Frankly the entire blessings category could use a once over… but this would be a way to make the shovel feel passable. Even savage sweep would help.
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I don’t use shovels myself but a lot of people really like the new ones and find them extremely effective. The old ones were popular too for their versatility, them I used for a time.
But yeah, the blessing system has been one of mixed results since release. They’ve made a ton of improvements lately though but there’s definitely work left to be done. To name but a few issues:
- Some blessings just make no sense thematically or from a design perspective. Like Pinning Fire exists on a Shredder - which is a fast bursty SMG for short ranges -, but does not on Autoguns or BAG’s - which are specifically mid+ range stagger-heavy weapons where PF would make every sense. Meanwhile Deathspitter & Fire Frenzy, which are all about close range dmg (less than 8m iirc), can be found on Autoguns and BAG’s, but not on a Shredder.
- Trauma has 10 blessings, 8 of which either literally don’t work at all, or are nearly useless given what Trauma does. Yet for over a full year now absolutely nothing has changed.
- Many weapons have a tiny blessing pool with 1-2 good choices if even that. So there’s no variation to be had at all as regardless of your build you can only build the weapon one way.
- A lot of weapons in general have blessings that just make no sense for them. Such as +weakspot dmg on weapons that don’t do weakspot dmg or are very bad for it.
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I mean, I just listed one example, but you’re right. Staff blessings are a nightmare right now with how many just don’t function.
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Lol no because of the power attack. Shovels were fine until the new ones were added imo. Stupid levels of power creep. The strikedown lights on the Mk3 and Mk7 do more damage than the ones the standard issue does, in addition to having relentless hits with 8.0 hitmass instead of 3.0. This means at the only effective elite killing standard issue can do (uncanny boosted push attacks) the Mk7 is completely better, and can also fold and crumple a Crusher with Thrust. While being better the rest of the time too.
Please do something about the standard issue shovel and mk3 brute brainer. The brute brainer seems unable to stagger Daemonhost atm so its even more useless vs a club for me than ever.
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The new shovels feel like how the thunder hammers should feel.
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I find deciminator is really nice on the shovel. Its not an amazing horde clear weapon regardless but it dramatically increases both ttk and usage safety by increasing cleave. I ran the green one a few times as a pure shooty vet (no melee buffs) and it was very usable. Just light spam the horde and special elites.
Im still not the best at shoveling however. I generally agree blessings are in a bad spot design wise.
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I took decimator + rending on weakspot hits on the melee veteran (right/middle tree) and was pleasantly surprised. Strong defence, good stagger, nice dodges, fast attack speed, decent cleave and overall easy to use bonkinator, that can wither down even a mixed horde. It is fast enough to just spam LMB with only an occasional block!
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Thrust also works very well on them, especially for the ones with empowered strikes. Shovel heavies are snappy enough that you can spam them and clean out hordes pretty well, and coupled with the alt attacks on the new ones you can atomize elites, and ragers even on pure ranged builds. Nvm actually running it on a hybrid or melee set up.
Isn’t that sad?
The standard is for CC and spamming heavies. The consistent, sweeping attks on both heavies and lights are your moneymakers here. Add one of the impact blessings + thrust or decimator, and you’ll effectively be able to stunlock mixed hordes, and bully melee elites and ragers with consecutive heavy attk head strikes, especially in melee builds.
In general you only really use lights for the strike down as a combo finisher on the new ones, and to make room to get your heavy sweeps going on the standard. Otherwise you just spam heavies by default.
Honestly, blessing access decides weapon viability in a lot of cases. Without savage sweep I feel like chain sword would struggle. With savage sweep chain axe would be very powerful for horde clear
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Or just use the Mk7, which has the same 2 heavies as the default but better light attacks by far. You can usually just spam light attacks with decimator on Mk7, which works better than anything Standard Issue can offer. But it has the fold attack for actually one shotting that mutant on the hit going in instead of having to stagger stop it and then hit it in the head 6 times. So you could run another damage boost instead of uncanny which the sapper shovel needs to function at all.
As the resident wizard of bonk sapper shovel desperately needs like 4.5 hitmass lights and another target or 2 in the damage cleave index. Right now its dumpster fire, even if you ignore the special move completely Mk7 is better.
Brutal momentum… Cough
It’s a matter of playstyle and taste IMO, if you play melee aggressively even on ranged builds, sure. Now, if you only melee defensively or passively the standard is perfectly fine, at worse I’d say it’s definitely niche, if not outright hipster bait. I wouldn’t necessarily be against minor buffs or changing up blessings for all shovels though. I’d definitely be open to OP’s suggestion too.
Would be pretty broken if it could one shot 4 Crushers with special like Ogryn’s shovel though…
or well, they could just make it so Crusher have unique property for stopping brutal momentum hit.
It would probably only spread the weak second part of the hit, since BM spreads the killing blow only.
That’s quite a hand-wave to arrive at it being infinitely inferior overall alongside horde clearing to be ‘play style based’. At best the shovel is too inferior to the axe because they just gave it the same mobility. This is where the powered attack of the new shovels comes in that the standard issue doesn’t have, but the rest of its moveset is completely gutted vs anything but Mk3 Sapper. Which is probably too simple for its own good but has less hit lag on the special so its not entirely useless.
Standard issue shovel should probably honestly have the moveset of Mk7 to be truly utilitarian and unrivaled in unpowered attack utility. Or give it back its 6th dodge and extra mobility, it feels so sluggish now and not at all worthwhile with combat axe mobility. In most games I was running similar loadouts on my shovels (because rerolling is still AIDS) the Mk7 was just completely superior ignoring the fold out as much as humanly possible. This shouldn’t be the case, it doesn’t have anything to do but slap crowds around.
Or they could fix the scenario that enables that in the first place, the stacking and overlapping of enemies.
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What? You mean putting Uncanny strike on everything that was struggling is NOT good game design?
WOAH
Also there’s a ton of stuff that really got uncanny strike undeservedly.
That blessing is incredibly problematic imo. It’s the primary reason melee weapons have such high levels of homogenization.
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It’s a boring solution at best )=
The Shovel is one of the better weapons in the game, for reasons I’m sure someone understands.
Well, and because we’re hitting people with a shovel, so of course it’s automatically one of the best weapons.
It also has a large blessing pool with a variety of good choices.
(See a sum-up here)
Actually, Brutal Momentum would be a pretty fitting Blessing for a Shovel.
After it’s been nerfed, that Blessing seems to be BIS on almost any weapon that can get it, and its pretty darn annoying. Maybe if it wasn’t so easy to get infinite cleave, Hordes would actually be mildly dangerous without a Crusher Patrol hidden inside.
And yes, uncanny strike could also do with a bonk.
But I doubt BM is required to make the weapon “passable”, it can already solo a hordewave well enough.