Simply put it doesn’t do enough ult damage against superarmoured bosses. It’s the only elf weapon that can’t kill a CW in one hit with the shade ultimate, against bosses it performs even worse.
If you crit headshot a rat ogre you will hit for 40.75 damage.
If you crit headshot Bodvarr you will hit for 31 damage.
However if you use the shade ult first you will hit the rat ogre for 203 damage, and Bodvarr for 31.5 damage.
In other words the shade ult gives you a 400% increase in damage vs rat ogres and a <1% increase vs Bodvarr, which is essentially nothing. Does that sound wrong to anyone else? The glaive heavy attacks also suffer from this to a slightly lesser degree, against Bodvarr you will deal just 18% more damage.
Admittedly all of the other elf weapons like dual daggers also have a very poor ult damage boost vs Bodvarr and Skarrik. However I think that the two specifically anti-armour weapons should receive a buff against those bosses. At the very least they should perform better than other weapons, instead of worse as is currently the case with the axe.
I always thought this was done on purpose? The glaive is one of the best weapons in the game for hordes and anti armour, they probably want shades to take daggers or S&D. Other wise every elf class would just be running the glaive. I guess I’ve seen a lot of elf players lately with spear as well.
Though I agree on having anti-armor weapons continue to be anti-armor weapons in all situations (because consistency), there are some cases where it has to be a video-game. @SmokerT69 is correct in saying that the Glaive is already a very good weapon and probably doesn’t need a buff to stay pertinent; Shade damage is very good and doesn’t particularly need further amplification. Even if it’s just for the bosses: her kit is already excellent for dealing with them.
Well, I always try to justify things with lore-bits. If that’s the case, I like to beleive he’s just been hit by enough axes that he is getting used to it at this point
Glaive is currently bugged, for some reason the 2nd doesnt really get any big damage boost on crits, even with a crit power setup.
I think the damage goes from like 51 to 57 on a armored dummy headshot, meanwhile spear goes from 25 to 51 or something like that, made a post that got acknowledged, but i hadnt actually checked if its the case of the axe as well.
To be honest, if you’re running glaive as a Shade, that’s on you. Dual Daggers has always been the best ULT damage for her. I don’t see an issue, and if you can’t run daggers or S&D while playing shade, that’s a skill issue. But in my opinion, a weapon shouldn’t be the best overall. Running an axe type weapon and trying to make it work like dagger just seems strange. Switch up you’re play style
I have to disagree. Right now the infiltrate damage bonus is just shoehorning Shade into using certain weapons. In theory all weapons should be equally viable at least with certain builds on all classes. We know it’s not possible, but making some weapon choices WAY worse than others is simply bad for the game, especially since axe to the back seems quite damn deadly if you ask me, and certainly no less deadly than lelven daggurs, especially vs armor.
Shade is already absolutely imbalanced class by itself, it doesn’t need sorry attempts at balance via discriminating axe users.
lol, think about this. Using an axe, you have to brute force pierce through armour to do damage. Where as with daggers or smaller blades, you can slide through armour. That’s the entire point of smaller finesse weapons.
Once upon a time, the Glaive was Shade’s strongest weapon. And being the overall very good weapon it is (and at that time, it was even stronger in general, if slightly trickier to use), it was overpowered. Now, it’s still a very good weapon in all aspects, but doesn’t dominate Shade’s (or other elf Careers’, for that matter) weapon choice. And of course, there’s the notion of a backstabbing assassin using a huge axe as her weapon of choice…
The handaxe, on the other hand, suffers. While my opinion on its being the boring, unnecessary addition to Kerillian’s arsenal isn’t as strong as it used to be, it still feels a bit lacking, and particularly on Shade. The damage bonus from Infiltrate isn’t enough to backstab a CW to death, which I’d say is one of the most common (and arguably most important) uses for Infiltrate, and that makes the weapon not only a suboptimal choice, but a useless one. An armor-piercing weapon, with an ability geared specifically for high single-target, single attack damage, cannot deal with its most common target cleanly. Combined with the normal troubles with the axe, this makes it practically denied from usability on Shade.
I’m not the kind of guy who thinks every weapon needs to be on equal footing on every Career; I think there can (and should) be differences in weapon efficiency on different Careers. But in this case, the difference is too great, and is one of the few weapon choices I consider plain foolish to pick. Even the Two-handed Sword or Spear can be as good choices for Shade as they are on any other Career: They have devastating headshot damage, and Shade can utilize that more easily than the other two (and they get a decent boost from Infiltrate). So yeah, while the Glaive is good enough on its own, and if used well, can actually be helpful for Shade, the single axe isn’t.
Ah i dont run glaive, i stopped using it at all because i realized it was bugged, as i mentioned the 2nd heavy crit doesnt do anywhere near the damage it should which isnt so good when using a setup built around crit.
But personally i always prefered SnD on shade, you have the daggers backstab and vastly superior fighting ability vs multiple opponents.
Who cares if the axe doesn’t synergize well with infiltrate? It’s still very powerful in every other scenario and on every elf career. It’s not like there aren’t already plenty of options that oneshot CWs and chunk bosses using infiltrate.
Weapons don’t all need to be strong in every possible scenario. There’s too much of that as it is.
Here’s some testing data I gathered for hits against CW with shade ult. These are all body hits from the front.
Daggers: Kills CW with any hit, including the push attack.
Dual Swords: Kills CW with heavy attacks.
Sword Dagger: Kills CW with light 3 (the dagger stab) and heavy attacks.
Spear: Kills CW with any of the stab attacks.
2h Sword: Kills CW with the heavy stab + 7% vs chaos or armour.
Glaive: Can’t kill CW with single light or heavy strikes, but if you ult one heavy attack the other will finish them off.
That leaves elf axe and 1h sword.
Axe will do 81.50 damage with a light attack or 95.75 with a heavy. (this is with 10% vs chaos)
1h sword does 54 damage with a light attack and 87 with a heavy.
Both weapons can only 1-shot a CW if you hit them in the head.
TBH this dynamic seems backwards to me. Dual weapons are by far the best for Shade because they blend hordes with ease and double (!) ult damage against bosses. Giving them the ability to completely trivialize CWs too just cements them as the meta. Heavier two handed weapons like Glaive and Spear are also viable but nowhere near as meta as dual wielding. Elf axe and 1h sword are pretty much useless by comparison. Which isn’t to say the weapons suck, only that in the hands of Shade they are so inferior to the other options available there is no reason to use them.
The general feeling seems to be that Shade is OP enough as it is. So instead of buffing the underperformers maybe we should nerf the meta a bit? I think Shade should have the capability of 1-shotting CWs, but maybe you should have to aim for the head and make it more of a finesse attack like WHC. Or at the VERY least you should have to backstab the target. Maybe reduce the power for ult body hits and maintain/increase it for headshots and backstabs, that would be more thematic to the class instead of the instant delete button it is for dual weapons.
Dagger do not “slide through armor” mate. Blades are actually really bad at piercing plate, ypu need something heavy and solid to damage armor, axe can go through some thinner plate if you apply enough force and if you hit the head, blunt force trauma alone may do the job. With dagger you really have to hit an armpit or a joint and hope for the best. But you can as well strike the back of the knee or at the elbow joint or at the foot or hand with an axe and disable the enemy just as well (glaive would most likely just amputate said limb) also a good axe chop seems like an awfully good way of killing big enemies - a strong hit to the lower spine and Ratogre ends up on wheelchair.
I understand that elf uses finesse to accurately strike at unarmored spots, but axe can strike some of those too and can reliably hurt some parts with thinner armor that daggers would just slide past. Also it’s a game and most things don’t work in a logical manner - spear sweep deals more superarmor damage than charged thrust, unless you land a headshot, then it’s the opposite.
Just a sidenote. GLAIVE IS BUGGED
H2 non crit headshots on armor deal more damage than crits… (This also applies to dualaxes…)
So glaive is fine, if the bug is fixed…
Ugh, stuff like this makes it really difficult to talk about balance because you can never be sure what’s supposed to be a feature and what’s just bugged in the first place. I know a lot of Kruber’s weapons have the same exact issue, wrong damage multipliers, less damage on crits etc. That’s one of the major reasons why I decided to shelve him for a while and try other stuff like Shade.
