I propose to change this blessing to work similar as hand cannon but on weak spots attacks:
“Weak spot hits receive 30% Rending"
This would remove the enabling synergy with bleeding, burning, and soulblaze. But it would keep the funny zealot knife synergy (maybe even add it to an ogrin weapon for rock). It would still reward precision strikes but be more in line with other Rending blessings/skills. Lower maximal value but no stacking mechanic rather an always on effect.
DS and Knife would still get very high pen with that, I think around 70% if my memory serves me right but no more weird over pen mechanics outside of vet. So it would be a moderate nerf but the number is just a proposal and open for discussion.
Force swords are quite comparable to DS so they would prob feel a similar nerf. Shovels split in folding and OG shovel. Folding shovels have near 80% armor pen on their special move so there would be a very small diff, the OG shovel might be hit harder by the nerf? Someone more accustomed to that weapon may give insight…
I suspect that even if the Uncanny effect was halved it would be still one of the recommended picks, the one thing to consider is how you pointed out yourself is how such changes could affect the current “not-meta” weapon picks.
There should be a general nerf to inter-weapon / ability / talent / blessing interactions. This is a major source of some broken builds.
Then we can talk about long-time coming Soulblaze stacking nerfs…
rending generally breaks the game and its crazy how easily attainable it is compared to vt2, where armor pen was a very important and set in stone part of weapon design and only str potions could “cheat”
in darktide it’s literally baked into every classes kit
True, but Darktide went in a bit different direction than the core VT2 experience. We really face massive waves of enemies. One could make an argument that if Fatshark nerf player power levels, especially with the usual build / weapon suspects, THEN they wouldn’t have to push the game engine to its limits to satisfy the demand for intense gameplay.
Let us expand our horizon a little by asking few questions,
how many DS marks are there?
Is one of them actually relying far less on stabbing heads (on account of not having stab attack) and more on attacks from behind and sides?
does it make the quite obscure mark of DS a rather non-offender when it comes to the whole head stabbing uncanny strike controversy?
wouldn’t the proposed solution affect the least offending DS mark the hardest?
I do however realize that despite this board having nearly infinite appetite for balance takes, figuring out that weapons have different marks that sometimes behave in an entirely different way is as of yet a nuance too far
I get your gripe but let me ask a fifth question: If the other marks do not rely on stabbing heads, are they even affected by an uncanny nerf? Seen as uncanny stacks by stabbing heads. In my book they work the same just have different animations; where DS IV just stabs the others have some variance between stabs and strike downs. Which by fatshark standards are two sides of a coin as you can read in patch notes: “stab strikedown” reduced from… to…
Let me be bold and assume something: seen as the strikedown have lower armor pen then the stabs, I would say the other marks are more dependent on uncanny to perform on the same level as mk IV against the current armor spam. Could that be the case?
Feel maybe, number wise we faced less enemies per match in VT2, unless you played specific mods in the modded realm. Hordes felt bigger because it was harder to quickly to clear your screen, and enemies would build up and stay alive for longer.