Power Sword

[Antilus]

Dec 14 2022

@Aqshy

Tweaked Munitorum Mk III Power Sword:

• Tuned down cleave on powered attacks (from infinite to simply very big cleave - 8.5 to 12.5 cleave range, so around 10 enemies)

• Added damage falloff for targets beyond the third on heavy activated sweeps. scales from 130-260 at targets 1, 2 and 3 down towards 50-100 at target 8+

First Power Sword nerf setting the stage for what this game was going to become, removing unique features from weapons normalizing them so that every time you pick up a new weapon it would feel just the same of the one you left behind

Looking back at this is even more infuriating, since now that we can choose freely our weapon blessings there are next to no vet mains that plays the damn thing with sunder

Feb 21 2023

Back then there was a rampant glitch that would allow you to keep your power sword energyzed for the whole duration of the game, i never managed to witness it in my games nor i’ve informed myself on the matter

Despite that the dev answer to the problem was just to bluntly nerf Power Cycler for everyone else in total disregard and neglet to the players not even bothering to fix the jank of the weapon, back then we suffered the same problems we have today, the weapon would deactivate randomly mid combo, and the only thing mitigating the issue was the high amount of energyzed swings you could get in some occasion (up to 5 at this point in time)

@Fatshark_Hedge

Munitorum Mk III Power Sword

• Fixed an issue where activating the Munitorum Mk III Power Sword after doing one attack didn’t reset the number of hits. The sword should now properly allow two swings after each activation in addition to resetting the active time.

@Fatshark_Hedge

Power Cycler:

• Fixed an issue where additional max activations used a default value. Lowered the number of allowed activated attacks per Weapon Special Attack from max 7 to 5. (without Blessing, the Power Sword allows 2 attacks per activation.)

Apr 4 2023

This one caught me completely off guard despite being in april’s fools territory, i was playing the game when this happened with my power sword, population suddenly lowered so i thought i would quit to download the new patch

And when i hop back boom, my power sword wasn’t working properly so i reported the bug immediatly

Power Cycler blessing not working after last patch

is it just me?

and low and behold, the unthinkable just happened, they nerfed it again, not the blessing this time but the weapon itself

@FatsharkCatfish

Munitorum Mk III and Mk IV Power Swords

• Reduce number of attacks per weapon special activation from 2 to 1.

• Removed the extra weapon special attacks when using heavy attacks.

• Power Cycler blessing: Reduce the number of extra attacks per weapon special activation from 3 to 2

• Fixed an issue where chaining attacks would sometimes not count toward the number of activations properly.

• Summary: Powerswords get 1 activation default, total of 3 if running Power Cycler. (Down from 2 default and 5 with blessing)

This is what got me more aware of the darktide forums and exposed me to the toxicity that was revolving around power sword and veterans in general, it was my epiphany on what was going on

Fastfoward to Oct 18 2023

Many things have happened, the new mk6 power sword released as damage control to give it as a cookie to the fiew vet mains that are left in the game, we got the new talent trees patch ‘’the best patch that saved Darktide from the lack of new classes and all’’ that in reality messed up the balance of the game forever, rendering all the previus efforts at balance (including power sword nerfs) completely irrelevant

And then balance patch 14 dropped, head hunter autoguns were removed from the game, after their little moment of glory during patch 13 and low and behold Power Swords got buffed

Patch 14

@FatsharkCatfish

Munitorum Mk III Power Sword

● Light Melee Attack Base Damage(0%, 80% Damage Stat):

○ 1st Target: 60, 108 to 80, 144.

○ 2nd Target: 40, 72 to 60, 108.

○ 3rd Target: 15, 31 to 30, 52.

○ 4th Target: 10, 26 to 10, 26.

● Light Melee Attack Cleave (0%, 80% Cleave Stat):

○ 1.5, 2.9 to 4, 8.

● Light Special Action Base Damage(0%, 80% Damage Stat):

○ 1st Target: 150, 270 to 200, 360.

○ 2nd Target: 100, 180 to 120, 216.

○ 3rd Target: 80, 144 to 80, 144.

○ 4th Target: 60, 108 to 60, 108.

○ 5th Target: 40, 72 to 40, 72.

○ 6th Target: 25, 61 to 25, 61.

○ 7th Target: 20, 52 to 20, 52.

○ 8th Target: 10, 42 to 10, 42.

● Light Special Action Finesse Modifier(0%, 80% Damage Stat):

○ 1st Target: 40%, 88% to 80%, 144%.

○ 2nd Target: 40%, 88% to 60%, 108%.

○ 3rd Target: 40%, 88% to 40%, 88%.

● Heavy Attack Base Damage(0%, 80% Damage Stat):

○ 1st Target: 100, 180 to 120, 216.

○ 2nd Target: 60, 108 to 60, 108.

○ 3rd Target: 20, 52 to 20, 52.

○ 4th Target: 10, 42 to 10, 42.

● Heavy Special Action Base Damage(0%, 80% Damage Stat):

○ 1st Target: 150, 270 to 270, 486.

○ 2nd Target: 130, 234 to 180, 324.

○ 3rd Target: 130, 234 to 150, 270.

○ 4th Target: 100, 180 to 90, 162.

○ 5th Target: 90, 162 to 85, 153.

○ 6th Target: 80, 144 to 75, 135.

○ 7th Target: 70, 126 to 70, 126.

○ 8th Target: 50, 90 to 50, 90.

● Heavy Special Action Armour Modifiers:

○ Unyielding: 175% to 65%.*

○ Carapace: 75% to 150%.

● Push-Followup Special Action Base Damage(0%, 80% Damage Stat):

○ 1st Target: 150, 230 to 250, 400.

○ 2nd Target: 60, 108 to 120, 216.

○ 3rd Target: 60, 108 to 80, 144.

○ 4th Target: 60, 108 to 60, 108.

○ 5th Target: 60, 108 to 40, 72.

○ 6th Target: 60, 108 to 25, 61.

○ 7th Target: 20, 52 to 20, 52.

○ 8th Target: 10, 42 to 10, 42.

● Push-Followup Special Action Armour Modifiers:

○ Unyielding: 175% to 200%.

○ Carapace: 75% to 125%.

Munitorum Mk VI Power Sword

● Light Melee Attack Base Damage(0%, 80% Damage Stat):

○ 1st Target: 60, 108 to 80, 144.

○ 2nd Target: 40, 72 to 60, 108.

○ 3rd Target: 15, 31 to 30, 52.

○ 4th Target: 10, 26 to 10, 26.

● Light Melee Attack Cleave (0%, 80% Cleave Stat):

○ 1.5, 2.9 to 4, 8.

● Light Special Action Base Damage(0%, 80% Damage Stat):

○ 1st Target: 150, 270 to 200, 360.

○ 2nd Target: 100, 180 to 120, 216.

○ 3rd Target: 80, 144 to 80, 144.

○ 4th Target: 60, 108 to 60, 108.

○ 5th Target: 40, 72 to 40, 72.

○ 6th Target: 25, 61 to 25, 61.

○ 7th Target: 20, 52 to 20, 52.

○ 8th Target: 10, 42 to 10, 42.

● Light Special Action Finesse Modifier(0%, 80% Damage Stat):

○ 1st Target: 40%, 88% to 80%, 144%.

○ 2nd Target: 40%, 88% to 60%, 108%.

○ 3rd Target: 40%, 88% to 40%, 88%.

● Heavy Special Action Base Damage(0%, 80% Damage Stat):

○ 1st Target: 150, 270 to 270, 486.

○ 2nd Target: 130, 234 to 180, 324.

○ 3rd Target: 130, 234 to 150, 270.

○ 4th Target: 100, 180 to 90, 162.

○ 5th Target: 90, 162 to 85, 153.

○ 6th Target: 80, 144 to 75, 135.

○ 7th Target: 70, 126 to 70, 126.

○ 8th Target: 50, 90 to 50, 90.

● Heavy Special Action Armour Modifiers:

○ Unyielding: 175% to 65%.*

○ Carapace: 75% to 150%.

● Push-Followup Special Action Base Damage(0%, 80% Damage Stat):

○ 1st Target: 150, 230 to 250, 400.

○ 2nd Target: 60, 108 to 120, 216.

○ 3rd Target: 60, 108 to 80, 144.

○ 4th Target: 60, 108 to 60, 108.

○ 5th Target: 60, 108 to 40, 72.

○ 6th Target: 60, 108 to 25, 61.

○ 7th Target: 20, 52 to 20, 52.

○ 8th Target: 10, 42 to 10, 42.

● Push-Followup Special Action Armour Modifiers:

○ Unyielding: 175% to 200%.

○ Carapace: 75% to 125%.

note: Unyielding: 175% to 65%. looks like a huge nerf to unyelding damage but its just a mistake in the patch notes, damage on Unyelding actually incresed, although i don’t know the real numbers

Just raw damage buffs, again the weapon is being treated with negligence, the years old issues of its buffs just fading into nothing still unaddressed, and an injustified damage buff was applied

Needless to say up to this day the weapon is so janky that i would trade these juicy damage buffs just so that it would have its bugs fixed

After that the weapon got caught in a bug among all the other weapons with a special activation, where their special would get deactivated just the same as power cycler buff gets deactivated

But this got promptly fixed, more of that here:

PowerSword Not Charging

Issue Type : Weapons Issue Description : In many occasions the power sword will fail to charge. Steps to Reproduce : Use Power sword Press Charging Button Notice how it dont charge while performing attacks Reproduction Rate : Unusual (<25%) Platform : PC - Steam Video : [Power Sword Charging Bug] Video gets slowed down, to notice how the attacks are not charged at all. Power Sword Stats Picture [image]

Power Sword feels Great Again!

I don’t think it’s the overshield breaking , I think it’s the 75% threshold at play just looking at grinder not lua. The overshield can break but your max threshold from the shout is still increased and it can be refilled, so it changes the thresholds if a shout buff is active irrespective of having yellow bar. I think there may be bugs some math bugs in there or what it considers missing and I haven’t looked deeper yet. If you have a poxwalker nearby you can kill it and increase your tuf past…

to sum up:

• Special Action buff disappearing after getting hit [Solved]

• Special Action buff disappearing when trying to perform it in the middle of certain animations [Unsolved]

• Power Cycler buff disappearing after getting hit [Unsolved]

• Power Cycler buff disappearing when sprinting mid combo [Unsolved]

I wouldn’t be surprised if there would be more of these instances happening but hopefully all this have raised the awareness a touch

[Hrupo]

In any game it’s always frustrating when something you like gets changed, and years later that change is unecessary in the current state of the game and is forgotten, but it’s performing well according to devs statistics so its left in that state.

I have a feeling the devs are balancing the game with the inconsistency and bugs in mind, instead of actually fixing the bugs themselves. Which is bad ofc.

[Harridas]

@Antilus

• Power Cycler buff disappearing after getting hit [Unsolved]
• Power Cycler buff disappearing when sprinting mid combo [Unsolved]

Power Cycler only works on chained attacks, meaning anything that interrupts the combo will lose the buff. Including push attacks.

[MarxistDictator]

At least the power sword didn’t get taken out back and Old Yeller’d like Saltz’ repeater pistol. That thing may as well have gotten yanked when they ruined it even for Bounty because Bounty could quicker picker upper with it. Its more that other weapons are safer and more mobile, if they wanted to buff the sword I’d start there and Infested damage (most of the unenergized mods are terrible but infested is 0.5 only carapace deflects more damage). And the Mk3 is just boring and terrible vs Mk6, which shouldn’t be the case but short of making moves for the Mk3 (basically another mark) I dunno what you’d do.

[Antilus]

@Harridas

Power Cycler only works on chained attacks, meaning anything that interrupts the combo will lose the buff. Including push attacks.

and it got acknowledged as a bug

Addressing more deactivation junk on Power Sword

Issue Type (Required): Weapons/Blessings Issue Description (Required): Sprinting deactivates power cycler after landing any 2 hit combo, denying you the third energyzed attack Both mk III and mk VI variants suffer from this bug Reproduction rate 100% [20241130060100_1] [20241130060050_1] happened to me in game many times, didn’t knew what it was, now i finally found the culprit

Power Cycler only gets one energized hit sometimes

Power Sword with Power Cycler Special only energizes once, sometimes, instead of the intended three. It’s random, but not uncommon, can’t reliably replicate on queue.

Power cycler doesn't work if you chain power sword push attacks

Power cycler is supposed to give you 1-2 extra charged strikes. However if you use a charged push attack and then try to immediately push attack again the second strike will cancel the weapon’s charge. Any other combo of attacks like push attack-light-light, push attack-heavy-heavy etc all work normally and you get the full number of charged strikes. EDIT: This bug can also happen if you try to chain into the push attack after doing a charged light or charged heavy.

(Munitorum Mk VI Power Sword) Power Cycler IV Losing Charges After First Swing While Staggered

Issue Description: Being staggered by a melee hit after the first swing depletes the next two charges in the Power Cycler IV blessing for the Munitorum Mk VI Power Sword. I am not sure if other scenarios mimic this issue, such as toughness depletion or other forms of player stagger. Steps to Reproduce: Be staggered by an enemy melee hit after swinging once with the Power Cycler IV blessing active. Platform: Steam Approx. Time of Issue & Timezone: 1:00 AM Central US Time, May 30th, 2023 R…

[souI23]

Welcome to Nerftide

[Warudo]

please god give me a few more nerfs i am so hungry… just 1 fatshark.. please… we havent had one in like a year… i wi ll star v.e…

[dannylew8299]

Well, now that player power has been scaled way high and enemy health was basically doubled/quadrupled… yeah, f*k it, let’s roll back some power sword changes.

What’s the best case scenario? You have a better heavy sword with worse mobility, but can deal with scab ragers?

I can’t faithfully complain about being obsolete in melee anymore on any other class and every single ancillary pain point has since been patched out.

[Antilus]

it is clear that patch 7 is what screwed the weapon most, effectivly stripping both blessing options away as far as i’m concerned

Power Cycler and Sunder are not simply non negotiables for me, they are the ones that mitigate the nerfs in order to let you play with a green version of the weapon

the Dec 14 2022 patch removed the infinite cleave, so if you want to mend the wound you’d need sunder that allowes you to cleave trough up to 4 maulers

the Apr 4 2023 patch removed the base number of attacks making power cycler mandatory for everyone

[dannylew8299]

Yeah, the abridged history of power sword is it hoovered up enemies like the Twin-linked Heavy Stubber ogryn hoovered up ammo so FS made the choice to make it frustrating to use.

Now we’re here, every inch of the screen is made of Crushers and everyone is good at melee. The most common sentiment from anyone wanting a buffed Power Sword is to make it Relic Blade. Because no one wants to have to turn on the sword after every single attack; no one wants to turn on the sword only for it to turn itself off after 0.6 seconds which is a problem every OG activated weapon should not have.

Fatshark, just let the damn thing stay on for a reasonable amount of time. It’s not a thunder hammer.

[aroth68]

@dannylew8299

The most common sentiment from anyone wanting a buffed Power Sword is to make it Relic Blade. Because no one wants to have to turn on the sword after every single attack; no one wants to turn on the sword only for it to turn itself off after 0.6 seconds which is a problem every OG activated weapon should not have.

Picked up the PS again on Vet yesterday, to gauge its worth after all the Arbiter stuff ; my goodness is it painful having to dodge-dance and activate that thing constantly. It’s effective, but I’ll take a nice shovel with Decimator and Skullcrusher over this any day.

On a side note, the Vet’s melee options (ignoring DS4) are clearly kinda mid compared to other classes. You can really feel this class hasn’t been touched in over a year.

[Antilus]

@aroth68

You can really feel this class hasn’t been touched in over a year.

incorrect, they nerfed survivalist a cuple times

[Hrupo]

Don’t forget that huge, game breaking skirmisher buff

[Antilus]

@Hrupo

Don’t forget that huge, game breaking skirmisher buff

what’s skirmisher lol, is that a perk?

to be fair there is also the change to catch a breath’s activation requirement

[PathOfLobo]

Honestly, despite all this, the MK VI is still my favorite melee weapon. The recent change is actually a big deal for me personally - canceling the energized state on stun used to be a death sentence.

But it’s definitely off-putting to see other melee weapons performing same or even better without needing any activation, or having other penalties.

There are three things I’d like to see improved:

• Performance of regular attacks - The sword should feel usable even when it’s not energized.
• Blessing variety - Reducing the heavy reliance on energized attacks would help, but Power Cycler would still be the obvious choice. I think the sword should have three energized attacks per activation by default, and Power Cycler could add a fourth, along with some bonus scalable with the blessing level. I believe Blessings should support different playstyles, but not be the main factor in a weapon’s overall power.
• Mobility - To put it simply, I hate relying on Weapon Specialist. I don’t want my primary weapon’s survivability to depend on ranged kill, that makes no sense. It needs to be consistent. Otherwise, I don’t care if it’s native behavior or requires investment in the talent tree.

[Antilus]

i disagree, power weapons should be supposed to be used powered, i just don’t buy allwoing power weapon in the game and have them work 90% unpowered like power maul and crusher

its just a stupid gameplay design

[Hrupo]

Honestly doesn’t seem so bad until you see where it is on the talent tree

[dragomusic]

The first Power Sword nerf was 100% justified. 7 empowered swings, when the game had the spawns it did back then, was insane.

The 6 is in a good place right now power wise. Making the 3 more viable would be fine.

The massive, overblown outcry after the Power Sword nerf is probably why FS is so afraid to nerf anything now.

[GMG_Pie]

The devs who nerfed 10 swing Power Sword all left the company so you could ask nicely for the new ones to bring it back. They could pack it with the next Psyker buff.

[Yuma310]

@Antilus

it is clear that patch 7 is what screwed the weapon most

Can only speak for myself, but it is for this reason most of all that, even if only initially as a knee-jerk reaction, I’m often wary of calls for nerfs, and it’s also why I can’t take the loudest, most ardent proponents seriously, because I remember some of them foaming at the mouth at the prospect.

But when it finally happened, and the Power Sword was effectively crippled, their smug preening got kinda deflated by FatShark’s god-awful implementation and steadfast refusal to make revisions with any semblance of diligence or regularity. It took FatShark HOW many months to repair ANY of the nerfs? Something which far too many of the loudmouths seem to either forget or sometimes selfishly just don’t care about.

We’re all adults here, yes? I’m sure that we can all recognize the self-evident need for both nerfs and buffs, but I don’t know WHERE this sense of delusion that FatShark can handle balance comes from, since their history of breaking things, then taking an unacceptablely long time to scale it back, is also self-evident. Admittedly, I don’t have a solution myself, and FatShark wouldn’t listen if I did anyway, but more importantly, it’s not my job to have one. It’s FatShark’s. And we’ve seen (to our cost) just how well they handle pressure.