. Swapping should be for moveset and combo, not for parry is what I’m saying. Imagine you parry a Mauler but now you’re in horde mode? So you only should parry in one direction?? Seems a bit odd.
These things already ooze utility with two kinda baller movesets and the slick combo transition. Can’t say I’ve had issues with it in combat, but I run the can’t-be-stunned perk so maybe that helps.
The combo transition is in no way slick. You interrupt it by doing a normal attack too early or too late, but the timing on the weapon is nothing more than “this feels about right” for when you can actually start the attack.
A parry offers at least a discrete and consistent point in time where you’ve definitely switched to the other mode, as well as rounding out the value in a horde since, typically, stabbing something in the face in the middle of a swarm isn’t really a thing you want to have to do more than one time.
The stance switch could also work like some of the other special actions where holding the button does a stance switch attack, and tapping just switches stances, but right now timing by vibes is clunky, and continues to just never be a thing you’d want to really do in a horde versus just hitting everything with a cleave that ignores their hit mass.
I do agree the windows feel a little off. Reminds me of Branx pick when it came out, and i want to say one of the eviscerators too. But the scenario when you are in a horde and you need to stab one thing in the head so you combo into dagger mode and do that great backhand stab is slick as hel and you won’t convince me otherwise.
With mixed hordes I’ve found single mode far more useful to dispatch high priorities than simply spamming cleave mode. If anything it’s the single → horde transition that feels lacklustre to me. The weapon doesn’t have enough stagger to CC much so killing and dodging feels more fitting, and the switch followup is a bit weak.
I mean I guess you could just give the weapon a free parry and it would be cool. Give the weapon with great utility even more. But if it was weakened to compensate, then I’d be unhappy and overall would prefer no parry. It’s a cool idea though no doubt.
Maybe another compelling reason more skitarii weapons should have more marks!