My suggestion is simple.
Martyrdom should provide Power instead of damage AND Martyrdom should affect ranged weaponry, just like how martyrdom affects ranged weapons for Victor Saltspyres Zealot career in Vermintide 2.
Why?
Well for both melee as well as ranged weapons, more power equals. . .
More Damage
1.1. Many of the Zealot’s ranged weapons could definitely gain some benefits from Martyrdom.
1.1.1. The Psyker gains the benefit for more damage from Warp Charges, so why can’t the Zealot gain the damage benefit from Martyrdom?
More Stagger
2.1. The player gains more control of the engagements
E.g., staggering Reapers with vigorous fire from a Lasgun should be possible, but it really isn’t because of the extremely low stagger damage the Lasguns has.
2.2. Helps with survivability.
E.g., The Ogryns survivability is actually largely from the ability to stagger enemies, throwing them down to the ground or suppressing them with ranged fire so much they stop firing and seek cover, essentially making them harmless for a brief period.
But more importantly More Cleave!
3.1. This is actually the largest reason i make this suggestion, lets talk more about it.
Why am i focusing on cleave?
Because the Zealot has many weapons that desperately need cleave to be effective, unlike the Ogryn who has a lot of cleave with any available Ogryn weapon.
The ability to cleave targets isn’t all about killing many targets at once, it’s also about staggering them to minimize the incoming melee strikes towards the player.
To make an example where cleave is needed.
Weapons such as the “Devil’s Claw swords” , “Chainaxe”, “Eviscerator” and the “Assault Chain Sword” has very low stagger damage (and i really mean low stagger damage) and on top of that there is this “weird” situation each of these weapons have that is associated with cleave.
All chain-type weapons need cleave to not make the player become locked in a “sawing” animation.
This animation lock only happens when the weapon does not have enough cleave to run through all enemies.
For the Devil’s Claw swords, they have such a pitiful stagger damage that they hardly stagger anything beyond the first two or maybe three targets hit in a cleaving strike.
So, on these weapons that make up about 6/14 of the weapons that have any sort of cleave to them naturally. Players feel like they are being forced to take blessings like “Savage Sweep” or “Wrath” that solely increases cleave instead of trying out other blessings that are available.
The negatives are so heavily weighed that the players sacrifice everything to get what they know will help them the most.
If the weapons are lacking in some way, buffing Martyrdom isn’t the right way to bring those weapons into line - with the exception of the Evis, all of those weapons are available to multiple classes, so those weapons are only “fixed” in one specific scenario.
In general use, this only applies to the Evis. The chainaxe lights can reach power levels that allow it to cleave, but they’re inherently a single target attack and you lose some of the single target damage (since you lose a Shred tick). The specials, as they currently exist, are primarily single target burst damage (without specific blessings) and the sawing animation is part of that tradeoff (and the charm of the weapons )
I’ve had a similar thought, though don’t agree with it affecting ranged regardless, but it would honestly be kinda bad for some weapons. Power stacks additively with other power bonuses, but multiplicatively with damage bonuses, so for the many weapons you stack power blessings on changing martyrdom to power would actually lessen your overall damage. It would definitely be helpful for like rampage Claw or Evicerator, but Chaxe, Caxe, T Hammer, and Heavy Sword would all probably be hurt as much or more by that change than they’re helped.
I think base Martyrdom is probably fine, Honour The Martyr definitely needs some help but a few things could definitely change with the upcoming class rework so waiting to see how that pans out before banging that drum again.
This was one of the things i thought about.
And yeah, i do agree that it’s not the right approach for fixing the weapons shortcomings.
However, it was the best example i could think of.
The whole point is to let Martyrdom have the same effect that we can see Victor Saltspyre’s Zealot career have in Vermintide 2.
Not only did it help reaching breakpoints to kill targets, but it made it possible for players to reach cleaving breakpoints as well.
In Vermintide 2 Zealot players that were competent enough to know they can stay alive with > 10% HP always let enemies lower their HP just for the sake of all the benefits they got.
I have a specific build in Vermintide 2 where i use the One handed axe and i focus on increasing the power level as much as possible. Because if i reach the desired power level the one handed axe gains enough cleave limit to be able to hit 3-4 slave rats (equivalent to groaners in DT) with the push attack.
Which makes it possible for me to play my role as a armoured elite killer, but at the same time i’m not completely handicapped in dealing with hordes with the melee weapon.
But like i said, it’s a tool that players should be able to utilize, and we already can!
I just miss the utility of actually being able to reach not only damage breakpoints, but cleave as well as stagger breakpoints by sacrificing HP.
Ranged weapons isn’t affected by the Martyrdom as it is today.
Martyrdom only affects melee damage.
So by making Martyrdom affecting the ranged damage as well, we only gain something, we don’t sacrifice anything.
And sure, power is calculated differently, but the “bigger picture” of getting three attributes buffed (damage, stagger and cleave) outweighs getting more of only one attribute (damage).
That’s what i think at least.
I’m aware. I simply disagree with Zealot having a ranged damage buff in his core kit. That’s just power creeping an already strong class.
For heavy sword and BM Caxe that basically already have all the cleave and stagger they could need? Not really no, I don’t think it would outweigh the damage loss. Regardless I agree with the earlier take that moving values around with Martyrdom is a sloppy way of addressing weapon balance. Claw should be a better horde clear tool than it currently is on Vet and Psyker as well. I’m still not sure what Evic needs but I’m pretty sure some passive power isn’t is considering that does little to alleviate its awful damage cleave (bonus power doesn’t increase how many enemies actually get hurt by a swing).
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