Powersword makes all other melee weapons, as well as Zealot and Ogryn, irrelevant

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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Actually, it is more that people learned via experience it isn’t nearly as necessary, or great when playing with randies. It still kicks butt just as well as it always has, but the issue is that the Sharpshooter especially has access to far better options than the Boltgun with the combination of the Lasgun + Power Sword which gives the Veteran much higher killing potential than the Boltgun ever did against greater range of foes.

The weaknesses of the Boltgun become evident when you realise that suppression is a major negative, and having 15 shots to take out 10+ shooters before they can wipe the floor with you isn’t exactly a viable option. It is also a redundant option to use with the Power Sword around as they both offer you the same advantages you would have against hordes and armoured elites. You are far better off using the Lasgun against everything that isn’t heavily armoured and the Power Sword to fill the gap against those and hordes.

Adorable, but no. I would very much like to see you clear an entire room of shooters by yourself as the Zealot using the Boltgun. Note, let’s make the room the Data Interrogation section in the repair mission. You will most likely kill probably 2, maybe 3 of the shooters before you are suppressed to high heaven and then blocked from dashing as the first gunner appears around the corner and opens up, killing the Zealot on the spot within a handful of seconds.

In that situation, as the Veteran I just pop Focus Fire to ignore it and then tap everyone once with the Lasgun. In case I get rushed in by horde and/or Ragers/Maulers, I pull out the Power Sword, swing 6 times and continue the mission without a hitch.

But not at once. You can be short range CC with the Surge Staff, a worse Flamer with the Purgator, or long range AoE with the Voidstrike. You will, once again, have a flaw to deal with as the Psyker. If you bring out the Surge Staff, Snipers and Reapers can still easily shred you as they are far out of your reach. Purgator doesn’t have the reach of the Flamer, nor the staggering effect, making it honestly the worst staff in the game in my eyes, and the Voidstrike lacks damage in higher levels. Also, it isn’t the Plasma Gun, it is more closer to the Boltgun for it pens bodies but doesn’t actually damage that much. Again, the Veteran can fight against hordes with 'nades and the Power Sword better than the Psyker in all instances while also being able to take out most elites from max range and the rest while in Melee, and still have plenty of time to fight off the shooters.

Ogryn can either be a really good blocker for your team, or you can be a decent horde clearer, CC guy with the ability to stunlock most elites in the game, but you are also the biggest, easiest target to shoot apart with dedicated fire.

Again, note this recurring theme. Each one of the classes you described doing all-rounding can’t do ALL things with one build. They must specialise somewhat and then give away something in return. The Veteran can.

I need to emphasise something very critical here to you. You have said it yourself, you are bad at melee, so how in the world can you ever, under any circumstances, be able to see how the weapon is as powerful as it is? In your use that thing might not appear to be good because you don’t actually use it on regular basis, but the average joe can shred with the thing way beyond their paygrade.

Again, I don’t have this “squishy in melee” problem when I play my Veteran because nothing can ever hit me since I know how to dodge and also know how to aim the thing to make it one-tap swarmers. No other weapon I have used, from Thunder Hammer to the Eviscerator to the Force Weapon, have EVER come even close to the level of performance I can do with that weapon, and I have all classes levelled up to 30.

Yes, but note something very interesting here, something you might have skipped over. Out of the three weapons you mentioned, 1 is dedicated to the Ranged Class of the game, but also happens to be the single best melee weapon in the game as of right now, while the other two are for THE Melee class in the game. Funny how that happens, huh?

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Probably, though the Thunder Hammer’s powerfield is balanced by the fact that you only ever get one swing and you get locked into an animation when you hit something for a few frames so it isn’t as borked as the Power Sword which never locks you into anything at any point. Heck, they could balance the Power Sword even by simply adding a canned animation to turn the thing on so you can’t dodge or anything while you activate it, even if it is for only a few frames. That alone would help out a lot as right now you can easily chain slice through hordes with it while the Thunder Hammer can’t do both at once, fight Elites and Hordes at the same time.

Well, I do from a theoretical standpoint. The way to achieve that in a cooperative game is to offer all classes a role to fulfil on the said team, never giving one class an overwhelming advantage over the others by offering them tools the others can’t access that overshadow their own unique equipment. Things aren’t exactly balanced when you have a class capable of best ranged and best melee performance in the game at the same time when you have three others that can only ever really focus on either of those aspects at once.

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Isn’t giving a super-good melee weapon with bad mobility to an immobile class with no melee synergy a pretty good idea balance-wise? I mean really, it’s not sarcasm. Think about the Veteran with a flamer, that would be pretty nuts.

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Veto on that one, doesn’t work well with the way classes and matchmaking are implemented at the moment, as everyone can be put into any team comp, imho everyone should have solutions for every situation. Also imho again, but I don’t see coop only working if you have to complement each other on an absolute basis. It can also work on the fly, when team jobs are handled according to the current battle situation. Not defined by the pure inability of a class to fulfill a given role.

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I disagree with PS being best melee weapon in the game.
It is best Veteran melee weapon for sure, it is good at everything, with almost no downsides. I think you overexaggerate its power/dmg on Damnation. I am sure you realise it requires 8-10 (crit dependant) powered heavy swings to actually down a Crusher.
In general mixing in other classes in this PS discussion is pointeless and a mute point, as their builds & traits are tailored for other things. We can come back to it if Z gets a 2handed power sword :wink:
Not to mention Vet should generally avoid melee and focus on taking down ranged opponents and specials/elites on Heresy+.
Again, I fully agree it is best Vet. melee. Peace, just my opinion.

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the class that shouldn’t be actively seeking out melee combat gets a good weapon for when they do enter melee combat. It was good intention but it creates veterans who try to melee everything which is bad gameplay.

Also the zealot is not a melee class either, there are no melee classes. Every class gets a melee weapon and a ranged weapon, it’s misleading that they are labeled primary and secondary, but going back to zealot;Did you know the toughness damage reduction feat can trigger via ranged crits? You can clear out ranged trash relatively easily with the right weapon just as well as a sharpshooter can, you have a feat that makes you immune to melee stuns which can be extremely useful when using flamer, you can get extra toughness damage reduction, and your ability replenishes toughness. There’s even a feat that makes ranged weapons do more damage, and the passive damage from martyrdom stacks is good on automatic weapons. The eviscerator isn’t bad either. Sure it’s not a knife through butter but it’s still extremely good at its job and in some cases the stun is preferable, and the thunder hammer takes out mutants almost as well as the box does, possibly better because hammer doesn’t have ammo, and its proficient at bosses and melee elites more than the eviscerator is, but i digress.

You get extra ammo on veteran for a good reason. Put away sword and do your job. Devs even give you an feat that augments your ability to highlight targets and it only works with ranged weapons. So there’s a clue. If you ask me confirmed kill should only work in ranged, that would fix a lot of the issues with melee veterans not playing their class as intended because they would no longer be able to cleave two elites with power sword and fill their toughness back to 100% in a second.

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What? This doesn’t make any sense at all.

Your whole argument can be turned upside down. Why does the zealot get ranged weapons? You shouldn’t sit back and shoot. You have the ability to charge in, you should do that!

By that logic what makes you think there are ranged classes? The veteran has melee weapons, even a dedicated one.

I don’t want to be mean but is this sarcasm that I just don’t get?

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It’s the story of the life, you can bring many good things to ppls, what they will do with is an other story, you cant control that, it’s juste life.

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on higher difficulties you will wind up on some heretic’s bodycam reel doing this

which veteran should use when the situation requires it such as being swarmed. This is common sense or are you going to continue with the semantics?

Murphy’s law. Whatever can happen will happen.

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And cause you seem, i insist about seem, to play well with power sword you suggest a nerf ? God what is this community.

And dont think we play the same game, cause no, i cant oftenly activat PS then slash 3 time in T5 difficulty. Also in hord my psycher or priest with flamer lower ennemys HP so it’s much easyer to controle the hord yeah when no ammo left in my rifle. + often, i can swing only 2 times due to fight chaos, + ofter the charge on the sword does not proc.
And to finish if you can clean a whole hord without help just wait and play the solo mod who s coming in next update.
And if you dislike this weapon cause you think it’s to OP just play with an other 1 and let other players have fun omg.

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You really need to tell me how it´s “bad gameplay” in a more melee-focused game…
Yes Vet is the range-class from all 4, but it doesn´t mean he shouldn´t be able to melee or shouldn´t use it overall. Even the other tide-games had more range-orientated classes, but you still had to use melee at some point.
Not to mention that everyone can play as they want anyway.

Also it´s not a good intention to create a broken weapon on any class. It´s just bad balancing. If they offer something class-related like the forcesword, fine… In case of Vet a dual-wield with saber and pistol would fit the class somehow… but just a broken sword?!

Just because it´s not THAT great at one thing doesn´t mean it make it less broken. There are other strong weapons yes, and some of them need little nerfs too, but none is better than the powersword.

Won´t say optimal level, but i would say stuff like axes and the powersword are in a good spot. They´ve clearly defined pros and cons. The axe can penetrate pretty much everything and is decent with its stagger, but they overall lack waveclear.
Meanwhile the forcesword lacks on basedamage, but offers a fluent and versatile gameplay. The special is pretty strong to deal with armored elites, but has clear cons like chargetime and heat. Also it´s a one-time activation and you can´t decimate all enemies right in front of you. It offers a good skill-ceiling in my eyes.

I still see it quite often across the board. Might be a thing that a Vet can make even or more use of other stuff, but the bolter offers a bunch of pros, meanwhile the cons are pretty much irrelevant when the enemies are all dead within 2 seconds.

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looks at this post
huh
looks at ai spawning 90% ranged units in a T5 game

yeees… melee-focused…

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So you don’t think that someone, who knows the melee system and knows the ins and outs of it, isn’t capable of noticing a clear power balance issue with the thing? Right-o.

And if you need a clutch weapon to be able to scrape by higher difficulties, then maybe don’t play on those difficulties until you can and don’t bring the team down if that weapon hopefully is balanced for the sake of maintaining challenge and class balance?

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Ever heard of forcing them into melee to have an easier life? That´s why Zealot and Ogryn actually exists… Playing those pewpew rangefights costs nothing but time and life.

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yes, force into melee, run up to shotgunner and instead of pulling out melee weapon just shoots you two more times while the scabs five feet from him also do not pull out their melee weapons. Very deep thought into that move of just blindly charging the enemy gunline.

Or, alternatively, you can just make them dead from range. Much easier and much more convenient for everybody. Especially for the ogryn who can’t hide behind anything. Do you know why most ogryn’s use shields? Its not because they’re a good weapon, They are good at cc, sure, but the reason is most sharpshooters are pretty bad at doing what they’re supposed to do, and many zealots pretend their ranged weapon just doesn’t exist at all.

When you see an ogryn planting in front of a gunline, that is the manifestation of ptsd from having to deal with toxic sharpshooters who dont actually shoot anything with their big ammo pool. That is a community conditioned behavior.

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You can dodge, you can flank, etc… Anyway i´m too tired to start such kind of discussion, because ppl tend to ignore the melee-part of the game.
May try Vermintide for a couple of days and you´ll see what i mean here.

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oh i see, yes too bored to start the discussion, that’s why you started the discussion by responding to me, and vermintide? yes, yes. Warhammer 40k is just like Warhammer Fantasy, Darktide is basically Vermintide 2 so I’ll just go ahead and play this game like a game it isn’t.

Well since you’re too bored to have this discussion I will just block you so I stop wasting your time.

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I´m too tired, because i had such discussions before already and i see dozens of poeple every day jumping in Darktide and believing that it´s a FPS title, which is clearly not.

The game isn´t as melee-focused as the games before, but it clearly is and everyone who´s atleast decent in melee will recognize how much easier the game is, once the enemies are forced into melee. Especially hordes can be a great “meatshield” since the most enemies don´t shoot through them.

I´m not saying you should change your playstyle, but please stop acting like stuff is impossible or not intended in its design, when it clearly is a thing and needed at some point.

And well, bye then, who cares.

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I’d argue with that, but let’s put this aside.

I play both zealot and veteran on damnation, I don’t even disagree with veteran always running into melee isn’t good or zealot shouldn’t rush in everywhere. I just can’t make heads or tails of your argument.

There are definitely situations where you should rush in with the boys even with vet since staying back alone is way too dangerous or it’s an event so you are going to be surrounded non-stop or you are in a tight place and there is no chance to shoot over the ogryn or killing the last two shooters is way too much time and you prefer to move instead of letting an extra group of specials to spawn…

Heck, you can turn a 5 min shoot-out with a patrol into a 20 seconds melee fight if you jump on them (if they aren’t far away, and they haven’t run into every possible corner of the room yet), it’s even worth it doing with vet if you can close the distance. If s* hits the fan and actually there were 6 ogryns and 8 zerkers around the corner, well that’s what grenades and flamers are for.

I’m all “go kantreal XII with Counterfire pew-pew” on vet, but there are just situations where you go hack and slash even on T5, especially on T5.

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If one thing is all ogryns and flak armored enemies then yeah, “one thing”.
Besides all chain weapons are better against single targets, stunlocking that Crusher, Mauler or Rager. Thunder Hammer is just Elite killer period. Dagger is crit bleed machine. Of ocurse all have their downsides, rev is locking you as well, Hammer may be harder to hit desired target in a horde etc. they are still better at their designated roles. If you think PS is absolutely best in everything it means you only play Veteran or don’t go above Malice too often.