-Super effective Stagger with power-attacks.
-Can do some huge hits to one target with power-attacks.
-Doesn’t have an effective playstyle to fall back onto when not using power-attacks.
-Becomes repetetive and boring because of the desire to chain power-attacks.
Activation becomes a detriment to the fun of the Power Maul because I want to press the activation-button immediately after my hit first power-attack lands. And if my rhytm is off I re-activate too early which cancels the attack. On top of that teammates sometimes kill my target right before I land a hit which again messes up my rhytm and causes me to re-activate an already powered up weapon.
Whenever a power-attack fails to land because of the above reasons, enemies often punish me.
I think the Power Maul would be more fun if I didn’t need to activate it so much. Regular attacks could be better at dealing AoE dmg against groups of enemies like the buffed Shield does, and activation could last for three attacks at perhaps reduced damage per attack.
Yeah but who cares if it isnt fun? We could compare how quickly your paint dries versus mine and tweak the settings on that too, but it doesn’t matter if we’re both bored afterwords.
Regardless of balance, “activation” weapons are annoying and need a rework.
I think it’s a pretty good weapon overall and pairs nicely with kickback or anything else that can take big chunks out of hordes.
I don’t tend to bother powering it up on raw hordes. Overall I think it’s fine enough but I’d be lying if I said the first target damage of uncharged attacks doesn’t feel unnecessarily low. It’s a blunt weapon it’s fine and understandable that it has bad damage cleave but if uncharged attacks at least reliably killed the first enemy they cleaved (for poxwalkers and groaners specifically) it’d feel a bit less like swinging a whiffle bat when spamming uncharged lights or heavies into a horde. I don’t think giving it slightly less abyssmal horde clear for uncharged combos would break it so I’d be pretty happy to see a buff along those lines.
It’s easily my second most used Ogryn melee weapon behind BB. I think it can have fun setups like using a charged attack to open a bulwark before two shotting it with kickback. Very reliable shield opener and the degree of control it gives in dense encounters feels powerful and impactful, which is fun.
As was implied by my previous post the only thing I find unfun about it is clubbing trash enemies for what feels like too long. Doesn’t feel right for the heft of the thing, hence why I suggested more first target damage. Reliably killing one trash enemy every uncharged swing would pretty much fix the only thing I find unfun about it.
I don’t really agree with more AoE as that kinda goes against the blunt archetype, and mostly I’d like uncharged attacks to be a little better so the charge isn’t over centralised
Shields have traditionally been their own archetype in Tide games, with pretty different attack profiles to clubs, swords, or axes. I’m not familiar with the DT shield as I have literally never used it. Regardless I wouldn’t expect the Paul to have any particular similarities to it besides the basic club swings.
Right now the Shield is compromised of a Battle Maul (club) and the Shield itself, both having unlimited cleave as blunt weapons. It should be mentioned that Cleave is one of the Shield’s 5 stats, which is probably a big reason why.
I don’t agree that more damage to first target would solve much for the Power Maul against regular enemies. Because these enemies come in groups, and in such AoE scenarios you have almost no control over what targets you hit first. I’m already killing a target each heavy attack when chaining into groups of regular enemies. Perhaps your focus is on light attacks?
I was hoping to see the Power Maul live even more up to it’s specialization Crowd Control, as listed on the weapon, by having better AoE damage against regular enemies.
What I find to perhaps be a big detriment to the effectiveness of heavy attacks is the Power Maul’s very slow attack speed on heavy attacks.
It’s worth noting that crowd control is typically used in a gaming sense to mean that they have strong abilities to disable enemies in some manner and the term can be used to apply to both single target and area of effect (AoEs). The maul is one of the strongest CC options even if it’s just used for the big ole’ charged bonks on single target. “CCing” an enemy is a pretty common way to express that a single target is stunned/disabled/knocked over in some manner. Something could have fantastic CC capabilities without ever actually doing damage, for example. coughshieldcough
And a weapon having a particular stat doesn’t necessarily mean much, not to mention what stats actually do can vary by weapon. (Hover over the more detailed stats to be sure what exactly something does)
The shield pretty much needs the cleave on certain attacks because otherwise it would be even more mediocre than it already is.
EDIT: Also just disagree with this statement in general:
I don’t agree that more damage to first target would solve much for the Power Maul against regular enemies. Because these enemies come in groups, and in such AoE scenarios you have almost no control over what targets you hit first.
Controlling what your weapons hit is a pretty important skill, aim still matters even in melee.
Using the game’s in-game description for Crowd Control:
Increased effectiveness versus enemy hordes, clearing or suppressing large numbers of foes at once.
So it applies to AoE dmg and AoE Stagger, but not necessarily both at the same time. The Shield does both. The Power Maul does Stagger. The Shovel does none – All three weapons that specialize in Crowd Control according to their tooltip.
I was refering to the Power Maul’s need for higher first target damage during AoE specifically, since both it’s heavy attacks are Relentless and doesn’t try to hit one specific target. They are commonly used when you’re AoEing down large numbers of stacked regular enemies. Aiming is more essential on a weapon like the Brunt’s Special Bully Club which has a heavy Strikedown attack, though is also essential for the Power Maul’s two first light attacks, but now we’re not AoEing anymore, which was what first target was intended to improve according to alsozara.
Lights don’t even kill the first groaner they hit with a non crit head shot.
Upping that would actually make for a pretty noticeable difference in horde clear, it doesn’t need large damage cleave to improve that. Horde clear rate should be mediocre to compensate how strong the charge attack is, it’s just a bit too bad currently. Reliably killing a horde enemy every swing would be enough of a difference, it’s not that slow to swing.
When you’re chaining attacks into a Poxwalker horde the cleave damage and bleeds will cause your strikes to hit injured Poxwalkers, effectively causing the first target to die because it’s already damaged.
I don’t see how the Power Maul can’t have the same AoE damage as the Shield. The Shield is going to get a re-work on it’s Defensive specialization to make that strength more interesting and desirable for a team, so why is ok for the Shield to have that strength in addition to AoE, when the Power Maul can’t have it’s strength in addition to AoE?
We don’t know what the Shield re-work is going to be, but I assume it’s going to a straight out buff in usefulness defensive wise.
If it were truly balanced, then it’d knock hordes in to the air with each standard swipe. You’re an enormous Ogryn. You should sweep mobs around like skittles. But then conversely, if it were balanced, then you’d get max aggro and everyone would target you. Probably not fun, but maybe the shield would become the alpha weapon…?
Anyway, I digress. I used the power maul for a while, but I personally think it’s a bit of a one trick pony. You’re a bit like Bardin in VT2 but without the tank element bit. Stun enemies 'til the cows come home, but you’re screwed when a horde hits you and you’ve no nearby teammates to help out.
Meanwhile the BB has huge horde clearing ability, okay against ragers, and when paired with a can-opener Ripper can take on the big guys too. Easy choice right now, imho.
At the OP comment: maybe if the charge carried over a bit in to subsequent hits, like a power sword, then the tempo would be more enjoyable.
This power-up carry-over similar to the Power Sword is what I’m imagining too, just for the sake of reducing the amount of activations. In addition to fleshing out a playstyle outside of chaining power-attacks to promote some variety to the one trick pony the Power Maul usually becomes.
