Power Sword is by and far above the powerlevel of all other weapons in the game in both anti-horde and anti armour.
on damnation/5 it takes one light special to kill basic infested and unarmoured with infinite cleave and one heavy attack for flak (also while having infinite cleave)
comparatively we have the Eviscerator
The Evis takes 1 hit(ish) in the primary hit zone to kill on a charged heavy special on unarmoured and infested at damnation (you only get one rev attack before having to re rev) and does not have infinite cleave meaning that you will kill one maybe two per swing.
this isnt even getting into uncharged light which are abysmal taking 3 hits to kill a unarmoured or infested enemy.
ogryn weapons in general can’t hold a candle to even the evis and that is very depressing since they are monsters on TT.
pysker weapons are in the same wheelhouse but they arent as centered on melee as the other two ( not to mention that the class has much bigger issues than just its melee at the moment)
can we please please buff these melee weapons to be useable past malice since you are unable to reach one hit kill breakpoints on anything but the power sword in melee currently?
I’ve got all classes to at least level 20, and the power sword is just head and shoulders above anything else on offer. I find melee against both single targets like crushers and mixed hoards of chaff/bezerkers/armor MUCH easier with the veteran than with any other career due to the insane cleave and armor penetration of the power sword. Somethings not working right there.
it’s strong for sure, and also lore accurate technically.
but it lacks of defense actually, if by any chance for some reasons you get overwhelmed by enemies, even if you try to special button and then trying to CC sometimes might be a problem.
i think it’s fairly balanced, it’s indeed strong, but imo they should slightly buff other weapons instead to nerf power sword to make on par to other weapons.
I’m all for balance across the board, its an iterative process. But I’ve still got to politely disagree on the sword front. I find playing zealot with the eviscerator super satisfying right now. Its got an interesting move set with a mechanical depth that lets you tackle hoards or elites as long as you get your swing combos right. I’ll compare it to the power sword in terms of complexity:
Eviserator hoard combo that I use: Block-push → light → light → heavy → light → light → repeat. That gives you 4 vanguard horizontal swings with only one overhead, and it can be repeated while mixing in pushes. Good fun when it comes off.
Eviserator single target: Weapon special → career skill → light. If you’re in a hoard, and your ability isn’t ready, weapon special → jump → light. Jumping lets you land a reliable headshot and prevents you from wasting the weapon special on chaff, as most elites are taller than the zombies. Again, mechanically interesting.
Power sword hoard combo: Weapon special → heavy until you run out of charge.
Power sword elite combo: Weapon special → heavy until you run out of charge.
And this is just my experience from playing both classes but the power sword is better at both those things than the eviscerator. One weapon shouldn’t be so flexible AND be so easy to use. It’s boring if nothing else. Change up its move set. Reduce its cleave against armor. I want to use it, its an iconic 40k weapon. But it should have more of an identity than “chain heavy swings to delete whatever’s in front of you”.
Power Sword’s damage against armor and high HP enemies drops significantly on the highest difficulties. It’s super powerful (like everything else) on lower settings.
Most of my playtime at this point is on heresy, but I’ve done a few damnation runs. It seemed to me that the power sword still had infinite cleave on difficulty 5, as I was still cutting through chaff and armor with it reliably. This is of course just my anecdotal experience, but it felt safer and easier to use than anything on my Zealot or Ogryn. AFAIK the only weapons with infinite cleave in Vermtinde were shields and Sienna’s fire sword, and only sienna’s sword actually dealt damage via a weak DoT effect. The power sword is seemingly the first weapon in the tide series with infinite cleave that both staggers and damages. (correct me if I’m wrong) It almost feels like a bug.
Darktide isn’t Vermintide, but even Vermintide had weapons with infinite cleave targets (not infinite cleave damage.) Horde, and melee targets in general, are a single tier of threat in Darktide and every class has a weapon to rapidly eliminate them with various degrees of safety, range and angle of attack. Each of these comes with limitations on what threats they can deal with at once and has other individual weapon weaknesses.
go play with the combat knife and learn to use it’s mobility to your advantage because that thing can really let you zoom and can deal decent damage to any target.
The MkIV chainsword is also increadibly versitile and does more damage to carapace armor than a power sword. Go test things in the meat grinder before you start thinking the power sword is the end all be all.
You have to turn on the power sword and even then you get two to three swings before it’s back to being just a regular sword.
Also the Chain axe is another one of my favorites, use the strong attack to help with horde clear and the push attack to help make space.
Also if you’re veteran and want decent CC ability, just take the level 10 feat to regen grenades.
And if you dont like ogryn weapons, go add to my post about why ogryn melee needs a buff.
At the very least ogryn knifes need to be able to deal some damage to carapace armour enemies. Currenly the only weapons that can deal decent damage in any capacity to the crusher are the ogryn shovel and the mk I club and I will never use the club because it looks like garbage.
On tabletop Ogryn gets a huge knife and a power maul. The huge knife in 9th edition is -2 AP which is pretty damn impressive, for reference plasma weapons are -3 AP
AP = armor penetration
So part of why I think ogryn needs a buff is because if we’re going to give up the slab shield for anything else then I think at least one of the knife options should provide less horde clear and be able to deal good damage to each enemy type. However after testing in the meat grinder, none of the knives available for our big boi can harm anything with carapace armor. This matters because we have the perk heavy weight which emphasizes us dealing more damage to larger enemies ( mainly ogryn ). Part of the ogryns feat kit can allow us to play more aggressive on paper, however we get shot to death very quick so most of us stay with the shield until we get decent curios to carry you through the gunfire more appropriately because there’s not always a nice sharpshooter boss to cover fire you. I’m sick of the notion that ogryn is only there to crowd control when you literally use ogryn as your melee in tabletop and in the lore bullgryn are not there to knock things over. Ogryn should be able to have at least one real option to feel like a skull breaker and not a meme factory. The other classes have viable melee options as I listed above being the combat knife for its ability to deal 340 damage to a crusher ( I have a crit damage and chance roll and +3 rending on a backstab knife for vet with 80 damage and 80 pen ) Then we have the quite capable chain weapons being the MkIV chainsword and the chain axe. The chain sword is the kind of weapon the ogryn really needs more of. Something Versitile and not excelling too far in one end but able to partake in hurting each enemy type. In a game where you can play whatever character you want unlike vermintide, we should be able to have various ways to play each class to fill different roles in a group. I feel ogryn doesnt meet that standard.
Give powersword finite charges, so it becomes a tactical choice when to activate. Once activated, it stays powered until deactivated. Make every hit that connects take a certain percentage of charge. Once depleted. Charge regenerates over time, albeit slowly. Problem solved I guess.
Other weapons are the issue imo, the power sword functions exactly like a power weapons should. Evisc could use a damage buff imo, and the thunder hammer should function like it has a disruptor field when it’s charged, just like the power sword, but they seem to hate that idea for some reason. Thunder hammer should do massive AOE and single target damage on carapace enemies, and cleave anything else when charged, they can keep it slow like it is, and it’ll feel good. Force sword charged light attacks should be like the charged power sword light attacks (keep force sword charged heavy attacks the same imo, or even buff their damage) chain sword feels good to me rn, maybe slightly more cleave. Then we just have tow air for power axe and the ogryn power maul and hope they make them feel like badass power weapons. All the power weapons should really feel like the pinnacle of melle weapons, to be fair.