[Rework] 1H Sword (Kruber) and 1H Mace/Hammer

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Gameplay Feedback
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Premise: their problems become evident/important at Cataclysm;

1H Sword (Kruber) and 1H Mace (Kruber and Bardin) are not the worst weapons… but imho they would still need a little, targeted, help to finally shine.

  • 1H Sword: it’s a versatile weapon, a kind of toolkit, meant to give survivability and versatility… but, to reach this goal, it misses one only (but fundamental) point: this weapon can’t help us when we need it most.
    When we are surrounded, so when we need to breach the enemies, this weapon is pretty useless:

    • Push is “light” tier and consume 2 stamina;
    • Push-attack has a very low stagger;
    • Heavy attacks are too slow to be used when you are in a critic situation.

    Suggestions:

    • Push-attack could have the same stagger value as heavy attacks;
    • (optional) Push could use only 1 stamina;

  • 1H Mace: it’s a weapon meant to be a “little 2H Hammer”. 2H Hammer has more stagger and damage and range; 1H Mace has more agility… honestly, I already see a problem: 1H Mace has more disadvantages than advantages… but, the main problem, is that it can’t stagger nothing. Simply this: the stagger is really too low.
    p.s: curious how Mace&Shield’s light combo has the same 1H Mace’s values (damage, cleave, stagger)… but tank property and a better moveset too;

    Suggestions:

    • Light combo (and push-attack) could stagger more (higher stagger value or a property like “tank”);
    • (optional) Light combo sweep attacks (the first two) could be “more horizontal”.
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1h Sword is a top weapon in the game, although most people don’t recognize it as such because you can’t left click spam. If it was buffed any more it would be OP.

1h Mace is kind of crap but it’s not a stagger problem, it’s a cleave problem. It just doesn’t hit very many things. Things that don’t get hit don’t get staggered either, so it’s easy to get them mixed up, but it’s stagger is quite strong. It’s just nearly worthless for hordes. It’s nowhere near as bad as axe, but when it’s greatest weakness is 90% of the game, it’s never gonna be competitive. It needs a rework of it’s light attack pattern to cleave better.

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I feel like you have no idea what you’re talking about. 1h sword is weak and mobility doesn’t make up for crowd control anymore in this game. If you wanna spam heavies at a horde might as well use a 2h hammer.
1h Mace does have low cleave but it still staggers multiple enemies per hit (3 marauders i.e.), it just doesn’t damage after the first one hit. Saying it’s worthless for hordes doesn’t make sense when you have a push attack that leads into 3 cc attacks, just the damage output is rather low.

For which attacks? The light attacks can stagger any of a maulers attacks but their damage is low. The heavies lack stagger strength to interrupt a lot of elite attacks. And the light attack do no damage against armor but are some of the only attacks a mace has to stagger SV.

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Mace - all it’s attacks. It’s no 2h hammer, but it’s stunning enough. The problem is when you have 10 things in front of you staggering 3 is meaningless. The low DPS doesn’t help either. Like Axe, it’s only good for elites. 90% of the game is hordes so being a master of killing elites is meaningless if it can’t at least tread water vs hordes.

1h Sword- You have no idea what you’re talking about. It has I think the 2nd best cleave in the entire game (after 2h sword) and it’s fast and responsive. It staggers like a 2h weapon - even most CW attacks can be interrupted by heavies. It’s mediocre vs elites but gets the job done, and if you use it on a melee bonused career (pyro, UC, merc) the bonuses make it mulch elites as well. It’s not meme-tier like exec sword but if you want anti-horde with as few weaknessess as possible holding it back, it’s second only to various Elf weapons, plus maybe the WOM ones.

Here’s some tricks to you to try out with it.

-Heavy>Light>Repeat combo. Heavy staggers and cleaves like a beast, the light is fast and responsive and does a lot of damage since the targets are fully staggered. Aim this at shoulder height and it will cleave through everything that’s not armored or shielded, do it with headshots, and in a wide enough area to keep your flanks clear. Far superior to spamming heavies.
-Heavy>Heavy>Light combo - The anti armor move. 1x of this will kill a SV if you headshot, if you miss you need 2x of this combo. Suck less and it works better!
-Dodge to headshot from the side. When you use this weapon a lot you’ll start to get an instinct for where the next swing will be - step or dodge to the correct side and the sword will go right into a SV head, even with a pure horizontal swing. Really helps maximize what this weapon can do and compensate for it’s flaws.
-The Heavy attacks are 2h and have extended reach. Use it to keep enemies at bay and save your dodges for when you truly need them (unlike Elf, you only have 3). Visually imagine you are scraping the rats nose with the tip of your sword. That’s about the right distance, you’ll hit them and they won’t hit you. As a bonus, you can headshot rats and SV at this distance without having to offset to the side, since their head sticks forward you can hit them right on their nose.

Just because it’s not laughably simple to use like Xsword and because you personally can’t make it effective, don’t discount it. It’s very balanced IMO with pronounced strengths and weakness that you have to work to overcome, but put in that work and it’s a beast. Even a small buff would make it OP, and I’d really like to avoid putting it through a meme>nerf cycle.

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Are you referring to the 1h Sword’s performance on Cata or Legend?

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Legend. Otherwise you need twice that to kill a SV. That kind of explains the love he spreads about it. Sword is very fine on Legend. You dont get hurt by needing half an hour per CW and 5 minutes for a SV.

The sword has just not the Armored kill speed that you want/need in Cata, which could be supplemented by the changes OP talked about, but Iam personally still dreaming from a stabbing attack, which is keyed to the optional attack button, like the Rapier has its shot.

Mace is a cruel joke on Cata. No cleave, horrible damage and supposedly high stagger and anti armor plus the high dodge range and stamina one handed weapons have. There is no scenario were the, not so recently buffed, 2h Hammer wouldn’t be straight better.

Mace needs roughly 10 heavy hits to kill a CW, if he staggers and you land atleast half of them at his head, which isnt always easy when there is a bunch of them, or a wave also wanting to take a bite out of you. So I dont really see the anti armor potential.

The only “one handed” weapon I use atm is M&S. Its basically middle ground of them. (Unlike all the other duals that are just five times better than the single version.) Its push attack and heavy attack deal with waves and elites in them easily. It staggers a lot, you have a good dodge range and stamina amount. Its left click sucks and you better learn to just ignore CW and let your team deal with them.

Its really a shame. I played Mace and the Sword alot on Legend. They just handed you all the tools you need to survive and pull through crapy situations. With the added density and health of elites they are quite the opposite on Cata.

(Insert the unique answer: “Not every weapon needs to be “viable” on the hardest difficulty.”, which I would like to answer with: “They should at least be fun to use and have a place. Ofcourse not every weapon can be top tier.”)

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1h sword is fine and using it alot on merc, the only issues are shields in a horee or cw’s, but i don’t see this as a problem, yes exe sword or greatsword are the easier version of this weapon.
(Above talking about cata)

1h mace i don’t rlly know, but i heard its not that good anymore.

Also think the game should balance around legend as it is still the highest non dlc gamemode. Nobody wants to balance around weaves either.

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Couldn’t agree more. The default illusion even says to stab with it. This weapon just has no real way to deal with multiple elites even slowly with a lot of blocking, waiting and backpedaling (that I know of).

This is all from the breakpoint calculator. It refers to Cataclysm and involves Kruber’s Mace and 2h Hammer.

With no stats, talents and 650 hero power it takes 14 heavy bodyshots and 9 heavy headshots for the Mace to kill a CW. For the 2h Hammer it takes 11 light bodyshots and 7 headshots.

With 10% Armour, Smiter and MtM, the Mace takes:

  • 6 heavy headshots (2 MtM stacks) and 8 heavy bodyshots (5 stacks) for CWs.
  • 2 heavy headshots (5 stacks) and 3 heavy bodyshots (3 stacks) for SVs.

For the 2h Hammer on the same build it takes:

  • 5 light headshots (1 MtM stack) and 7 light bodyshots (3 stacks) for CWs.
  • 2 light headshots and 3 light bodyshots (both require 3 MtM stacks) for SVs.

It has 9 stamina and the heavy breaks wooden shields, like the 2h Hammer’s lights, making it a great defensive tool for Huntsmen as well (even if it’s out shined by the spear most of the time).
It doesn’t kill hordes well, but it’s still very safe against them while being better against armour than the Mace and Shield, the Mace and Sword, and the 1h Sword.
In my opinion, Kruber’s Mace is not that bad.

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I’ve actually been working on balancing all the weapons using lua code. I removed the single-target light attack from mace and changed the uppercut to a diagonal like lights 1 and 2. I then added “Tank” to all 4 light attacks. Just those simple changes made it a really fun and useful weapon.

1H Sword - I haven’t got around to this one yet, but imo, it simply needs the armor damage buffed slightly.

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I would like to try this if it could be put on the workshop

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I’m hoping to get a modder put it up once we get done writing the lua scripts. If you want to work on your own, you only need the execute lua mod.

There may be one or two weapons that would actually shift the meta of a character, but the idea to this point has been not to buff weapons to a point that they are better than any of the top tier weapons. The goal is to introduce variety rather than make the game easier.

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This would be cool if we could get some kind of public balancing discord started or a topic on the forums related to it, so it would be easier to discuss and test different suggestions.

Ofcourse depending on how the mod works etc, what i’m suggesting might be bad idea cuz i don’t rlly know how modding works and lua codes etc.

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Same brother. When it gets done, I’ll open a thread and post a link so everyone can give feedback.

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Honestly I think that the problem is both stagger and cleave… because, a stagger value of 16 without properties like tank, it’s nothing special.
Anyway they can buff cleave or stagger… for me, it’s the same.

I just would like to see a Mace that can stagger more than 2-3 enemies.

Believe me, I have tried Huntsman with every weapon or weird build…

How could Mace be a good defensive weapon if when you have to deal with an horde, or you are surrounded, you can’t stagger nothing apart 2/3 enemies?

How could Mace be a good defesinve weapon if, when you remain alone for a clutch situation (and it happens even to best teams), you almost do zero damage and you take years to clear?

Rapier is a good defensive weapon, even if its attacks have less stagger than Mace… but Rapier has an higher block cost reduction, it consumes only 1 stamina per push… nothing that Mace has.

Moreover, even if it’s obvious (we are talking about 1H weapon), we have to remember the very short range.

Exe and 2H Sword not only are easier… but stronger in everything. In everything (and a lot).

Sure, 1H Sword is more agile… but exactly for this reason it needs the bonus I wrote.

“More agile” should mean more survivability, it should be its work… but, if when I need survivability I can’t get it (for the reasons I wrote), it’s a paradox.

Indeed (I think) my buff would just help this niche, this aspect… I don’t think they are something that can make the weapon over power.

This guys, this! For this reason I specified CATACLYSM. It’s the first thing I wrote.

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So you’re saying you want the hardest difficulty to not require optimizing builds? I thought that was the point. Not only should “not everything needs to be viable”, but it should be that not everything is viable! Otherwise it’s not hard enough to be the prestige difficulty, is it? I mean, if you’re playing for the ultimate challenge, then min-maxing builds is part of that. If anything goes it just means it’s under tuned. Isn’t that why everyone complained about Legend and wanted Cata in the first place? “It’s so easy you can get away with anything.”

Not that I’m against weapon balancing, the game needs a lot more of it, but I don’t think the difficulty level that like 6 people play on should be the basis for it. Cata doesn’t have it’s own loot tier for a reason.

eta: To clarify, this is because of how V2 is balanced - with asymmetrical design. Some weapons have more raw power, but lose in another way. Strengths and weaknesses. Not every weapon will be good for every situation - THATS THE POINT! Mobility is obviously enough to prevent getting surrounded, otherwise explain Elf. If that’s not your personal strong suit, don’t use the weapon designed for it!

ps. Thank you FS for dividing the community with a paywall. This is all your own fault.

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Why can’t weapons be balanced for both difficulties?

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Because the needs of each difficulty vary.

With asymmetrical balance, you rely on intangibles. Comparing damage numbers or breakpoints is easy. But what’s the value of a 10% dodge boost? Of 4 stamina shields vs 3? Of better move speed during attacks, or situational movement (eg: Pickaxe heavy). There’s also stagger level, cleave, cleave falloff, stagger falloff, heashot multipliers, attack patterns, I’m just getting started.

V2 gameplay is very complex. When you push it to the limits for the sake of challenge, you necessarily winnow it down to the essential points, and not every intangible will necessarily survive. Also, It’s not just the weapons that need to be considered, it’s the balance and design of the difficulty itself. If mobility weapons are no good on Cata, I’d say that’s a problem with Cata, not the weapons. The design of the difficulty is determining what is or isn’t viable just as much as the weapons themselves.

It’s just not possible to balance things the same for every difficulty because the change in difficulty is itself a change in balance.

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I fail to see how something like, for example, a small increase to it’s armour damage or heavy attack speed would make it too good on Legend, yet such a change would help make it decent on Cata. On lower difficulties than Legend everything does so much damage balance is kind of irrelevant.

Not all weapons have to be perfectly balanced across all difficulties, but surely they can all be comparable to each other. The 1h Sword passes on Legend but it doesn’t compare at all to weapons like the Greatsword, Exec, Spear, Shield and Sword etc. on Cata.

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I don’t see how buffing under performing weapons will make cata too easy, you only use 1 weapon at a time and if sword was still a little weaker than the rest of the available weapons, you’ll still have to work harder to get results compared to using something better. It’s more interesting to have more than just a couple meta weapons for each hero, it gives us more to options to try out or swap to if the team comp needs it.

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Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that “everything must work on Cata”. This would be bad. BUT this must mean that you have to “study” your builds (properties, traits, talents, weapons, etc etc)… this must mean that certain careers can work only with certain weapons (for example 2H Hammer must not work with Huntsman).

But the phrase “This weapon is just too bad to be played at highest difficulties” is… is just sad. You are cutting off a part of the game.

The possibility to use more weapons, doesn’t make Cata easier… just adds more variety.

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