For some reason, the faster the weapon the more damage you will deal, which doesn’t make any sense, no one uses slower weapons, they have worse DPS, and much much worse mobility, and they are overall sluggish for no reason.
most people know that currently the best two melee weapons are the infamous dueling sword, and the combat knives, the dueling sword deals the highest damage in the game (outside of thunder hammer special) to most enemies with its stabbing heavies, and high mobility to go along with the insane fast attacks, knives on the other hand feel 90% fine to me, I fear changing them will ruin them completely, and they require much more time investment and skill to use them to their full potential.
I genuinely believe that the heavier the weapon, the higher it’s overall DPS should be, no two ways about it, faster weapons already allow you to land more attacks and stack buffs and other talents faster and more reliably, a blessing on a slower weapon could be useless, but the same blessing on a faster weapon is simply ten times better.
Also armor penetration should be more exclusive to heavier weapons IMO.
I don’t fully agree with the principle, but I agree on the outcome.
Slow, heavy weapon strikes could instead stagger, rend armour to generate the ‘brittleness’ debuff, or cause significant dots (e.g. via internal bleeding). That these factors end up being secondary - or not included - is a shame I think in DT. And as they aren’t (currently) really comparable in usefulness to direct damage; I agree that it’s weird.
And some of the weirdness has actually been patched out - I seem to recall some heavy strikes doing less damage than lights on targets on the same weapon. (Mutie damage was it??)
Anyway; they could have (could still):
Stuns from shock mauls could have been used more creatively to set up criticals (inc. from team mates).
Eviscerator / chain sword strikes could have been used to apply permanent debuffs to carapace enemies.
Heavy attacks from the thunder hammer could have caused massive DOTs on all enemies struck.
But instead it’s all ended up a bit simplified so that rend + direct damage is always the best combo. I know it’s oft said; but power creep is the bane of games. I just ended up as a lvl22 Arbiter trying to solo an event-Damnation … for reasons. It was the most fun I’ve had in ages. I really had to fight (but failed at the end ! )
I do remember the bug, actually. It was Combat Axes having a lower damage multiplier vs Maniac armor on heavies compared to lights, so this affected Muties, Dreg Ragers, Flamers, and Trappers (not that it mattered for the other specialists).
Overall, I agree with the sentiment. Heavy weapons should offer mass crowd control or single-target damage (thunder hammers lol) in exchange for their slow speed. Right now mobility is king and the kings of mobility are great generalists.
There is a difference between good and bad clunky though. Good clunky tends to be something that rewards either knowledge, preparedness or mechanical skill with a relatively satisfying payoff where bad clunky is just (relatively) mindlessly going through the motions just to get to something’s preferred state.
I wouldn’t necessarily say DPS, but there should be some trade-off, yes. Looking at the 2H hammer (Bardin/Kruber) from VT2, it offered tremendous cleave and stagger on its heavies. Even though it’s not straight up damage, it is still something of utility. DT has an issue where stagger is just a bit less useful in general. It still works for crowd control but without the added damage of stagger states, it’s contribution to team effort is limited.
It wasn’t perfect, but VT2 kept the 3-way balance between damage, stagger, and cleave much better than DT has. DT mechanics seem to favor going all-in on damage and this issue is a bit more fundamental than just weapon speed/damage trade-off but that might certainly help.
Pickaxes, especially the Branx, is the only heavy weapon that really follows this rule.
folding shovels too but we don’t talk about those
Most weapon blessings and available talents on 3 out of 5 characters don’t favor slow attack speeds, either. Fine for Veteran and Psyker. But I don’t know what they were doing with Zealot, nothing about him has ever been able to elevate thammer since launch.
There are few things as satisfying as releasing a branx heavy 2 with a couple of thrust stacks into a mixed horde and seeing the snivellers get swept away as if they’re weightless.
- I seem to recall some heavy strikes doing less damage than lights on targets on the same weapon. (Mutie damage was it??)
from me.