Power weapons are tedious to use and i would say a little nonsensical.
I think its a lot better if these “junker power weapons” are by default “empowered” and after X strikes they depower and need to be restarted.
Its not imbalanced in its current state save for a few wierd things …
you should be able to engage the power while blocking … you dont need to twist it in front of you and grunt … you are toggling a switch off and then on again …
Some weapons make a lot of sense in thier current iteration … like the power sword. …
others do not like the thunder hammer … theres only enough time for 2-3 swings with it charged because its attack speed is so slow. frequently you will energize it and have to block too long to get a good hit in. It also depowers after 1 strike no matter how much time “should be left”. it also limits the impact to 1 target, backwards of its reality. it should “cut” through targets while empowered … and should bounce off when not powered.
Additionally it is important to note power weapons do not “cut” or “Bonk” thier victims … they vaporize matter in front of the blade/hammer head … they should not bounce back unless they strike something too dense to vaporize …
Additionally, on that thought the thunder hammer actually vaporizes enough matter on a hit to cause an explosion, it should really present itself as more of a shock and awe weapon they are not normally good in defense in 40k setting. The only thing more offensively minded is a power fist.
It realy makes more sense for it to swing wide and cause a lot of knockback/down until it depowers, then the kickback on impact makes more sense. it honestly operates backwards of the physics it should.
If you want a like weapon for defense on the preacher it would make more sens to provide them with a shock mace/maul which has a primary function of stunning targets with electricity and pair it with a combat shoeld so they can tank daemonhosts.
Eh, Kind of think they ought to just be on, and leave it at that. Turning them on feels really weird.
And honestly, chainsword and force sword just suck. Force sword is best in slot because utilities, not because it’s a good sword. The two handed chainsword is pretty decent, but best melee weapon in game is powersword. Does everything well.
Having to constantly toggle the power field on is obnoxious and tedious. If the power field cannot be balanced to be constantly on, then make it so that after X number of hits it has to power off and recharge, and then re-enables automatically.
The chain weapon rev up style is also annoying because its a liability against weak enemies. You can get stuck sawing a regular zombie and mess up your ability to clear hordes. So most of the time you don’t use it, and then only do for elites. Which is the game telling you NOT to use your weapon’s main feature.
Make chain activation a toggle and have the weapon behave differently in the two modes. Standard mode can be how it currently is, and chain mode can be holding it against things to inflict continuous damage or something. Get rid of the long sync kill animations on horde zombies. Its fine to have it cleave more in one mode and rend more in the other, but don’t have it be tedious!
I think the concept is great.
Power/rev up and now you got extra tools to deal with enemies.
One thing I would liked changed is the Thunder Hammer.
With the 2hand chain sword you got basic attacks and heavy sweeping attacks and overhead heavy attacks.
When you rev up you get massive heavy over head damage and on the heavy sweep you get a even higher damage cleave with and fast follow up or block.
Thunder Hammer has only single target hits and heavy sweeping attacks that knock down everything and when charged the light just explodes one guy and the heavy explodes one guy to your right hand side who you might not even see and both give you massive recoil.
I want the light attack to deal more damage than the sword since its single target and the heavy can stay as is.
The charged light should be the single target aimed damage dealer with recoil and the heavy should cleave though but less damage or explode in a aoe to help blow up hordes.
I have used both a lot and the Hammer gets the endless heavy that knock stuff around but the 2handed chain sword just kills everything in frount of you light attack and does it again.
Then does a better job with revved up attacks for single target then the hammers charged attacks.
Don’t disagree with a lot of your general points, but gonna point out this last one is very enemy armour dependent. Charged hammer crushes everything else against unyielding enemies (bulwark, reaper head, bosses). It does at least have that niche very solidly. Go hit a bulwark in the back or a reaper in the head in the meat grinder and you’ll immediately see what I mean. Can probably still one shot them on Heresy with good damage rolls.
Yeah, it does have that niche, but the core issue that it has which the 2-hander Chainsword does not is that the Thunder Hammer strikes the first thing the hammerhead hits, the Chainsword not so much, it hits what you are aiming. The Hammer deals significantly more damage, yes, but the problem is to actually be able to land those hits with how generous the game is with flanking enemy spawns and out of frame attacks.
Personally I have already concluded that the best possible way to solve the issue of the Thunder Hammer is to make it so that the field explosion knocks everything down when it goes off, that way when you get stuck in the animation for a few frames because the game didn’t register the target you were aiming at and instead picked the random Poxwalker that walked into frame, you at least don’t get a bunch of free hits slammed into you in turn before you can try again.
As for the Power Weapons always being on, I am not entirely a fan of the notion solely because the Power Sword is by far the best melee weapon in the game and this change would quite simply make that even more so. The Power Field Dance as I like to call it isn’t even difficult to execute in my opinion and is quite needed to even remotely balance that thing. If you never needed to activate the field, you just negate the reason for any actual melee class to be present.
Of course, as people mentioned, they could make it so that it is on at all times but loses charge from use, which I would like to see be X number of hits, and every hit in a cleave would count for it, meaning that you’d get probably 2-3 cleaves into a horde after which that thing turns off for I’d say 30 seconds or so. The Veteran has plenty of tools to clean a horde out if it hits them, so it would be nice to give the Zealot and the Ogryn something to do when that is not happening.
I think you’ve misunderstood me? I said unyielding enemies, which are Bulwarks, Bosses, and Reaper’s head. I don’t think any weapon does nearly as much damage per hit as special charged hammer heavy on those specific enemies.
Not sure why you’re talking about flak or carapace armour when I specified unyielding.
Because it shouldn’t function better against them outside maybe punch damage through the shield … power fields dont cause extra damage to fleshy targets … they are meant to pen armor thats why.
It should be the optimal weapon for crushers, and carapace ragers.
The problem i have is i am getting about a 30% success rate when i push the button for the game to recognize it and actually perform the action of activating the button. It is also tedious and annoying especially with it having a timeout timer, you can frequently activate it and then be forced to block for the whole duration. Charges is much better for the player in so many ways over a 3 second duration, the current blessing that enhances duration can just give an extra charge for each pip instead.
The power weapons should be on and then stall is to reduce the tedium of constantly spamming mouse 3 like 600 extra times a mission for no other reason than making the game less fun to play. this way you dont have to charge it when passing between groups, or on long walks waiting your chance to finally get a melee in while the ranged combat takes place.
You can instead be repositioning and picking your targets with that time.
The power sword makes no sense presently because turning on its power field makes you do more damage to fleshy targets which isnt what power weapons do they eliminate damage reduction of heavily armored opponents. the power sword should be optimal against pox walkers without juicing it … you should have to be sure its juiced during fights with flak and carapace. Its also why harder difficulties just spawn more elites and give everything more HP.
If penetration worked right, just spawning two different types of elites would make you have to think more, because you likely arent optimal against both …
the games entire buffering and queing for commands needs work
well i thnk we need to be clear , the power sword is utterly broken , its clear and obvious the nerfing this is going to take is going to be epic in nature and we need to accept that now.
ive vented about this one myself , so dissapointing. i had to get my zeal to 30 before it even showed up in the shop , talk about disapointed child at christmas.
it might make sense to have it pass through on a lore front but i think if you have a big hammer doing that in game people are going to say it feels horrible lacking weight. i actualy like the huge thunk bang and recoil , its the lack of correspending damage, lack of intelligent targeting ie it it the pox walker not the rager your aiming at . an issue for other weapons to.
keep the power up but make it an instant switch you can even use mid swing and have it go on Cooldown, the hammer head can glow red and steam and beep till its cooled enough to use again.
implement priority target so it hits specials/elites in the crosshair even if other mobs are first in its path.
keep the grunt bonk bang recoil it feels so hmmpfy ! but it needs a small ae shockwave stun so your not getting wrecked by everything else while you stand there the only thing stunned as you watch a single pox walker rag doll down the hall.
it could also be given some cleave so it it is used on small weak enemies like poxwalkers it hits a bunch of em but has a cut off at a certain individual not total mas.
I think the idea here is that we don’t get real space marine melee weapons. We get power swords and chain swords, but not the finley crafted instruments of death that the emperor’s chosen do. We get hand me downs and leftovers, that needs a lot of management to work.
Power weapons are the melee equivalent of artillery weapons in Darktide. They take some extra management and positioning, then they wreck the thing they’re designed to wreck. They’re not the best at everything, but they can front solid survivability by putting out a strong offense. Reducing their offensive strengths to make them like other melee weapons would be silly.
Unless it is the Power Sword which is indeed best at everything as it can counter every enemy in the game, as well as hordes, like they were no more than a minor inconvenience.
Power weapons should be epic vs anything. We’re basically talking about the warhammer 40k lightsaber.
Eisenhorn actually HAD a lightsaber, because his powersword had no metal blade. It was a relic and blew up fighting a daemonhost.
He also uses a force sword, and it’s basically a powersword, maybe a powersword plus. Our force swords are kind of lousy and it looks like the nerfed the push again, which is most of what they had going for them.
Still, the micromanagement required in Darktide is a bit grating, and the powersword wouldn’t stand out so (even with the micromanagement) if the chain weapons were a bit better. Presently the only one that feels decent is the two handed Evis.
I grant how to make a chainweapon work in first person is a big problem for a devoloper. The things really ought not to work at all based on the usual designs we see in the art. Still, it’s an iconic weapon and we need them to be effective. Also true of the force swords.
Perhaps the solution is
A. Make the chain/force weapons better, much better.
B. Give a major bonus to something else if you take a plain melee weapon like a knife or shovel. (What this something should be would likely be controversial, so I’ll hold off on the speculation for the moment.)
C. Give the thunderhammer AOE like in Deathwing or Space Marine and dump the rebound camera jerk.
D. Remove micromanagement from chain/power/force and make “on” default. Add interesting special abilities.
If I were to rebalance the power sword and chain weapons, I’d make the power field and chain motor a toggled “stance”.
With the power field on, you’d get all the advantages you get now, and they’d stay permanently. I’d even add in a block efficiency buff, given that power weapons are meant to destroy ordinary weapons on a parry. With the motor running on chain weapons, you’d gain cleave power in light attacks, and your heavy attack would be replaced with the current lock-on tree-chopper attack - and you’d just be able to run that for as long as you like, or until something staggers you.
In compensation, you’d get hit with a harsh amount of clunk. Your dodge would go slower, shorter, and you’d have less to work with. With the power sword, you’d be unable to sprint, and you’d lose stamina regeneration. With both, you’d have to manually deactivate the motor/field to swap weapons again.
After playing a whole lot of zealot the way stuff activates I would prefer only a few very minor changes to eviscerater and Thunder Hammer.
The evisceratier is perfect as is except how the rev down works.
Have the stall animation be much faster and can swing or block right after the buttons pressed.
With Thunder Hammer same thing with charge ups normal but charge down is instant.
The fact you want to swing sometimes but you already rev/charged so you know your gonna be vulnerable means you already wasted time why punish more.
The Thunder Hammer could use a aoe on charged heavy so your not left vulnerable when a off screen enemy eats your obliterater charged swing that sends a poxwalker flying into the sky while a mauler squashs your head.