I think this blessing needs a buff or a retooling of somekind. Currently how the game is meant to be played at higher levels blocking is not really a thing besides in the most direst of circumstances or if you’re being targeted by a boss that’s doing a long attack chain, like chaos spawn crawling on the floor while rapidly hitting you.
Also it is more often it is just better to dodge to avoid incoming attacks than blocking.
As an idea for a buff:
Buff this blessing so it stack 6 times. This is so that it is comparable with Thrust which gives 60% strength at max stacks and it arguably does it much easier.
I think it’d be a better if this blessing was changed so that you gain stacks also from pushing enemies. Pushing is a defensive tool to give you and your team space, so it fits the theme.
Say for example, on blocking 1 attack = gain 3 stacks. While one push against an enemy = gains 2 stacks.
Consuming 1 stack per attack is in my opinion fine and a good way to balance this.
To me making such a limited blessing suggests they’re aware of how OP strength is and decided to avoid making yet another boring strength blessing for a weapon. For comparisons sake, Slaughterer is 40% strength and just stays on so long as it doesn’t time out. As a result, slaughterer is almost a required pick on any weapon that has it (minus some that have an even better strength or otherwise mandatory blessing, like brutal momentum). For some reason though they decided to make a strength blessing for the shield in the form of Offensive Defence anyway, and as you say, it’s ass because the activation mechanic makes it pointless.
A bit of a tangent but my point is that I don’t think they should be adding mandatory blessings to weapons and strength with good uptime is in almost all cases simply mandatory. It’d probably outperform skullcrusher so you lose a slightly interesting mechanic (things that are staggered take more damage) in favor of a boring one (just strength for doing what you’d already do anyway). In the same vein I’d like them to rework Offensive Defence into something that isn’t just “you get strength, so now you have to pick it”
They should also remove other weapons strength and otherwise mandatory blessings but that’s the toughest to swallow pill. Just bake them into the weapon a little bit instead and let people have fun with a combat axe that isn’t headtaker/decimator+BM.
This blessing should also be reworked to reward perfect blocks. We shouldn’t reward an Ogryn that stands in the middle of a horde holding RMB blocking swings.
In fact, just getting 50% Strength on your next attack after a perfect block might be better. We really need to reinforce doing frequent Perfect Blocks as a high(er)-skill option for Ogryn.
I very much agree the likes of Slaught are waaay too braindead for the power they provide. I would rather they make the condition harder to proc, but it might just be worth ditching them altogether, right next to the 25% damage perks. I mean, most blessings are either worthless, boring, or both. So it’d be like plugging holes in a leaking ship, at a certain point they should build a better boat.
Removing blessings like Slaughterer and headtaker wouldn’t make other blessings more appealing to weapons. The reason why you never see someone use stuff like Perfect Strike on slab shield is purely because it is a non-sensical and terrible blessing no matter how you spin it.
Ogryn already has the worst crit chance in the game, and most of his weapons do f*ck all crit damage because his crit modifiers are terrible.
Same goes for blessings like Bash, Devastating Strike and Unstoppable Force on the cleavers.
These blessings are all bad on a conceptual level.
Removing good blessings which are arguably simple and well designed, just makes the game worse. And it is also just punishing the players for prefering and wanting efficiency over badly designed gimmicks.
And agree that Fatshark should remove blessings, but I think they should specifically remove useless blessings. Like Smack Down and Perfect Strike. Nobody picks these because they just suck and no amount of buffing is going to make them any better.
The point I was trying to make was that most blessings suck either on a practical or conceptual level. Blessings that reward you for doing what you’d already be doing are as bereft of creativity as the ones that ask you to jump through hoops for a pittance. They might be simple, but they’re not well designed.
The point of blessings is to add more player agency, a few all-round better blessings are anti-choice. At least I can look at Perfect Strike and say “Yeah, if I had a crit build, I might use this.” And Smack Down at least encourages using your special attack, something most people don’t use with most weapons. They suck on a practical level, but are conceptually better than “I hit things and get better at hitting things.”
If whether or not a weapon’s “fun” is based solely on having 1-2 specific blessings, then the weapon’s bad and should be buffed, and those blessings subsequently removed. Blessings shouldn’t be band-aids.
If you remove all the “bad” blessings till only the few good ones remain, you’re just ignoring the problems intrinsic to the weapon while removing player choice in the process.
Even on a crit build perfect strike isn’t good, specifically a crit zealot using a eviscerator has an access to that blessing, but the reason why nobody uses it is because using shred and rampage is always better. Arguably even shred + wrath (which eviscerators also have access to) is also more appealing choice because you get 200% cleave just chaining attacks instead of hoping you get a crit which ignores hit mass from enemy armor. And it ONLY ignores hit mass from armor.
If you wanted something like perfect strike to be worth using it should ignore all enemy hit mass on a critical hit and it should be giving you 30% crit damage on top. Then it’d be something worth consider using on a weapon.
Smack down is in the same category, smack down is bad because it is 20% crit chance for only 2 seconds, and it is specifically 20% crit chance on a weapon for a class that does not benefit from crits at all and has the lowest crit chance in the game. Also the said crit chance is only against staggered enemies, which is another hoop to jump through.
Reliability and consistency is the key here. People will always prefer consistent and reliable blessings over ones that are not.
I beg to differ, I have tons of fun with perfect strike on a crit build on the Evisc that only does light horizontals. In practice and with the right build you can stunlock walls of elites with it. It’s fun, it changes how the weapon plays, it’s a good blessing.
Meanwhile rampage is boring and keeps the weapon the same, only giving you strength for doing exactly what you do with the weapon without the blessing, too.
I won’t deny rampage is better because strength is just good, but you also can’t deny that if rampage didn’t exist you would have more variety with fun blessings instead. Even rev up is fun to use. It competes with rampage/shred though and that’s really the end to entertaining the thought of running it.
Chainaxes face a very similar balance situation. I’m simply advocating to not create the same balance situation on more weapons
I feel like you missed the point I was making here. I was not saying Perfect Strike or Smack Down are good blessings, in fact:
Saying that “No one uses this because Shred and Rampage is always better” is exactly why Shred and Rampage are conceptually bad blessings. Because Shred and Rampage ask for little from the player, all while being objectively better than the blessings that are build dependent, and encourage stepping outside your comfort zone. How is that not poor design?
As a blessing becomes harder to use, their reward should become greater. These “Set and Forget” blessings are too potent, while the more complicated blessings you have to work to get value from are too weak.
This boat has too many holes in it, and FS ain’t even trying to patch them. If I didn’t enjoy these kinds of debates so much, I’d say we are all wasting our time here.
Then is it not better to make the weapons themselves more reliable and consistent and let blessings be more creative?
This is 100% the point I’m trying to make. Also the weapons end up balanced around the power blessings anyway, so in the end by giving a weapon a consistent strength blessing, you’re really just giving up a blessing slot. If you disagree, you haven’t tried a combat axe without a strength blessing yet
Why would I ever want to stunlock elites when I could just kill them? Crowd control is a meme stat. Best form of crowd control will always be eliminating the enemy. A crusher or mauler that is dead is no longer a threat to anyone.
If rampage didn’t exist I would just use wrath instead because +200% flat cleave on every swing is always better than ignoring armor hit mass on a random crit.
Also stuff like rev up are a pure gimmick. And practically nobody uses it in high level play because there is no point, you don’t need extra movement speed on the eviscerator even if you only have 60% in the mobility stat.
Making a “creative” blessing does not mean it is a good blessing or a blessing worth using. Things like Smack Down will forever be in the bottom of the barrel category for the simple reason that it does not benefit ogryn in anyway.
More hoops and more gimmicks a blessing has, less usable and appealing it becomes. Simplicity is key. This is the reason why headtaker and slaughter are used.
People will always prefer and take blessings which give them the most effect for the least amount of effort.
As we can purely see by Offensive Defence, the subject of this thread.
And here’s the thing, if you’re advocating to remove stuff like slaughterer and headtaker on weapons but then compensate for it by buffing the weapon damage profiles like you said (innately increasing player power and lethality), just so you can force players to choose 1 or more mediocre blessings (which still have some sort of benefit even if mediocre), just means you’re adding more powercreep into the game.
For example, say you take away rampage from the eviscerators but you bake some of that strength into the weapon innately to make it more reliable and consistent, like you have suggested.
Well after that, I just have a permanently buffed eviscerator that does more damage than before (both in terms of raw damage and crit damage since the raw damage values have been buffed, which lets me kill more stuff even easily now).
And on top I can still choose another blessing addition to shred, like rev it up which now lets me run around with +20% movement speed which makes me untouchable to hordes and most enemies. Or I could just take wrath instead which lets me cleave through everything +200% cleave on every swing.
Do you see the problem here?
In case it’s not clear, it kills them even while doing this, it just lets you swing more safely
Not really because 200% flat cleave won’t let you cleave through crushers and bulwarks still
Because you have blessings that make the primary function of the weapon, straight damage, better. It shouldn’t really have those blessings to make space for actual interesting fun blessings. I’m presenting a hypothetical. You know, “what if you werent downright forced to pick rampage because it’s just simply the best blessing”. When you answer with “but people ARE picking rampage” it doesn’t actually engage with the hypothetical
And does so in a worse, less efficient manner when compared to Wrath.
As long as your dodge game is on point, which it should be if you are playing auric games, then the safety PS provides is useless and not worth it to invest in.
And that doesn’t matter because I’m not even bothering to try cleaving through crushers or bulwarks. Practically no one does that.
It’s not what the eviscerator is built to do even in the first place. Eviscerator is a horde clearing weapon.
If I need to deal with a bulwark or crusher or multiple of them, I just pull out my bolter and blast them.
And your hypothetical is missing the point that removing Rampage doesn’t make stuff like PS more appealing to use when it is under powered even compared to a blessing like Wrath.
Biggest problem is that, this game is chock full of terribly designed blessings that shouldn’t even exist in the first place, like Smack Down. Darktide has 181 blessings in it, no matter how hard you try, you are never going to have all of these blessings be balanced and equally effective. Having this many blessings is arguably a detriment.
Removing Rampage doesn’t make me want to use mediocre blessings like PS or Sawage Sweep or Bloodletter more. Especially if that dynamic is forced onto me artificially by just removing a better blessing so I’m forced to use another one which I don’t care for. It is basically punishing me and other players for wanting to be efficient at this game.
It kills exactly as fast as Wrath actually. Are you aware of how cleave mechanics work on the evisc?
Because it doesn’t work unless you have a weapon blessing that lets you ignore hitmass from armor. That’s why nobody tries it. Doesn’t mean it’s not good in some situations. There are tons of situations especially on higher difficulties where you get faced with a ball of elites mixed with bulwarks and crushers that’ll force you to back off because you can’t get that shotgunner/rager through the bulwark for example. With PS, it takes a lot more to force you to back off, which means you can be more aggressive and do more damage.
Don’t try the “CC isn’t damage” thing with me, it’s really stupid. CC opens opportunities for damage. There’s a lot of situations where your dodges aren’t adequate, especially on a relatively mediocre mobility wep like the evisc.
Even if you are adamant in insisting that PS is not good, you have to at the very least admit it’s a blessing that opens up new playstyles and actually affects gameplay, unlike rampage, which just gives you strength for hitting enemies, which you do already anyways.
Disregarding your wrong interpretation of what PS is helpful for, it does by freeing up a slot. You’re failing the hypothetical thing again, especially this part:
It’s been said repeatedly now, but in the hypothetical where rampage/slaughterer/etc would be gotten rid of to make way for more blessing variety, the weapons would need to get buffs to compensate for the loss of the strength stat. You would gain a blessing slot to use interesting blessings like PS, rev it up or bloodletter, instead of being forced to run the strength blessing because the weapon is more or less just balanced around that one.
Also finally just to repeat, I’m only saying this because in this sense it’s a bad idea to create more mandatory strength blessings. They should be gone to begin with
Nope, players do pick these and have a tougher time in higher difficulties than they should because FS doesn’t explain some of the Blessings well enough.
