From 100% Peril, while passively quelling, it takes:
~30s to get to 0% with Force Sword (same as Brain Burst equipped)
~12s to get to 0% with any non-Force weapon
I’ve played Psyker for a long time using only non-Force melee weapons to take advantage of the insanely fast passive Quell speed it offers, to maximize staff usage while helping out in melee as often as possible.
In comparison to, say, a Chainsword or a Duelist sword, the Force Sword only has 2 advantages to offer : Deflector, which takes up a Blessing slot, and the special attack, which isn’t so good as to make up for the downsides.
Let’s talk about the downsides : bad mobility, mediocre Horde clear, no armor penetration bonus, and most important of all, terrible passive Quell speeds.
As you can probably infer from all this, I am not a fan of holding down R for half the mission, nor am I content with being pigeonholed into choosing Mind in Motion (instead of e.g. Kinetic Deflection which in the same row of feats) because I had the gall to use a Force Sword, which doesn’t even offer sufficient advantages to balance it out, in my opinion.
For more detail about Quell speeds I can just refer you to a Reddit thread (there are others, of course)
I think the logic is that force swords have a slower passive quell to make use of the damage boost you can get from the level 10 feat, while also being able to quell much faster actively if you want to, while non force weapons just have a medium base quell rate dive since there is no active option.
just use chain sword. rev is instant cast, its got better pen and it passively quells about as fast as force sword’s active quell while you are swinging. just another bit of proof that psyker was either an afterthought or someone at fs wants to actively punish anyone that chooses to play them.
Now before I start, most issues with Peril with force sword are fixed with blessings. So obviously YMMV as there are a lot of blessing combinations with force sword that are very strong. With that out of the way;
If you roll a force sword with a good Exorcist roll you can vent in 12s. This is an example of speed in a situation you will never use in a game. About 12 seconds on a single target. Crusher was chosen as he can actually survive that much damage.
To get a more practical example of how this performs in a horde I ran a quick damnation (specifically to take advantange of the often times solo start you’ll see yourself in if you don’t spam quickplay); This is a more realistic example of passive quelling speed in situations you’ll see yourself in.
Take note on the number of just how quickly I’m quelling.
It’s got okay mobility
While yes it’s sprint speed and dodge distance aren’t in the dueling sword → dagger class they more than make up for that fact with the aspect that you get an unlimited number of them.
It’s horde clear is fine enough in my opinion. Shorter scale than the point above but the main point is your weapon isn’t getting suck and you kill in not that many swings while doing damage to most of the stack.
It doesn’t need it. There’s a variety of armor in this game. With the right build you can
3 shot Crushers (You can also just 2 special action and 3 regular charge attacks at 0 Peril but starting with a head pop and 2 tapping them is more convenient)
It’s regular charge attacks also have good enough armor pen for a weapon of it’s class without sacrificing damage to maniacs like many weapon types do.
As for mind in Motion. With the force sword, it’s not necessary
Compare :
the distance I move with Mind In Motion
with the distance I move with sidesteps
I find Mind in Motion to be redundant when using the force sword but very nice to have if you’re using any other melee weapon (I enjoy it when using it alongside the antax)
What I’m trying to say is. The weapon can be very good with the right blessings and without them still requires a slow peril speed to take full advantage of both Psykinetic’s Wrath and the (still mistranslated) Unstable Power Blessing. Increasing it’s passive Peril speed when it already can have a very fast peril recovery (talent depending) would make the weapon less satisfying to use.
I guess this is all true ; but until we’ve got a complete crafting system, getting a decent Force Sword with both Deflector and Exorcist to make up for its shortcomings is… a lot of work for very lukewarm results, at least compared to the rest of the weapons.