We had a little chat about this today. There are some pretty bad weapons out there, and some which are just objectively worse than their counterparts. Ogryn seems to be the most affected.
Weapons which need go back to the drawing board:
Achlys Mk I Power Maul - this easily the worst weapon in the game, even if you are into the special attack suppression spam. It’s light attacks are terrible, heavies aren’t much better. Poor damage, cleave and attack speed overall
Atrox Mk IV Tactical Axe - the light attacks feel off, I haven’t tested it, but it feels like its range is worse than the other Marks
Weapons which need a buff:
“Brunt’s Pride” Mk II Bully Club, if this is meant to be Mk I brother, its first heavy attack needs to come out faster
Krourk Mk VI Cleaver it’s lacks a decent carapace combo, and the other cleavers are just better at everything, even with its high heavy attack cleave
Foe-Rend Mk II Ripper Gun, without bracing its spread and recoil are terrible
Foe-Rend Mk VI Ripper Gun, I have a near perfect Mk VI, Mk V easily out performs other variants at ANY range, in terms of more consistent kills, ammo economy and in terms of dps
Catachan Mk I “Devil’s Claw” - again a forgotten weapon Mark. No single target heavy attack makes it a substandard choice as Mk IV and MK VII exist
Helbores and Bolter - these aren’t bad, but especially with Helbores, racking the bolt every time you pull them out just adds to the generla clunkiness of those weapons. At least with baynet buffs, you have to switch every time few enemies push through
Kantrael MG IV Infantry Lasgun - please improve handling of this thing… I like weapons with character but the recoil pattern on this thing isn’t fun to learn, it jumps too much. Also consider making this a close-medium range lasgun, reverse its damage profile to do more damage closer you are to the target, and less further away you are. Just to make things different from other lasguns
shotguns still deal inconsisted damage at reasoanble ranges, have pretty poor time to kill and as a result poor ammo economy. you spend more time reloading them than actually shooting. There are few builds which make them work, but in general these just feel weak
Weapons which need to get reined in a bit:
Tigrus Mk XV Heavy Eviscerator - light attacks stagger way too many targets, also automatically stun ragers…if you build right, the damage output of this Evi just feels “slightly” too much for its
brainless attack pattern
M35 Magnacore Mk II Plasma Gun - 100 CLEAVE? Adjust this downwards, this is just silly
the NEW shovels - one-hit kill on heavy elites trivilises the game
also, I have no idea how I missed it, Columnus Mk V Infantry Autogun - no idea what is the fix here, higher recoil? lower rate of fire? I’m no a fan of silly damage drop offs in games, and autoguns already have that. Atm Mk V IAG this is the weapon to go on for vet, zealot and psyker if you want the highest ranged dps
Isn’t the new shovel require some specific blessing like Limbsplitter and Thrust to one shot crusher? having to sacrifice more useful bleesing like Uncanny Strike and Decimator, then there’s also conditions of stop attacking for 4-5 sec and hold heavy for Thrust stack in middle of cqc seem like a fair trade for that one shot potential. Unless you’re talking about Ogryn variant.
If anything I’m more surprise you listed shovet but didn’t mention anything about Power Sword.
Also I honestly never meet anyone with Shredder auto pistol anymore after the nerf, seem like they overdid it a little.
The little power creep is a lie. Damnation is much easier now. Compare any build like a purgatus build to pre-patch 13, and it’s clear that it’s just straight stronger with more crit, dodging while crit, 3 different toughness regen option, larger aura, faster quell, etc.
This game most definitely got a huge power creep after patch 13.
I can’t think of a single build from before patch 13 that wouldn’t have everything from before and more stuff on top.
The Evis Mk XV light attacks are slower than heavy attacks of some of the other weapons. (Meanwhile the light attack chain seems to have a bug which forces you to left click twice as fast as the attacks actually go. Otherwise the attack chain gets interrupted.)
The block+attack is lackluster as it has a short reach and low damage.
P.S. You forgot to request buffs for the Crucis Thunder Hammer. Worse than a shovel in all aspects right now… which is a sacrilege.
Cool. Not seeing a single problem with any of this.
Nerfing is the choice of the unimaginative.
Balance does not need to arbitrarily make weapons worse for the arsenal as a whole to feel good.
Making weapons that are useful beyond the handful that are constantly used is the way to go… Buffs or behavior adjustments are warranted for underused or underperforming kit. Doesn’t mean it needs to be AS powerful as the gear that is used most.
Because constantly buffing everything creates a vicious cycle of having to buff something else because it’s now underperforming despite never being touched.
Once we finished buffing all of our stuff, we have to buff the enemies now since they’re not performing.
Then we add something new, increase power overall, and then have to buff everything again.
If you want to see this phenomenon in action, look at payday 2 and the fact they had to keep adding new difficulties after difficulties and made this convoluted mess.
I didn’t call for everything to be buffed. You seem to have inferred that, from where I’m unsure, because I didn’t type it.
I suppose since you didn’t seem to read what I said that first time: I’ll change how I stated it:
Not all gear needs to perform exceptionally, it just needs to not feel like they’re doing next to nothing because at the end of the day, these are in fact weapons intended for (in most cases, shovel aside) the sole purpose of killing.
Someone else is eventually to call for more buffs eventually if we stay in the mindset of “buffs only,” and a buff from bad to slightly underperforming is really a stopgap for someone else to claim for more buffs to make sure everything is equal.
Variety is a power increase, so a larger arsenal is a natural power creep which will just cause cyclical buffing issues.
At this point i think the weapon balance is pretty ok.
There are always going to be outliers, some weapons are going to be stronger than others and some are going to end up in the weaker category, and i am ok with this.
It’s extremely low speed balances the easy moveset well enough in my book
The low ammo, awkward charge time on uncharged shots, long reload and lack of any zoom balance the power of the shots well enough. It‘s a plasma gun - it can penetrate terminator armor. It should benetrate lightly armored humans well enough.
Their oneshot pickaxe ability are the only reason to take them - take that away and turn them into useless trash only good at muddying down the RNG slot machines.
None of these nerfs are warranted - especially not as long as crafting is such a bloody RNG grind.
Agreed - V and II feel vastly better and I see no reason to use the IV.
The helbore I and II can stay out pretty long due to effective and fun bayonet attack. So you don’t need to change ranged and melee as often and thus it’s not as bad as on the bolter. What I’d like for the III as a buff is to changed the awkward bayonet hacking to the same thrust of the I and II.
And you can use Volley fire to insta equip bolter and helbore. I think this clunkyness is an interesting way of balancing power and gives the player a choice to choose a specific skill to get around it.
So while I wouldn’t mind a faster equip time I don’t think it’s necessary.
The folding shovels are the best power weapons in the game.
In order for the folding shovels to be in line with other power weapons, the activation animation needs to be extended to include the character to stop moving and observe their weapon (maybe even give it a little shake while mouthing a “woahm” noise for effect), after that the shovel needs to aggressively unfold itself automatically and without warning at an extremely awkward 0.1⅜ seconds after the completed activation animation (especially during attacks).
This is how power weapons are supposed to function and we need to be vigilant against the voices demanding FS start making disgustingly broken weapons… like a foldable thunder hammer.
Side note. All of the things people have pointed out as being outliers are outliers mainly due to the blessings they have access to that other weapons do not.
Brutal momentum, thrust, rampage and sweeping strikes etc.
I’d trade the folding shovel for a Power Sword in a heartbeat. Requires alot of build around to reach the coveted one shot breakpoint on crushers to be able to get a bunch of them in a single swing. Commiting to the swing in situation where there are other enemies around leads to you taking chip damage unless you’d be willing to give ground and dodge slide around.
I was under the impression that alot of people where unhappy with how the hammers function and might not be the best measurement of a good power weapon.