Two-handed axe, Sienna gone wild

As Sienna currently lacks career specific wepons, and her current selection is agressively MEH in my opinion.
Playing as Unchained feels a bit lackluster, as you can’t really handle armour that well with whats currently available.
I’ve been thinking about what everyones favourite crazy cat lady could benefit from:
A great whoppin’ two-handed axe, for opening those walking tin-cans.

1 Like

Sienna is not an anti armor class by design. In a good party, this is not her typical job. If Sienna is trying to hold down against armor too often, someone else isnt doing their job. You go in with a mace just in case you find yourself aggrod by armor in a bad situation, but its not advisable to go after armor specifically as sienna. Thats not her job. But that’s my opinion!

Sienna does best with good support, dishing out stagger and eradicating hordes, or effectively supporting front line classes. Sienna is not a front line class. Good sienna players can carry groups, yes, but is best operating as a ranged class dishing punishment at distance. The greatest of groups actually watch their sienna closely and keep one melee class like saltz or kruber or even kerillian/glaive stick close to the sienna kind of like a full time bodyguard. This allows sienna to really do what shes meant to… which is eradicate hordes, support front line melee, and catch aggressors at distance. Like a ranged tactician to soften some of the angles that give enemies advantage.

There are a few different ways she can be played, but even with unchained, being superb at melee against armor isnt her thing, its a weakness by design. Thats not what sienna is ever meant to do super well. Now if they suddenly gave her access to something like kerillians glaive, I would have a very different opinion because then she would be capable of much more effective handling of armor beyond how safely she can manage with just the mace. Mace can handle armor okay, yes, but it is not incredibly safe.

2 Likes

An axe, little or large, isn’t really Sienna’s style. First off, she’s a “frail” old lady, at least physically, so lighter and smaller weapons are more her thing in melee. Second, all her weapons are more-or-less strengthened ceremonial items, and while that doesn’t exclude an axe from the options, I still think it wouldn’t fit that well in that aspect either.

I do understand your point, though, and even agree. I think Unchained should have an exclusive melee weapon, something that’s a bit more dedicated than the existing options. I think an all-rounder would be better than an armor specialist, though, and I’m unsure of what that particular weapon should be.

But before any of that, her (and others’) current weapons should be balanced. I think that the armor problem could actually be solved through the (already asked-for and proposed) tweaking of Bolt Staff. As it stands, it’s already the only staff to be able to deal even with super armor, and is a moderately useful staff anyway, but otherwise it’s overshadowed by other weapons.

2 Likes

Uh, going to have to disagree with you there. Beam and 30% armor/skaven is sort of crazy. You can two-shot bodyshot SV. Her SV kill rate is faster than anything besides BH and maybe Huntsman (he’s slightly slower IMO, accounting for charge time and missile travel).

This is also putting aside how she can just delete CWs back to back.

I think maybe you really meant this?

Although, I’m not sure I love your argument that it should be this way. It does make melee sort of painful. You really only have 2H mace as an option for armor pen so I get OP’s frustration. I feel like the flame weapons should have some armor pen or maybe a fire spear or something? Heat damage seems like it would hurt like hell even with armor.

1 Like

Sure I agree all of her options for melee have some significant anti personnel weakness, but speaking to what she is currently good at, I kind of outlined what her job is - so to speak.

I’m more quibbling with mixing the assessment of her ranged and melee.

With ranged (especially beam), she is good-to-phenomenal against all enemy types. Her ‘role’ is really just kill everything as fast as possible – which, to be fair, is sort of everyone’s role.

With melee, I agree she kinda sucks against armor.

1 Like

Armor in your face… and armor at distance… 2 entirely different things. The discussion was about melee options. I main Sienna unchained as well, and have mastered this class. But we aren’t talking about ranged, we all know she can suitably utilize bolt/beam against armor effectively. But when you have armor in your face shes got nothing to pull out except… mace. Which becomes hard to use safely against multiple arnored enemies at close quarters. This thread was focused on her melee options… and melee is vital.

1 Like

I guess.

This is again Pyromancer, at full crit stacks.
It doesn’t answer or solve problems with lackluster melee weapons, especially on 2 other classes.

Other Sienna’s classes can’t really rely on either crits or beamstaff, as both are only good on Pyro, the only class that can stack them.
And since Unchained is melee centered, it should have either weapon selection to deal with any armor category or unique buff to her melee, as “at X overcharge you penetrate armor on attacks”

But the Unchained is exactly that. Problem is, while you can rack up turtle stats and become almost unkillable it lacks offensive options. Which are priority in this game.

If melee class needs someone to babysit her all the time it’s faulty design.

Okay, but what is her strength then?
She’s not exceptionally good at hordes vs other classes, she needs warm up to be effective, firesword/ sword are basically skins because weapons feel very similar.
Where is this particular weakness balanced by unique strength?

Melee/Mixed Sienna players want options, not just “mace or wipe”.

Crit is irrelevant. I wasn’t relying on crits in that clip.

This is just beam on Pyro with 30% Skaven/Armored. It’s always a two-shot bodyshot vs. SV – even without a crit. You can get the same performance on BW since it also has the 10% increased range damage passive. I haven’t tested, but it might also be possible to hit this breakpoint on Unchained running full 40% Skaven/Armored (since the percentages are multiplicative). The math ‘should’ work out doing it in my head.
Probably someone else with more experience with UC can weigh in here.

So this can be replicated on Pyro and BW without crits. Probably Unchained as well.

I’m not saying this justifies poor anti-armor melee weapons on Sienna. I find them a little frustrating to use. My main quibble was NoobSlayer saying Sienna is not an anti armor/elite class. That’s just not true. I’d say she’s just hands down the best elite/armor killer in the game right now running Pyro CDR/RSS Beam. You can even chain kill CWs back to back.

NoobSlayer also said that armor could force you into melee so you have to deal with the terrible melee weapons. I also disagree. You don’t really need melee to deal with armor using beam and hitting the SV breakpoint to two shot since the snipe always staggers (even mid-attack animation). You can just do what I did in that clip – cycle through the enemies one at a time in order. It’s super easy.

I was thinking for some time about a better melee weapon for sienna.
And i agree that a axe is not really Sienna’s style, i was thinking give her a “big” ceremonial sword.
Sienna would use this sword with 2 hands, and as attack pattern i was thinking something like Kerillians 1 hand sword.
That would give you light attacks from left to right to defend yourself and a decent overhead. If you would make the overhead so that the blade bursts up in flames that would be awesome.
And there you have my idea for a pretty good melee weapon for Sienna.

1 Like

My idea is flaming 2h-Chain for Unchained :grin:
It could be built to be like 2h-Sword or, perhaps more logically, Flail. And if it was Unchained exclusive maybe it could have some kind of mechanic that it would eat overcharge in use but would ether have fire damage or DOT on hit in proportion of overcharge.

This topic was automatically closed 7 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.