About that Spear kills quickly more or less as Exe, I don’t agree.
But we can’t compare weapons without the context… this is a coop game, you always play with other people and covering each other is a fundamental mechanics. Following this logic Shields would be totally useless: they stagger but they don’t kill; so, if there aren’t your mates, you can’t do nothing. Literally.
I’m talking about free choices with pro and cons… Do I want to be more independent and versatile? I can use Spear. Do I want inflict the highest damage cooperating? I can use Exe.
Sure, Spear thanks its stagger can help your teammates… but if there already is a career dedicated to stagger, like a tank, Spear’s stagger would be superfluous.
I fully agree one needs to consider the context of a weapon to judge it fairly, which was my entire argument on why Spear ends up superior to other weapons to start with. I understand you need to consider teammates as well, but the reality is that you are often not fighting the same enemies as your buddy, instead needing to cover different directions, roles, and somesuch during any run. And Spear can fulfill every role on the fly, while still augmenting and benefitting from every possible teammate / weapon. No other weapon can say that.
Also, if you’d try to compare weapons by thinking from the hypothetical situation where you have a buddy that compensates for the weaknesses of that weapon all the time, the best weapon in the game would be the one that is super good at a single aspect regardless of its flaws. This, as we all know, does not hold up to the reality of Vermintide. The best weapons in this game are, and have always been, the allrounders that can do everything well. The end result just ends up being worth more than just the sum of its parts with those: Being allround is the most usefull strenght to have in itself.
What my argument boils down to in the end: In the reality of Vermintide combat, there are hardly any realistic and non-hypothetical scenarios in which the Spear does not perform more efficiently than pretty much all other Kruber weapons. And that includes taking every possible team composition in account.
Spear killing more quickly than (in this case) Executioner in a realistic scenario is either true or not. It’s a factual statement, not an opinion. My experience is that it does, yours seems to be that it doesn’t. Debating this point further is not going to be helpful however, I guess one would need to test it one way or another to move forward in this discussion instead. Therefore I’m not going to engage this argument much further in this thread for fear of it regressing to simply a repetition of opposing claims ad infinitum.
I understand your point of view, but weapons should be balanced around the best hypothesis and not around the worst one.
If you decide to play end game contents with random guys, without communication and coordination, it’s obvious that “jack of all trades” weapons will be the strongest… but this reasoning is valid about every weapon of that type, not only Spear.
We must think about the game when played to its fullest potential.
When I play with “discord friends”, honestly I haven’t problem to divide us in more roles and fulfill them… the game itself is meant to be played in this way. I don’t “feel” you are forced to break your role. I mean, it could happen, but not so often to make useless specialized weapons. Playing as shielded tank, I can stagger the entire horde and cover every mates. In that scenario hordes die much faster (and remember: it’s fundamental in Vermintide) when the crowd control career use a “full damage” weapon. Additional stagger would be useless.
And sure, with certain weapons you can fulfill every role on the fly… for this reason they are called “jack of all trades”; but they have cons too. And I already said where Spear is worse than Exe… repeat myself would be useless.
Apart this, I think we see the game in a different way… because if you say me that, also with mates, the best weapons remain “jack of all trades” type… I can just answer you “I don’t agree”.