I use a Heavy Sword on my zealot and find much better luck. The version with the horizontal heavy is fantastic at dealing with hoards, one light attack into repeated horizontal heavies. Block and shove where applicable, repeat. Heavy attack vertical, block to reset so you don't do the horizontal, repeat. Not good against Carapace armor sooo...only the crusher really matters, just hit the mauler in the flak if you need to. And if you're still worried about it, just run Bolter
I personally don't run it, though I probably should give it a try some time for my Veteran since I don't have a good crowd melee for him yet. I like running a tac-axe with decimator and Shred to help quickly chew through maulers and crushers, I just run attack speed buffs in my talent tree to help off-set my mediocre crowd control. (I mainly play Zealot with the Tac-Axe.
The special attack on the knife has a followup with the standard melee attack that is an instant full charge heavy. you use the punch to reset the enemies animation to a stumble so the head is easier to hit
Something to add for the combat blade, the punch ignores stagger reduction. I haven't tested this out myself, but on other weapons that have the exact same thing it will let me stagger Ragers and other "maniac" type enemies to keep my face attached. On top of that, this blade definitely has a different strike pattern when you use the punch first and immediately follow up with an attack. From what I remember, I think it's actually an overhead stab similar to the heavy attack. Might be worth testing.
the melee attack after a punch is a rapid fire heavy. never even bother charging up the heavy on the combat knife. just punch into melee for a 1-2 combo
I feel like the chainswords Rev could be toggled instead of gone after a couple of seconds or use. That would give them a heavy advantage not needing to reapply the special toaster ability
To be fair, it applies so quickly it doesn't really matter. That is unless you want it to also not go after hitting the enemy, which would be pretty cool but maybe a bit OP.
I'd argue powering in general should be togglable and stay on unless expired through use rather than just for chainswords. Forexample, Thunder Hammer. Takes a good while for it to charge up, and it's gone in what? 3 or 4 seconds? Might be you charged it to deal with something that seemed like it was gonna be easy to just swoop in and kill initially, but now you've spent your rush, and chasing this clown creature around the arena because it's fixated on someone that happens to not be you. Instead of having to recharge it constantly whilst chasing whatever your target is in a scooby doo like fashion, why not just power it once, and if you score the hit, great. If you fail to get the hit because someone else killed it, fine. You can just unpower it by toggling it off. To make up for the problem of the power sword, it seems you typically get 2 or 3 swings out of it, so just make that the limit per charge. If you wanna get fancy, you could give it a battery bar of some sort that automatically regenerates from lack of swings so that if you attack infrequently enough, you'd never need to charge it more than once? Probably an 8 second recharge time from idleness when left on, but allow you to just manually recharge it at almost the same speed you've always done. (Almost because the toggle would presumably take up a bit of time, maybe half a second or less?)
the Mk IV Devil's Claw is sorely underrated in my opinion, it has quickly become my personal favorite melee weapon to use on basically every class. Zealot can do surprisingly good work with it. What makes it so good is that if you do a Light > Heavy combo, and repeat, you can kill hordes without stopping to block or shove hardly ever. The first Heavy being a Strikedown attack makes it a lot better for quickly taking out single troopers than the other Devil's Claws, and a very good opener vs specials and elites of basically all kinds except crushers/maulers/reapers. You can also use sprint to turn any Heavy back into this first Strikedown Heavy, which means you can quickly chew through scattered troopers. A Heavy > Light combo on the same rhythm as the horde clear combo is pretty good against most single targets. The one thing that really keeps me glued to this weapon though is the Parry. The Parry is severely underused, as it has a few particular situations that allow it to be extremely useful beyond just style points. It can let you solo a Rager attacking you very easily, simply spam the parry to defend yourself and deal damage at the same time. You can even do it while fighting multiple Ragers if your spacing and kiting skills are good. It can help with Bulwarks that are focused on you, as you can parry any of their big swings to get some damage in. It is one of the best tools to deal with a Daemonhost if things go to shit or you don't have a shield user ogryn. Spamming parry will keep you alive for a surprising amount of time while also adding some damage.
Parry is heavily underrated, pretty sure it blocks everything other then grabs and ranged attacks. I now activate demonhosts everytime now spamming parry to always block everything if there's no ogryn with shield. Great for staying alive when the last alive. I use it on my Zealot as it also gets some crazy attack speed the lower your health with certain skills.
Zealot's Power Maul is just INSANE crowd control tool on powered up attacks. You can basically hold anything, any crowd, any special enemy (except bosses of course) alone by just doing power up-strike-repeat, this explosions will stagger everything in enormous radius. And as a cherry on top you also dealing great damage. Really loving it. I also wish FS buff Power Hammer because right now it's feels kinda underwhelming, both with and without powering it up
I use the M7 Tac axe. The special can spam interupt ragers and maniacs, like a push fot zero stam. Blessings on the axes in general are very powerful. Speed and good head magnet get me through everything.
With the thunder hammer, you can cancel the recovery animation after a charged swing by hitting your melee weapon button (1 by default on keyboard). Charge => Swing => hit 1 as soon as the attack connects => repeat.
I've found great use for the catachan knife with the Zealot's Bloodletting feat. Once it gets going, the crits start rolling in, and the bleed seriously piles up. I've yet to find a single use for the heavy sword that isn't turning it into dockets.
A strategy I picked up is initiating with a light and then following up with a heavy, then alternating between the two. For the vast majority of weapons, this is an infinitely resetting cleave combo.
can confirm that is the best horde clear in a lot of cases (not all), the combo also has a hilarious opposite on the ogryn's grenade gauntlet, going heavy then light then repeat allows it to use only single-target attacks making it pretty decent at elite takedown.
On a note with the Heavy Eviscerator, I find that the first heavy consitently cleaves multiple targets and notably knocks down horde enemies. Also, chaining Heavy, Block, Block Attack, and then looping gives a constant series of sweeping cleave attacks and knockdown, great for hordes.
Something of note, and owrthn testing to be sure it wasn't just me... but the dueling sword hs a similar perfect block ability built in, like that of the rapier in vermintide. Basically, if blocking as the attack hits, it costs no stamina to block the attack.
The second reason to bring a force sword is the blessing that allows you to block ranged attacks combined with the feat that uses peril to block before stamina allowing you to tank like a shield Ogryn, Its allowed me to save so many runs getting revives off or preventing teams from losing huge chunks of health down long hallways the class feels so much squishier without it.
Since the recent buff I have been using the Mk 9 heavy sword with a lot of success, it does way more damage and way more flak armor damage now. Cleave and stagger is big and very easy to apply. It also must have some sort of bonus vs specials or maniac armor because the heavies do 1000 dmg+ to the mutant. With 5% crit on the perks it easily enables the zealots crit bleed build too.
Amazing video as usual, thanks for that. Btw when youdo the Ogryns like you said, please take note of Ogryn's special attack with a Field Shovel. It is hilarious.
I only tend to use the power sword, it's still head and shoulders above everything else for the veteran. Ogryn is either Slab Shield or Shovel, Zealot is usually combat blade (the perks and buffs you can combine are lethal in concert) and the Psyker is normally the force sword, with occassional forays into a duelling sword BUT... I feel somewhat constrained in my choice of weapons even if there is a wide selection.
Is this for Heresy and up? Honestly the combat axes on the zealot work well especially if you have any cleave or ignore mass perks, you can try those! Power maul is also incredibly good crowd control and pretty spammable. If you get thunderstrike (extra damage to staggered enemies) it can delete hordes, especially if paired with The thrust Perk. I agree power sword is still the most powerful for vets, though. Maybe some more buffs for the chain weapons or nerfs to the animations for power swords would help with it’s excellent horde clear. Ogryn’s cleave knife is pretty good especially for hordes! Just ran it on damnation and did really well. It’s just that the Ogryn is a big-ass target for ranged enemies. He just needs a suppression buff so more enemies will get into melee with him. Maybe have his coherency range automatically suppress enemies? I haven’t touched Psyker tho, so no comment there.
@@Breakingfasst88 I do have a Power Maul with TS but I only just hit max level with the zealot and whilst it is a 365 base, I need some crafting mats to consecrate it. Axes are fine, eviscerators are fine....and I do need a break from mad combat-blade dancing once in a while. Food for thought, cheers :)
I've been pleasantly surprised at how effective the Tactical Axes are at dealing with hordes. They aren't the best at horde clear, no, but they hold their own much better than I expected.
with the thunder hammer lights vs carapace the most recent patch was meant to improve the damage from 1% to 25% and the heavys from 20% to 25% but it somehow slipped through the net so those changes should come next patch making it considerably stronger vs maulers/crushers without the special (will admit the 0 aoe on the special is really disapointing though)
For the Catachan Knife: The special chains into a heavy strike. So, after the punch lands, do a light attack and it'll be an overhead heavy instead. Really useful against big or touch enemies its slightly faster than charging your heavy chain.
The Chainaxe is just so satisfying to use on the Zealot. Not sure if the chain attacks work with Bloodletting. As for the shovel, I refuse to use anything else on my Veteran and you can't convince me anything else is better, because Krieg.
IMO the chain should always be on. attacks going through light and no armor keep going, attacks hitting medium to heavy stop and you need to keep the sword there for it to do damage.
So the combat blade has a special thing it can roll with that lets it have a chance to instakill “human sized” enemies on repeated weak spot hits with the heavy attack that seems to work on ogryns at least in the meat grinder
not sure if anyone said this but you forgot the specials on the tac and combat axes. some of them have really good uses such as high stagger faster hits or over head cleaves
it wouldn't mostly because I don't think this dude knows the proper resets for all the weapons (because pretty much no one does atm) so he'd be likely to give wrong info on weapons.
i really want the power maul gameplay with the thunder hammer weapon model. that ground pound and everyone is just chucked everywhere when you overhead smash something with a big ol' hammer would be awesome. but im a big fan of the duelling sword. it looks like actually putting finesse into gameplay to outfight your enemy would be rewarded with such fast attacks and from such different angles and effects.
4:25 mentioned that you can reset heavy combat by shovel/defending if you only wants a specific move from the combo(in this video is the cleave attack), but you can also just do something like heavy-light-heavy(depends on which move you want from combo set), for example, if you do heavy-light-heavy with devil's claw mk7, it works like heavy cleave- light cleave combo, faster than shovel/defend
points to add for the thunder hammer if you can get skin contact with a heavy special attack you'll usually oneshot... the big shield ogryns get around the shield their one hit same with gunner ogryns you can two shot the carapace armored ogryns those were my test results at level 20 on level 4 difficulty
fun thing with the knifes special, if you combo it punch then light attack you get a free heavy stab without having to charge. also holding down the button when shoving will do a followup overhead attack that does good damage at the cost of some extra stamina
Great video, it's nice to see weapons in action before we drop money on them to find out, but one thing I did feel was lacking was that for a lot of the weapons you didn't cover their special attack, even though we do get a description for it in-game sometimes the description can be deceptive, as some sound way more useful than they actually are while others sound useless but are actually quite strong
What really stands out on the thunder hammer is its boss damage. A powered up heavy shouting charge attack can take out about a quarter of a beast of nurgle or plague of run’s health bar
That’s still a good think imo, if they over nerf the sword it would pretty be a slap to the face to the people who use it. Small nerfs to it are the way, but I still advocate for buffs to other weapons first.
@@Breakingfasst88 Yea and no. Imho overnerfing is better than undernerfing (leaving something too OP). Something that's underpowered invalidates itself sure, but something that's overpowered (far above average) kinda affects the viability of EVERYTHING else. In other words the effect of things being nerfed to the ground on the overall meta is much lower than the opposite (something being buffed to high heaven). In the end it's all about getting rid of outliers. In an ideal world everything is exactly average. Imho, a good way to potentially tweak the power sword a bit more is touching up the hitbox of its swings. It's a short sword after all and shrinking the ark is a loreful way of touching it up.
the last antax axe is good because of it's versatility . One chaff angers you ? HEAVY ATTACK . A horde in a relatively small space ? SHOVE-ATTACK . A special is too close for comfort ? HEAVY ATTACK THEN LIGHT ATTACKS . that's why this axe is so good .
The dueling sword is very strong with the right stats. High finesse stat with penetration and mobility, and any weak point or crit perks makes it shred through anything.
Honestly the power sword is kind of a bit too good Great at cleaves, single targets, armoured targets, and with a fast attack rate I kinda feel like theres no point using anything else
Great review of the weapons. But there are some major elements missing for a lot of the weapons and their primary utility. For example, tactical axe Mk IV special attack. The damage isn’t great, BUT it staggers almost any enemy in the game including ragers. It’s great for a quick stagger to then get the damage going with other attacks. Obviously too much stuff to cover in one video, but you could do a video for each weapon type and do more in depth
This was a long, long project so I apologize for missing the specials for many of these I am planning on going back like I did for the plasma gun and doing specialist guides that really go all the way in-depth if people are down for that
@@stoutvt I totally understand! I really appreciate this type of video to see the general functions of the weapons, truly. And I agree I think more in depth videos would also be majorly appreciated by the community!! Keep it up
Big fan of the axes. My favorite type of hoard management is killing one enemy very quickly repeatedly. Available on all the humies, very convenient. (But just use the hammer on zealot if you like the axe)
I wish the chainsword was a little better at hordes. I've been called out before for using it on Heresy. Granted, I sorta understand why but, I'm trying my best to prep for further powersword nerfs.
Honestly disappointing how weak the Thunder Hammer feels, especially next to the Power Maul which does all but single target damage better and with almost none of the weaknesses. Great vid, thanks for the breakdown.
The Thunder Hammer just feels like a downgrade compared to the Ogryn's Power Maul, which is pretty damning since Ogryn Melee seems to be designed to be weaker but more Stagger focused. The energized Light damage seems kinda comparable between the 2 (admittedly I need 2 headshots to finish stuff my brother's THammer kills in 1, but I also have a fairly low rated Power Maul and his is nigh max, and the Stagger means they die without fighting back anyway), and the Ogryn's Maul is just better against hordes in almost every way. I've obliterated hordes as an Ogryn, but if I try doing the same with the THammer's Heavy and I hit too many my weapon stops dead with a resounding "thunk", leaving me to be mauled. Is Fatshark REALLY that scared to give the Zealot the Vermintide 1 version of the 2-Handed Hammer?
Kind of gonna show my nerd here. And I'm by far a 40k guru when it comes to lore. But my favorite ppl are the catachan jungle fighters, and there's only 1 way your getting there knives and swords. You Must Kill Them...but explains why they're the best blades
The fact that warhammers/poleaxes were used to great effect as anti-armor weapons for centuries yet in 40k a Thunder Hammer does absolutely nothing to carapace armor......
Small thing but why did you only talk about some of the specials and not others? They're not all the same between weapons of the same type, IE axes/hatchets
I had a 200ish combat axe and 300ish hammer. They have a very similar moveset. But the hammer sucked in every aspect in comparison except in killing elites. There it was slightly, just slightly better. So far the hammer feels just shitty. Low damage, slow and sluggish. A combat axe with 33% less points is better.
there's more important stats to cover so you will probably miss a lot of important distinctions between some melée weapons watching this. not all weapons have good movement speed, not all give good dodge amounts or dodge distance, not all have good block or push or push attacks or specials. now admittedly the powersword have insane damage capabilities but i find it to be really lack luster in terms of defensive capabilities, it's not often you get cornered with a powersword however, but when you do and have enemies swinging at you from all sides you're probably gonna go down which you probably wouldn't with some other melée weapons that let you block more and dodge out of those clumps easier and push enemies away more often and harder. this will become evident the higher the difficulties you go where enemies hit harder and have more health. for example my prefered weapons is the catachan knife and the shovel because they do surprisingly well, the knife can kill hordes surprisingly decently and can be nice to dance around and kill elites with because the movement on the knife is just insane and the heavy stab is good for single target and the light is good for multiple targets, not amazing but good. ofcourse there's bleed builds but even without bleed it does well. as for the shovel it's probably the best all-round defensive weapon, it may not kill fast but it will get you out of a jam and with a good combo of push and push attack you can single out elites in a horde and the push attack does surprisingly decent single target damage with an overhead headshot, my shovel for example does 250 damage on it and i don't have blessings that could increase it which i'm actually looking for now. as a veteran i take a melée for the defensive capabilities over the offensive capabilities of the melée weapons, because if i wanted to kill something i would have brought a gun for that in particular.
37:55 Isn't the armour pen value for the Thunder Hammer vs Carapace Armour bugged at the moment? And didn't Fartshart want to fix this in their "biggest patch yet" which got toned down massively before release? I think I read something along those lines.
Maccabian 5 is especially crazy for its status as a sabre already giving it a ton of dodge distance, but then it also has the highest heavy damage stat, plus 2 stats that govern dodge distance, so you can slide safely across rooms with that thing without really sacrificing anything except for style, because honestly.. It is the ugliest sabre I've seen in my life. Doesn't compare to Mk 4 or 2 at all. But that's the price you pay for statistical superiority I guess. Most probably the best melee a Psyker can wield because it almost takes skill to die with it.
tips for the mk IV devil's claw: heavy > light > heavy > light is your best single target dps, and light > heavy > light > heavy does a lot to control and whittle down crowds.
Would be good if you included the specials for axes, swords etc. Some of them actually have a use case, as surprising as that is to hear. The riposte is pretty dogshit but a lot of the axe pokes and combos stunlock ragers and even rippers/crushers, they seem to overcome stagger resist that kicks in when they start their attack chain.
Heavy sword MK VI is my weaponfu. the lights may suck damage wise, but the lights basically infinite cleave on anything but ogryns and maulers, so yeah it is better against larger groups Possibly the best non-stop cleaving weapon. But yeah bring a gun to make up for your innability to deal with armor. MK VII is hot garbage though. Your heavy is a cleave swing instead of a strikedown, which is not what you want your when your lights are already cleaving. the heavy sword is basically the go to for the crit-refresh builds, because just slap a +5% crit chance perk on them and hit the waves and you'll be charging every few swings the moment you get any crits. Also all the heavy swords have huge defense, so they can block for days, if for some reason you need that.
How are you seeing the detailed stats and effects break down, is that a mod or a feature built into the game? I've been trying to figure out how to see this kind of info, but i cant figure out where its listed or how to pull it up. I just got into the game a week ago.
This videos a touch outta date for the turtols now, got one that basically one taps everything but crushers/bulwarks and minibosses while yes the light still sucks for horde clearing the special "combo" starter attack also deals full heavy damage for half the wind up, landing a weakpoint hit with is nearly an ensured kill and if not is a guaranteed stunlock while its still not crucis Mk 2 stick of go McFuck your heresy its still very fun now!
the entire point of the knife special is its a stager hit that chains to a heavy without charging for mobility and defense. Sure it seems bad if you dont know how it works, but you shoulkd learn how to test the movesets better
With the Powersword you make one big mistake, not aiming high for cuttings heads off. Also with my legendary Powersword i have 3 powered hits on heavy and 4 on light, if i hit fast.
I use a Heavy Sword on my zealot and find much better luck. The version with the horizontal heavy is fantastic at dealing with hoards, one light attack into repeated horizontal heavies. Block and shove where applicable, repeat.
Heavy attack vertical, block to reset so you don't do the horizontal, repeat.
Not good against Carapace armor sooo...only the crusher really matters, just hit the mauler in the flak if you need to. And if you're still worried about it, just run Bolter
Many of the axes are all about finding an axe with Brutal momentum, which turns them into crowd shredders.
Brutal Momentum on a MkV is godlike. It does SO much damage.
I personally don't run it, though I probably should give it a try some time for my Veteran since I don't have a good crowd melee for him yet.
I like running a tac-axe with decimator and Shred to help quickly chew through maulers and crushers, I just run attack speed buffs in my talent tree to help off-set my mediocre crowd control. (I mainly play Zealot with the Tac-Axe.
The special attack on the knife has a followup with the standard melee attack that is an instant full charge heavy. you use the punch to reset the enemies animation to a stumble so the head is easier to hit
Not exactly, I am pretty sure the heavy attack does more damage but it is negligible.
Don't forget the special can cause bleed on crit to which is funny
Something to add for the combat blade, the punch ignores stagger reduction. I haven't tested this out myself, but on other weapons that have the exact same thing it will let me stagger Ragers and other "maniac" type enemies to keep my face attached. On top of that, this blade definitely has a different strike pattern when you use the punch first and immediately follow up with an attack. From what I remember, I think it's actually an overhead stab similar to the heavy attack. Might be worth testing.
As does the special attack on the heavy blades, but less of a stagger and more of a stun/interrupt
the melee attack after a punch is a rapid fire heavy. never even bother charging up the heavy on the combat knife. just punch into melee for a 1-2 combo
the only real use for the Shovel heavy attack is to hear the satisfying "bonk" when it connects with an enemies skull.
For fun and memes.
I feel like the chainswords Rev could be toggled instead of gone after a couple of seconds or use. That would give them a heavy advantage not needing to reapply the special toaster ability
SAME. You can turn off the rev already when you double tap the special button, why can’t you keep the toggle? It really doesn’t make sense.
To be fair, it applies so quickly it doesn't really matter. That is unless you want it to also not go after hitting the enemy, which would be pretty cool but maybe a bit OP.
I'd argue powering in general should be togglable and stay on unless expired through use rather than just for chainswords. Forexample, Thunder Hammer. Takes a good while for it to charge up, and it's gone in what? 3 or 4 seconds? Might be you charged it to deal with something that seemed like it was gonna be easy to just swoop in and kill initially, but now you've spent your rush, and chasing this clown creature around the arena because it's fixated on someone that happens to not be you. Instead of having to recharge it constantly whilst chasing whatever your target is in a scooby doo like fashion, why not just power it once, and if you score the hit, great. If you fail to get the hit because someone else killed it, fine. You can just unpower it by toggling it off.
To make up for the problem of the power sword, it seems you typically get 2 or 3 swings out of it, so just make that the limit per charge. If you wanna get fancy, you could give it a battery bar of some sort that automatically regenerates from lack of swings so that if you attack infrequently enough, you'd never need to charge it more than once? Probably an 8 second recharge time from idleness when left on, but allow you to just manually recharge it at almost the same speed you've always done. (Almost because the toggle would presumably take up a bit of time, maybe half a second or less?)
@@milat9287 yeah, i agree
Overworking its machine spirit would displease it.
the Mk IV Devil's Claw is sorely underrated in my opinion, it has quickly become my personal favorite melee weapon to use on basically every class. Zealot can do surprisingly good work with it.
What makes it so good is that if you do a Light > Heavy combo, and repeat, you can kill hordes without stopping to block or shove hardly ever. The first Heavy being a Strikedown attack makes it a lot better for quickly taking out single troopers than the other Devil's Claws, and a very good opener vs specials and elites of basically all kinds except crushers/maulers/reapers. You can also use sprint to turn any Heavy back into this first Strikedown Heavy, which means you can quickly chew through scattered troopers. A Heavy > Light combo on the same rhythm as the horde clear combo is pretty good against most single targets.
The one thing that really keeps me glued to this weapon though is the Parry. The Parry is severely underused, as it has a few particular situations that allow it to be extremely useful beyond just style points. It can let you solo a Rager attacking you very easily, simply spam the parry to defend yourself and deal damage at the same time. You can even do it while fighting multiple Ragers if your spacing and kiting skills are good. It can help with Bulwarks that are focused on you, as you can parry any of their big swings to get some damage in. It is one of the best tools to deal with a Daemonhost if things go to shit or you don't have a shield user ogryn. Spamming parry will keep you alive for a surprising amount of time while also adding some damage.
Parry is heavily underrated, pretty sure it blocks everything other then grabs and ranged attacks. I now activate demonhosts everytime now spamming parry to always block everything if there's no ogryn with shield. Great for staying alive when the last alive. I use it on my Zealot as it also gets some crazy attack speed the lower your health with certain skills.
Zealot's Power Maul is just INSANE crowd control tool on powered up attacks. You can basically hold anything, any crowd, any special enemy (except bosses of course) alone by just doing power up-strike-repeat, this explosions will stagger everything in enormous radius. And as a cherry on top you also dealing great damage. Really loving it. I also wish FS buff Power Hammer because right now it's feels kinda underwhelming, both with and without powering it up
When the track ‘Escape Initiated’ started at 23:07 I got the sudden and desperate urge that I should be running to extraction
Even rewatching for consistency passes I had the exact same feeling
I use the M7 Tac axe. The special can spam interupt ragers and maniacs, like a push fot zero stam. Blessings on the axes in general are very powerful. Speed and good head magnet get me through everything.
With the thunder hammer, you can cancel the recovery animation after a charged swing by hitting your melee weapon button (1 by default on keyboard). Charge => Swing => hit 1 as soon as the attack connects => repeat.
I've found great use for the catachan knife with the Zealot's Bloodletting feat. Once it gets going, the crits start rolling in, and the bleed seriously piles up.
I've yet to find a single use for the heavy sword that isn't turning it into dockets.
With the Combat Knife a light attack after the punch becomes a heavy, I found the DPS higher doing punch-light-punch-light than heavy-heavy.
Thank you for this nice guide about box. I will enjoy using many more variety of box.
It's like a box but you keep it after you kill something :)
A strategy I picked up is initiating with a light and then following up with a heavy, then alternating between the two. For the vast majority of weapons, this is an infinitely resetting cleave combo.
can confirm that is the best horde clear in a lot of cases (not all), the combo also has a hilarious opposite on the ogryn's grenade gauntlet, going heavy then light then repeat allows it to use only single-target attacks making it pretty decent at elite takedown.
On a note with the Heavy Eviscerator, I find that the first heavy consitently cleaves multiple targets and notably knocks down horde enemies. Also, chaining Heavy, Block, Block Attack, and then looping gives a constant series of sweeping cleave attacks and knockdown, great for hordes.
Something of note, and owrthn testing to be sure it wasn't just me... but the dueling sword hs a similar perfect block ability built in, like that of the rapier in vermintide.
Basically, if blocking as the attack hits, it costs no stamina to block the attack.
correct
The second reason to bring a force sword is the blessing that allows you to block ranged attacks combined with the feat that uses peril to block before stamina allowing you to tank like a shield Ogryn, Its allowed me to save so many runs getting revives off or preventing teams from losing huge chunks of health down long hallways the class feels so much squishier without it.
Since the recent buff I have been using the Mk 9 heavy sword with a lot of success, it does way more damage and way more flak armor damage now. Cleave and stagger is big and very easy to apply. It also must have some sort of bonus vs specials or maniac armor because the heavies do 1000 dmg+ to the mutant. With 5% crit on the perks it easily enables the zealots crit bleed build too.
Ironic how a dueling sword is good against hordes.
Amazing video as usual, thanks for that. Btw when youdo the Ogryns like you said, please take note of Ogryn's special attack with a Field Shovel. It is hilarious.
I only tend to use the power sword, it's still head and shoulders above everything else for the veteran. Ogryn is either Slab Shield or Shovel, Zealot is usually combat blade (the perks and buffs you can combine are lethal in concert) and the Psyker is normally the force sword, with occassional forays into a duelling sword BUT... I feel somewhat constrained in my choice of weapons even if there is a wide selection.
Is this for Heresy and up? Honestly the combat axes on the zealot work well especially if you have any cleave or ignore mass perks, you can try those!
Power maul is also incredibly good crowd control and pretty spammable. If you get thunderstrike (extra damage to staggered enemies) it can delete hordes, especially if paired with The thrust Perk.
I agree power sword is still the most powerful for vets, though. Maybe some more buffs for the chain weapons or nerfs to the animations for power swords would help with it’s excellent horde clear.
Ogryn’s cleave knife is pretty good especially for hordes! Just ran it on damnation and did really well. It’s just that the Ogryn is a big-ass target for ranged enemies.
He just needs a suppression buff so more enemies will get into melee with him. Maybe have his coherency range automatically suppress enemies?
I haven’t touched Psyker tho, so no comment there.
@@Breakingfasst88 I do have a Power Maul with TS but I only just hit max level with the zealot and whilst it is a 365 base, I need some crafting mats to consecrate it. Axes are fine, eviscerators are fine....and I do need a break from mad combat-blade dancing once in a while.
Food for thought, cheers :)
You want tac axe V with Momentum even on Psyker.
that sounds like a you problem
@@ExValeFor does it? Helpful response, thanks.
I've been pleasantly surprised at how effective the Tactical Axes are at dealing with hordes. They aren't the best at horde clear, no, but they hold their own much better than I expected.
Especially good for a zealot with a crit bleed build too with that crit bonus
@@stoutvt shred plus brutal momentum deletes hordes and keeps you super safe
with the thunder hammer lights vs carapace the most recent patch was meant to improve the damage from 1% to 25% and the heavys from 20% to 25% but it somehow slipped through the net so those changes should come next patch making it considerably stronger vs maulers/crushers without the special (will admit the 0 aoe on the special is really disapointing though)
For the Catachan Knife: The special chains into a heavy strike. So, after the punch lands, do a light attack and it'll be an overhead heavy instead. Really useful against big or touch enemies its slightly faster than charging your heavy chain.
The Chainaxe is just so satisfying to use on the Zealot. Not sure if the chain attacks work with Bloodletting.
As for the shovel, I refuse to use anything else on my Veteran and you can't convince me anything else is better, because Krieg.
IMO the chain should always be on. attacks going through light and no armor keep going, attacks hitting medium to heavy stop and you need to keep the sword there for it to do damage.
also the axe should be called clytemnestra since thats what she used (in some sources) to kill agamemnon
Yup!
Great editing!
So the combat blade has a special thing it can roll with that lets it have a chance to instakill “human sized” enemies on repeated weak spot hits with the heavy attack that seems to work on ogryns at least in the meat grinder
not sure if anyone said this but you forgot the specials on the tac and combat axes. some of them have really good uses such as high stagger faster hits or over head cleaves
I see you selected Psyker Pimp Stride (e.g. Warp Traveller) as your intro.
Excellent choice and informative video.
I think a bit more comparative commentary within categories (so between marks basically) would make this video even better, as great as it already is.
it wouldn't mostly because I don't think this dude knows the proper resets for all the weapons (because pretty much no one does atm) so he'd be likely to give wrong info on weapons.
i really want the power maul gameplay with the thunder hammer weapon model. that ground pound and everyone is just chucked everywhere when you overhead smash something with a big ol' hammer would be awesome.
but im a big fan of the duelling sword. it looks like actually putting finesse into gameplay to outfight your enemy would be rewarded with such fast attacks and from such different angles and effects.
4:25 mentioned that you can reset heavy combat by shovel/defending if you only wants a specific move from the combo(in this video is the cleave attack), but you can also just do something like heavy-light-heavy(depends on which move you want from combo set), for example, if you do heavy-light-heavy with devil's claw mk7, it works like heavy cleave- light cleave combo, faster than shovel/defend
I might of missed it, but you didn't talk about the catachan sword parry at all
Time to get close and personal!!
points to add for the thunder hammer if you can get skin contact with a heavy special attack you'll usually oneshot...
the big shield ogryns get around the shield their one hit same with gunner ogryns
you can two shot the carapace armored ogryns
those were my test results at level 20 on level 4 difficulty
fun thing with the knifes special, if you combo it punch then light attack you get a free heavy stab without having to charge. also holding down the button when shoving will do a followup overhead attack that does good damage at the cost of some extra stamina
Great video, it's nice to see weapons in action before we drop money on them to find out, but one thing I did feel was lacking was that for a lot of the weapons you didn't cover their special attack, even though we do get a description for it in-game sometimes the description can be deceptive, as some sound way more useful than they actually are while others sound useless but are actually quite strong
Thank you for this.
What really stands out on the thunder hammer is its boss damage. A powered up heavy shouting charge attack can take out about a quarter of a beast of nurgle or plague of run’s health bar
Even after a nerf the power sword is just so good.
They brought down the cleave on power up to "10" and I don't feel much of a difference lmao
@@stoutvt Yeah same. I does feel like it's not eviscerating hordes as quickly as it used to but it's still very strong.
That’s still a good think imo, if they over nerf the sword it would pretty be a slap to the face to the people who use it.
Small nerfs to it are the way, but I still advocate for buffs to other weapons first.
@@Breakingfasst88 exactly what I thought, too many devs overnerf rather than stip steps to the right area
@@Breakingfasst88 Yea and no. Imho overnerfing is better than undernerfing (leaving something too OP). Something that's underpowered invalidates itself sure, but something that's overpowered (far above average) kinda affects the viability of EVERYTHING else. In other words the effect of things being nerfed to the ground on the overall meta is much lower than the opposite (something being buffed to high heaven). In the end it's all about getting rid of outliers. In an ideal world everything is exactly average.
Imho, a good way to potentially tweak the power sword a bit more is touching up the hitbox of its swings. It's a short sword after all and shrinking the ark is a loreful way of touching it up.
This was a good video but you missed out on going over the Push attacks.
the last antax axe is good because of it's versatility . One chaff angers you ? HEAVY ATTACK . A horde in a relatively small space ? SHOVE-ATTACK . A special is too close for comfort ? HEAVY ATTACK THEN LIGHT ATTACKS . that's why this axe is so good .
The dueling sword is very strong with the right stats. High finesse stat with penetration and mobility, and any weak point or crit perks makes it shred through anything.
I still don't get the special attack though.
@@chimeraelite Same lol
my hero! must’ve taken you soo long to edit this! good job Stout!
Here’s a like and sub for your effort, thanks for the guide man.
That tossing salad comment gave me a good laugh... XD
Honestly the power sword is kind of a bit too good
Great at cleaves, single targets, armoured targets, and with a fast attack rate
I kinda feel like theres no point using anything else
Great review of the weapons. But there are some major elements missing for a lot of the weapons and their primary utility. For example, tactical axe Mk IV special attack. The damage isn’t great, BUT it staggers almost any enemy in the game including ragers. It’s great for a quick stagger to then get the damage going with other attacks. Obviously too much stuff to cover in one video, but you could do a video for each weapon type and do more in depth
This was a long, long project so I apologize for missing the specials for many of these
I am planning on going back like I did for the plasma gun and doing specialist guides that really go all the way in-depth if people are down for that
@@stoutvt I totally understand! I really appreciate this type of video to see the general functions of the weapons, truly. And I agree I think more in depth videos would also be majorly appreciated by the community!! Keep it up
POV: You're a zealot about to face down a horde and two veterans come up beside you with power swords.
Dueling swords and shovels for me, although that power sword is nice.
Big fan of the axes. My favorite type of hoard management is killing one enemy very quickly repeatedly. Available on all the humies, very convenient. (But just use the hammer on zealot if you like the axe)
I love this yipee!!! Good job!
I've found that Block-Canceling the heavy attack on the Sapper Shovel gives much more DPS.
I wish the chainsword was a little better at hordes. I've been called out before for using it on Heresy.
Granted, I sorta understand why but, I'm trying my best to prep for further powersword nerfs.
I like the look of the heavy sword but the damage is just bad. I think it should get a buff in a later patch.
Thank you.
For the heavy Chainblade the best way to deal with hordes is heavy, light, heavy, light and so on always cleaves that way.
Honestly disappointing how weak the Thunder Hammer feels, especially next to the Power Maul which does all but single target damage better and with almost none of the weaknesses. Great vid, thanks for the breakdown.
I feel the chainsaw ones... weak, not in damage but in afect, it feels kinda empty
The Thunder Hammer just feels like a downgrade compared to the Ogryn's Power Maul, which is pretty damning since Ogryn Melee seems to be designed to be weaker but more Stagger focused. The energized Light damage seems kinda comparable between the 2 (admittedly I need 2 headshots to finish stuff my brother's THammer kills in 1, but I also have a fairly low rated Power Maul and his is nigh max, and the Stagger means they die without fighting back anyway), and the Ogryn's Maul is just better against hordes in almost every way. I've obliterated hordes as an Ogryn, but if I try doing the same with the THammer's Heavy and I hit too many my weapon stops dead with a resounding "thunk", leaving me to be mauled. Is Fatshark REALLY that scared to give the Zealot the Vermintide 1 version of the 2-Handed Hammer?
I use the punch of the knife to when i kill something but its stil moving so i throw it with to the ground with it :D
25:52, bussin indeed my dear psyker
Thunder hammer tests are diluted because of the Slaughterer blessing
So the mauler has flak armor on the body but a carapace helm.
The fact that the chain sword doesn't make the engine revving sound effect on every attack is a severe game design flaw
The Thunder hammer is so underwhelming. The crusher however is honestly quite amazing.
Kind of gonna show my nerd here. And I'm by far a 40k guru when it comes to lore. But my favorite ppl are the catachan jungle fighters, and there's only 1 way your getting there knives and swords. You Must Kill Them...but explains why they're the best blades
the cleave in the antax combat axe works on light attacks, your cleave stat wasnt high enough
The fact that warhammers/poleaxes were used to great effect as anti-armor weapons for centuries yet in 40k a Thunder Hammer does absolutely nothing to carapace armor......
I allmost fell asleap watching this but great video
Small thing but why did you only talk about some of the specials and not others? They're not all the same between weapons of the same type, IE axes/hatchets
I had a 200ish combat axe and 300ish hammer. They have a very similar moveset.
But the hammer sucked in every aspect in comparison except in killing elites. There it was slightly, just slightly better.
So far the hammer feels just shitty. Low damage, slow and sluggish. A combat axe with 33% less points is better.
Put the best melee on the best range class, why do zealot need to exist?
there's more important stats to cover so you will probably miss a lot of important distinctions between some melée weapons watching this.
not all weapons have good movement speed, not all give good dodge amounts or dodge distance, not all have good block or push or push attacks or specials.
now admittedly the powersword have insane damage capabilities but i find it to be really lack luster in terms of defensive capabilities, it's not often you get cornered with a powersword however, but when you do and have enemies swinging at you from all sides you're probably gonna go down which you probably wouldn't with some other melée weapons that let you block more and dodge out of those clumps easier and push enemies away more often and harder.
this will become evident the higher the difficulties you go where enemies hit harder and have more health.
for example my prefered weapons is the catachan knife and the shovel because they do surprisingly well, the knife can kill hordes surprisingly decently and can be nice to dance around and kill elites with because the movement on the knife is just insane and the heavy stab is good for single target and the light is good for multiple targets, not amazing but good.
ofcourse there's bleed builds but even without bleed it does well.
as for the shovel it's probably the best all-round defensive weapon, it may not kill fast but it will get you out of a jam and with a good combo of push and push attack you can single out elites in a horde and the push attack does surprisingly decent single target damage with an overhead headshot, my shovel for example does 250 damage on it and i don't have blessings that could increase it which i'm actually looking for now.
as a veteran i take a melée for the defensive capabilities over the offensive capabilities of the melée weapons, because if i wanted to kill something i would have brought a gun for that in particular.
Ah, you didn't cover the parry of the catachan swords
Kinda sad how weak the melee exclusive weapons for zealot are. In hopes they buff more the evicerator and thunder Hammer
I wonder if the people making this game know that evicerators have a power field generator?
The hammer is just so bad
37:55 Isn't the armour pen value for the Thunder Hammer vs Carapace Armour bugged at the moment?
And didn't Fartshart want to fix this in their "biggest patch yet" which got toned down massively before release? I think I read something along those lines.
This is after the content patch, so I'm not quite sure
Did i miss it? What about parry on the sword tho?
Maccabian 5 is especially crazy for its status as a sabre already giving it a ton of dodge distance, but then it also has the highest heavy damage stat, plus 2 stats that govern dodge distance, so you can slide safely across rooms with that thing without really sacrificing anything except for style, because honestly.. It is the ugliest sabre I've seen in my life. Doesn't compare to Mk 4 or 2 at all. But that's the price you pay for statistical superiority I guess.
Most probably the best melee a Psyker can wield because it almost takes skill to die with it.
They buffed the heavy sword buuuuut. I still haven't even tried to use it, my memories of it are so bad
Rewatching this in 2024!!!
tips for the mk IV devil's claw: heavy > light > heavy > light is your best single target dps, and light > heavy > light > heavy does a lot to control and whittle down crowds.
Would be good if you included the specials for axes, swords etc. Some of them actually have a use case, as surprising as that is to hear. The riposte is pretty dogshit but a lot of the axe pokes and combos stunlock ragers and even rippers/crushers, they seem to overcome stagger resist that kicks in when they start their attack chain.
the Mk 8 combat axe with around 160 and higher light attack dmg does one shot every trooper and infested
Heavy sword MK VI is my weaponfu. the lights may suck damage wise, but the lights basically infinite cleave on anything but ogryns and maulers, so yeah it is better against larger groups Possibly the best non-stop cleaving weapon. But yeah bring a gun to make up for your innability to deal with armor. MK VII is hot garbage though. Your heavy is a cleave swing instead of a strikedown, which is not what you want your when your lights are already cleaving. the heavy sword is basically the go to for the crit-refresh builds, because just slap a +5% crit chance perk on them and hit the waves and you'll be charging every few swings the moment you get any crits. Also all the heavy swords have huge defense, so they can block for days, if for some reason you need that.
How are you seeing the detailed stats and effects break down, is that a mod or a feature built into the game?
I've been trying to figure out how to see this kind of info, but i cant figure out where its listed or how to pull it up.
I just got into the game a week ago.
This videos a touch outta date for the turtols now, got one that basically one taps everything but crushers/bulwarks and minibosses while yes the light still sucks for horde clearing the special "combo" starter attack also deals full heavy damage for half the wind up, landing a weakpoint hit with is nearly an ensured kill and if not is a guaranteed stunlock while its still not crucis Mk 2 stick of go McFuck your heresy its still very fun now!
I Hope this game gets a power fist
I will forever be depressed I can't use the rapiers for my zealot. The fact the heavy swords are so lacking also sucks, a whole category..
I'm kind of disappointed with the thunder hammer
the entire point of the knife special is its a stager hit that chains to a heavy without charging for mobility and defense. Sure it seems bad if you dont know how it works, but you shoulkd learn how to test the movesets better
not a week goes by where jerma isn't threatening someone with a meat grinder.
You didn't show the special attack on the Antax Mk V
The design is very human.
Funny to me that the Psyker has the highest damage single target melee weapon
With the Powersword you make one big mistake, not aiming high for cuttings heads off. Also with my legendary Powersword i have 3 powered hits on heavy and 4 on light, if i hit fast.
When I use my power sword, only the first attack gets buffed after I activate it. Here you can see the power lasting for 2 or 3 hits. Why is that?
Old version of the game before they nerfed it
i am a bit late as usila and good videos as usial 👍