After the last two patches it is save to say that the Heavy Sword is currently the worst melee weapon by far. While it’s definitely good at killing horde and the heavy attack has it’s unique property of dealing massive damage to the first two unarmoured targets, it absolutely lacks in everything else.
It’s slow movement speed, worst performance against carapace armour of all melee weapons and the fact that other than Headtaker all blessings are bad makes it such an awful weapon to use.
What I would suggest:
Buff the mobility. Having such high movement penalty during attacks makes it so horrible to wield and there are other weapons that have excellent horde clear that don’t suffer from this.
Add or rework some of the blessings. Other than Headtaker, all current blessings are mostly working against horde in which the weapon is already very good at. The only one that gives rending works when hitting multiple enemies, so you don’t have it against crushers where you need it.
Give us a way to deal with armour. What I think to be a good way would be giving the special attack the ability to apply brittleness similar like the Ogryns Ripper Gun with Can Opener, either as base ability or as a new blessing. This would still make it worse than other weapons against armour but at least you could fight crushers somewhat efficiently and it would make it unique to use.
I play all classes and use every weapon in Auric missions and in the current state I’d say the melee weapon balance is at a good point where you can make anything work on Havoc so far except the Heavy Sword. It is currently the most lacking weapon, even far behind the Devils Claw and it feels like a handicap to use.
Yeah turtleclub sword is pretty weird. It wants to point out that it would be good for killing elites because it has the same first target damage to target 2 in the cleave distribution with that heavy strikedown (this is why Mk9 died when they reworked these weapons). But one of the main elite enemies that you can cleave with this weapon (because ogryns you cannot) are maulers which is one of the sore spot targets for this weapon. It mainly does weakspot damage and basically nothing to carapace.
So overall it is hard to make good on what they intended for with this weapon. Unless you are dealing with ragers where its in the zone. But so are a lot of weapons avaliable to those 3 without making you cry whenever ogryns and maulers show up en masse
Thunder Hammer literally melts bosses in 2-3 hits with the right build. It’s hard to use and it has it’s weaknesses but at the things it is good at it far outperforms any other weapon. It’s probably the worst weapon against multiple ragers but the pros are definitely worth the cons.
Its special is a compete garbage, I honestly don’t know that is it supposed to be used for other than resetting the combo. It is supposed to deal more damage vs armor, but in practice strikedown heavy will always deal more against the same target, other than Crusher maybe.
I only really have experience with the IX but it seems to chain with vertical heavies on the VI and with a diagonal uppercut on the VII that is probably best used as part of the horde combo.
Lol what. It kills enemy ogryns in one hit on martyrdom builds, kills bosses with 3 on average, allows to CC chaff easily. The only real problem it has is with ragers, but it’s manegable, you always can take bolter and melt them, if you wish.
Can’t say for highest difficulties, but in Damnation and below 20 Auric I had a lot of fun with thammer martyrdom zealot.
This, and the mediocre dodge, really kills any enjoyment when using them. The only solution, currently, is using heavies with the new talent Unfaltering.
This blessing is such a trap. If it had Uncanny Strike, or +Rending or +Brittleness on the special attack, then you’d have a decent weapon in the current meta. And even then it would still be a far cry from the holy grail that is the Duelling Sword.
So what? Useless against other enemies without it’s special. No cleave, no damage, slow. Good luck without stealth having enough time to strike boss. This game got plenty of weapons that good against bosses, without using special and with ability to destroy other enemies with ease. Garbage gimmick weapon.
Not agree.
Devil’s claw is a little worse in term of damages, but it is, somewhat, an utility.
Tbh, a lot of weapons can do what this weapon does and with dealing damages, something that the Devil’s claw doesn’t do,
HS is terrible when you compare it to a relic sword unpowered. But, the HS is not so terrible. Of course, there are lot of other better choices, but you can play with it and it is the best horde killer you can get.
However, I can’t play with it because it is a weapon that is totally inefficient when you compare it to other weapons. But calling it the worst… no catachan is worse.
Cat mk I on a vet is lovely. The problem of the HS is that there is no class that covers it’s two weaknesses.
It is slow, so you either want around 20% constant attack speed or some kind of immovable, which points to zealot
It has relatively low armor pen, which vets can fix.
I really like the mk VII heavy sword on a vet but it is too slow for high havoc hordes. However, I have not tested it since the skill tree rework. I imagine it can one tap crushers on the new zealot with FotF as it has very good finesse stats on the strike downs.