The Relic Blade, What I was Missing

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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I figured I’d put this together simply to state my apology to the Relic Blade, I was not entirely familiar with your game. (On top of maybe being a hopefully decent resource for others to hopefully find the love for the Relic Blade they lacked).

But after a few more recent back and forths between myself and a few others stating how ‘good’ it is, I thought I’d give another look at it as I felt like ‘either I’m missing something, or will re-affirm my stance’…

And I was missing something, something rather obvious to most I’m sure, but to me initially went against how I first looked at the weapon.

I had forgotten Thy Wrath be Swift exists.

I played Relic Blade under the assumption ‘it should compete with the Heavy Eviscerator’. Being a two handed weapon with immense ad clear potential, every part of my being compared it to that weapon, and still does. But in doing that, I kept trying to build it like the Heavy Eviscerator, and thus would try and absolutely maximize damage as the weapon was stupid simple to use and just needs damage amps to be applied to it.

The Relic Blade however, is nearly entirely counter to that. It mostly wants ‘playability’ to be given to it, it wants to ignore hit stuns to be allowed to string it’s combos together, it wants low mobility (despite it costing sprint speed) so that you can max out Heat Management and, because rounding, literally make it’s Heat Generation be as low as it can possibly be (as in it hits 0.03, which is the same amount it would have of generation even if it could go up to 100%). It wants at least ~20-30% ish attack speed at all times, but how that’s achieved isn’t entirely reliant on FotF (so long as you’re ok being at below half with Martyr most of the time).

And I had been missing ALL that, trying to maximize it’s damage out put and getting caught up on how clunky it felt due to getting bonked resulting in combo resets that just made the whole experience feel awful.

But I have ‘seen the light’ so to speak, and ran around just sawing through waves with both variants of this sword to great effect. I still don’t really see it being a ‘monstrosity melter’ just due to it’s slow swings making it a bit tough to time them all while also hitting the weakspots, but it deals with everything else cleanly and efficiently. I then pair it with high mobility guns because I ‘still need that mobility in my life’ and like the fast swaps too for quickly turning off the blade faster than the animation, but a Boltgun sures up it’s weakenesses too if one’s ok ‘being slow’ for a Zealot.

But yeah, while I’m sure the builds won’t be to EVERyone’s taste, figured I’d put them in here too, may them or at least all these works help others find the light of the Relic Blade! They might not be as incredibly simple as the Eviscerator is, but they can still perform INSANEly well, and feel super nice empower cleaving through head after head regardless of armor or station.

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“Zealot ez af” also doesnt maximize zealot potential. :neutral_face:

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A pious Zealot walks into the Mourningstar’s armory and picks up a freshly sanctified Relic Blade. The quartermaster hands it over reverently and says, “With the Emperor’s blessing, this blade will cut through heretics like never before!”

Brimming with righteous zeal, the Zealot marches into battle, swinging the blade with all their might. After an exhausting day of hacking at the filth of the galaxy, they return, dripping with sweat and frustration. “This so-called holy weapon is worthless! I barely carved up a handful of traitors before my arms gave out!”

The quartermaster, puzzled, takes the sword, grips it firmly, and presses the activation rune. With a divine hum, the blade crackles to life, its energy field sparking with righteous fury.

The Zealot stares in wide-eyed amazement and exclaims, “BY THE THRONE, WHAT IS THAT GLORIOUS SOUND?!”

A little faith is good, but knowing how to use the Emperor’s gifts helps too.

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The relic blades are so fun to use, I love the fact that I can do like 4 different attacks without being in a combo. Even if were truly bad I would still enjoy it more than the Eviscerator. The white and golden relic blade is perfect imo, it’s so intuitive and feels great to use. The red one has its benefits, but I prefer the white and golden one. I wish I could remember the actual names lol.

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OK after giving it another go. Seems to be unusually effective not just horde but single target too?

Find it seems to stagger enough to negate having to dodge/block as much.

Seems to share horde effective cleave and horizontal simplicity of heavy sword’s moveset. Then at same time sprint, heavy animation which gives a small speed boost then poke - Similar to DS for fast melee sniping elites.

What interests me most is the length of the sword. I think that might be it - That 5 steps melee distance, just walk backwards to avoid Crusher overheads easily and save the dodges for something else. DS/combat axe is 3 steps distance. You’ve got more melee distance safety.

My bad habit at the moment is not using charged in hordes. I keep saving for armour in case they pop out of nowhere and about to overheat.

Didn’t vastly change breakpoints for crusher/unyielding so I stuck on flak and maniac perks then Wrath to treat as mainly horde weapon. Unsure of what 2nd blessing to stick to yet.

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I like Cranial Grounding on the X due to the mentioned ‘worry about using the power mode in the horde’. With it’s horizontal lights finished with a poke (or it’s 'L L H into L H combo) it makes it super simple to constantly hit heads so long as you stay at their level, allowing you to stay ‘active’ surprisingly long which feels incredibly good. It’s heavy strings (just H H L over and over, or push attack poke into H over and over) is also just downward chops, making it work super well against clearing out larger/beefer targets when you need it as well.

For the II, I like Rampage, because it’s main string for wave clear (Push attack into L H combo string) has a diagonal in it so it doesn’t lob heads as cleanly, and it has more raw output so you don’t have to be ‘on’ all the time and I normally just turn it on strictly for high value targets/elites and such. Thus Rampage helps make up for not having it on ALL the time by just giving you more damage while wave clearing.

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I originally started with the mk2, but the horde clear is awkward - heavies are too slow. My main concern when switching from the Eviscerator mk2 is that the L1 is incredibly good for dealing with “light” elites and stragglers, and I wanted something like that, but it didn’t really work.

Relic Blade is definitely a “make weapon work button” weapon like the Veteran Power Sword, but the weapon is still serviceable in its base form. Switching between the two forms depending on intensity seems to be important for mastery of the weapon, and it helps that you have guard point during (de)activation.

Main downsides with the weapon is that the heavies and chaining into block/push are really slow. I wouldn’t ever use the heavies and you seem to just be screwed if a poxburster appears.

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Thy Wrath be Swift is Zealot’s both most underated and overated talent.

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Dodge/block slow. It seems to shine by maintaining 5 steps distance and moving instead of dodge/block to evade. Other smaller weapons are kind of half closer required.

5 steps hard to judge in heat of moment, But I judge by position of their feet lines up with bottom of screen as guideline for larger enemies, smallest enemy feet lines up with toughness bar.

Mk 2

That light vertical cycle. Probably better for charged tapping down crusher heads and it’s back pedal in and out safety is easier, similar to rashad heavy verticals. But the heavy horde swings really are slow.

Mk 10

Light spam is 2x horizontal and 1x poke, cycle very easy horde like heavy sword. I skip the poke by pause/block/back pedal then in again 2x light, so it becomes continuous 2x horizontal in horde as I don’t find that little poke useful.

But doesn’t have the nice repeated light strike down chain cycle of MK 2 against single target. MK 10 you would have to pause a bit per vertical heavy back pedal out and in each time where MK 2 lights can keep up a lot more vertical pressure like Rashad heavy verticals.

MK 10 - Horde and MK 2 - Single target?

Mobility

Can’t monkey dance like knife, ds, combat axe their mobility allows more room for mistakes. So instead highlight is that length of sword gives better melee safety distance. But less room for mistakes than smaller weapons to recover from in mobility.

Super poke

Both weapon marks. Sprint, charged heavy DS style poke. That’s 1/3 damage to crusher head as initial free damage.

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Guess the lack of mobility is the balance. You get better than Rashad single target, better than heavy sword for horde but less room for error in movement.

Yea ok DS, but that only works in open areas, plenty of space to kite. When you’re surrounded, tight path, stuck in a corner with team mates special activation, dash, swing feels like an massive AOE knockback talent.

I might just hang up my Rashad. But monitoring heat buildup does reduce my awareness a bit when things going on.

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