It is not in a great place. It used to be able to one-tap maulers and two-tap crushers and delete ragers. Under the most ideal circumstances it sort-of still can but it isn’t in a great place. The massive downside of using the special attack is now just way out of proportion to the damage output. A lot of this comes from the blatant nerf to shoud backstab making it one-shot things but the large part of it not feeling good is the fact that zealot no longer always has fury of the faithful to downgrade armor (thus increasing TH effectiveness so it has suffered for it).
It is quite simple, the weapon has always had a “hidden” damage multipliers, just increase those to account for the massive buff you gave elites. I can guarantee it was not the TH that was the sole justification of increasing elite health, if you don’t want to buff the damage reduce or get rid of the recoil animation lock.
It doesn’t need a damage buff against anything else, it deals with trash and specials well, and deals as well as you would expect against shotgunner packs and gunner lines. The one thing is is made for, though, it now struggles to do where it did not before.
Enemies it struggles against with the special attack that it should not: Crushers, Maulers, Ragers
Please fix this.