I got into the habit of rocking the Devil’s Claw on my vet in an effort to handle Rager spam and their unfairly long melee range - but now with their attacks actually being dodgeable, there’s not really a point to the main gimmick of the sword.
It’s still fairly good against hordes, but I could take a chainsword instead and still have roughly comparable performance while getting better use against armor.
So what should I do instead?
Knife
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If you’re on zealy the heavy sword is turbo catachan, basically. No counter but pure offensive killing power and proactive stagger on the special instead of reactive (though the counter is strong). It also has brutal momentum called deathblow or something.
But catachan isn’t terrible, its just that like tactical axe the lowest tier armor penetration is noticeable. I say lowest tier because the veteran shovel has uncanny strike for some reason. Both swords actually have unused rending blessings (probably for the best). Its once again a case of a specialized weapon being unappealing vs generalist ones.
I loved running the Catachan Sword with the Plasma Gun. They complimented each other’s weaknessea perfectly.
Than they buffed the Plasma Gun so hard and made it unfun for me to use, so in general that build has been collecting Dust since then.
I could try running it with Bolter, but with it’s long reload and ammo issues I don’t think it would be as fluid.
It depends on what you want - but generally speaking, every class has unique options that outweigh the generalist use of the Catachan sword, whose main purpose is mixed horde clear.
Veterans have Power Swords and the Folding Shovels, the latter of which doesn’t do a lot of damage but has insane CC as well as excellent single-target damage when folded, enough to one-shot a mutant.
Zealots have a lot of weapons, but as @MarxistDictator said, the heavy swords are basically just devil’s claw swords on steroids. Since you can dodge basically everything, the lack of parry is irrelevant - I personally wasn’t a fan, and prefer using the mk2 eviscerator. Same great crowd control, solid anti-armor capabilities, and it’s a HUGE LIKE XBOX chainsword. What’s not to love?
Psykers don’t really use melee a bunch but I’ve found more success with the dueling swords, force swords (uncharged attacks are better than you think), and even straight up chainswords on various kinds of builds.
I think the primary purpose of the Devil’s Claw sword is to be an easy melee weapon to pick up and do well with, but every class usually just has better options available for mixed horde clear and anti-armor options. Overall, it’s usable, but certainly not meta - and I don’t think it should be. It would be boring to have this stupid basic sword everyone starts out with be the best option available.
I still use it from time to time. If you can manage to get shred and rampage on it, with carapace damage on the side, I find that it serves well against all targets, even crushers. It’s also amazing for dealing with bosses, especially the chaos spawn, as you can parry literally all swings (not the grabs) at little to no cost. I prefer it sometimes for its flexibility and speed over something like the power swords or chain swords.
Zealot is actually really good with this weapon in spite of the mystifying presence of heavy sword (they should really put this weapon back on psyker imo). Running generic FoTF builds catachan is insanely well tuned to crit cooldowns on any keystone. Making it very flexible and imo best with martyrdom…but martyrdom is just broken on everything lol. Especially chain axe 4.
The standard shovel (hell, maybe even the foldable ones) with Decimator is basically the Devil’s Claw Mk1 on steroids. It’s just better in every aspect. And, as a bonus, the second blessing is just a free pick based on the specific thing you want it to be better at.
On Zealot, as mentioned before, Heavy swords might just be better.
On Psyker, the Mk4 Dueling Sword is also a much more versatile choice ; at the cost of slightly worse horde-clear (but not by much), it’s loads better at handling everything else, with added top tier mobility.
But again, MK 15 completely invalidates it with it’s horde clear, cleave, and crits just being better as well as actually having single target damage.
I mean with the right configuration, either will do just fine unless you’re specifically out maxxmaxx. It really ultimately just boils down to which ones attack patterns and special attack you prefer.
That rager nerf was really one of the weirdest design choices they made out of nowhere. I know they have statistics on which enemy kills how many players (since they’ve released stats before) and I’d love to see how impotent they are now.
That said I still like the catachan swords, the parry still lets you be way more aggressive and the horde clear is still great. It’s just decidedly less of a bonus now. It’s one of those things where they slowly powercreep everything to the point where the weapon that was intended to be “pair this with armorpen elsewhere for coverage + a specialized experience” is now just “it’s just x but worse”
I was one of the people who hated how BS their melee was and was taking the DC just to counter the moments where the game dumped a half dozen of them on you as a veteran.
Yeah I didn’t mean to come across like they werent janky but that they would just nerf them into becoming a glorified poxwalker is what I really didn’t expect. It’s crazy too because VT2 berserkers strike the balance chord perfectly
looks at Fatshark’s ‘balance’ history
Are you sure this wasn’t something you could’ve seen coming?
I don’t know if I’d call them glorified poxwalkers. Gangs of scab ragers can still be an absolute menace in the right/wrong situation. Personally I definitely agree with their nerf because the way their attacks functioned before was strong mostly because it was so janky and lacked any reasonable counter, which isn’t the right way to achieve difficulty. Now I think they’re mostly fine, maybe up their damage somewhat but meh, I don’t think even that’s particularly necessary.
They were not merely janky, but intentionally designed and coded to be undodgeable. Someone though it’s a good idea.
I use devil’s claw to parry plague ogryns. Works just as good. Pretty sure you can parry a chaos spawn too. Haven’t tried it yet.
I think you can parry every melee attack that isn’t a grab or a Dog pin, including boss attacks.
I think you can parry the aoe stomps the Plogryn and Beast have but I’m not sure.
Yes you can.
