There’s a lot of stuff that needs to be done to make many melee weapons viable as only a couple really are worth using but right now I’ll I want to do is add a suggestion to make the executioner sword viable. Right now the major strength of the weapon is its heavy attack, as it should be, but the problem is the extremely slow attack paired with the very low mobility with the weapon and short reach. Your movement slows and you don’t really get any speed boost when doing the charge like you do with many other melee weapons, and it means that you have to stand in melee range extremely vulnerable while you use it and there just are very few opportunities to do so without getting hit, voiding its major strength and any reason to use it.
All it really needs is just less of a movement penalty while doing to the heavy attack and/or a short dash forward while it’s swinging down, it’d make it very viable and actually pretty damn fun. I’d also argue that because the heft of the thing, it should have some armor piercing on its light attacks because the thing’s pretty much a giant falchion, But that’s not as important.
I play as merc Executioner since release and its far from needing any kind of buffs. More like halberd needs toning down with its push-attack combo and other weps slight buffs. Exec is in the fine position.
With proper traits, i can solo take out any hordes. Heavy attack is very strong and if you aim well guaranteed 1shot for most beside CW, its a fair balance of it being slow, You just dodge sideways , charge up and remove any elite.
And executioner sword , beside from being huge its job was to cut enemy heads off not to penetrate armour. Hence the weird shape of the sword tip.
It does feel weaker on huntsman and FK against hordes , because merc gets amazing cleaving bonuses. Still does its job well enough.
I agree with your points here, slow of a charge attack is a mechanic player has to work around. I don’t feel that exec needs a buff.
Just wanted to add that the historical use of the sword was not against “enemies” because it’s was not a combat weapon. It’s main use was, well, execution by decapitation.
The somewhat slow (i don’t really think it’s that slow) overhead deals twice as much damage as the overheads of the halberd, allowing you to one-shot SV, while the halberd needs two headshots with the overhead to take one down. I’d say it’s certainly viable and alongside the 1h mace and halberd, one of the better weapons on kruber.
Exec sword just has a high skill ceiling. One of (if not the) highest for a melee weapon. It doesn’t need a buff though. Like @Kazaanh said, it just deletes everything in one swing.
Yeah, there is one problem though - teammates. The swing is so slow, that the best strategy is to start charging it as you approach the enemy, in order to land the hit as the enemy comes closer. But then your teammates decide to “help” you. They stagger you target, it doesn’t come and you simply can’t reach it anymore.
And this not some occasional stuff, this situation gets repeated over and over again. And so far this is the biggest problem I have with this weapon.
Though waveclear is also below average. Even @Kazaanh admits, that
I never bothered measuring its dps and cleave, compared to regular 2h sword, though it seems a little weaker. But even if the numbers are fine, there is a very big problem with its attack pattern: you can’t afford hitting heads at all and the 3rd hit hitbox is just awful.
Summing this all up, I think Exexutioner sword definitelly needs some love.
Well it does have significantly less cleave and slightly less bodyshot damage on the first target on the lights compared to the 2h sword, but… well it almost certainly should, as the execs has the extremely powerful heavy, better attack angle on the light, way more headshot damage and can actually do something vs armored. Dealing with groups is the 1 thing the 2h sword can do, it should be extremely good at it.
Significantly less cleave
Slightly less bodyshot damage on the first target
Both of that on the light attacks (compared to 2h sword lights), as comparing heavies would make little sense.
My only gripe with the exec sword is its light attack speed. To me it feels to be in a weird spot: A bit too slow to do constant swinging like the regular 2-h sword, a bit too fast for effective back-and-forth movement like with the 2-h Hammer. The normal Attack speed buffs don’t quite get it there, and slowing down the attack isn’t an option. Probably that’s just a question of getting used to it and figuring some things out, though.
The charged attack is very slow, yes, but you can still dodge and maneuver around while charging it, and it’s very easy to headshot with (working better in that regard than in VT1, I feel).
I think you may be misreading it, according to the table:
Exec does 9.75 to the first, 7 to the second, 5.75 to the third and 4.25 to all remaining ones. All that with a cleave of 7.
The greatsword does 12.75 to the first, with it doing the same damage as the exec would to all remaining ones, with a cleave of 8.44.
Sidenote: The exec has the linesman modifier, which effectively increases it’s cleave by 67% to pretty much all relevant targets. This would allow it to pen more targets than the GS, but on the updated tables that also receives the linesman, allowing it to be better again (along the other buffs, like increasing it’s damage cleave).
So it has low attack speed, low stagger, bad pattern and a delay between 3rd hit and a new combo. Definitely needs buffing imo.
I would love to see some love for longsword also, like some more stagger and charged attack piercing 1 armored target, but that’s a whole another story.
Executioner’s swords weren’t actually a combat weapon when they were introduced at the end of the medieval era, rather they were a way to more nobly execute some one, as the person to be executed would be in a kneeling stance as opposed to hands and knees like with axes. The ‘light’ attack of it, is actually how it was used, swing wise, and they were very blade heavy. That said…
It is in a very, very good place IMO, if you can land the ‘weak spot’ hits on tank enemies (most call them bosses, but I save that for the specifically named ones, like Deathrattler) it does a rather notable chunk out of their HP, it’s also one of the best ‘special/elite’ killers for melee range in Kruber’s arsenal as outside of Chaos Warriors and Maulers, it’s pretty much a guaranteed one hit kill on heavy hits (power/charged attacks) and 2-3 hits if you land head blows on a Chaos Warrior, about 6 if you only hit the shoulders and such. The only thing I could think of would be to give it more cleave on non shield infantry or maybe to ‘flatten out’ it’s light hit swing ark some, especially on the backhand swing.
Maybe I just haven’t mastered it, but it feels…wierd to use. I WANT to love it, but like others have said, I tend to take too much damage while using it. It’s relatively slow to block, and even on light attacks your movement slows down enough that you can’t hit-move back-move forward-hit in quite the same way you can with other weapons, and certainly not as good as with halberd.
The charge attack I feel is so slow as to be mostly useless. You expose yourself to damage for way too long, so it’s really only usable if you come upon a single enemy. And if you come upon a single enemy, any of the ranged classes have killed/staggered the enemy long before your slow-ass charged attack finishes.
It also feels wierdly inconsistent in getting headshots on the light swings. Even aiming above the heads of the enemies, sometimes it will just hit shoulders and stagger them instead of proccing headshots, which is annoying on SV and maulers especially. If light attack headshot was more reliable, you could headshot, stagger and kill SV quite reliably with light attacks, which would make it far more usable. Because you really cant use the heavy attack if there is 3 or more SV.
we all will fight with bare hands… with 2H hammer, the only decent weapon; ALL other weapons need buff.