Is there any way we could get shred added to the heavy sword blessings pool? Even if it’s at a reduced capacity (like how head-taker has different values on heavy sword) I really like the weapon and would love to see it synergize a little easier with the crit feats in the way the other weapons can.
Not a bad point. Now that crucian is dead, I expect most heavy sword builds are dead, too. It can’t roll momentum either, right? So you can’t really build for a toughness regen build either.
Yeah, I mean the 5 percent you can get on perks certainly helps when you’re mobbed as you can cdr relatively quickly, but I feel like the weapon relied pretty heavily on crucian to work well, especially in damnation. But even with the perk that only puts you at a 10% crit chance overall which isn’t enough imo to keep up the toughness d/r snowballing that you need. Zealot feels like a class that’s asking you to press enemies when you get into it and if you can’t keep that d/r up it kinda makes it feel not that useful on the whole. It’s still serviceable but that would be my change.
Why? Turtolskys are the best horde-clear weapon. They have
- High base cleave (8.5 targets)
- Headtaker, which is one of the most overpowered Blessings in the game and really should be nerfed (it’s ~60% DPS buff at 5 stacks, and stacks only require a Hit)
- Wrath/Savage Sweep in case you want to further increase cleave
- Rampage which is an okay damage increase, as an acceptable alternative to +cleave
The only thing working against them is their awful armor damage (which is a fair tradeoff for lawnmower horde clear).
With Bugs like Crucian where you’re running an exploit on Weapon A to turbocharge Weapon B, nearly always it’s because Weapon B was an amazing weapon in its own right (and therefore of course you’d want to turbocharge the best weapon you could find).
As for toughness, I’m not against giving them some sort of blessing but honestly I’ve never felt I needed it on my good Turtolskys.
The only Turtolsky changes we need is to take a hard look at Turtolsky VIs which seem like they might be trash compared with the other two (due to much lower cleave values). But it’s hard to tell if the displayed value in Cleave Targets is only based on Light 1 (and maybe LIght 2 has better cleave?).
As for Shred, I do think the devs should take a look at adding something else for playstyle variety. That could either be Shred or the one that stacks +Impact for stagger. Basically give players options that aren’t just cleave and damage.
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I’ll take your word for it, since I’ve never seen a heavy with headtaker and acceptable rating, so it’s not something I’ve tried a lot. I just know secondhand that a lot of people seemed to run it with crit cheese 
Realistically I’m open to anything as far as blessings go. More than anything I just want more reliable synergy with crit builds (because I like them) But no doubt heavy sword is fine, and I can’t argue with you about horde clear as it is definitely a lawnmower. Also off-topic but I would love it if they brought back that VT2 perk that gave you attack speed on crits, that was always a blast.
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Heavy sword is already really strong, it never needed crit build to be great. With Crucian it was genuinely extremely dumb. I like that currently shred is a noticeably differentiator between heavy sword and DC sword. I really think changing that would be a mistake.
As a side note Zealot doesn’t need crit build to perform well whatsoever. It’s just a crutch that makes damage avoidance in melee borderline unnecessary.
Only carapace is a weakness. They destroy flak. My HS 2-3 shots most flak elites on Damnation, only crushers give you any real trouble, and maulers are a touch slow to kill since HS normally benefits hugely from head shots.
VI is my favourite variant. I saw testing done on the Zealot discord for different heavy sword variant horde DPS and the TL;DR is that the IX wins, but it’s a real small margin. HS has possibly the best balanced variants of any weapon in the game TBH. They’re all pretty close to one another and it’s mostly down to moveset preference. For MK VI your primary combo is light → heavy repeat, though spamming lights certainly works well enough.
If there’s an actual issue with heavy sword it’s not how strong head taker is, but how much of the weapon’s value lies in that one blessing. HS base damage should get a significant increase then HT should be knocked down to the values is has on other weapons. The overall power of heavy sword with optimal blessings should stay where it is now. It’s pretty perfect. Competitive with clearly defined strengths and weaknesses without invalidating any other weapon.
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I wish they’d just pick a goal. 30% DPS increase or something
Then design all blessings to try to roughly hit that goal.
If something is super easy like “on Hit” or “when you dodge” then let it maybe only provide 25% value or take a lot of hits/dodges to reach full value.
If something is rarer like “on Elite Kill” then either give a really good duration or sometimes a higher bonus. (And don’t make it a 5-stack like Superiority, a blessing that triggers on elite kills, actually is.)
It’s just weird that Headtaker, Slaughterer, and Decimator are so crazy OP compared with the other blessings. You can see at a glance how OP they are, it’s a little frustrating.
Same with ranged blessings and how underwhelming they all are compared with melee ones.
Ultimately I think I agree after a few more damnations with my trusty heavy last night. Like for me, I just love the power fantasy that comes along with the crit build, there is something about the woosh of the critical that does it for me. Anyway, I digress, I think for me it’s just I want a little bit more variety in blessings in retrospect. And as for headtaker, I agree, it’s not so much about how strong it is, but how pointless most other blessings feel for it. Anyway, heavy sword gang stay strong out there. Cheers.
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I never used crucian with heavy sword, it easily the most OP weapon for horde, light armour clear with the right blessings.
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Yeah I think they should play a little more with attribute/blessing variety on variants.
My Psyker got a Catachan with Wrath+Shred on it (so +cleave and +crit, both stacking on hit). It turned the Catachan into a sword that’s way closer to a Turtolsky, and I think would be a perfect weapon for what you want from Zealot. It’s particularly great because Catachans have Finesse, which increases their crit damage.
But you can imagine if they just took one of the Turtolsky variants and replaced something (maybe Cleave Damage) with Finesse, which increases attack speed and crit multiplier, and then they would give just that variant Shred so it can be “the crit Turtolsky” basically. I’d love to see them lean into the variants being a little more distinct. Hopefully it’s just a matter of tuning time.
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