The light attack of a Devil's Claw sword does less damage to Flak than the knife punch special attack

[BlueRiddle]

No, not the follow up heavy stab after the punch. The punch itself.

In case you were wondering about the state the Devil’s Claw swords are in.

[Durandal94]

That’s honestly hilarious

[MixedLetters]

And thus this is why buffs where needed XD

I know from personal use, you basically use them as heavy attack machines or obviously for their parry function. Their lights are only ever used to stack up talents or if literally ONLY groaners are in front of you. As soon as the horde becomes mixed or anything with flack walks in, you have to heavy attack or die.

So here’s hoping that changes even just a little bit with the patched things.

[CopperBack1]

It’s a headshot weapon for horde clear , still does better damage in weak spots, cleave and most flak trash lacks head armor.

[alwaysoveronepointow]

There are 7 types of horde enemies in the regular play (that is, outside of event modifiers):

• Poxwalker (Infested)
• Groaner (Unarmored)
• Scab Shooter (Flak)
• Scab Stalker (Flak)
• Dreg Stalker (Unarmored)
• Scab Bruiser (Flak torso + Unarmored head)
• Dreg Bruiser (Unarmored torso + Flak head)

Three of them have flak helmets, but only the last one - Dreg Bruiser - is something you’ll need to clear large amounts of.
Noticeably however that last enemy is also the most problematic, as they are quite tough (almost 700 HP on Damnation) and hitmass, to the point where large swathes can slow you down significantly. I think that’s enough to warrant better Flak penetration on Devil Claw lights, but there’s more.

Devil Claw can clear Flak hordes with heavy attacks which have better penetration against Flak, it’s tedious but doable. Where it always struggles, however, are armored elites: Scab Shotgunners and Ragers are already problematic, but still doable. Wherein lies the problem is the Carapace penetration: even heavy attacks have meager damage against Carapace, to the point where even your best attack will usually deal no more than ~500 damage (and that’s on weakspot crit).

So if you build Devil Claw properly you can deal with some of its weaknesses (mediocre horde clear and bad Flak DPS) but no matter what you do, Carapace will always remain an absolute chore which forces you to take something else to cover that area - and that makes Devil Claw an inherently niche option, as there’s plenty of choices on all classes that do not have any significant weakness that cannot be dealt with (Relic Blade, Power Sword, Chainaxe, Combat Axe, Force Sword… not to mention the dreaded Duelling Sword).

Notably, the Duelling Sword has a very similar weakness to Devil Claw as its penetration against Flak / Carapace is miserable on lights and only alright on heavies - but that is remedied entirely through Uncanny Strike which renders all ADM modifiers pointless on this weapon.

[Cannon_Fodder548734]

I know this sounds weird but I’d really like slashing one handed swords to do roughly the same damage; they have different traits, attacks and special abilities to separate them. The block/riposte is powerful but it’s not that powerful.