Power Maul Feedback (Nugryn rework)

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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Two years ago I wrote some feedback about the Power Maul, and I’m happy that some of it has been addressed. :face_holding_back_tears:
Here’s where I think the Power Maul lands today after the latest changes:

  • Now has an effective playstyle to fall back onto outside of spamming special-attacks.
  • Light and heavy attacks deal satisfying damage and stagger.
  • Light attacks are fast and effective against hordes.
  • Heavy attacks hit hard, but feel overly slow compared to other weapons.
  • The energized playstyle of the Power Maul is not that enjoyable.
  • New slide-attack is a nerf to how at least I use the weapon.
  • The unique blessings for the Power Maul aren’t very useful.

The main reason I play with the Power Maul is to experience a unique playstyle of energized attacks that sets it apart from other melee weapons. :high_voltage:

Energized Playstyle
In this regard, today’s energized playstyle revolves around having my movement slowed down when activating special, doing one energized attack, and then the pleasure is over. A slide is almost always performed while activating special to counter being slowed down. Since the best time-window to activate special is when enemies are staggered, it often means chaining special-attacks back to back. This playstyle is not very satisfying. From a logical standpoint, why can my Ogryn slide at the same speed while activating special, but not walk at the same speed?

Desire / Solution
I just want to keep attacking and experience energized hits while doing so, not pause between each attack to re-activate the weapon. :slight_smile: Could the Power Maul learn something from the Shock Mauls, Heavy Eviscerators, and Relic Blades? The Power Mauls are mildly activated on each attack, allowing you to debuff many enemies at once, and has quick powerful special attacks against one target. The Heavy Eviscerators activate automatically on certain heavy attacks, and the Relic Blades stay activated for longer.

Slide-Attack
Typical situation: A priority-target appears while I’m in a fight, so I slide over to burst it down, but my attack now changes from L1 and L2’s strikedowns into a weaker uppercut that prevents my burst and knocks the priority-target away from me. Some will say “don’t slide”, but the slide is often necessary to avoid attacks from other enemies and the priority-target itself so I can actually get within melee range of it.

I just don’t find any use for this slide-attack, and I find slide-attacks to be kinda unreliable to proc anyway. I’m sorry to say that I’d honestly prefer if the slide-attack was just removed..

Blessings
In my experience Supercharge takes too long to apply (target dies before it’s useful), and does Power Surge’s double-explosion actually do anything? I can’t see it, hear it, or feel it. Skullcrusher is too good to pass up, so it feels like I only have one Blessing slot to be flexible with. :slight_smile:
The Power Maul is a unique “AoE” debuff support weapon, and I’d love to see more blessings play into this uniqueness by applying debuffs to many enemies at once for your team.

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Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised that it felt perfectly usable, though I felt the combos were not very useful. I mostly just ended up spamming lights into hordes.

The activation button remains a real issue, it doesn’t need to be so clunky feeling on any weapon.

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ogryn should be able to slam the ground with a heavy charged attack sending the small fry flying and the medium up to rager/maulers stunned.

likewise i’d imagine some “taser” move, shoving the charged thing up a crushers or bulwarks ass or face and cooking him over time would be a nice addition as well :smile:

i mean if i was ogryn and had an electric fire hydrant sized club it use it that way. :rofl:

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I think i would like to see this with more orgyn weapons, they all feel very samey, atleast to me, so some cooler speacials would greatly appreciated,i thunk the pickaxe is way ahead of the pack right now, atleast in my experience

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I wanted to bring up the combos, but the post was too large already. :flushed_face:

Imo it’s not very elegant having to weave block-cancel into an attack chain to reset it. Like, L1 > L2 > block-cancel, repeat.. I prefer cycling to attacks by doing attacks. :slight_smile:

If I cycle to H1 it will eventually cycle back to L1, but by that time I may not be in need of a L1’s strikedown anymore, and H1 might often be too slow to carry out in the first place. So I end up doing Special > L1 most of the time where I need a strikedown.

With that said, I think weapons should have built-in weaknesses, so I’m fine with the Power Maul being a bit clunky/lacking in getting back to strikedowns if only it can become more fluid at weaving in energized attacks. :slight_smile:

I want to add that the Opportunist Blessing (25% Rending vs Staggered Enemies) works very well for light spam. So much that I prefer it over Brutal Momentum.

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I don’t mind block-canceling, it’s old hat to Vermintide players, but it definitely needs a reliable way to get into more single-target attacks. At the very least, after charging it up it should have a heavy strikedown.

It would be really nice if it got a powered mode like the Relic Blades, though, tbh

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As much as I prefer to see weapons be unique, I do think the heat-mechanic from Relic Blades fit very well with the Power Maul. It would also mean that while powered up, any attack would effectively pass as a “strikedown” due to the added damage. I think this is very neat, since it means the Power Maul can have easy access to “strikedowns” for a while, but when it needs to cool down it “struggles” a bit to access strikedowns. :slightly_smiling_face:

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