power swords, when powered, do more cleave and rending
shock weapons shock
power mauls cause stagger pulses
the thunder hammer does a massive discharge of energy
arc maul causes arcs
the phosphor pistol comes with a phosphor effect that burns through enemies and makes them more cleavable and take more damage
the transonic blades don’t seem to actually have any effect. in the lore it’s described that on impact they’ll attune to the frequency of whatever they’re striking so they can then melt through it like butter. is this somehow represented in darktide? as far as i can tell they’re just normal swords with LEDs on them
obviously if it worked 1:1 like it was described in the lore it’d be op, just like power swords. but the “power” part of power swords is represented nicely in darktide
In DT they’re bimodal. You toggle their attunement between anti armour and anti flesh. (With some some cross attunement dipping though push attacks)
the push attacks specifically made me come to the conclusion that the only difference in the modes is how the weapon is swung, but now that i look at it closely it actually makes the christmas lights reverse if you press special so that was probably the intent you’re right
although i think it doesn’t make much sense when you analyze it further, because the anti armor attunement also does more damage to flesh
The anti armor swings are more likely to hit the head, but have a tighter swing pattern.
The anti flesh can cleave the entire screen, but will get stopped by carapace, which is why I like to run it with the “ignore enemy hit mass on crit” perk.
Having a long animation in-between switching is HORRIBLE though. This game is so fast paced, I ain’t got time for that!
And they should change colour or something anyway as I’ve no idea which one I’m set to. I know the hands hold them differently but that’s too subtle
The sweeping moveset has higher adms against everything except flak and carapace, which has a negative cleave multiplier (unyielding also has this penalty despite the boosted adms.) The opposite is on the single target moveset: higher flak and carapace adms and a cleave penalty against every other armor type except unyielding. This means that the sweeping moveset actually has decent single target damage against maniac ragers and unyielding targets.
Is this explained in game? Of course not.
Swapping stance in the middle of your combo lets you do a special stance change light attack, which has good damage. Not being able to tell which stance you have on at a glance does suck though. No one has time to look at which direction the energy is flowing.
What do you mean by doing it in the middle of a combo? How do we do that?
Do any attack like a light or heavy then press the weapon special button. If you did it right, your character will do what looks like a parry with the dagger (not a parry). Then attack again and you’ll do a special attack. Sweep to single target transition attack is a downward stab and the single target to sweep is an uppercut slash.
Ok thanks I’ll give it a go but sounds quite complex to manage during a mosh pit 
The push attacks are able to give you the type of attack the current stance isn’t configured for. You’ll do 2 sweeps in single target mode and 2 strikedowns in sweep. If the electrocution status wasn’t so easy to get from how avaliable crits are to such weapons I’d enjoy using this (not running electro talents makes melee sustain worse). Feels kinda bad when you have a dueling weapon that just stuns enemies instead of giving you opportunities to get dodge stuff to proc.