I think the one thing I would add is my ideal form of balance, as disussed in many other threads, involves making iconic 40K weapons more powerful than mundane weapons (as long as that aligns with lore).
I used the example of the boltgun to the kantrael MG12 in my Chainsword thread where I said the chian axe should be to the combt axe what the Bolter is to the Lasgun. Chain weapons, and power weapons on top of that, should require more setup to use properly and maybe be a bit more cumbersome or some other balancing factor that requires more skill to get more out of them, but they offer somewhat outsized benefits when used.
I primarily run a shotgun even though I, as a zealot, have access to the flamer and boltgun. Both weapons are clearly superior weapons in a lot of ways. But they each have certain drawbacks that I disfavor for my play style and as a consequence I prefer the “weaker” choice for the niche value it offers. When I do play a veteran I prefer the Kantrael MG12 over the Bolter. Even though the bolter is strong and well represents a bolter in 40K, I prefer the Lasgun’s ability to headclick efficiently against the majority of targets I care about and am best specialized to handle. (shooters, normal infantry, specialists, etc). The only area he Kantrael suffers in is armor damage but it suffers quite badly there (as it should) and that does make it a worse weapon.
I mean the picture above already shows what´s wrong. Pretty much every Vet run PS before the patch, now you see mostly axes and this will also shift into any direction if we keep some weapons or blessings too strong.
I mean yeah, poeple can play whatever they want, but making weapons stronger on purpose only to suit the lore is still not that great gameplay-wise.
I mean we already have chain-weapons or forceswords that let you stuck into enemies. It´s a tradeoff for having a strong special-ability a PS or Illisi don´t have to deal with. Yet poeple wants to get ride of such drawbacks because “It´s clunky to play.” or “I can´t use it because i´ll get hit.” etc…, while they want the old PS back and Illisi as it is.
I guess you know what i mean with that claim so…
Ofc we can find other trade-offs to go for. But it´ll probably last in the same threads as usual. Better players will get used to them immediately just because they can, while others don´t want to or just can´t deal with such drawbacks. (Missing reflexes, wrong decision-making etc…)
And it´ll for sure last in missing variety, because such meta-weapons like the axe with BM right now, are just too strong and come with 0 drawbacks to deal with. Still yes, everyone can choose what they want, but if we continue this road, we´ll have 100 weapons somewhere in the future doing all the same but having different animations.
It doesn’t bother me near so much when I see a lore top tier 40K weapon as a defacto choice. If all the veterans prefered to run power swords and they just added some skins for variety and marks for variety that’d be more ok to me than just mundane axes
I am also arguing for chain weapons to be prefered choices over mundane weapons. Chainswords and Chain Axes are both available to Veterans. If the chain axe was flat better than the combat axes I wouldn’t be complaining about its commonality, because it would be the 40k aesthetic.
There are actually A LOT of lore powerful weapons available to veterans that are missing from the current iteration of darktide and some that there would be no reason not to introduce even if not outright normalized for them in lore.
power axes
power blades (knives)
chain swords of different shapes and sizes and patterns
chain axes of same
Power Fists
Chain Fists
Power Sabers (these are thing these days, I’m getting out of date)
If you get rid of variations of marks for a second and just do a flat count of types of weapons available to Vet:
If we look at my list above and do the same:
5 more advanced weapons
That’s not even accounting for some of the rarer and out-there options. Warhammer 40K is a three decades old, time tested, tabletop war game. It is absolutely jammed packed with variety. Variety that includes base rules and balance that is prexisting and could be leveraged. We don’t need to be hunting around trying to make mundane combat knives work 1:1 with power swords when we can just have power knives.
My issue with chain weapons is they tend to be more work with no greater reward on the normal attacks. The special is in a great place and offers a lot of value to the skilled player. That some people don’t like learning how to use them is fine. Let those players use mundane weapons. One of the niche options for mundane weapons can definitely just be ease of use.
However I do know what you mean and I agree with you strongly. A power weapon should have some drawback, like a boltgun does, that disincentivises using it even though its the “best”. A skilled player should get more out of a powersword than a shovel. But there should be a reason to bring the shovel beyond RPing a kreig soldier.
Yes, maybe we should actually get ride of those standard copy & paste weapons from Vermintide and replace them with 40k stuff.
But what comes then? Should the PS still be more powerful than your PK or not?
There´s still balancing which is needed and besides a special-attack, this PK would only have a different skin and name probably.
Again, nothing is wrong to keep power-, force- or chainweapons as A-tier while the others are just like A- or B+. This would be some sort of balancing that should be possible over time.
But in kind of “making them super strong with decent drawbacks” will for sure last in the stuff i´ve claimed above. Better players will just play around them, but others will have a hard life to deal with them. It´s like @Lion-EL-Gubson always mentions that the PS has weak dodges etc… It´s a no-issue to me and a lot of other players. We just kill the stuff in front of use with the power we actually have instead of “running away” and trying to find a gap to engage.
You´ve atleast 2 types of players coming together at this point and the more you bring power you bring onto a weapon, the more drawbacks you´ll need to outweigh them. And this will actually effect those players more that wanted the power.
Yes a table-top RPG with dices to roll. But bringing this into a game like this without making the game boring, unbalanced or whatever?
This game is pretty much Vermintide with more range and a 40k skin, nothing else. The core of the tide-series still belongs and they could adjust it to “The Walking Dead”, “Starwars” or whatever lore you can believe of with melee weapons and some guns.
I really get the wishes of some diehard-fans, i really do. But we´ve also a lot of poeple left here who are fans of the tide-series itself and throwing away what pretty much makes this series outstanding in combat, shouldn´t be the way to go for lore only.
a) There are poeple who wants to get ride of them, i mean just look at the patch, locks got reduced.
b) Weaken other players in general terms, because they prefer one weapon over the other shouldn´t be a thing in my eyes. Some more skilled weapons should exist yes. But it shouldn´t mean that they are automatically the meta-choice.
The gameplay of the tide-series has always been in the favor or rewarding skill, no matter which weapon you used. It´s decision and surviveability what increases by skill, not the damage output per se.
And with that kind of balancing we would need to bring stuff like the flamer or the different staves in a pretty useless spot.
The issue with the current drawbacks is, that you can easily play around them. As i´ve said, they´ll punish less skilled players who actually asks for the weapon to be that strong. You see it at several chainweapon thread or that the FS should have the bulletshield as passive etc…
It´ll never really match together.
But besides that, the most common drawbacks are
less ammunition
long reload-times
high recoil
less stamina
less dodgerange
slower movement / attackspeed
But who cares for less ammunition if it´s everywhere? Or long reload-times if a class press F and you continue shooting? Who cares for a higher recoil if the enemy is dead?
And all those light melee penalties mean nothing if you got used to melee in general or a slower weapon (like we have argued about the TH before) just staggers everything so it´ll be never a fear to you.
It´s in the most times just something players can either get used to or play around thanks to blessings or feats.
For the end a question noone answered to me aswell, but since you´ve made the other thread…
Why do you guys don´t want a more decent balancing, when you´re tired of everything else but damnation high int / shocktroop?
Keep the weapons strong at malice, maybe heresy, but heresy+? It would offer more from what you want and still something to grow at.
I don’t favor flat deletion or anything. Having them is fluffy and fun. But how they balace against other things is the point that I do believe you understood so I will try not to belabor this. I just wanted to be clear on my intent. (I literally want them to include muskets in darktide for that feral world feel)
I don’t think there is a single person in this thread or any thread including @Lion-El-Gubson that is arguing for anything other than some kind of balance like the above. And apparently theres no issue in your view either. Which means everyone agrees.
Having to play around the drawbacks IS balance. I, earlier, explained how I use the shotgun despite it plainly being a weaker weapon than the flamer or boltgun. It clearly is. But I like the effective snap-shots it is capable of. I am playing around the weaknesses it has to get to the advantages it has and that makes it my prefered choice. I can and have played around the weaknesses of the flamer to extract value. A weapon is unbalanced not when a skilled player can mitigate the weaknesses through play but when there aren’t any weaknesses that need to be worried about at all. The Combat Axe with BM is the perfect example of an S tier weapon that is unbalanced. Just spam LMB and everything that isn’t a mauler or crusher dies, then spam Heavies. Perfectly safe due to high dodges and no comitment. Despite being clearly the best melee weapon in the game I haven’t ever advocated nerfing it because it doesn’t trivialize the game for me when other people play it. If there WAS something done to the axe it should have worse carapace and maniac damage. That’s it in my view. Not a lot worse either, just a little. Sometimes zealots kill crushers and muties almost as fast as I do when giving them the ol’ Hammer and that’s a balance problem.
That is wholely the wrong way to look at Darktide. Darktide is vermintide + hybrid combat and + modernized movement and +40k lore, aesthetics, classes. Vermintide is the foundation but lets not pretend this is just a reskin. Its decidedly not.
That’s just not feasible. There will always be a heirarchy of best to worse. If you choose a B grade weapon when an S grade weapon is available you are literally worse and weaker. That isn’t a problem and it isn’t a bad thing. The point is there shouldn’t be weapons that are F tier. If someone takes a B grade weapon, like I do all the time, it needs to have redeeming qualities that skill can extract value out of. The question is what weapons should be S tier and what weapons should be B tier since its going to happen anyway. The answer is in the 40K lore. The answer is power weapons on top.
An example completely out of left field is the Mozambique from Apex Legends with Hammer Point. Most players didn’t like or run this weapon and prefered everything else. But I found it a very useful sidearm and would surprise enemies in the endgame by quickswapping to it and blasting them when they had no shields. You could alphastrike them down way before they could get any other weapon reloaded or deployed. The weapon was widely considered a joke and not played, but it turned out to have decent effectiveness at range too if you knew how to use it. That is GOOD, not bad, Balance.
You’ll have to rephrase this question because I am not able to parse its meaning.
It´s not about issues in S A B C tiers. It´s about the issue that a good chunk of weapons or blessings outscales everything the game is throwing on us.
So right now yes, weapons that are balanced or fit their niche are somewhat B - tier, there is nothing really lower. Blessings might be worse because they indeed go from something like K to S tier.
But here we´re already talking about SS Tier weapons and why they got their nerf, even if they´re still A+ -S tier after the nerf. And if B tier is balanced, A tier might still be ok. But S tier or more shouldn´t be a thing.
And yeah, this brings me to the question you haven´t understand:
It´s about this and similar threads, while also poeple want to get ride of low int.
You´re bored, everything but damnation high int / shocktroop is a snoozefest, etc… Yet you seem to fail to see that the simple solution would be balancing. Bringing down SS tier weapons, blessings and feats to A tier. Buffing stuff which is atleast not B tier to A/B tier. Make enemies stronger in their core (not bulletsponging) to give them different strengths and more stagger-resistence, so FS can actually develop weapons and blessings better against those strengths. So far said, more niches to fill…
This would be something in the short form and no, a new difficulty won´t help much if everything is exeggerated as its currently is. All what it would probably cause is +10 minutes on a run and would make some feats / weapons even superior.
That´s why the whole question is, how you and others don´t see the need of it? As i´ve said in the past where all these nonsense started. “Get better at the game, get used to the stuff, try it out and then start to judge.”
Yet poeple screamed and still do, meanwhile FS came with bandaids to cater the audience, but the same audience is bored from everything but the top tier difficulty right now.
It just doesn´t make sense and the core reason why everything which is not damnation+ is boring is, that we sit on too much stats and have too much possibilities to compete with everything the game throws on us. And yes, a lot still don´t sit on sick blessings etc.
I guess you got it now?
I get the wish to keep weapons and classes interesting and fun to play. I´m fully on this and i also see the need to rework the PS to keep the “special-playstyle” alive. But we could also enjoy all of this on heresy, while heresy+ isn´t that snoozefest all keep talking about in the linked thread if it´s done correctly.
I think that is a weird analysis of my position considering I have put together an entire thread with like 15 different proposals on how to balance the Power Sword. An entire thread on the failure of Darktide melee weapon balancing, which proposes various ways to weaken or strengthen weapons which underperform or overperform to bring them in line with a well defined ideal. AND a seperate thread discussing the current poor state of chain weapons. Myself and others are all here discussing how to balance the weapons in accordance with not having things be OP while still having things be interesting and have styles and niches.
I’m just extra confused by your post because we’re all here actively having the conversation on how to balance melee weapons and you’re asking us why we won’t talk about balancing the melee weapons.
Also, tiers as a t-shirt size definition is fine but if we want to get serious we should probably be defining our terms. I would define them thus:
The Ogryn Shield is literally a garbage dumpster fire, F class, useless in almost every situation weapon. The Combat Axe is a S Tier weapon that has no drawbacks and is effective in all situations. A tier is good in almost all situations with a few limited drawbacks, Deimos for example. B is good in some situations and iffy in others with obvious drawbacks, Thunder Hammer.
It´s not just about you. It´s in general about the poeple playing the highest difficulty only, but yet want stuff to get overbuffed to “keep it viable”.
While we´re here:
The ideal is clearly subjective. But given to the point that more than enough poeple don´t want low int and only stick to the named possibilities, it shows that the game already failed in long terms.
This means that the whole “get better to beat XY” process got fast skipped and in no way it´s possible nor a good idea to throw one difficulty after another into it, until we might reached a point where outscaling is not a thing anymore.
That´s why i´m convinced that we need to tune down things, while making enemies somewhat stronger, so the difficulty shifts from damnation to heresy and damnation will be outstanding.
And it´s just that i don´t get that poeple who´re like “It´s a snoozefest.”, seem to fail to see these issues we ran into.
Even if those missions would be always available, which would be a great thing, then there is still nothing you can really grow at and you´re pretty much binded to play those missions to have your bit of fun.
We´ve A LOT of space to use and to readjust into the other direction to keep the endgame more interesting and fun for everyone even in long terms, while offering more variety across the board.
This claim actually shows what´s wrong in general.
Stuff like the shield or even those taunt-blessings etc. are not useless, it´s made with coop-play in mind. Yet we´ve way too much possibilities and broken weapons, so that coop-aspect is not really needed besides “the worst situations ever” or “coherency”.
The axe with BM or the old PS are perfect examples how to faceroll the game with tons of damage, while other stuff staggers so hard it´s nearly impossible to eat a hit.
I mean, it´s ok that it´s not everything is focused on coop-play since you´ll never know which teamcomp or randoms you get. But real coop-play should actually overshine some randoms with allrounder-weapons, which is definately not the case.
In the best case everything should be like A/B tier, no matter which niche a weapon fills. But those niche-weapons should clearly shine in their niche compared to allrounder ones, which is also not really a thing thanks to blessings like BM or just weapons with too heavy basestats.
Clearly. That’s the purpose of defining it, so it can be discussed.
Well you should start a thread on buffing enemies in Damnation. Personally I was displeased by the nerfs to shooters, enemy aggro range, and shotgunners.
Taunt blessing isn’t in the game and I, for one, am glad for that. Enemies shouldn’t act like idiots and just wail on a slab shield anyway. The shield is bad because it offers nothing except stagger. Stagger is not more helpful than killing things at a high speed and never will be. Its a liability as long as it has no advantage against any enemy type. The shield is and will remain Ftier until it can reliably and quickly kill at least one common enemy type. End of story.
This is the best case. I agree. Let me add something though. Insofar as there are weapons that are better or worse, and there always will be if there are differences, then there will be an S tier weapon. Because the range of difference can be shrunk but the relative scalar will remain. Some weapon will be the “best” and other weapons will be “almost as good”. and some will be “worse but viable”.
But THIS thread is dedicated to getting powerswords into a good place in balance. Not necessarily worrying about the current state of it, but trying to undersand and propose where it SHOULD be in an indeal world. And we all agree it should be the best (however we define that) weapon. But it should have some kind of drawback to make up for it. And it should be a fun weapon that is fluffy too. Its not that now.
Ofc it can. But some poeple seem to forget the possibilities we and even FS have. There is data to talk about, something which is not in hour hands an more of a feeling. But we can be sure that something is wrong if we see a weapon on atleast 2 players each run.
And poeple clearly forget the difficulties. As i´ve said, we can cater pretty much everyone with them. Poeple just need to say “Ok, if i want to beat the next difficulty, i´ve to become better instead of grinding 1000h for that RNG that will carry me through it.”
Already shared my brainstorming ideas and if i remember it correctly, you read them.
I agree that dead enemies are good enemies, but even here lies an issue. We just need to look back at V2. There have been a lot of players playing shield-weapons on higher difficulties. Not because you were able to deal with CW´s, but you brought a lot of stagger to assist the group, so the glass cannons were able to do their job properly.
Even an IB with his taunt-ultimate + shield carried a lot of bad situations like a patrol that got pulled or so.
The reason why we´ve no impact here relies to the stuff i already said. We´ve too many weapons that are too powerful on any difficulty and also too many of them have a way to high stagger-multiplier. I don´t even know why range-weapons have “stopping power” unless we talk about a bolter or a loaded lasgun-shot.
I know this is one of the threads about PS. But a lot of claims here and in others show exactly, that poeple judge about stuff they haven´t tested properly or used it while leveling, claimed it to be bad and never touched it again. (Just take the recent example of the chainaxe or the difference between a lasgun and laspistol.)
Or scroll a bit up where you explained by yourself the difference between “waveclear and waaaaaaaaaaveclear”.
I can understand that poeple enjoy something and want it to stay as it is / was whatever. But they should atleast be honest to themselves and the others while claiming stuff. And i personally can´t take a lot of those “pro PS” players seriously, when they haven´t seen “the issue” coming. And if they really thought “it´s fine”, then they probably just lack knowledge / skill to really judge about such things besides personal preferences.
Making the PS not clunky to use? Ofc… making it as it was before? No way…
And i mean, i know your ideas, you know my ones… we need something like this and definately less damage somewhere if we go back to multiple swings.
Not seeing much consensus in these polls. The majority agree that the power sword used to be OP but was then overnerfed. But when it comes to offering solutions the reactions are almost universally negative with “no” votes in the 50-90% range for everything except the battery idea which has only 54% support.
This is just my impression from this and many other threads but it feels like a lot of the resistance to further changes is coming from people who main other classes that use a power sword once, swing a charged heavy strike into a horde and think “how could this possibly be balanced” without understanding the wider context of the class. And even among veteran players no one can agree on what should be changed to bring the sword back in line. Fatshark is going to have their work cut out for them.
Well, most of the players have very little idea or experience in the matter. This added to the general vitriol towards veterans for some weird reason doesn’t help much either with the conversation, but…
It isn’t our job to fix the mess FS made. It’s theirs and they have our ideas and their data to work something out. Honestly, I was kind of baffled that there was not even a line regarding this issue, at least that they are still looking at/into the issue or debating it or something (also flamer where the forum consensus is a bit different, but they promised to say something…). Communication still needs some work it seems.
I think this is in part because the power sword is a completely different animal now. Instead of merely tweaking a few variables like damage, stagger, etc., Fatshark standardized everything according to the “power weapons only get one powered swing” model that now holds true across the board. Balance-wise it’s the equivalent of flattening everything with the same bulldozer and calling it a day.
What you’re left with is a complete re-imagining of how the weapon is supposed to work. Couple that with a power cycler blessing that you can’t really make sense of within that framework, and it’s not surprising that there’s no real consensus when it comes to solutions.
Unfortunate if true, since that’s essentially the wrong yardstick. The problem was never the power sword’s admittedly excellent performance against hordes. It was that it didn’t pay (enough of) a price in other areas to justify it. Give me a power sword that is just as bad at taking down armored targets as a thunder hammer is at taking down hordes. And in exchange, the power sword should be just as good at taking down hordes as the thunder hammer is at taking down armor. That’s a bit of a rough analogy of course, but it mostly works.
Illisi is great for horde killing. I prefer Obscurus personnally cause it is a versatile weapon.
At contrary, PS is generalist. You can kill everything with that weapon.
Ps is not unsafe to use, you just have to adapt to your weapon, like with any other weapon.
PS is effectively good at wiping enemies (horde or not) and the fact your movements has big malus don’t really impact you as… you kill fast the enemies so you make enough space to, or energize your sword, or prepare an heavy swing.
PS is worth running, especially with PC. Sorry to say it, but that’s the truth.
Problem is more about PS without PC… here it is not really fun, that I can understand it. However, as with PC you can loose the energized attack at the first swing, I had, sometimes, to energize a lot the sword. This can be done easily.
Zealot would need love then… cause this is the melee class that has no real great melee weapon. Most efficient weapon for a zealot is clearly the combat axe. Tactical axe is good also.
But:
heavy sword is horde clearing focused and the worse weapon against any strong enemy (mauler, ogryns…)
thunder hammer is great against single target but bad for crowd control (max 3 enemies get damages)
eviscerator… sorry can’t even say something good about this iconic weapon (in my opinion, the attack chain is… garbage)
crusher is good for crowd control but bad for killing things, however, the powered swing is really good at crowd control. This is just you need lot of time to kill something you could kill in few seconds with a… PS
Look @Ralendil you can’t write thing like that and except me to take you seriously.
Illisi is exactly PS on psyker. It’s a generalist. It has (and even had before the PS-Nerf) way better engaging capability, mobility, and non-powered attacks. That weapon is a beast and can be used for every situation, including horde-clear, elite groups, crushers, and engaging shooter/shotgunner teams. It also helps you keep up with peril decline to keep up the damage boost and Toughness DR. Not to mention the infinite dodges it has…
I used this weapon a lot when it came out and it’s absolutely top-tier. I’m running Bloodthirst/Unstable and Slaughterer(t3) on it with +flak and +unarmored.
Heavy sword was already faster (and safer) at clearing horde than the PS before the PS-nerf. Now it’s a lot faster while being on a super mobile and survival class (even against flak I did faster than with your PS setup and my HS isn’t close to as good as my PS). I’m sorry but being worse against Crushers doesn’t matter since Ult clears Crusher on Zealot with any damn ranged weapon (and with HS too since you will crit every second strike).
Use mark IX with double damage blessing and you’ll see. I personally don’t like it that much, but my SO swears by it and prefers it over Caxe (Playing HiD+). It’s a top-tier weapon.
On a side note just look at the Heavy Sword and tell me which weapon it outperforms in every regard. I give you a hint, it’s a weapon that has the same design space and not a class weapon…
Thunder Hammer is also beast, and always was, it was just super clunky due to the self-stun. Now it’s super good. It has its drawbacks, but mine can one-tap crusher with ult and almost take down bosses with 2. It’s bonks and heavy swings are also totally fine.
I would be okay if something similar would happen to PS. Something that no other weapon can match, like the TH. It’s like you haven’t even read what I wrote…
Yes, Evis need love, go look at the Evis thread and what I wrote there.
I haven’t played much with the crusher, but…
When I did I managed to permastun hordes including elites (groups of them) by just chaining powered attacks. Phantom hits made me quit the weapon. It was also very, very good against Bulwarks (that is only shared by Paul in the melee category) and good against Crushers. The weapon I had was pretty bad btw, not optimal double t3/t4 or anything (it was before the introduction of Brunt).
Yeah, yeah it doesn’t kill things, but it’s probably the absolute best melee CC weapon in the game. I can’t speak about what adjustments should be made to it since I haven’t played it recently and don’t have enough experience in it, unlike in PS, Knife, Caxe, Eviscerator, TH, HS, Illisi, Obscurus, DS…
To reemphasize:
I think PS could absolutely be the best generalist and it wouldn’t be a problem since it’s sitting on the least mobile and survivable class (outside ranged situations) thats main purpose is being anti-elite with an ability to branch into being also anti shooter.
If you or someone else doesn’t agree then fine, but it has to have something that makes it better in some way than everything else (like with the other Class weapons). It has to be something that’s really worth it to run on Vet, as Forcesword or Staves on Psyker.
Currently, it isn’t there.
Just think about how many people wanted FS to be better on Psyker, how bad it was that TH felt clunky to use, or how much of an uproar it could cause if staves weren’t the go-to…
I tried also this weapon. Obscurus is better to target strong enemies (boss, ogryns, mauler).
I don’t think illisi is comparable to the PS, but sure it is a strong weapon against horde.
Ult can help at clearing any enemy with any weapon…
Heavy sword has always been the best horde clearer. And that’s what I’ve written. Now, you say ult can make the heavy sword working against crusher… and when you have 5 crushers and 2 charges? usual situations in damnation
So, I maintain that heavy sword is not a generalist weapon but an horde clearer.
Again… What did I say?
thunder hammer is great against single target but bad for crowd control (max 3 enemies get damages)
Thunder hammer is not the best at crowd control. The new TH, is better, but crucis is not a good weapon for this.
I don’t see anything in your sentence that contradict that. You say that TH is a great weapon… I don’t disagree. I say that it is, again, a weapon that is specialized like is the heavy sword.
Again… I said it… really great at stunning and horde control. Bad for killing.
To summarize, what I said is that the zealot has only one strong versatile melee weapon and… it is the combat axe. So not a class weapon.
And PS is a strong versatile weapon that can replace a combat axe. You can kill everything with this weapon. You wipe hordes, you can kill crushers, you cut in two the maulers…
Maybe they have to nerf the illisi if it is where you want to go… I don’t think as you cannot use the special every times as it increases the peril.
The PS, even after nerf, is a really strong weapon. So strong that, when I use a combat axe for my zealot 98% of the time, I use also 98% of the time on my vets the PS. And melee fights are easier with my vets than with my zealot. The difference between them are the feats. And sure, the zealot has the right feats for melee.
I agree it should be the best generalist but we need to be very careful about the assumption that it is going to remain locked to a single class. In 40K there is a unit called a Crusader, a type of tanky zealot, that uses a stormshield and power sword in tandem. There’s also the previously datamined Veteran Sergeant which likely will be a melee focused support class. And, assuming Fatshark does not hate fun, there will be a Deathcult Assassin that may have some kind of power sword as well. We cannot assume that power swords are going to always be relegated to Sharpshooter. Perhaps just this brand of munitorum powersword.
I still laugh about that every day. But its fine, getting a player base to agree on a design isn’t always easy. Not least because they can’t mock it up and try it, like FS can. And so they ultimately lack vision. Not as a personal failing, but a practical one. I’m doubtless no different, hence me encourporating as many other people’s ideas into the thread so at least they are aggregated.
Do you know what can deal with maulers alone? Every weapon and a lot can do it pretty fast. Do you know what’s better against 2+ maulers or 1 mauler in a group? Illisi.
Do you know what’s better than the original FS against Crushers? The damned brain burst that two-shots them without locking you up.
I don’t know what you do in Zealot, but the amount of BS I can constantly pull off with Caxe on Zealot… anything else I have ever seen from other classes just pales in comparison.
You must be doing something incredibly wrong on Zealot if you feel this way.