its not about malice vs damnation its about the PS vs other weapons. it being “fine” ie less over the top because the higher mass and hp dont let it one shot entire hordes and waves of specials doesnt make it balanced. it performing on par with other weapons would make it balanced.
oh and the extremes of the difficulty bell curve are where you find the least not most balance.
not even professional esport games like starcraft or valorant or cs :go are balanced around the top 1% a few games have tried it but when the game doesnt work for vast majority of your playerbase you quickly run into problems. so yes it braking malice is a very big deal. just not to anyone on this forum.
The crusher I somewhat understand, it is strong in terms of crowd control. But thunder hammer? Are you serious about it?
If you ever use this weapon you will know how hard in higher difficulties to get a good hit. Especially about reapers, sure you can one-shot reaper on the head, sounds cool, but the first choice is always to use a ranged weapon(normally by a vet) to kill them first. Unless it’s very close, or in a small room, yeah you can charge your weapon to do the cool attack to save some ammo.
This is the type of weapon looks so good on paper or in the meat grinder but feels bad in actual gameplay. It’s really slow, it has terrible dodge, and it stuns yourself after the charged attack. It has a lot of negative traits, in order to get the single-target killing power. The problem is, the attack is very hard to deliver other than a boss fight, because there will always be more than one reaper/bulwark with gunners/ragers and poxwalkers, the charged attack is easily wasted on a poxwalker and leave yourself open to attack. And most people will deal with those high-threatening targets with range first to kill them as soon as possible.
Average joe WILL go down with a wall in the back, even on T3. With more than 8 Poxwalker in front of him, he is doomed with the PS in hand, as soon as the stamina is on 0% . His Toughness will melt down. They are all individually hitting at different times. When the block or push will no longer work, they will interrupt his weapons charging and just shank him down.
Average joe plays with random groups. Because if average joe would have a full team of friends, there would be no need for him to even pull out the PS.
Vets need melee weapons when they have enemies in their face, that a good team would have kept away from him. The Vet has a role that is intended for him to fulfill. He has the tool to KNOW where that bomber stands, that can make a horde fight into a graveside. He is able to let everyone see the specials AND shooters. He can snipe away all them annoying staggering shooters in a blink of an eye, if only he has the assurance, that he wont get mugged from his backside while he shoots.
But random teammates don’t care for average joe. Because average no-brain-meat-mountain permanently runs straight in his line of fire. That’s because average joe’s red laser beams are like landing lights for mean-mountain-pilot, to find the enemies he wants to land on.
Average hipe-up-screamer is always 2 rooms ahead because of his need of the fight club feeling.
And average beloved-weirdo is mostly busy bursting brains, cosplaying a flamethrower or Palpatine frying Mace Windu.
Average joe can not do his holy lasgun duty as soon as there are melee mobs near him. And oh lord is this game doing everything to ensure, that there is always a melee mob coming for average joe’s booty. Average joe is then facing melee mobs and hordes that will not let him reload or take aim.
What options does he has? Would he use other melee weapons, it would take him double the time to kill some poxwalkers. Time he won’t have if the audio of bombers and poxflamers go of close by.
Normal melee hits will not replenish average joe’s toughness. Everage joe only gets toughness on weak spot kills and heavy attacks. Aiming sometimes requires joe to stand still. And average teammates do not care if joe falls back because of that. They don’t care how many times joe prevented their death by sniping away enemy shooters on higher ledges or snipers. For them it is like all the treats are not existing.
They just care about the time it takes average joe to fend of the horde they left him to deal alone with, wile they are standing in an elevator and starting a kick vote. Because stupid average joe is not with them and instead fighting for his life against a horde and a Mutant constantly flinging him around.
The Vet has nothing to gain from melee kills. He has no bleed or melee kill skill ability’s, that give him back some toughness or even HP like other classes. That’s the reason why they won’t get that Sword. Because on them it would be OP. OP like for example a Sword that has infinite dodges like the force sword. Or OP like a 100% dmg avoiding shield block. Or OP like being able to feast on blooding enemies with a knife so fast that you need a new mouse every month, while also carrying a flamethrower that gives you the Hank Scorpio grin.
Every Class has it’s unique THING to carry.
Vet’s are almost required by game design to play with ability III 1 and VI 2 to aid the team. But when they play with the only reasonable melee choice, the forum gets flooded with posts about how they should not be able to survive if they get hard attacked in melee.
And i am sick of it! Everyone here that states ‘‘I am a Vet player myself’’ or stuff like that. Telling everyone that the Power Sword would be OP on Heresy or Damnation is a god dam STRAW PUPPET!
Melee fights as a Vet player on Damnation or Heresy, without a Teammates support is almost a secure death sentence.
I don’t understand how this became Veteran vs Zealot contest? Nothing changes the fact that Power Sword is still the best option compared to all the other weapons of the veteran that’s why it needs to be brought down.
I already said it before, the solution for me is to reduce the time it says activated so it last for only one swing.
If the thunder hammer had a quicker charge animation and not such a ridiculously long flinch after discharging then itd go a long way to make the zealot have a comparable weapon imo
That it is the best option for Vet is not the point. It was never the point that the PS is the best choice for Vet and that it needed to be nerfed. IF THAT would be the case. And if it would NOT be a Z vs V thing. The post had demanded that another melee tool of the Vet should be BUFFED.
The fact that it is always about the point that it would be to strong just shows where that nerf calls come from. And that is undeniable. No MAIN CLASS player in his right mind would demand, that his only reasonable tool, that he is forced to use to stand his ground, be NERFED BEFORE some other tool would be fixed or buffed FIRST.
That’s straight out ridicules. That would be like an sprinter saying he would run to fast with his sport shoes. And that he thinks he should put some led into them to make him slower.
This whole discussion around the PS was N E V E R about PS compared to other VETERAN melee weapons.
IT was always started ONLY about ‘‘PS toooooooooo stronk!!!’’ for itself.
And that is nothing other then ‘‘PS is better than the melee choices of MY CLASS’’
But if your mindset is that if someone else has it better than you. And you want him to have it less good, instead of you having it equally good. Than you are literally Thanos, wanting to snap away half the population of the universe, so that the other half has more resources. Instead of snapping his fingers to increase the resources of all.
Power sword violently outshines all of vets other melee options, even after the nerf. I dont want it nerfed further, but the ease of use and versatility put it head and shoulders above the other melee weapons.
Like the Combat Knives attack speed compared with blood perk and blood abilitys on Zealot agianst all his other melee weapons.
Like the Staffs compared to Guns on Phsyker.
So what is the point of pointing out that PS is stronger than other VETERAN weapons?
Why would you care to call for nerfing it, if it would be a Vet weapon vs another Vet weapon?
Why would you want more dog S*** on your left shoe if you stepped into it with your right foot?
Why not want the S*** to be gone from the left shoe first?
If you want to complain about the weak points of the Ogryns melee actions, then do it. Doing it by demanding a nerf on other classes will not make him stronger.
Why saying that PS must be nerved instead of saying the Thunder hammer NEEDS to knock down surrounding enemies of the one that gets hit with the heavy attack?
It’s dodge is fine enough and the self stun is a point of contention I have but is serviceable. The one I myself use in particular isn’t rolled as high as my buddy but I’ve been clearing through damnation just fine with the thing.
About aiming, it’s a bit awkward to do and I had to practice but since the swing originates from the side, I’ve been sniping elites in groups by angling to my side. This is a bit obtuse and clunky but hey, it works. If we’re going to be real honest, the thing should work like the pickaxe did in VT2 where you frontload the inaction (i.e when charging the level 2 downswing) stun. Backending the self stun feels terrible and the satisfaction I have of one shotting elites never really get’s past the fact that you basically can only use the thing in builds that specifically trade hits. Which I do, but that’s aside the point.
Ogryn happens to be my most played class. But if we compared the range difference between Ogryn and SS it’d be one comparing a class designed to do damage at ranged to one designed to suppress at Range. And Ogryns weapons are very good at doing that. Best in their class at that kind of aoe at that level of range. Suppression as a mechanic is the issue here. That said, large Ogryns are suppressed at 3 shots from a decently rolled MKII and shooters are all suppressed at 1. Gunners are 1 too. We can kill at mid range on a decently rolled MKII with 2 shots with proper talents. If dumped extreme distance snipers at 8. Bit of a waste but sometimes you gotta. We can two tap Bulwarks on a dime at point blank. A decently rolled Rumbler can kill entire shooter hordes at two shots (not to mention one tapping snipers if your aim is on top, same as grenadier gauntlet).
The grenadier gauntlet may have crap all for splash but it sure salvages scenarios like these
It’s as a bit of a awkward comparison as comparing any weapon to the plasma cannons damage or armor. Or any ranged weapon against the flamers horde clear.
I ain’t saying this game is well balanced. It’s far away unbalanced. But I don’t believe the power sword is that egregious given the number of scenarios you can’t salvage with it due to it’s delay in activation as well as it’s nonexistent ability to stagger.
But most of my opinions are completely shaped on practicality, anecdote, and application so I’ll admit my perspective is a bit blind to certain arguments.
I swear to the emperor, 90% of you people arguing against nerfs on powersword bring up this absurd idea that people want to ruin your fun. Having one weapon that is undeniably better than any other, being only one class or al classes is not healty for the game.
Some other weapon may need a bit of refining but it’s outright ridiculus to assume powersword to be the only reasonable tool. Axes, knifes, swords and especially shovel are very good weapon, they just lack the ability to cut in half 2 crushers like it’s butter so you need to rely on skill, positioning and well timed dodges to get out of sticky situations ( or spam out ranged like evrybody else )
If with a powersowrd you are a god that obliterates evrything on t5 but with a showel you are pox walker fodder it ain’t the shovel that’s too weak…
Cool story. So you start with a pistol and best in slot is a cal.50. And because the cal.50 is stronger as the pistol you demand the cal.50 to be weaker.
You just going on to prove my point. You are not playing Vet as main class and you are jealous about the PS being Vet exclusive.
Axes, knifes, swords and especially shovel are not very good weapons. Because their move sets are useless. The Vet needs to be able to get rid of melee danger fast, to be able to shoot enemy range mobs again. Currently only the PS has that needed move set.
The PS is sooooo strong? It can kill Maulers and such mobs so fast? That is a stupid point anyway. The
Recon Lasgun does the same thing within a blink of an eye by shooting in its chest for 0.3 seconds.
Veterans eat specials for breakfast. Its the Horde that kills them. And not even the Strongboys that hide in the crowd. Its the pure amount of low dmg health chips that the Horde applies to them.
Priority #1 is Sharpshooter still needs to have a horde clear weapon. The complaint about Powersword seems to hinge on it being too good at too many things. So make it good at one.
To make Power Sword lore friendly, just change the weapon animation and up the damage/change stats so it is an elite killer and armor piercer and not good at clearing hordes.
DC sword can substitute with some tweaks, has a very awkward feeling weapon combo to spam cleaves on currently. Arc is better on the Power Sword too though in many regards they feel like similar weapons.
Vet has one of the best horde fighting weapons in the game as his starter weapon. Seriously if you played VT for 5 minutes you will never be hit by a bruiser, groaner or pox walker with the vet shovel in hand. It has high stamina, 6 buffed dodges and incredibly good stagger and cleave values.
It just trades elite damage for horde clear. However it is far from weak against elites, because the special poke is near instant (especially comboing it after any other move) and staggers everything. Its an extremely low risk and effective weapon overall, with incredible safety and mobility (that stamina + dodge count).
Similarly Ogryn has knives which trade stagger cleave for cleave damage, and are worse vs elites to actually provide some choice for players.
Its just a moot point to compare it to the power sword. Amazingly you even have people claiming that this weapon is ‘especially’ not good. Never once clicking in with any of the game’s mechanics, instead being carried by comical broken nonsense. If your skill level produces a take that claims everything in the game is garbage for not being a power sword, the only thing you did was out how terrible you are at these games. Try pushing, dodging, blocking and sliding before discussing this again.
Clearly Average Joe should be playing Malice (the average difficulty) or below, where every melee weapon is more than just functional. If Average Joe can’t fend off melee mobs with a normal sword, shovel, dagger or anything else Vet has in difficulties 1-3 he should change his name to “below average Joe”.
It’s such a bad faith argument to try and suggest Vet is powerless to fulfil their role without specifically power sword. You will find heaps of players here and on the Discord that can comfortably do Damnation with a variety of weapons. It strongly sounds like you want to play higher difficulties without actually engaging with game mechanics. There are 5 difficulties for a reason and currently there is no incentive to even go past difficulty 2 for progression unless you’re really hung up on penances.
So why should average Joe be a serious balancing concern when there is ample content they can leisurely stroll through with any weapon they like?
This, Vet mainly uses PS for hordes only, The only time I see Vet using on elites is when Zealots and Orgyn already have the aggro, try to take on melee elites in melee combat in Heresy or higher difficulty is a death sentence even for pre-nerf PS
