Sienna melee thoughts

Hello!

So after having played the WoM beta for a while i went back to play around more in detail on live to get a proper feeling for the careers i normally dont play or stopped playing previously.

The ones i normally play are Saltzpyre (WHC) and Kerillian (waystalker) as i enjoy both mobility and anti special styles.

Now having seen the others in action a fair bit i was able to quickly make sense of both Kruber and Bardin and find my own ways to comfortably play those, even finished pulling them up to level 30 which i hadnt done.

But then i got to the reason i decided to make this post, Sienna.

Now i have no real complaints when it comes to her staves, they all have their own purposes and things they are good at, but to me her melee feels like an absolute mess.

First up, dagger and mace and crowbill all feel like they do the same job, killing one guy with a lot of certainty either by a few rapid its or a few slower ones but what they do is still similar…,…well the mace has some cleave but it also attacks more slowly.

But Crowbill has AP on all its attacks and a great attack pattern ontop of being nearly as fast as the dagger so it just ends up being the best of the 3.

Meanwhile the normal sword and the flame sword are both utterly terrible against armor,…like you´d expect that a claw made of fire would scare a furred rat dressed in clothes and armor but it barely even hurts the dang things.

Their main cleave is stuck on their heavy attacks which limits their mobility but the cleave is too low to really make it amazing or feel good to use at all.

The damage being kinda bad and the stagger similarly being low also does not help either the burn is also too low to make an impact on anyone except Battle wizard´s who has the talent to make it last as long as needed.

So all in all, she has a severe overlap in terms of function between her weapons. This ontop of all of them except Crowbill being kinda bad is just pouring saltwater on the fire.

So i have some suggestions, albeit only general ones.

  • Make the mace the best against armor and shields, that´s actually what maces were used for in reality so doing this makes a fair bit of sense, then have it do some more fire damage because its Sienna´s mace.

It would need some cleave though as a lower speed makes it risky enough to compensate.

  • 1hand sword ought to be the real cleave machine among Sienna´s arsenal, it only needs a bit of a damage/cleave buff on the heavy attacks to be good or close to good, similar in way to Kerillian´s dual swords.

  • Flame sword keep the cleave and the stagger as it is now but amp the damage against stuff in general and make that burn actually accomplish something, honestly the damage on this thing felt so bad even on overcharged unchained i could only drop it.

To illustrate how terrible the flame sword is against armor, the first heavy attack consisting of a direct hit + 2 burn DOT ticks does 5 damage in total.

5 damage…-…a legend chaos warrior has 120 health.

Also, Fire swird ought to burn stuff on every hit…Although the same goes for the Crowbill.

As for the crowbill and the dagger…to be honest i figure that keeping the crowbill as it is might be fine if the dagger is buffed to be generally better against all targets without armor, this would at least prevent overlap and give them clear roles.

If someone has any thoughts or a different perspective feel free to share^^

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The reasoning for why Sienna’s melee was universally terrible to mediocre until crowbill was added was that her staves were supposed to make up for them. Her staves aren’t bad, each capable of dealing with hordes and stormvermin to varyingly satisfying degrees, but I don’t feel they quite justify such lacking melee tools.

Normal sword is a good all-rounder weapoon (note that against armor, use the heavy + heavy + light overhead combo for some good damage) on Unchained. Crowbill is good on anyone, but the rest of her weapons seem entirely redundant compared to these two, with Firesword trying to fill a niche of anti-horde weaponry in an arsenal that is already perfectly capable of dealing with them. I still enjoy using the Firesword on my Unchained, and I will continue to use it out of love for its aesthetics and feel (claw-attacking mixed hordes never felt so satisfying!) even while I acknowledge it is the absolutely worst tool in her arsenal.

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Given that all careers have ranged weapons for one situation or the other (except slayer) i think its only fair to let Sienna have better melee if that was the reason to leave it behind x)

But to be honest i think Fatshark has just gotten themselves busy with other things which is why i chose to post as i did, or even if they did reason as such then giving them a different view is also good feedback.

And i mean,given how often you are forced to actually melee it makes little sense to bad at it which is why every Sienna i have seen for a long time now runs Crowbill.

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I think this is where you hit the nail on its head. All her staves are powerful, and all of her Careers can be played as almost completely ranged. Unfortunately, all but one of them have one major weakness - armour. And super armour in particular, i. e. Chaos Warriors. Only the Bolt Staff can reasonably deal with them, and it isn’t horribly strong otherwise - in fact, a few small tweaks for it have been asked for a long time, and personally I’d describe it as “mediocre”.

While usually, melee and ranged weapons are used to complement each other, that’s hard to do with Sienna, as most of her melee weapons have a hard time dealing with CWs. Only the Crowbill really hits that niche, and I’d argue that’s the real reason why it feels so strong for many: It’s the best choice to complement her ranged weaponry. All of the others deal with soft targets easily, and normal armor at least usefully (through headshots, control and/or DoT).

As the normal Sword is shared with Kruber, I’d be careful about touching that. Personally, I find it a quite versatile weapon, and don’t need much need to touch it. The rest are unique to Sienna, though, and could well be tweaked to deal with armour more effectively (and in more varied ways). I think a simple solution would be to allow the fire DoT to hit even through super armour, even if it’s at a quarter strength or so. (Iirc, it already hits normal armour with half damage.) After all, Flame sword and Dagger particularly play a lot with the DoT, and that would allow them to do at least some more damage to super armour without needing headshots. The Mace, in my opinion, needs a bit more dexterity and/or varied strike patterns to be quite useful.

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I don’t think you’re wrong; the Crowbill has been taking the cake for a hot second now and I also beleive that @Yzneftamz pegs the point on the head. Admittedly, however, that’s never stopped me from playing a Sienna designed for crowd-fighting where I ignore the armor and tear everything else to pieces. I love me that Fire-Sword for the epic looking claw attack. It does almost no damage but ignites the targets in flame, which I find absolutely badass! More often than not (if I’m not using the Crowbill) I actually find myself strictly power-attacking with Sienna… the cleave is handy, the stagger is good, and it’s just so satisfying.

I agree that her functionality is lacking. Personally (and I mean it is entirely my opinion, not at all a balance point) I’ve not minded her combat state and rather enjoy her swords/crowbill. That being said, I think others would appreciate a statistical reason to reach out beyond what they already use.

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I absolutely agree that the firesword, and its claw attack, look cool, really damn cool.

Badass.

But then going to a armored target dummy and seeing that it does like…was it …5 damage for a level 25 and fully equiped battle wizard? Is just so damn sad.

Even on a unarmored target its just ~10 damage…which is the same as a light attack, and it only directly hits 2 targets.

So as i see it the problem isnt that Crowbill is actually OP, its more on the lines that the rest of her stuff is horrendously weak if the fire sword is anything to go by.

Honestly i am not fond of such a stale repertoire of weaponry where all of them except one are used for the same things and you just pick whichever happens to work the best, which is why i made the post essentially asking for changes and even buffs x)

I believe changing them to have a clear purpose is a good first step, then buffing them so they can accomplish that would be a good way to go about it.

On my level 25 battle wizard (fully equipped) the fire sword does 10 damage with its first heavy, 5 with the second, meanwhile crowbill does 10 with a light attack, 17 with a heavy and 20 with a light headshot (which are easy to do).

Mace? Doesnt even have armor pen on all its light attacks and heavy headshots does as much as the crowbill light ones…Its a damn mace why isnt it one of if not the best against armor?

The knights from the middle ages will revive and call it a fraud!

So as i see it, the problem is not the crowbill being overpowered, its the rest of her weapons being very underpowered, perhaps as a result of some balance patch being meant to tone her down from a long time ago.

Even if she shares the 1hand sword with kruber it can use buffs, i dont see any kruber use it either, or any kerillian use her´s.

So all in all she needs her weapons to gain clear purposes, then buffs so that they can fulfill those well enough but also be somewhat versatile so you dont end up hopelessly stuck dealing with what should be a average situation.

If the problem with her weapons is so severe that the unchained melee power boost of 60% cant fix it then her weapons are truly subpar.’

Just to mention, before anyone starts getting wrong impressions: I quite agree that Sienna’s melee selection needs changes. But in contrast to @Frostysir, I’m not certain they need a strict buff, rather than a wider selection of options on the current weapons.

Sword, Mace, Flame Sword and Dagger all deal easily with soft targets, including hordes. So do all of Sienna’s staves. In addition, Sword, Dagger and Mace are reasonable at headshotting, including Stormvermin. They have variable weighting changing between DoT, control and agility, but only the Crowbill is an armour specialist. Also several of her ranged options are good at dealing with regular armour, either through control and allowing friends to do more (Conflagration, Flamestorm) or direct damage and DoT. These overlap significantly. And because the game isn’t really friendly to specialist builds, especially horde specialists, this puts Sienna’s options in a nasty spot: If you want the weapons to complement each other (in particular, you want a weapon that deal well with CWs and other armour) you have very limited choices in either side.

Her melee weapons work quite well in the roles they have, but unfortunately that isn’t a role they need to fulfill. Thus, I think that they don’t really need a buff, but rather just changes. That can be done through targeted buffs to enhance their capability, in differing amounts and ways, against (heavy) armour, but outside of that I find them quite fine.

As an aside, the Crowbill may be a bit too strong altogether, but as it has hardly any competition in its niche, it’s hard to judge. If anything, it’s agility and strike speed could be toned down, but not by much.

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Admittedly, though, the fire-swipe does vastly more burning damage-over-time than it does on contact, which should be taken into account… or is it 5 with all of that damage included?

1 damage on the direct hit then 2 damage per DOT tick.

You wana try killing a Chaos warrior on legend (120 health) with this? : P

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sienna was over tuned in ranged then they nerfed it hard and buff others chars’,
yet her melee stay weak and ranged is nothing vivid comparison and even mildly weak in most situations.
she definitely need some love.

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I agree with OP on the theme but disagree on pretty much all the details.

Sword- Quite possibly the most balanced weapon in the game - notably it’s a duplicate of Kruber’s Sword, so it doesn’t have the built in awkwardness of Sienna’s other weapons. Good all around multi purpose weapon - just remember the Heavy-Heavy-Light combo for dealing with armor, aim the 3rd overhead strike at the head and this combo will 1hit a SV.

Fire Sword - Hot garbage for all purposes at all times, although maybe it will get some use when WoM hits and stagger is needed, since it’s the best stagger weapon in the game. However it is fully incapable against armor, so even with the stagger changes in WOM it’s going to be a niche weapon at best. It’s a CC support weapon with almost no killing power except against slave rats and zombies.

Dagger - Very good but very awkward. It’s stagger/CC is very good and I expect it to be a top tier weapon in WOM. With the right combo (Push stab to head>heavy 1> heavy 2 > light 3 to head > repeat) you can stack a lot of DoT and headshot damage for some really good dps, but it’s pretty inaccessible to anyone that hasn’t spend too much time at the target dummy testing combos. It’s a shame that it needs such a complicated combo just to get to break even compared to Sword. I don’t mind the complexity but it could really use a way to shortcut to the 2nd heavy attack for easier access to the anti-armor move - there should be some benefit to mastering a difficult weapon, not just breaking even.

Mace - Good in concept but just not that great. It’s too weak for how slow it is. The swing animations take forever and it actually does less damage then the Sword, with the sole exception of the heavy overhead strike. My team will usually kill what I’m aiming at before my heavy attack is halfway through it’s swing. This would be a good weapon if it had a damage boost or an attack speed boost. Also, the attack pattern on this weapon is really clumsy and doesn’t feel satisfying to use. It’s just block cancel>overhead strike, or push attack>heavy sweeps. The rest of the attacks are just weak filler that you try to avoid as much as possible.

Crowbill - It hurts armored things. Meh. Good for pairing with an AOE staff but pretty weak on it’s own.

Of Sienna’s melee weapons, only Sword and Crowbill are actually decent choices. The rest are all lacking in some critical area. Her staves are good but definitely not good enough to make up the difference.

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You definitely have some experience playing Sienna. Well put together post. I would like to add in on two points though.

Fire sword is actually really good at dealing with mixed hordes as long as there are no CWs in them. With h1 > h2 > l1 > l2 you can take out at least one SV or Mauler per combo while staggering the rest without issues. In general I agree though. It struggles so much against CWs and bosses that it’s just painful to play when you have to deal with them yourself, and so does dagger.

It’s anything but weak. I didn’t like it initially but if I’m running harder content it’s a must unless the rest of the group has plenty of stopping power. Dodge dancing a horde paired with the l3 or l4 and a few push-attacks is easy enough even though it takes some time. When it comes to anti armor it’s a beast and it does good enough boss damage to contribute. A slight disadvantage to unchained because she doesn’t have tHP on kill but also a great power boost due to her other career specific mechanics.

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Sienna’s melee weapons in a nutshell. (imo)

Crowbill: Very Good, excellent anti-armor capability, high damage, somewhat poor cleave.

1H Sword: Good, well rounded.

Fire Sword: Average, Good CC, terrible vs armor, heavy attacks look cool.

Fire Dagger: Bad, horrible at basically everything except attack speed.

Fire Mace: Bad, weird attack pattern, clunky, poor against armor despite being a mace, overall just yuck.

Everything below the 1H sword needs buffs

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How does that hurt SV? That’s a whopping 0 (+2 from dot) > 12 > 0 > 0 damage to a SV, which have 39 health. And none of those attacks can be reliably aimed at heads.

l3 is a single target side swipe and l4 is single target a stab + a dot. What’s special about these that helps with hordes?

I don’t understand how that’s supposed to help.

I’m not big on crunching numbers but for the fire sword the h2 and especially the light stab (pref. headshot) is what usually does it. Point of the combo is to deal with mixed hordes and that’s why you value a high stagger attack (h1) to keep the rest of the enemies in check. It’s nowhere close other melee options for other characters but more of an interesting and safe way to deal with them. >>Super slow but effective nonetheless<<

The stab attack on the crowbill has good enough stagger to be able to work on hordes with the crowbill and it can’t possibly be single target. It affects multiple damage, kind of like the fireball AoE but much smaller. The power of the weapon itself along with the fact that you can deal with horde using it exclusively makes it a really good option for smaller mixed hordes as well. Especially when you mix in a few stormvermin (non-shielded) in a skaven horde.

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But her staves are not good. They are good only against hordes. Against elites or specials they are just bad compare to other heroes guns like repeat gun, long bow, X bow.

She cant kill something with fast witch. Elf can kill something with bow very fast with one shot in the head(what you need in 99% cases). Sienna just cant do it. And elf has the best melee weapons in the game too.
Her staves are innacurate and have slow projectiles.

Thats why she least played hero.

They fill a purpose.

Fireball is wrecking most things, excluding CWs but including bosses.

Conflag does good damage but focus more on control, once again excluding CWs + less damage against bosses.

Flameweave can wreck everything except bosses (somewhat limited experience with this one), but it’s also lacking range unless paired with the Pyromancer (and her ult.)

Bolt is probably the most versatile staff but also requires the most heat management atm.

Bolt is hard to utilize well and not as rewarding. It could definitely function better. Can do decent damage but with a lot of heat management and headshots are required for the most part.

Most of my games are missing an elf at the moment. It’s been like that for quite some time in contrast to how the elf was always taken the first 9 months after release.

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She has nothing good against specials. Bean is kinda ok, but still meh.
Hagbane or grudge or drakefire pistols are very good against hordes too. And they have a good melee weapons too.
So staves are not superior to guns. But her melee is just awful.

Conflag staggers and hopefully sets specials on fire. Fireball is just cleaving entire hordes so it’s always a golden option, way better than most ranged atm. If we’re only talking specials in hordes I agree that the other ones suffer a bit, just like most ranged weapons do atm, but if it’s a special outside of a horde you’ll only have a hard time killing it with the flameweave staff in my experience.

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