I really don’t know what to think actually about the nerf.
I think that it is a shock for people that were using, all days, a power sword.
However, after playing with it several runs, it is yet very powerful. Slow, but powerful.
So, I don’t know what to think. As I said somewhere else, maybe two swings when you use special action would have been an enough nerf (but two swing even if you don’t hit anything). Maybe…
I don’t think it was “overpowered” at all.
Honestly you had to have REALLY sucked balls on Zealot if you were getting beat by the Power Sword Veteran by any large margin.
I had Veteran up to 30th level and had played a couple of times in Damnation with him, but he was nowhere near what was claimed, nor were any of the other Veterans I played with on Zealot. They dropped like flies the minute they got overrun. I think Power Sword was the only thing that kept them alive that long. At least not on anything past T3.
And they sure as hell weren’t beating me by any large margin even WITH the supposed “overpowered” power sword. and that’s if they even could at all.
Unless I miss my guess we’re going to start seeing an enormous amount of buffs to the Veteran because there’s nothing to hide how weak they really are now. They might have been beating Ogryn… but that’s about the only one.
Tbh we should all just equip Camo Expert. Other classes players whined so loud about power sword and veteran being viable in melee than we should just listen to them, use camo expert and let them deal with all these hordes, while being safe from melee combat.
I think that a weapon with low stamina, dodge count, and negative dodge distance is what made them fall.
You can kill some poxes with heavies, when there is no window to charge. But how many lights it will take to kill flak rager or shotgunner? It also feels that heavies atack speed is near the same as lights, so lights feels underwhelming to use. In the end lights feel weak. Overall PS design isn’t about every atack has it place and purpose, it’s about strong hierarchy lights<heavies<charge. (New MKVI patterns design is a bit better imo)
Well it is how psychology works. It is also maybe just a personal expectations and a matter of perception - i see thick heavy-looking sword and when i press lmb it’s…meh. However when i see elegant blade of Illisi and i hit something it just feels right.
I have a suggestion on how the current situation can be changed.
At the moment there is only one level of power cycler - lvl 4. It’s quite a unicorn blessing to get. Why not, for example, add tier 3 with +1 swing and keep lvl 4 as it is. This way power cycler would be a lot easier to get than in current state. It would still be a nerf but at least you might say its a way of eating a cookie and having it too.
Or they could change it to give not +swings but +charge duration time
Which makes no sense lore wise - a force sword strains the user so unforced use make sense with mere mortals. But why should you use a power weapon unpowered while fighting for your life?
Imagine if the sword stays charged when activated as long as you have the melee weapon out, but it turns off when put away and you have to activate it when you pull it out. In that case, also make the activation a bit longer (chant the Litany of Activation while you’re at it too). Wouldn’t want the power field to corrode and eat away at whatever you were storing it in.
Well, than it should be energized all the time or you need to jerk charge button constantly. 1st one is hard to balance, 2nd one is annoying. You can’t stick to the lore for 100% in video game. Even something that happens on the tabletop mismatch lore from novels.
Power Cycler is just bad idea, it always will be either a huge QoL blessing or a huge damage dps buff.
If PS patterns were just different for example:
fast vertical for lights so you can aim heads, but with some damage compromise cause it’s not a heavy atack in the end. (Or it can be combo if vertical+slight diagonal). Now if there is no time to charge PS it is still comfortable to take down elites, but one by one.
slower (compare to lights) diagonal for heavies, so you can clear hordes even if they mixed with armored elites, but not so fast as with pure horizontals. (Or it can be some kind of composition like 2 diagonals+1horizontal, etc).
additional though: regular atacks should have more stagger power, less cleave. Energized - more cleave, less stagger
Now you have a meaning behind both light and heavy atack.
Adjust other things like non-energized/energized damage, charge duration time, mobilty.
Now you don’t need to change damn special atack with every second patch anymore, just change philosophy behind this weapon once.
The biggest problems of PS are these spamm patterns and how they easly benefit from charge buff
The almighty shovel has good patterns actually
There are some good ideas in there - also someone else suggested some kind of „ammo“ mechanic that runs out as long as the weapon is activated sounds reasonable. In general less stagger when energised is reasonable as the cleaner cuts should throw your target less around then comparable blunt attacks with a dead blade. Yet having to reactivate the sword after one strike is super annoying.
you are comparing the new power sword, MK VI, not the MK III.
and you are testing, if you reached full stack of slaughterer, with a highest Tier,
with a weapon perfectly having Cleave Damage, Cleave Targets, Cleave Damage, and finesse at capacity.
which makes your stats theoretical more than realistic approach.
also a horde is rarely just poxwalker, there is dreg or scab in between , not specials or elite, the normal grunts.
My bad on the MK. Yeah I know those are good stats but I’m also basing that opinion on actually using an incredibly mid power Sword (like slaughterer 3 only blessing + mediocre stats) unpowered frequently.
It’s really not nearly as bad as people make out.
the group i join with in damnation i still didnt join them yet.
i played solo multiple times, before i could easily do Solos T5, even did Consignment yard T5 with High intensity , now tried 2-3 times i keep dying.
i will need to test out with a group for accurate measures of how good is the Power Sword now.
i got 2 power swords, will test them both.
what i noted for now:
Mauler require 2x time to kill.
Ragers are best to use ranged against them, no more getting in close.
Crushers always use ranged against them.
Armored patrol use ranged against them.
which makes bolter usage about 1.5x higher already, and with Kantreal many heavy targets i used the sword to eliminate , now Kanteral build is much worse against armored targets .
No it’s not and you’re entirely right, people got too used to be carried
The real kick in the nuts would be a nerf to either or both the Slaughterer and Executioner blessings to a state where they don’t let you cross the 300 damage threshold on Poxwalkers anymore
I don’t believe for a second that’d ever happen so yes, the current Power Swords are now just good weapons instead of hilarious crutches
It’s even funnier to me people call it dead when in fact it now plays like an Illisi, with worse dodge but better cleave, so i guess Illisi was dead on arrival to these players
Power sword should just use a crank mechanic like the outcast engineers gatling in VT2. Like one of those little toy dynamo flashlights where you have to crank the handle like crazy to make it glow.
Change my mind.
But yeah, adding on a couple tiers of power cycler and making the sword more mobile should alleviate its current suckiness.
Oh and the Bolter could just be made a tiny bit less accurate so it can’t be used as a ranged sniper rifle, would instantly put it in it’s place.
I know, I love the illisi so much, it’s single handedly doubled the fun I have playing psyker.
Where it has the upper hand over the PS is great mobility, force push, being able to block bullets, infinite dodge, and taking advantage of multiple damage boosts from the psyker class.
With 6 warp charges, high peril, and slaughterer, you only need to activate it once to build stacks up, after that it just tears hordes apart on heresy like paper mache, each light attack kills multiple poxwalkers.
I only activate it then to regen toughness from the warp attack.
It’s still terrible against armor/maniacs though, I always switch to ranged when ragers or muties come at me.
I’ll always be in favor of buffing other weapons over more nerfs. I think the Illisi Mk V Blaze Force Sword was a great example of this. It didn’t detract from any other classes, it simply gave the Psyker a much needed boost, and put it on par with other classes.
Nerfing a weapon until it’s no longer fun to play with (or at the very least, subjectively less fun to play with) sends the wrong message.
Case in point, I used to play exclusively with Lasguns and Bolters on my Veteran and Zealot, but when the new shotguns came out, I can’t get enough! Especially the Agripinaa shotgun… Reminds me of what the original shotty was like on beta 
…
The bolter takes 24-48 hours to shoulder and 3-5 business days to reload, but lays down the punishment and is great for deleting…well, everything! The Lasgun is fast and precise, good for taking out lots and lots of shooters in a short amount of time.
The shotgun is fast, reasonably accurate and reasonably powerful, making it really good for a run and gun playstyle, especially with the Sustained Fire talent. This is what good balance looks like; real choices as opposed to one META to rule them all…'til it gets nerfed to tiny bits…
I really think this is exactly where fatshark went wrong with the powersword in the first place. They treat powered attacks as having a much higher damage profile when instead they should only increase crit and weakspot damage and reduce armor to unarmored. If they worked like that then the powersword would be easy to balance and could always be on.
The bolter is an accurate long range weapon and most of our fighting is done sub 100m. It already has sufficiently jumpy recoil and terrible reset on sight picture. There’s no reason to nerf its accuracy on first shot.
Not a bad idea actually, like a passive rending blessing on activation.
