I want to like the Pickaxes, but they’re just a bit too slow. Even alternating a Heavy + Light sweep combo, I constantly get hit during swarms. Meanwhile the Brunt Basher gives me perfect coverage no matter what is in a swarm.
The Grab + Overhead combo on the pickaxes is certainly interesting, and I’m not going to write them off just yet. I need to see if I can make them work somehow.
Initial impressions are, they’re good, but not as good as the Top Tier Brunt Basher
The Indignatus MkIII Shock Maul is absolutely insane. It does everything, it kills everything, it stops anything nasty attacking you. From just a single game with it, not yet used to the moveset, I don’t see myself ever using another melee weapon.
The other Shock Maul is also good, but the moveset doesn’t feel quite as good.
The Bolt Pistol is a great side-arm on a melee focused build. I’d say it’s almost as good as the revolvers. It’s somewhat better when you have a roomfull of gunners in cover because the explosion will stagger the ones you didn’t kill, but it’s not as good as killing that one elite or special you really want dead.
The Shotgun is amazing in close range, terrible at long range. The issue with this is… You have a melee weapon for close range. And with the Shotgun, you have nothing for long range. Weapon itself feels good, it just leaves you vulnerable to everything more than a few steps away. Woops.
Bolt Pistol: Blessings are key to making it amazing
So far I been unlocking its blessings, some look interesting like Puncture (causes bleed stacks), yet I know anything that helps with ADS triggering (like Surgical) is important if its available.
For myself with it, its all within preference of play style, finesse to determine ADS or just a point blank hip shot.
Pickaxes: Brovoni is the big winner with the streamer I viewed the day prior of new update launch. One shots every enemy except Chaos Ogryns (Crusher, Bulwark, Reaper)
Shock Maul: Indignatus Mk III is deemed the best of them by the same streamer I viewed. That stun stagger is amazing.
Double Barrel Shotgun: It has great damage and depending on its range stat it compliments its One-Two Punch. Still researching blessings
i will say i got extremely lucky with my bolt pistol and it has surgical IV + deadly accurate IV, if you can get your hands on those blessings you wanna grab determined and deadshot (both right next to each other on vet tree) to make it stable and bump up the crit rate and then you can just start one tapping everything weaker than a mutie and 2-3 tap maulers and crushers
idk what people are doing with puncture but 3 bleed stacks seems nigh useless compared to being able to just crit headshot everything that even minorly inconveniences you
New Double Barrel shotgun is insanely fun for Weapon specialist Vet with the reload talent. Probably not the best choice but it feels better than the other 3 shotguns a ton there.
Mauls and Picks get a thumbs up from me but need to play with them more.
Bolt pistol has the same abysmal jitter the Boltgun has so it’s unusable for me, because at least the boltgun has a better hipfire usage.
IDK man, absolutely 0 cleave just kills it for me.
Surgical and Deadly together… Well, I was hoping it would make a good side armor weapon and sniping isn’t that hot with the jitter it has and of course the no cleave.
It’s kind of a shame since the new blessings are interesting and cool.
Might work better on Zealot thanks to the +25% close damage, but IDK.
kinda don’ t like the bolt pistol the revolver is better and more useful.
not really sure whats it’s role it’s suposed to fill
Everyone has been a debbie downer on the double barreld but that have it’s uses for boss deleter but just booted the game and tried them in the in the meatgrinder so who knows.
Speaking for myself, I am extremely underwhelmed thus far. The weapon handling could be charitably described as “sub-optimal” at best, and the weapons they chose to introduce are SUPREMELY uninspired.
“Oh boy, a pickax and double-barrel shotgun”. Kinda makes me think the devs were playing Minecraft and Doom 2016 respectively in their downtime and said “hey, let’s just do that! That’ll be enough”. Leaving aside for now the absurd vox intercept video and just that the assets for some of these additions were already in-game and accessible via mods to a certain extent, they all just seem like slightly different “interpretations” of what we had already.
very interesting i think im a fan theres a lot to unpack with them and its going to take a while.
wasn’t a fan of the super shotty or the bolt pistol didn’t see the point of either on first pass but grey versions on a zealot over 1 map probably doesn’t show them at their best
Well…Let’s start disassembling the bolt pistol on the Psyker. This miracle of engineering is a weapon without tasks. All this gun can do is be an alternative to a revolver (and I can’t say that this is a good alternative) and that’s why - I go on the most difficult missions - where shooting 3-4 specialists, to put it mildly, will change little.
Let’s start with specifics - armor damage (I mean ogrins) leaves much to be desired.
Accuracy? even aiming, you have a chance to miss.
Special ability - “what?” Why does the laspistol have a psyker normal ability and here is some kind of deranged something?
I was especially upset by the fact that the only playable state of this gun is the сrits for aiming and damage from the crits to the heads (only no one will give you so much time to aim at the difficulties that I play). I would really like to be able to apply bleeding from the blessing to the damage area. That’s when we could talk about some kind of diversity.
The MKIII Shock Maul is absolutely insane on a Zealot. It’s by far the best weapon of this patch, and one of the best weapons period.
The active is basically what the active on the chain weapons and force swords should be.
The heavies are devastating, the lights keep hordes at bay. Alternating the block-push-attack and a heavy lets you clear our armored targets from a crowd.
I’m expecting it to get nerfed because it’s just too good.
Bolt pistol: I think works pretty good on Veteran with weapon specialist. Extra damage from flechette is nice. The combo with surgical and headhunter sounds good on paper, but aiming so jank I just go for body shots.
Picks: Brilliant. Doesn’t require much investment from the skill tree to be good. Means that Gunluggers finally have a good melee option. Shield and shovel are still better for Tankgryn and Skullbreaker respectively.
Shock Maul: Haven’t had the chance to try them yet. Although apparently they are very good.
Shotgun: I wish it had a little more range. It works well on Zealot only because they can take knives to take out distant targets. Fun but a little undertuned.
Not a massive fan of “pick axes” as the choice of weapons to add to the game, however I actually enjoy using them so far. I managed to craft a decent Borovian (it only took 500k dockets…), and it feels pretty fun with different attack rotations. Shock mauls also feel pretty fun to use. I’m looking forward to crafting good blessing/perk combos on my zealot.
I like the sawed-off thematically, but I had no chance to use it. A friend of mine was complaining about damage fall-off, but I suspect its pretty good on zealot and weapon specialist vet. I see a lot of people complaining about the bolt pistol…but it seems to be really strong with right blessings / build. Admittedly it shares poor handling characteristics with its big brother, but that’s game balance for you.
I played a mission with it pretty much blind and had a hella rough time. Then I spec’d over to ExStance + Marksman and I can 1-2 shot everything in the grinder. Excited to try it out in a mission! Yea it bucks like a bronco, but it’s quick to pull and I think I can dance shots off the bounces.
Boltpistol : pure deception. We need a balance fix for zorona and at the same time I would say like AlphaOmegaMan a magazine increased to 10 and less recoil. I would also have loved the same rate of fire of boltgun when not aiming. And aiming is… really too bad with this gun
Shotgun: could not test what I would want. But seems good for a zealot or a melee veteran
Picks: must say that I love them. It feels interesting to play again ogryn. Maybe I will be bored fast, but I actually take fun with the melee ogryn.
Shock Maul: not tested… sorry I had only 30k plasteel and 3 millions ordos
Weapon Specialist always recovers 1 round with that talent selected, no matter what. So it doesn’t matter if you get between 1-10 stacks, you always load 1 shell in.
