Half of the game’s weapons are effectively useless against Crushers and this slims down loadout choices considerably. Look at Ogryn - when counting the marks, cleavers make up 3/7 of the melee choices. Running Heresy+ compels you to never choose these, otherwise you’d be at the mercy of teammates who may or may not have chosen good anti-crusher loadouts. Please nerf carapace armor or buff these weapons, however it works. Tomayto, tomahto.
EDIT: And if someone thinks buffing carapace damage on cleavers would make them OP, why do you think that is? The game has been very unbalanced since the pre order beta. (Going back to Ogryn) If it’s not a cleaver or shovel, it’s too slow and unwieldy.
You realise you can compensate with your ranged weapon right. Cleaver + GG is one of the most popular Ogryn loadouts for higher difficulties so it’s funny to see someone say the exact opposite.
Considering that Zealot and Psyker have crusher damage baked into their kit, you have to be pretty damn unlucky to have nobody on your team who can deal with them.
TBH Crushers only pose any kind of threat due to being a blocker that is slow to remove. If such a change went through I’d want to see them buffed in other ways to compensate.
Ogryn knives are balanced like table top, negative AP. His kit is, minus shovel. Just embrace the poop scoop.
I think on the whole I’d only like to see vet shovel improved against carapace noticeably, that push attack is booty in general, but I usually run something like bolter or plasma with it anyway which lends into the design of the game. Which is mostly good.
Also it’s rougher because the Crusher doesn’t have a weak spot like Chaos Warriors did. Chaos Warriors in Vermintide 2 is the closest analogue to Crushers, they were like reverse maulers, having super armoured (carapace equivalent) bodies but their heads was only armoured (flak equivalent).
Sorry are you saying you think all ogryn weapons are bad against armor except shovel?
Latrine Shovel
Bully Club
Battle Maul
Grenade Gauntlet
That’s a fair number of options good against Carapace, and remember that you aren’t the only member of your team and you don’t technically need everyone to be a “generalist” to survive.
DPS vs. Crusher goes something like
Plasma Gun (V)
Grenade Gauntlet (special) (O)
Power Maul (O)
Bully Club (O)
Helbore Mk III (V)
Force Sword (P)
Antax Mk V (humans)
Latrine Shovel (O)
(Meaning those are the top 8 DPS in the game you can use against Crushers, and they’re very Ogryn centric largely due to the Ogryn’s Anti-Ogryn feat. This is only sustained DPS without abilities (the other Helbores pop up several ranks during Ogryn-specialized Volley Fire, and Zealot DPS on several armor-piercing weapons would be up there with their ability active since it downgrades Carapace to Flak apparently.).)
Jokes aside your complaint is “wow my counter if really hard to deal with” you mention Ogryn which is by design meant to be a anti horde crowd control monster, which he does very well its what his tool set is made for.
You have some anti armor single target options in case your team lacks the specialty class (on this case psykers) but it will never be your specialty.
And well if basic logic hurts your head that much i got bad news for you homie.
No, I’m saying that all Ogryn weapons are fitting into neat little categories like the table top rules, except shovel. Shield is defense only, knives horde clear/flak armor maybe, billy club/power maul for single target. Shovel is the general weapon with no downsides, not as good as any of those individual weapons at their role but without their weaknesses. Slab shield kills nothing, cleavers suffer on armor/maniac/unyielding and the 2 clubs are horrible on horde (but shock maul does get brutal momentum).
I think grenade box needs a buff vs carapace most of all though, its so underwhelming as it is.
Clearly this is what I get for only citing one example instead of making a comprehensive spreadsheet of damage values for every single weapon vs carapace. Not to say it’s a certainty you’d understand the numbers based on what you’ve said so far.
With the cleaver example, my point was surely there’s ground to gain from doing single digit numbers. No one complains that chaos warriors in Vermintide aren’t oppressive enough and aren’t exerting more influence in build decisions because a significant chunk of weapons are utter crap against them. Not to mention the inconsistencies with the lore/common sense. The combat knife does alright against crushers, but an ogryn with a big ass cleaver only tickles?
Obligatory restatement that cleavers are only just one example. You focused on cleavers, so I responded about cleavers.
I read this and was wondering the whole time what I do wrong I do not realize …
IMHO the Powermaul is a great Anti-Crusher-Tool (Ogryns in general, Reapers might get an issue depending on the Situation) on all dificulties (even without the anti-Ogryn-feat) it’s special got a strong DMG-output and its build in CC gives you enough time to reactivate and start the process again.
IMHO the shield is definately not defensive only. It brings you up close quite comfortably and its heavies do good DMG and have a large area of effect (and FEEL quite fast to put out if u do not fully charge them - but I know it’s feeling and not fact based i guess - CC is the stat to go for) With the bleed-feat u can bleed nearly everything to death while staggering near constantly.
The load-out I use for Heresy+ is Power Maul or Shield (the one I just feel more to go for for fun reasons) and rumbler.
Sure, and hopefully that’s a separate argument for Maul+Shield buffs.
The low damage against everything makes it essentially useless. It does control hordes alright, and is one of few weapons to kill Flak horde in as many hits as it kills unarmored/infested, but the armor damage is staggeringly terrible and it really needs some sort of damage buff against something in order to be a good weapon.
Improving its defenses by letting it move faster while blocking would help, but would only go so far (because at the end of the day weapons designed around defenses and stagger still need to be able to get work done).
The final problem is it shouldn’t be allowed to have damage as bad as it has against Carapace. Its best attack does 68 crusher DPS, but even bad weapons do 100ish DPS.
As for cleavers, they don’t actually do bad against Unyielding (300ish DPS is strictly average DPS). Their Maniac DPS (150ish) actually is bad, but they have uppercuts to let them completely control Maniacs most of the time (with “most” just meaning that in certain mixed hordes it can be hard to land the punch on the maniac itself; as long as you can land the punch, maniacs are 100% controlled).
I think your Power Maul take is furthest off the mark as while the TTK against hordes isn’t amazing, the moveset of Power Maul lets you completely control horde in a variety of ways.
Power Attacks apply a 15m stagger, causing a huge group of enemies to just stand there for about a second letting you charge the next attack.
Light 3/4 chain back and forth into each other in a loop once you get there and are the “Easy Mode horde clear” option.
Heavies provide huge sweeps for really big hordes, though you’ll want to dodge-slide in and out of the horde to maximize benefit if you want to also avoid being hit.
Bully Club is the one that’s actually mediocre on horde. While Light1 > Heavy2 works fine (and L>L>Push-Attack is even more defensive), it never achieves a particularly great rate of killing.
I do agree Grenade Box is weaker against Carapace, and I probably shouldn’t have included it in my list. I think it’s generally fine (I’m more concerned about weapons not switching reliably when I use it since I tend to use it just against things it one-shots, and sometimes Monstrosities.)
I would say it’s the design of Crushers that’s the problem. In VT2, Chaos Warriors are clad in Super Armor (the equivalent of Carapace) and their head is basically unarmored. But ! Due to their height and the size of their pauldrons, their head is hard to hit unless you’re directly facing him, or above him.
So basically, your melee weapon’s Super Armor damage didn’t really matter ; if it had sh!tty Super Armor damage, it just meant you have to put yourself in a higher-risk situation, namely, by standing in front of the Chaos Warrior.
Here, in Darktide, you’ve got no choice : one of your weapons must be able to contribute to staggering or damaging Carapace Armor. Otherwise, you’re kind of a scrub, and leaving it all to your teammates.
Giving Crushers no real melee weak point is kinda bad design, I think. Zealots can always pop their Chastise with their ranged weapon, transforming their Carapace into Flak for an easy kill with most guns. Psykers can BrainBurst. But Veterans and Ogryns’ ability to deal with them depends 100% on their choice of weapon.
If a weapon’s got a 5% Carapace multiplier, it doesn’t matter if you’ve got a Rending Blessing, it’s still gonna take forever to solo a Crusher.
The really insulting thing is even if you take the cluster bomb feat the bonus explosions also do basically nothing against carapace. So that feat adds the extra utility to your 2 use grenade of… maybe killing a small group of flak Ragers with some horde collateral?
Kind of crazy considering Fatshark specifically stated before the game was released, that class would not determine role in the squad, that players would customize their kit and be able to fill different roles.
That’s a weird callout, given that Feat tier has literally the #1 carapace-killing feat in the entire game.
But I would agree if you’re saying the description should mention that the grenades are for taking out surrounding enemies and not the target itself, because that’s not at all clear from the feat’s text and really does feel like the betrayal (“insult”) you’ve described.
The stated goal is also reality. If Namelessmage believes the class that can handle Crushers easiest is only designed to clear hordes, then that’s really just his mistake, not an actual design problem.
Simple… Make your weapon choice to be able to deal with it.
On my veteran I use laser rifle. As melee weapon I use either energy sword or tactical axe. Both can kill a crusher.
On my zealot, i use combat blade, tactical axe or combat axe. Sometimes i can use heavy sword, then i always choose a distance weapon that can deal with them.
On my zealot I love to use the revolver that can hardly deal with them. However I have bolter that can deal easily with them. So when I use heavy sword, i use the bolter with it.
Actually I use combat axe and bolter. The template (not critic one)with these weapons is really effective. I use the bolter only to remove reapers, crushers etc.
