The Mk III seems to be the “heavy” variant of the Veteran’s shovel, but it doesn’t do anything remotely near the amount of damage that the Standard-issue does and is significantly slower. The Mk VII on the other hand does the same amount of damage as the Mk III, but the Mk VII’s attacks are significantly faster.
The Mk III feels:
Too slow.
Too weak.
Please make the Veteran’s Mk III into a proper heavy shovel like the Ogryn’s Mk XIX! The Veteran’s Mk VII already feels like the Ogryn’s Mk V and that’s a great thing!
Funny, my experience has been that the Mk7 feels slower than the standard.
Supposedly the Mk3 also had a faster activation than the Mk7.
Are there any datamined stats somewhere on how exactly their attack timings are?
If so, we need that here for Science.
Or any declaration of intent from someone at FS, but I highly doubt we’ll ever see that.
Very strange. I tested them both out and to me the Mk III was really slow in general, whilst the Mk VII was fast and felt good apart from its… strange attack pattern. I just posted this because I thought it was strange that they could be so different to use yet have virtually the same damage stats.
I apologise that I don’t have any specific stats, I just compared them side-by-side!
MkIII definitely feels uncomforatable to use for me, but thats mainly due to its light combo and heavy attacks being arguably the worst shovel for Veteran. The MkVII on the other hand, feels like exactly the variation we needed, it brings a new gimmick and still has solid patterns of attack overall.
The MkIII, to me at least, feels pointless. But then it was always like this with Fatshark. They have this system of making variants with vertical and horizontal pattern differences, regardless of whether its something that would be useful.
My absolute most hated example was the Greatsword for Kerillian. Never improved. Never used by anyone for long. Pointless.
Exactly! The Mk VII is just so amazing to play and the Mk III is just… worse in every way. Weapon marks should be balanced, heavy variants should do more damage at the cost of speed and light variants the opposite, whilst the medium variants are a comfy middle ground! It’s so pointless to have a slow, heavy shovel that does less damage than the medium variant! I hope that this damage issue is fixed soon so that it can be a relevant weapon
Imma level with you, I didn’t touch Kerillian after I got to Level 12 for her I played everyone else to Level 35 and just left the poor Elf in the dust! Maybe that Greatsword getting a rework could’ve changed that
Anyways, is there any other weapons that you’ve noticed have this issue that I might’ve missed?
Well I’ll be honest with you too then. I only play Veteran!
For the new veteran weapons I think the laspistols still need balancing better. The new heavy one isn’t hitting hard enough for its speed I don’t think. Theres probably more but I’d need to ponder this.
I do agree, the new HEAVY Laspistol deserves to be the big girl that her name implies, and either a slight damage or fire rate buff would probably do the trick for that!
Speaking of handguns - the 2 Revolver variants we have now are the light and medium one, too. I’m scared for how OP the heavy variant of the Revolver might end up being (same with the Plasma Gun, the one we have is the medium variant and it can almost one-shot Ogryn enemies)
It has a crowd push attack so it uses that gimmicky take a swing blessing pretty well. You don’t need Rending for folded strikes to absolutely ruin whatever you hit, and the folded strikes hit lag less on successful hits.
Its certainly not as terrible as the Mk7 catachan sword, it just feels a bit redundant like all the shovles are. Very little done to differ them up, besides the vet OG one just being totally power crept by the new adds (in a similar fashion Obscurus force sword went entirely to the wayside after its 2 variants were added).
Yeah, the Shovels atm are just kinda trounced by the Mk III Power Sword that I have with… well, I forgot the Blessing’s name but it gives me 3 total charged swings - that makes it absolutely flog ANYTHING that’s unfortunate enough to come across it.
Are we playing the same game? The Mk III’s special activation feels as fast to use as the default chainsword’s rev-into-attack. And you can build this thing with Thrust to one-shot Crushers reliably. Yeah the horde clear isn’t much to write home about, but why should it be when it’s this strong at single target?
Maybe I’m getting the two confused, regardless one is severely underperforming in every criteria. My Power Sword does more damage to crowds than either of these new Shovels and almost on par with the special attack. It’s shameful.
In my experience, the heavy shovel and the light shovel have virtually the SAME damage in every regard but the light variant also controls crowds both better and more effectively. The Standard-issue (which is the medium variant) does more damage than BOTH of them, which is fair to the light, faster attacking shovel because of balance reasons - but not for the heavy, slow attacking shovel that doesn’t excel at anything at the moment. The heavy shovel needs a damage buff if it’s gonna be relevant compared to the light shovel.
The power sword is its own topic but they should have left 6 dodges on shovels for the sake of the vet exclusives.
And Mk3 doesn’t stick as long and has a more overhead heavy when you do it, the Mk7 isn’t so great for hitting bulwarks in the head. The push attack is more whacks so the CC like any shovel is in no short supply.
Its just why even use them over catachan swords, let alone axes or power swords. The folding attack kind of gives us an argument for but removing a dodge was an awful change.
There aren’t many players who still use the normal axes🤣
I dunno, a slightly faster and stronger special attack doesn’t really make up for the fact that it’s otherwise useless. It beats around the bush too much and doesn’t get down to business, unless you exclusively use the special attack. It’s similar to the Power Maul in that way.
yeah i honestly have the opposite experience as the complaint here, the mk3 feels faster and more fluid, the mk7 feels clunky and slow, especially in the pickaxe activation where the mk3 is noticeable faster than the mk7. After testing as the yank part of the attack is much quicker on the mk3 allowing for faster follow ups
After playing with both, i feel like the mk3 is slightly stronger than the mk7, but it does seem like personal preference if you like to horde clear with lights or heavies, both do it very efficiently . But as far as armor killing goes the edge goes to the mk3, definitely better at it with the overhead heavies, the faster special attack, and the easier headshot hits, the mk7’s heavy attack feels like it doesnt prioritize the head hitbox and misses pretty easily
I almost feel like you got the marks mixed up when making this post?
Honestly I could be getting the two confused and I might be tweaking, but one of them just goes too slowly with low damage, whilst the other is really fast with the same amount of damage - an utterly ridiculous balancing issue.
I played everyone else to Level 35 and just left the poor Elf in the dust! Maybe that Greatsword getting a rework could’ve changed that 
(same with the Plasma Gun, the one we have is the medium variant and it can almost one-shot Ogryn enemies)