Melee weapon viability with kerillians weapons as examples

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Hello!

So i have been playing around a lot, especially quickplay on legend with all 3 of kerillians specializations and i have some thoughts on what makes a weapon viable or not for legend from what i experienced in doing so.

So on legend you generally want your melee weapon to possess a mix of horde clearing capability and anti armor ability, this because hordes are frequent, dense and armor is abundant.

You also cant assume your team will be around to always help you if a lot of enemies appear or maybe a boss.

So with kerillian as a example, she has a few weapons that are truly good for horde clearing such as SnS, spear and glaive with swift slaying and the crit to fuel it.

I wont discuss the 2handed sword because i truly feel is awful, the swings are extremely awkward and the stab attack doesnt even deal a lot of damage i so i never bothered using it.

Then for anti armor she once again has the glaive, then DnD and 1hand sword.

Special mention for SnD that is not great at anything but not bad either, and maybe its that trait that makes me feel that out of all these weapons only the SnD, glaive and DnD are truly viable for legend, and glaive is kinda iffy for me even then.

Perhaps you the readers wonder why i´d criticize the glaive and not mention the dual daggers? The reason is kinda simple actually, its mobility and action speed which is where the glaive to me feels kinda bad,however its advantages make up for it to a degree.

Now the reason i endorse SnD and DnD so much is exactly for their speed but i personally prefer DnD even if it lacks direct horde clearing.

The reason is overwhelming mobility, even if you cant meatgrind the horde to death you can still dash around them and if you do it well you can clear multiple waves taking no damage…something i did succeed at albeit only rarely x)

DnD also works wonders on both armor and shields, the charged heavy easily hits heads and the attackspeed ensures that you can do it swiftly while the mobility ensure that you can avoid any attacks while doing so, however it has the phantom swings issue still which is just depressing.

1hand sword fails here because it needs too many heavy attacks and its too damn slow, its a nightmare to face more than 2 enemies using it.

Dual swords have no anti armor or shield at all, thus they fail for all but the shade…and even then its not really worth it.

Spear is great with hordes but its awful, truly damn bad with shields and bad armor.

So my conclusion is that for a melee weapon to work well it needs anti armor capability, this is a absolute necessity, it must also work if facing more than 1 armored target.

Then it needs the ability to work on hordes even if its not in a straightforward manner but bonus points if it does.

Then finally it needs speed, trying to use the 2handed sword that feels just as slow as the glaive but with awkward swings and borderline terrible anti armor while slow as a tortoise is just depressing, glaive can at least demolish armored targets and even shield users when done well.

But glaive to me is somewhat bad because if you get persistent boss aggro or maybe more enemies than you can clear then you will run out of dodge charges so quickly that you wont be able to recover in time, you´ll have your stamina depleted and die feeling like you are swimming in glue.

And it takes no real thinking to know many of the “problem” weapons kerillian has share a number of traits with weapons from the other heroes.

So my hope to @Fatshark_Hedge is that maybe you guys could consider buffing either headshot damage or anti armor capability for a number of weapons, then a number of weapons like kerillians 2hander sword or even her 1hand sword could just use a full on re-doing because they feel like poop to use, highly unpleasant, awkward and it stinks like …crap.

Thanks for reading and feel free to offer any thoughts or observations you readers might have, perhaps you feel differently and wish to discuss it or maybe you find something very similar on another hero and wish to highlight it.

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The 2h is just barely viable on legend the 1st charged deals 14 dmg against armored on headshot.
You can fight 2-3 stormvermin simultaneously because it’s charged attacks have quite some stagger.
It’s generally outclassed by the glaive.
The weapon is a good example how non ap weapons should work but it’s ap on headshot is still a bit to weak and to balance for the missing ap in general I would increase “normal” dmg and cleave quite a bit.

Edit: Actually 3 charged headshots to kill a stormvermin is not that unbalanced if it were the clear hoard clearing champ.

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Can it really be classified as barely viable if it takes 3 charged headshots to kill a single stormvermin? Do mind that you are easily interrupted and cant dodge well when charging those up.

And to top things off, the horde clearing is truly not great for a weapon supposed to be good at it, slow, awkward and doesnt hit well.

I truly cant find anything good about it x)

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Meaning something like hagbane horde clear.

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1h sword is an absolute beast of a weapon on handmaiden. Can stack to kill stormvermin with 2 heavy headshots, marauders with 1 heavy headshot, it hast good light attack sweaps, good dodge range and satisfactory blockstamina. CC is good with light, light, heavy combo, attack speed is fair enough for such a potent weapon.

2h sword has very good horde clear, but the heavy attack stab should deal alot more damage against armoured. What makes it alot worse than Kruber’s and Salty’s 2h sword is the simple fact that the sweaps are underhand strikes, making it hard to hit multiple heads (or even at all), which results in a de facto hefty damage penalty when compared to the human 2h sword.
2h sword is rarely seen simply because Keri doesn’t have a ranged option for super armour, and fighting a CW with 2h sword is tedious, to say the least. Kruber can take handgun to compensate, and Salty has BH’s active ability as well as guaranteed ranged crits. Zealot can make up for it with insane attack speed, fighting CW with him and 2h sword isn’t as bad as it is sometimes claimed.

Daggers I’d say don’t have a “phantom swing” problem per se, but simply a reach problem. In some situations, you can run into enemies until they block your movement and you’d still miss. It’s a hitbox issue that can easily be solved by slightly increasing the DD’s range.

DS has no reason to exist since SnD can do everything DS can do, but you don’t have to sacrifice damage against armour. SnD is, imho, Keri’s overall best weapon. Can never go wrong with that package of mobility, stagger, CC, horde clear and armour damage.

Spear is pretty meh. It is surprisingly strong on Shade (it would appear it can “double hit” bosses due to its reach, giving it a similar bosse killing output as SnD or DD). I have a very certain Handmaiden build that relies entirely on CC via spear push-attacks and is insanely strong, but it’d really wish the heavy attack chain would change to stab first, sweap second. It is easy enough to chain into heavy stab from the first two light stabs, but as most of Keri’s weapons, spear suffers from a quirky attack chain that takes some time to get used to. Armour damage is also poor and like with 2h sword, Keri doesn’t have a ranged option to deal with super armour, so Shade benefits from spear the most again, which is a bit counter-intuitive.

I’d say most of her problems could actually be solved by giving Keri some kind of anti-super-armour ranged weapon. A while back, someone suggested this (high?-)elven bow that shoots magic fire-arrows. Would be a cool HM exclusive ranged weapon (could even work without ammo but with an overcharge meter). But that’s another topic.

Edit: Averlorn Bow for Kerillian?

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That bow idea is awesome expecially i like overcharge things

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I would disagree with most of you.
Spear is goddamn good weapon, mostly cause of rich. Still can kill elites somehow. Good attack speed (almost never got hit during attack animation holding rmb). But, its still only waystalker’s weapon (infinite ammo for sv’s, ult for cw’s).

SnD is very very questionable. Im not a jsat and i dont belive one of you too. The moment there’s two sv targeting you its just spear without rich. You ll never perform second heavy.

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Can’t say I share that sentiment. The first heavy doesn’t deal much damage to SV, but it staggers them enough to open them for second heavy. It’s definitely easier on dual daggers, but with proper movement and dodging, it’s very much possible to use SnD to kill even multiple armoured foes.

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i swear by the SnD on shade because it truly is versatile. i’ve written a lot of posts on it, but here are my main points:

  • light-light-cancel-repeat or 1st heavy strike is great for horde control
  • full quick light attack chain has many uses, eg. killing shieldvermin by swivelling to back for backstab / doing the same on unarmoured targets for massive ammo returns with bloodfletcher
  • double stab 2nd heavy is equivilant to double dagger first heavy, super heavy dmg to use with ult
  • 1st heavy with ult can dual-kill elites a lot easier than DD because of the sweep range

if you are trying to kill them with the first heavy, you are not using SnD correctly. in that situation you should be airing your first heavy out of their reach, then darting in and stabbing 2nd heavy on one of the SV while dodging back out before their attacks land. i assure you i will kill them much faster than you can with a spear.

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While i do think your argument for the 1hand on handmaiden makes sense i cant agree for dual daggers, the phantom hits issue is actually real and its somewhat easy to find if playing shade and being a bit crazy.

Simply play as normal until a horde comes, go from the side with your F into a enemy cluster and attempt to heavy attack, in my experience roughtly 3 outa 5 of such attacks will actually result in you hitting nothing and stealth being unbroken if enemy density is too high.

I think the issue lies with the fact that daggers are limited to hitting only a few targets and so when enemies stack up like sardines in a can then the game cant figure which ones to hit causing it to hit nothing.

And it happens on light attacks when facing a horde too, have had multiple occasions when like 5+ enemies stand infront of me after a stun and out of 5 swings the first 3 will miss because i was in range to hit all the enemies, this theory is supported by the fact that i can actually hit things if i move back a bit.

And DS beats SnD in a true clusterscrew of a fight, if enemies are dense and just keeps coming then being able to just mash light attacks becomes very gratifying but its still a case best avoided at all.

And while shade makes some weapons work the issue with her is still that she benefits immensely from dual hitting weapons with her F causing anything else to be really bad by comparison…pretty sure they nerfed the glaive think to ensure that.

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The reason i dont like spear at all is mainly how bad it is with armor (try fighting a stormvermin and a shieldvermin at the same time) and how bad it is with just shields and super armored targets.

Like, even just clanrats with shields need …i think it was either 3 or 4 light attacks just to kill a single one? And you can easily get like 5 of em charging you at the same time, then the issue with low headshot damage causing chaos warriors to be ridiculously difficult to deal with.

Several fellows writing guides for elf in general all recommend daggers and glaive as her best weapons in general just because they are good with shields, armor and even multiple enemies.

SnD is alright but crit reliant, you can with a crit headshot even on the first heavy kill a stormvermin but its a bit iffy.

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I personally think that the Two-Hander and Spear are quite viable choices if you maximize the buffs to ult.

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Glaive is an amazing weapon for Handmaiden because its weaknesses are covered up by her extra dodge distance, stamina regen, and low cooldown career skill that provides mobility/waveclear/deaggro.

Spear is probably the most underrated weapon in the entire game IMO. It’s a weapon you think you’re going to struggle using due to its armor weakness, only to realize your win rate holds steady or even goes up. It’s just so good at what it does that it enables the rest of your team to more than make up for your lost armor damage. And if you pair the Spear with the Longbow your weakness is primarily to super armor, which is only an major issue if you aggro a Chaos patrol.

What I love with the Spear is that its reach, mobility, and god-tier push attack allow you to easily maintain a relatively safe space for the rest of your team to work. Even mediocre players tend to do fairly well when they aren’t getting swarmed and can focus on a fewer number of powerful enemies. And if you’re playing with randoms you’d better be prepared to help out mediocre players.

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i really tried to like the spear but it’s way too weak against armor for my liking. love the range and mobility it gives, but i’d take still take a glaive over it. heavy attacking stormvermins is so tasty with the glaive. choppity chop!

clanrats with shields open up with one push, then u can stab them in the fase. chaos with shields is more painful tho, many people underestimate them.

i find shields really well designed on enemies. as long as you hit a shield your cleave won’t work on other enemies, it’s pretty intricate work to figure out angles of attack during a horde with a few shield units mixed in. good stuff

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