Let me put it slightly better:
“Weapon X needs a buff” – ok, I’m listening. “Lets compare it to A&F” – brain just shut off.
Its the Warhammer equivalent of:
“My husband needs some self improvement – let me compare him to Superman.”
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1h Axe is a great weapon; it’s actually my go-to for both WHC and IB.
I’ve actually never gotten on board with all the A+F love; I legitimately feel that 1h Axe is straight-up better on WH than A+F, and Falchion is better on BH than A+F. A+F only seems best-in-class with Zealot.
Of course, when WoM hits, this will probably all change.
I see you are smart guy.
If you are going to compare lets say golf players.
Would you compare them to Tiger Woods or to your neighbrhood who once a month go play golf?
Ofcourse you must allways compare other things to the best thing available.
And by the way superman is just fiction A+F is real.
Edit: If you atleast read through, you would see that I agree with nerfing A+F, but not as only solution. I was saying nerf A+F and boost rest, aka move them all to the middle.
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Axe is all right until you get to situation when team dies and you have to fight horde + elites + specials all alone to get to revive them.
When this happens you feel how inferior axe is compared to A+F (at killing all mentioned above)
Axe don’t shine in anything at all. It is worse at fighting horde (less cleave, slover swing, almost no movement speed which leads to draining dodge) elites (almost same, but still the mobility can cause problems, I am not speaking about 1 stormvermin going on you, I am speaking about 2cw, 2-3 mauls and some SV) specials (because of lack of movement on axe you have less dodge you can use, so it is harder (sometimes imposible) to create space to shoot specials)
In a standard situation, you don’t have to even fight as team could carry you. But the moment when it matters (thats gonna sound cliche) ever bit matters.
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First of all, I’d just like to say your humourous post genuinely brightened my day even further.
Uhh the analogy does not compute for me 
, I mean I don’t know about you but Tiger Woods is a bit extreme. Sure, you might look up to him, but that’s not a realistic goal let alone comparison short term.
Say you’re about a tenth better than your buddy but you’re both with rounding 0.001x and 0.001x as good as Tiger Woods respectively, it becomes harder and harder to actually compare yourself to each other because you’ve chosen a point of reference that is waaay above your own skill levels.
Same principle applies here with the A&F.
This is true. Crit, AS and SS does allow the axe to handle hordes (and axe has that juicy innate +10% crit), but it’s infinitely easier to do so on the A&F especially as the latter has higher cleave, heavy linesman and +20% crit on push attacks. A&F also does not lack for AP so it’s comparable to axe there even if not quite the same, but it’s not a noticeable enough difference to be a weakness over the axe. The A&F had its dodges nerfed in the WoM beta so that at least’ll no longer apply come the xpac.
But again, the crux of it is that the A&F is overtuned, not that the axe is bad.
Even the dual hammers on Bardin, which are great and can handle everything, have a downside, in that you’re forced to do heavies (or pushes but heavies are easier to land headshots) to deal with armour. M&S on Kruber is a great all-rounder but it lacks the heavy hitting punch of the exec and halberd. They have niches.
Currently A&F is a hybrid between the axe and the falchion but does both their roles equally well or better without downsides, that’s the main problem. Next to that, they’ll always look ass (again, the Tiger Woods vs you and a buddy example).
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I’ve played this game a lot, and usually I’m the one carrying my team, not the one getting carried. I only use weapons that I feel like I can reasonably survive anything solo with. For example, I really enjoyed dagger with pyro, but solo patrols in small spaces just felt like an auto-lose, so I switched o mace instead. I’m not using axe just because it’s good with a party; I’m using it because it’s the best all-around option.
With WHC, axe is hands down his best weapon. Easy to get headshots & higher crit chance, which both synergize well with that career. I would feel comfortable soloing a patrol or a mixed horde with Axe, but not with A+F. It’s too easy to take damage with A+F. The only scenario where A+F feels even arguably better is a pure horde, but that’s the easiest part of the game and is completely fine with axe.
With IB, axe gives him good mobility and still excellent armor killing power. It’s slow at horde clear, but I can always just swap to drake pistols & fire a couple charged shots into a crowd if the horde gets too dense.
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Seriously though, I feel like I’m the only guy in the world who loves the hatchet. All dorf and baldy classes can rock it and it chews through CW patrols and bosses. It can’t handle hordes without good footwork and positioning (or grudge raker), which… I mean I think that’s how it should be. It kills trash in 1-2 hits, but not in mass. Not it’s job when falchion and rapier deal with hordes better (but not vice-versa).
Not trying to derail the thread, it’s just out of all the weapons, I think 1h axe is in the least controversial state. That might change when WoM drops, since the beta introduced some highly unnecessary nerfs to it along with some indirect nerfs everyone already experienced. FS already stated that the beta was purposefully heavy-handed, so who knows where any of the weapons will stand after the change.
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In my opinion, Kruber’s 2h hammer, due its slowlyness, needs more push block angle or one more stamina shield.
Maybe the best thing to do about Axe and Falchion is to make it Dual Falchion.
It would make a lot of sence that he uses dual “swords” it will fix the issue with insane damage. No need to change any paterns, just instead of axe you will get falchion, a bit more cleave (which is not needed 
) and less damage (which is needed).
I really don’t feel comfortable with light one handed weapons that have worse dodging capabilities than executioner sword and almost same movement penalty (just to make sure that we are clear here, charged attack on executioner suplements or in some cases substitues dodge).
Also I have crafted (not perfect stats, near perfect) rapier and flail.
Rapier is exactly as I remember it, terrible. Light attacks pattern in combo is total meh. Charged attack - partially do almost no damage and fully charged attacks takes too much time leaving you too exposed and forcing you to stay infront of target (cw shoulders bloks headshots from even a bit of angle). Movement is also slowed terribly. Dodges are ok.
Flail on the other hand kinda surprised me. Yes it is not good at killing CW, it never was. But was almost ok, but the dodge distance, dodge count and again movement slow.
Also I don’t consider stamina to be that important, it is just for few pushes (especially when going to save someone) every 0,1 dodge distance or dodge count is 10x better than one stamina shield.
I think that low cleave, slow attack and slow movement speed is an issue on horde. And why I see it as issue on axe, when everyone consider it just anti-elite weapon?
Because there is a lot of weapons that can handle elites as well as axe, but are also much better against hordes. As they atleast don’t slow so much or have bigger cleave or are fast. Some and A+F is that case have all.
I agree that flail is good. Back before they changed stamina recovery in BBB, flail made Zealot almost unkillable, and that was back when temp health canceled stacks. With his extra stamina on low health, and with the stamina recovery you’d get along with temp health when you hit enemies, you could use the flail push attack quite liberally & get yourself out of almost any situation. Since they nerfed stamina recovery with the temp health overhaul in BBB, flail isn’t as OP, but it’s still good. It’s just not as easy to use as some other weapons.
I’m also with you on rapier. I don’t understand how to use that weapon. I’ve tried it a bunch of times, in both V1 and V2, and it just seems to do no damage and no stagger. I must be doing something wrong with it, because I see other people use it and do okay, but to me it feels like the most trash weapon in the game by an extremely wide margin.
But the fact that other people seem to enjoy it makes me feel like it’s balanced okay, and I’m just the problem. It must only seem terrible to me because it doesn’t fit my playstyle or something.
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It’s true, there are weapons available to Bardin that do handle elites as well as 1h axe and better with hordes. Hammer’s heavy attack has the exact same damage as hatchet but faster and a quicker recovery, Big Hammers lights hit just as hard if slower, pickaxe 1hKOs on heavies, and Dual Hammers are arguably OP. With all considerations, beyond hatchet’s ease of use and extra crit chance, everything he has can deal with armor as well as hatchet.
(Off topic, Greathammer does better armor damage on lights than Greataxe, how backwards is that?)
For Saltzpyre that used to be falchion until that weapon got nerfed heavily and then replaced with the unfairly good AnF. If AnF did not exist it would literally be best in slot for armor.
… I really wish AnF didn’t exist 
Also really wish flail could deal more than chip damage to armor
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Rapier requires heavy duty with animation cancelation. The reason why that weapon sux is the light attack combo. The heavy attacks, it is about getting used to, but it cannot be done as well as with other weapons especially when you get the animation when he thrust nearly from waist to center of screen.
In my opinion they would do just fine if they removed 3rd 4th animation from rapier on light attacks. And for heavy attacks right now there is partially charged damage and fully charged damage, I would throw that in trash and made it just standard heavy stab with damage somewhere in middle of those two values.
The problem with flail I have is again the movement speed and low dodge count.
There is simple solution to Axe and Falchion issue, making it Dual Falchion. It can keep dodge distance like falchion, same animation literally everything just the damage will get scaled to falchion.
Flail should do much more damage to armor. (In reality axes sux against armor. Maces and hammers are armor killers)
Offtopic Greathammer heavy attack has also better cleave. Greataxe is just inferior Greathammer with no advantages.
But most of all I don’t care so much about damage of the weapons. What grinds my gears is that light er weapons slows you down, but some heavy weapons speeds up your movement. There should be some standard for that.
every 2H would slow you down by x%
dual will slow you down by y%
one hand no effect, so by 0% (there is no reason for little tiny weapon to slow you down)
Ofcourse we must keep movement speed up on weapons that has it, otherwise it would broke them, like executioner heavy attack.
Yeah, I can understand that. My walls still bear a keyboard shaped hole the day I used the sword and shield to attack. Some weapons should not have their move speed slowed.
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I have to agree here. On WHC it’s clearly the headshot fishing, but I don’t know why so many Zealots also take it - yeah, there’s breakpoints with Fiery Faith, but taking any other weapon works well on Zealot too (and they’re less odd to use).
Playstyle incompatibilities are surprisingly often the reason why a particular weapon feels bad. The Elf’s Dual Daggers are fantastic, but if you have trouble with headshots and range control they won’t do much. With the rapier, you need to fish for headshots, but you also need to weave pushes into your routine and to learn to use the heavy attacks well - it’s very much a precision weapon. Other weapons need other strengths to utilize or other tricks in the attack patterns (and no, I don’t think any weapons needs animation cancelling, let alone macros to do it - some can benefit from it, but the benefit is usually minor). Part of why the A&F is so good is because it has no real weaknesses - and that means it can also fit practically anyone’s playstyle well.
It can be pretty hard to separate “it doesn’t fit me or my playstyle” from “it’s a genuinely bad weapon” though. If you can’t do it naturally, the best you can do is to look at how others use the weapon, how well they do with it and how much it’s used in general. If it still gets used reasonably much and people are doing well, it’s probably just not your thing. If it gets used very little and/or people don’t do well with it in general, it’s more likely to be the weapon’s fault. The of course, some weapons are also just naturally harder to use (the aforementioned Dual Daggers, for example) and as your skills improve you might find that weapon a lot better.
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I can remember as I was playing VT1, that it was commonly said (it was before the added challenge board) that rapier is bad without animation canceling, that the combo cycle sux. As I went through some guides and videos about rapier in VT2 I heard/saw the same thing.
So it doesn’t seem to me like a playstyle thing. And yes block push attack is part of rotation for that weapon. Aka 2x light attack and push block attack and repeat.
If we compare rapier charged attack (which is slowly charged attack requiring a lot of precision) to executioner sword (which is slowly charged attack requiring a lot of precision) rapier does less damage, provides less mobility, and has worse angles for landing headshots. With exe sword I can lock rat ogre on spot while cycling through charged attacks landing one headshot after another, but with rapier that is much harder as you must include dodging in charged attack movement speedup and all for less damage. Not mentioning that light attacks are definetly in favor of exe sword. So if I had to play rapier, I’d rather go on kruber with exe sword.
About macros. If it is not part of the game, which is not, I feel like it is cheating. I have never seen anywhere from FatShark officially stating that macros for animation cancelation are allright. Ofcourse you can see it on some streamers/youtubers, but they will definetly not ban a free advertisement 
but I hope you get my point. If FS agrees with animation cancelation let it integrate in game itself or sanctify some mod that lets you do it. Just imagine someone don’t have a mouse where he can bind a macro and also don’t have any spare side buttons (I hate those side buttons, when pushing them I move my mouse to right) and so on.
But especially in terms on Saltzpyre as you said it is generally not used alot and usually doesn’t perform well, that is case for every weapon he has except that A+F.
Dual Daggers are one the same level of strenght, maybe even stronger than A+F. But that might be personal feeling and probably just because they swing faster.
This is exactly part of what I mean. People don’t see reason to taky any other weapon than x or y. And there are real facts that say that weapon x and y perform much better in every situation that rest of weapons. And I think we need to give to those other weapons a bit of love and if it will seems ok than nerf weapons x and y.
I think it will get much more accepted if some weapons recieve boost and than the strongest weapons get nerfed to match level of those underpowered. Than if they just nerf the strongest weapons and than they try to improve other weapons.
This improving might not get well and we will be left with more “bad” weapons. In other games I have allready seen some attempts to improve something that ended just by making it worse. So we must count that as an option too.
So thats why I would like to see giving love to weaker less used not so good weapons and than nerfing those OP weapons.
But the thing we were saying there is that even though we don’t personally like rapier, lots of people still use it (even in Legend), so it can’t be that bad.
There’s a distinction to be made between x weapon is bad/good and person y doesn’t like x weapon while person z does thanks to playstyle.
Halberd is uncontestedly a great weapon for Kruber but I prefer the exec and M&S as I like their attack patterns more. And in my experience halberd handles getting cornered better than exec.
Could it use a different attack pattern? Maybe. But the ideal for me in VT2 is not that I, personally, should want to play every single weapon. The ideal for me is that every weapon is equally viable and people pick the one that suits their own playstyle the most.
If they all had more-or-less the same patterns, eg CC sweeps on lights and single target high damage AP on heavies (like exec and pickaxe) it’d get boring quickly, as they’d all play identically.
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