If nothing else, patch 13+ gave a nice boost to several melee weapons (not just for vets) and gave people reasons to experiment a bit.
Now, I’d rather not have the power swords (either Mk) nerfed back to oblivion, but I’d also argue at least the mk6 is entirely too effective at the moment.
I personally prefer using the OG shovel/current Chainaxe/Catha Mk4 for “fun” gameplay, but there’s really no arguing that if you can avoid the animation “locks” on the mk6 (which isn’t exactly hard) it’s an absolutely comically effective blender with barely any downsides aside from movement in a pinch.
So, here’s my attempt at a constructive suggestion, remove the stagger on the charged power swords, there’s your balance.
It’s a power sword, the gimmick is that it cuts through anything, I’d say that’s not what makes it unbalanced though.
That you can just swing like a crackhead with zero impact blessings or anything and as long as you hit your charge every 3 swings you’ll stagger damn near anything is where the weapon becomes OP, it’s when you both do massive damage, cleave through most things, and stagger things like ragers at the same time.
Remove the stagger and suddenly you can just afk-spam charge + l1x3 to deal with a pack of ragers anymore, and that puts the weapon in a bit of a risk/reward category that (imo) doesn’t make it better than everything else you can use.
Yea, a Catha mk4 or OG shovel with hammerblow is arguably safer, but one is solely reliant on ripostes at that point and not blending hordes at the same time, and the other requires a blessing and a lot of hopping around (but can stagger crushers with bodyshots at that point) and not at anywhere near the same damage output as a mk6 PS.
Remove, or at least greatly reduce the stagger on the charged power sword, and you’d have to spend a bit more time moving/pushing/blocking rather than just lolblend right into every horde or charging packs with little risk, and we’d still keep what makes the power swords good, the ability to smack pretty much anything.
If anything, if the stagger was changed, they could also tweak the damage profile up a bit on uncharged (especially on trash) to make it a little less useless when not charged.
Seeing as the mk6 is already a very solid “snipe” weapon with push attacks, maybe lean harder into that as the Vet’s unique weapon with weakspot talents, again, if they were the tweak the stagger.
Anyway, a thought on potential balancing options rather than just blindly nerfing damage/swing speed/movement or going after what gives the weapon it’s niche.
Thoughts?