Sensible Weapon changes suggestions

My turn on weapon finetuning. All weapons are legend viable, some just need a little love. Most are fine. Numbers are subject to balance, ofc.

I judge weapons based on how much of their movesets can actively be used in combat, and by experience. Categorisation of (melee) weapons is bascially:
Unarmoured specialisation: light and heavy attacks good vs. nonarmoured, worse against armoured (swordtypes)
Armoured specialisation: light and heavy attacks good vs. armoured, worse against nonarmoured (áxe-types)
Mixed specialisation: clear purpose of attacks, mixed anti armoured and anti unarmoured (mace and dagger types)

Traits:
Heatsink: Can only trigger once per 0.25 seconds.
Resourceful Comb./Sharpsh.: Make them actually do what the tooltip says, so they get useful for the longer cooldowns, not the shorter ones.
Scrounger: Internal cooldown
alternative 1: Cannot trigger more than three times in one second, so weapons like the repeater crossbows from Kerillian and Saltzpyre are included. Maximum ammo gain: 1 Shot -> 3x 2 shots = 6 - 1 one used shot = 5 shots.
alternative 2: Cannot trigger more that once every 0.25 seconds. Buff Repeatercrossbow ammo on both weapons slightly. Could be problematic for repeater guns.
Off balance: Make it actually do what the tooltip says: 50% for the 3s. Powerful, but has tough competitors and is very situational.
Inspirational Shot: Let it grant one full stamina shield to each team member. Still hard to justify imho.
Opportunist: Really hard to test, justify or measure. Rework idea: Your pushattacks interrupt all ongoing attacks in your effective pushattack radius. 10 seconds cooldown. Buff icon appears if ready.

Stats:
Increase in effective push and block angle also increases your pushrange (usually 2.5) by 5%-10%. So both stats get rolled on the single stat “slot”. Both are rolled in equal range -> Midrange blockpushangle = midrange pushrange.
Rework respawn speed to respawn speed and distance, so you respawn faster and closer. Or remove it completely.

Characters:

Markus “I like orders” Kruber:
Executioner Sword: Fine
Halberd: Semmingly really popular, yet most attacks of this weapon dont appear to be used. I think its identity was intedend as a mix of a twohanded sword + twohanded axe + spear. If to be buffed: Requires major changes/moveset rework imho. If to be nerfed: Remove a stamina shield. Maybe leave as is.
Hammer/Mace: Grant damagemodel of light attack no. 4 to light attack no. 3. Strengthen purpose of light attack chain: anti inf -> anti inf -> anti armor -> anti armor.
Hammer/Shield: Change Shield bash heavy attack to weapon alternative fire, add second heavy attack thats the same as the other, just the backswing.
Sword: Fine.
Sword and Shield: Change Shield bash heavy attack to weapon alternative fire. Let lightattack-lightattack follow up into the new second heavy attack (former 3rd heavy sweep).
Twohanded Hammer: Fine.
Twohanded Sword: Fine.
Blunderbuss: Fine if scrounger gets internal cooldown.
Handgun: Fine.
Emp. Longbow: Fine, if bugfixed.
Repeater Handgun: Grant 8 more shots.

Kerillian:
Repeater Crossbow: Fine.
Dual Daggers: Reduce mass cleave/stagger/damage values for the light attacks to 1, so only one target can be hit at all times.
Twohanded Sword: Bugfix the pushattack delay already, please. Otherwiese fine with the most recent changes to attackcycles and headshotdamage.
Dual Swords: Grant pushattack the damagemodel of Kruber Sword and Shield pushattack stab (17 armoured headshot dmg). Let light 1 into heavy 2 be a repeatable combo.
Spear: Fine.
Elven Sword: Grant lightattack 3 the damagemodel of Kruber Sword and Shield pushattack stab (17 armoured headshot dmg).
Sword and Dagger: Grant pushattack and lightattack 4 the damagemodel of Kruber Sword and Shield pushattack stab (17 armoured headshot dmg.). Let lightattack 1 - lightattack 2- lightattack 3 combo into heavy 2.
Glaive: Fine.
Hagbane: Fine.
Longbow: Fine.
Swiftbow: Slightly increase chargedattack headshot damage on armored targets (11.50 would be nice).

Bardin “Yoo hoo” Goreksson:
Axe: Slightly increase heavy attack speed to match with 1h Hammer/Mace. Could use a tiny power increase for the light attacks to hit fanatic bps with full commitment (3x 10% power).
Axe and Shield: Change shield bash heavy to weapon alternative fire.
Dual Axes: Fine.
Great Axe: Fine.
Hammer/Mace: Grant damagemodel of light attack no. 4 to light attack no. 3. Strengthen purpose of light attack chain: anti inf -> anti inf -> anti armour -> anti armour.
Hammer and Shield: Change Shield bash heavy attack to weapon alternative fire, add second heavy attack thats the same as the other, just the backswing.
Pick: Speed up the charged attacks very slightly.
Twohanded Hammer: Fine.
Grudgeraker: Fine if scrounger gets internal cooldown.
Drakefire Pistols: Fine.
Drakegun: Fine.
Crossbow: Fine.
Handgun: Fine.

Victor “REPENT” Saltzpyre:
Axe: Slightly increase heavy attack speed to match 1h hammer.
Falcion: Fine.
Flail: Fine.
Rapier: Fine.
Twohanded Sword: Fine.
Brace of Pistols: Fine.
Repeater Pistol: Grant 16 more shots. Victors Swiftbow!
Repeater Crossbow: Fine.
Crossbow: Fine.

Sienna “Negotiate? Immolate!” Fuegonassus
Ceremonial Dagger: Fine.
Flaming Sword: Rework pushattack to be a stab, and grant it and lightattack 3 the damagemodel of Kruber Sword and Shield pushattack stab (17 armoured headshot dmg).
Mace: Fine.
Sword: Fine.
Beam Staff: Fine.
Bolt Staff: Fine.
Conflagration Staff: Fine.
Flamestorm Staff: Fine.
Fireball Staff: Fine.

My opinions about the weapon balance. Sure, you can always go into the really fine damage models and breakspoints, but I’m painting with a big brush here.
Feel free to add your thoughts and thanks for reading!

  1. Edit: 1h Axe.

In testing on the modded realm, I’ve found that the pick performed worse than I expected basically across the board. I think the only weapon that did worse against an A.I.-disabled rat ogre was Hammer+Shield, because it relied purely on push-stab spam. Can’t recall off-hand, but I think 1h mace also beat it on clear speed for 30 fanatics.

Replacing the 1st charged attack with the 2nd charge attack (and removing the 2nd charge tier entirely) could make it much more competitive, but obviously that’s hard to validate on my end.

In short, the weapon is low damage, with slow attacks and poor mobility. Executioner’s Sword is a direct upgrade imo.

It’s probably a fine weapon on Saltz’s kits with the power increases, but I think the weapon really struggles on Bardin. The charge attack is a slower version of 1h hammer while doing the same damage, but you’re better off spamming light attacks anyway.

It can’t hit the fanatic bodyshot breakpoint. The best breakpoint would be 30% skaven/armored to two-shot headshot SV with lights, but at that point you could just run crossbow with 40% skaven/armored.

I think the light attack body-shot damage could be buffed from 13.25 to 15. That lets it hit a bunch of cool breakpoints with the right builds. Alternatively the attack speed could be sped up to match 1h hammer’s attack speed. Either way, there also needs to be a reason to use the charged attack.

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Axe isn’t fine, its charged attack damage is terrible.

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I agree somewhat on the axe part. It feels like for saltz, there are possibilites to make it work with breakpoints, or if youre just skilled, to go with all headshots during a chaos horde. But I agree for bardin, no power to get there, and the lower POV makes it quite hard to reliably headshot fanatics.

Added the stuff to the list.

The Halberd is popular for a reason. It’s versatile (with good cleave and AP, including armor-piercing on a cleaving attack), safe (as it has very good reach and its most used attack pattern includes block-canceling, plus enough attack speed that it won’t expose you), and strong (with good enough damage on cleaving attack and a powerful push-attack, attack combo for single targets, armored or not). And as OP noted, only a small part of its attacks are used (heavy attacks never, and only two of its light attacks, in separate situations. This indicates it will need heavy modification in the future, likely to its whole attack patterns (as I don’t think simple number-tweaking will change how it is used).

Double Daggers are another weapon that likely need some limitations. It could be limiting their cleave (as OP suggested), but I doubt that’s enough. Their heavy attack Monster damage could be another place where they’re too strong, being the weapon of choice for every career for those who like to optimize.

Kerillian’s Two-hander still feels clumsy. Push-attack delay is part of it, but not all. The heavy attacks are still difficult to aim (like all stabs), as they require headshots to deal with armor. I’m not sure how that could be fixed, though.

One-handed axe feels… lacking. Personally, I could barely make it work on Champion (even as I normally play Legend). I do understand that it’s partly playstyle and skill issue, but its non-existent cleave, low-ish mobility and quite slow attacks combine as a less-than-ideal weapon.

Otherwise, I pretty much agree. As a general comment, though, digging as deep as you can into why things feel bad is the most helpful to the devs, instead of simply proposing changes. They need to know the reason for those proposals, to better assess whether they actually fix the underlying problem and to figure out other possible solutions. There has been a dev post about that in Reddit, even linked on the forum, but I’m too lazy to search for it now.

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Will add descriptive feeling as to why to bigger changes in OP.

I think that Halberd is one the most balanced weapon… good to do all, but excellent in nothing; good vs horde? Sure, but the pattern attack > block > attack > block isn’t comfortable like just 2H sword attacks spam. Push attack is good vs armor, but consume stamina.
Also, it has low mobility.

p.s every weapon has unused patterns.

Ayway there are various weapons that need an (imho) urgent buff, like:

  • Kruber and Sienna 1H sword (it should have same Falchion damage);
  • all shielded weapons (they should have more taunt power and noone damage through block);
  • Sienna flame sword (more power with overheat?);
  • blunderbuss (more damage vs armor and boss);
  • empire longbow (little more damage vs boss);
  • kruber and Saltz rep gun (general improvements);
  • Kruber and Bardin handgun (it should have zero spread also in hip fire);
  • flail (all light attack should be against horde);

There would also be more…

After revisting ingame and a little bit of contemplation, I feel like Bardins Onehanded Axe should have the same damage model as his 2h axe light attacks for the light attacks. This would solve the fanatic breakpoint “issue” and grant him more damage. Heavyattacks could just get the speed of the Onehanded Hammer.

Problem is: its the same as the 2h axe in terms of damage, but with other attack angles/speed. Is that a big problem though?

For Saltys Onehanded Axe I feel like giving him the 2h Axe heavy attack damage model. He still has to work for the fanatic bp, but the heavies are just so much stronger, and still single (or two) targets. Would make using the current, slow heavies way more impactful. Maybe take away the 2nd target from the lights?

Reasons: As other ppl have stated, BPs are hard to hit with barding 1h axe, and victors axe heavy are barely worth using over lights, due to safety and speed.

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