I’ve been screaming skulls for golden throne for a bit, October beta Zealot was far superior to this iteration. From what I can see there seems to be a disconnect on its role. To me, the Zealot seems like the melee class of the group. Yes, I understand the Ogryn are good in melee but, I see them as a rear guard and horde smasher. Zealot perks are either so underpowered or simply broken, especially Purify in Blood. Chastise the Wicked (seriously fix your tooltip it doesn’t do what it says) is more of save me button or a gap closer… again a melee focused ability. I am really starting to see issues with horde minions, they need a hp nerf or population density reduction, swing times are too fast, the attack distance is obscene on their swings, and just about everyone of them runs faster than you. I am constantly side dodging all the time whilst swinging head level, bad design, period. It’s like bunny hopping and its stupid, yes you can push them back but its pretty much useless because of the insanely fast swing on basic enemies. At least special enemies are balanced…sort of.
Dodging while swinging is a classic Tide mechanic, not only do you avoid incoming damage, but the tip of your weapon can cleave through more enemies as it completes your attack.
Hence the reason I do it. As I dodge and swing, these horde minions TTK is the issue, I’m using the mechanics designed to avoid the damage they should be dying much faster…these are basic civilians with a pipes not Dreg Ragers.
You must be using a bad melee weapon bc the only melee weapons I felt sucked against hordes were the axe and the dagger, but they are made for killing elites anyway, probably best paired with a good horde killing ranged weapon.
Just dodging while swinging and backing up should keep you safe, the dagger was the only weapon where I felt reach was a problem, but that makes sense it is a dagger.
The combat axe is abysmal. It’s gotta be one of the laziest weapon designs Ive seen in a tide game, performing nothing but overhead chops (push attack does perform a bit of a horizontal chop), although I did get a blue variant that performed a horizontal chop (relentless) on it’s first heavy attack (but the sequence wouldn’t reset unless you blocked or stopped swinging). I see little reason to use it when the tactical axe exists.
Same with the “devil claw” sword vs the heavy sword. Latter feels far better for both hordes and elites.
Chainsword and its super effective against armored clowns and just about everything else, if you think the hp of the horde is in a good spot you are wrong.
Yea, I main psyker so idk if you get it, but the dueling sword is similar to the rapier in vermintide 2 and is great against horde and unarmored elites in melee.
Most zealots I’ve seen use the evicerator and look like they are having a blast.
Try to stay away from the catachan devil sword, the axe, and the dagger. Those weapons need a buff and FS will surely buff them.
FS addressed a lot of psyker’s problems with a hotfix 2 days after launch and we still haven’t officially hit full release. Have a little patience and faith, the underperforming melee weapons will surely get fixed after major problems are tweaked.
The axe isn’t lazy, you’re just not using it for its intended purpose. The axe does substantially more damage per swing, but is meant for single-target damage, making it an ideal weapon to use in the early game for focusing Special enemies while you use something like an autopistol to clear hordes.
The addition of ranged weapons makes it so certain weapons are better at crowd control, and certain for single target, and you can choose which tools you want to be for whichever job. For example the axe is incredible with the flamer as zealot, because you can just cook away hordes and bring out the axe to deal with approaching specials.
My only issue with the axe is that it’s near impossible to hit the body of a mauler with it, since the overhead chop makes every single swing hit the head unless you aim REALLY low, and since the mauler’s head is carapace armor, it deals next to zero damage.
Also, the special attack on the axe seems fairly useless, but that’s common with nearly every weapon in the game I’ve used so far
Give the weapons a go in the meat grinder. The axe will melt the specials in there far faster than any sword.
EDIT: Also the Axe’s push attack is a really solid crowd control option, give that a shot too. Not as much damage as a sword but considering that isn’t the axe’s intention, it’s nice to have.
The one with the horizontal chops are fine, even with the full cycle, but pleanty of weapons required block cancel in v2, and its pretty easy since the full block animation is not required to reset swing cycles.
Cite a single weapon in v2 that required block-cancelling to reset the sequence (as opposed to naturally restarting).
So it’s clear: heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy results in:
relentless, strikedown, strikedown, strikedown, strikedown, strikedown.
as opposed to:
relentless, strikedown, strikedown, relentless, strikedown, strikedown. ← the behavior of weapons in v2.
Regardless, block-cancelling isn’t as fast as chaining. There’s no point in using combat over tactical axe. The latter does infinitesimally less damage to single-targets but is significantly faster and able to handle hordes.
Sure. Saltzpyre’s rapier did L1 > L2 > L3 > L2 > L3 etc on its light attack chains, and you could only get L1 again by block cancelling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK4rdKT-u34
The third light was notably a diagonal-up-slash instead of a diagonal-down-slash, and hence slightly worse for e.g. proccing WHC’s headshot crit kill mechanic.
Since you were addressing me, in the future if you’d like to try and “correct” me, context is important. The two axes that were being discussed were the combat axe and tactical axe, not “the axe”. They’re not the same. Not the same speed, not the same damage (albeit similar), and the moveset isn’t the same.
This delusion that all the weapons in a beta have been properly weighed and their “intended function” set is utterly asinine. Every single goddamn weapon in v1 and v2 was revised multiple times.
Sad noises This went from a Zealot/npc minion rant to a weapons discussion.
Image thinking the weapons a class uses has no bearing on said class.
My take on the combat axe is that it’s actually my current favorite zealot weapon all-around; I find it more fun—although slightly less effective—than the eviscerator even on D4.
You can clear hordes fairly effectively by using the push-attack into 3 lights; the push attack actually has very good cleave and while the lights have mostly crappy cleave they one-shot headshot every basic horde enemy, including the melee flak-armored guardsmen, so you can handle most hordes fine—even/especially mixed hordes—as long as you space it well and can land headshots in melee consistently. It also has pretty good mobility on dodges and you can do some wavedash-level movement with dodge>sliding.
It also has some of the best carapace-armor DPS in the game right now with chained heavies, and can do so much more safely in mixed hordes than chain weapons or the thunder hammer due to attacking quickly with great mobility instead of requiring a half-second “chargeup” animation and then locking you into another half-second backswing animation.
“required” is a strong word, but if you wanted to use a lot of weapons vs hordes is was optimal to block cancel out any overhead swings. The Halberd is a good example, it did 2 sweeps and an overhead, which you would normally block cancel out vs hordes. Its not required but a lot of people would do it.
I don’t disagree, but this isn’t the point I was previously making. The grievance I have with the combat axe, it’s moveset progression (particularly with modifiers) aren’t present in several other weapons I’ve played with; they restart naturally so it’s possible it’s a bug and/or exclusive to the combat axe.