Disclaimer: Power is not an actual stat found on weapons but is a commonly used (in blessings and feats) to refer to a simultaneous increase in damage, cleave and impact (stagger).
In my eyes, one of the reasons why blessing balance seems so lopsided is that power+ blessings simply does too much by themselves (and in some blessings it can stack to pretty high percentages).
One proposal is that it might widen blessing viability if power on blessings was just translated to straight +damage increases, since thatâs what most people take it for. But now enemies take more to get staggered, attacks no longer automatically hit more enemies, increasing the risk of taking pure damage bonuses a bit.
Another one is to decrease the values for +power blessings, and increase the numbers for +damage, +impact or +cleave blessings so they can be more competitive in specialising rather than a generalist stat automatically outperforming themâŚ
While I agree that +power is better than everything else, I believe it is also important, that we recognize, that a lot of other blessings are straight up useless.
For instance you have weapon type specific stuff, which can either syngergize well
unstable power (high peril is what you always want anyway)
lacerate (bleed build yey)
or be really a**
rev it up (meme)
Furthermore we have blessings that give bonuses, which are too situational
precognition (too reliant on hits that proc unreliably and only increases bonus damage - wut)
superiority (+25 power max if you manage to melee 5 elites in a row, borderline useless against hordes, which is what youâre be meleeing most of the time and requires too much investment)
Apart from a lot of blessings either having whack requirements with little payoff, I also believe that players will always choose what is gonna give them an advantage in most situations.
Problem is - I donât think we could go further and turn +power into +damage agaisnt x, because at that point these blessings become just worse perks and even less gameplay defining.
That being said - if we were to turn +power into +damage across the board, then itâs still gonna be better than pretty much everything else, because you can use more damage against everything, while I donât care about having Wrath on my weapon while fighting a crusher.
No idea how to solve this without completely revamping blessings with a heavier focus on class/ weapon synergies.
Or you go the âUtility Blessingsâ-Route which @Darth_Angeal always champions, which to this day I have no idea what he means by.
Utility blessings probably refer to anything that doesnât increase damage directly, like +damage, +crit%, +crit damage. Anything that affects cleave, mass reduction, impact/stagger, move speed, sprint speed, stamina increase/regeneration, block cost, etc. etc. Attack speed has been very deliberately left out of itemisation completely.
I get that, but there is a vast array of possiblities if you refer to utility blessings the way you defined it above and if you are the one suggesting something like this, which puts a huge creative load on the devs and has equally as much potential to either be busted or a** as current blessings if not more, then I think itâs fair to want some examples and not just âwell utility blessings fix ⌠checkmateâ.
Yeah, for me a good example of a utility blessing/trait would be Parry. Skill element, active use, really strong defensively when used properly.
It doesnât help that currently a lot of the blessings we have now usually are either completely passive, give too little a benefit or have really arcane or rare activation requirements.
Canât agree with this sentiment at all. The power increases are situational and limited. We donât need more nerfs. Thereâs still far too many blessings that are underpowered and beyond useless.
And now we disagree.
Parry is very mid at best or a meme at worst.
It is only really useful on weapons with really low stamina of which we donât have any in Darktide. While it is true that stamina regen in this game is f***ed, if you do find yourself in a situation where you run out of stamina, chances are you have enough enemies around you, that parrying one of them does jack sht, so disengaging and repositioning it is.
Actively going out of your way to parry is also suboptimal, because it is aeons better to just dodge and keep attacking.
We have a weapon with an in-built parry trait and that thing is at most useful for parrying the few crusher attacks that do not break your block.
Even in V2 where you had actually low stamina weapons, this trait was meme worthy. You can use it on Dual Daggers or Dual Axes, but at that point you are better advised to run +stam and +30% bcr on your melee weapon +30% bcr on necklace.
Itâs a failsafe that fails at being one, when you are actually failing.
Oh right, I forgot Darktide had âparryâ as well. I was mainly referring to the V2 one where itâs much more useful than the DT one because you can parry multiple attacks during the window and also no-sell overheads. I mainly run it on knight longsword because of the block while charging heavy attack ability it has.
The DT one is squarely in the meh tier since it blocks and activates on single attack and puts you in a uncancellable counter attack that is too weak to really do anything and leaves you open.
Ok, then I guess you could run it on bret ls, but I blieve that the trait in that instance gets hard carried by the auto block while charging heavies.
On any other weapon this becomes a gamble to use in a pinch.
Whole blessing system should be refined. But for this you need to refine combat system as well. Not likely it would happen in nearest future. Power blessings on some weapons should be tuned down for sure, but problem is where power blessings are matter itâs where mediocre/bad weapons becomes too OP. And with current crafting system any changes in blessings are pain for playerbase. So they need to refine crafting system in a first place.
It would be better to address a lot of niche and situational blessings as being too underwhelming and underpowered or too difficult to maintain instead of just saying Power is too strong.
And weâre also talking about a Fatshark game where its core design is hitting breakpoints.
I would be in favor of normalizing base stats on weapons to be stronger overall, but make it harder to reach higher caps. For example, 60% would become the 80% that we have now, and the new 80% would be much harder to reach, and require a lot more to sacrifice in order to obtain it.
If that happens, then I think it would be safe to remove Power entirely. Damage should become more static and reliable and you would have to figure out dump stats better, while blessings become almost entirely utility/support/convenience.
Power as a stat is generally fine when it isnât provided in such large quantities or easy conditionals that it invalidates all non-power options. Blaze Away, Pinning Fire, Slaughterer, HSword Headtaker are so significant that theyâll never be unseated on the weapons that can use them unless everything is wildly buffed to compensate which is dangerous slippery slope. If the biggest offenders are nerfed, the weapons that rely on them have to be adjusted to compensate to ensure you donât accidentally ruin a whole weapon type.