I have recently been playing alot with the Greasword and I can say that it is way better than people give it credit for. It does however need a slight buff to be in a good place. The push attack is the main anti elite attack but at the moment you don’t quite get equal payout for the recourse you put into it ( one stamina).
By just adding a 10% crit bonus to the push attack would go a long way in improving it.
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Specifically this video about GS’s single target damage on SVs.
It will never be amazing at clearing single Stormvermins, and even less so Chaos Warriors, but this helped me a lot.
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Personally, for high cost (time, opportunity, stamina) attacks I’d rather get consistent behaviour than slightly increased random chance when considering a buff.
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Actually the greatsword is what a specialized horde-clearing weapon should be like. Your expectations are distorted by all the broken melee weapons in the game that are great at clearing hordes and killing armored elites. Hell, I actually think the elf greatsword is slghtly overtuned with its bonus crit chance, same damage as human greatsword with much faster attacks, and its excellent head-shotting, anti-armor heavy. Its only disadvantage versus human greatsword is a more pronounced X to its attack pattern. What’s crazy is that the elf arsenal is so overpowered people actually think an elf weapon that is only slightly overtuned sucks.
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Extra crit is more of am axe thing isnt it?
On non-elves, yes. On Kerillian it feels like nearly everything gets extra crit chance.
Both Kruber’s/Saltz’ Greatsword and Kerillian’s Greatsword are pretty equal.
One has higher single target damage and mobility, one has elite cleave, deals with shields more effectively and has better horde damage.
Personally I prefer the elite cleave and don’t really care for gratuitously pointless amounts of crit chance. It makes the lights good for crit fishing headshots on elites, but the charged attack is better armour dps anyway. The human Greatsword doesn’t have to crit fish when fighting elites because it controls them fairly well.
Again, both are pretty equal for what it’s worth at the level of baseline balance we’re referring to here. Maybe not on Legend possibly because of the lower enemy density and lower elite counts, but then again even the human Greatsword can 1 shot SV there so eh.
‘Feels’ is the right word here. Kerillian’s ranged weapons don’t get any (only ranged weapon in the game that does is Saltz’/Bardin’s Crossbow on zoom though), and the Glaive, Spear and Spear & Shield don’t. Kerillian’s 1h Axe gets 20% on its push attack, which is less than the 10% Saltz’ and Bardin’s 1h Axe gets on both its lights and push attack.
Well yeah, I was using hyperbole, and I was only referring to melee weapons since I was responding to the comment that + crit chance is mainly an axe thing. That said, one of these things is definitely not like the others:
Kruber
Executioner’s Sword (three attacks)
Mace (one attack)
Mace and Shield (one attack)
Bardin
Hammer (one attack)
Hammer and Shield (one attack)
Axe (one attack)
Great Axe (one attack)
Kerillian
Dual Swords (three attacks, with +25% and +50% on some)
Dual Daggers (three attacks)
Sword (three attacks)
Greatsword (three attacks, with +25% on one)
Sword and Dagger (four attacks)
Elven Axe (one attack)
Saltzpyre
Axe (one attack)
Sienna
Dagger (one attack)
Kind of seems like you are leaving out the faster attack speed of the elven greatsword, the +10% crit chance on light attacks which allows it to more reliably keep swift slaying up constantly, and its better single target armor damage here. I’m not saying it’s massively better, but I do think it’s a bit better overall. If it was on any other career people would have a much higher opinion of it, but it’s on elf, so it’s considered sub-par. That really says it all.
Its lights are faster and have much higher cirt chance, but despite that its lights are inferior dps for hordes compared to the human Greatsword’s heavies. I did some dps tests with UI Tweaks with the following setups:
- Foot Knight Greatsword Enhanced Power + no other talents
- Handmaiden Greatsword Enhanced Power + no other talents
I did it this way to stress test the human Greatsword’s lower Swift Slaying uptime, otherwise things like Crowd Clearer or Enhanced Training would get in the way of the comparison because they would cause higher Swift Slaying uptime. The tests were lights with Kerillian’s Greatsword and charged attacks with the human one vs twenty Chaos Marauders (no shields).
- Kerillian’s Greatsword averaged 95 dps (goes up to 110 with Push Attack > 2x Light)
- Kruber’s/Saltz’ Greatsword averaged 125 despite poorly spaced crits for Swift Slaying up time.
The dps is pretty noticeable on Chaos hordes. Human Greatsword can cleave 6 Marauders, Kerillian’s can cleave 3. As soon as anything else is added in, like shields or elites, Kerillian’s Greatsword’s dps goes down more. Additionally, the human Greatsword does a lot more damage with a Strength pot. Not super important but worth mentioning.
I wouldn’t use Kerillian’s Greatsword on Kruber or Saltz except on WHC, but that’s because of Killing Shot.
For the dps difference vs a group of three Stormvermin:
- Same Foot Knight setup as before, chaining charged attacks: 40
- Same Handmaiden setup as before, chaining Heavy Stab > Block Cancel: 50
Kerillian’s Greatsword wins out notably on purely single targets, particularly monsters, but loses out on groups. It’s safer and more defensive than the human one but lower overall damage, and I find the human one to be safe enough already.
If it didn’t have its crit chance, its dps would be pretty bad relative to other weapons on other characters.
Those numbers don’t really make sense since Kerillian’s greatsword has the same damage and cleave as the human greatsword when it comes to light attacks.
Edit: Oh, you seem to be comparing light attacks to heavy attacks.
The human Greatsword’s light attacks are lower dps than its charged attacks vs everything, so they aren’t really useful for anything other than thp generation.
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I find them vastly superior when it comes to not getting hit and keeping swift slaying up. I’d also argue that their damage is usually overkill against hordes without elites mixed in. Against non-mixed hordes Kerilian’s greatsword seems obviously better to me, but yes the human greatsword is better when elites are mixed in. That said, I find Kerilian’s greatsword more reliable in actually killing elites. Again, I think the elf greatsword is slightly better overall. This is obviously just my opinion though.
I saw this man kill 3 stormvermin. WITH ONE CHARGED SWING.
…OF HIS HOLY SWOOOORD.
Praise the lady!
It’s also pretty much impossible to max elf sword cleave and headshot your primary target due to uppercut attack angles on light attacks. Another big reason g sword out performs elf sword in infantry kill speed. Elf sword is slightly better for single elites. Worse at everything else.
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