Assault Saws seem forgotten

[Harutomata]

I was a bit disappointed with the Ghoulsaw when it released, and I tried to pick the weapon up again, thinking I was too harsh. I wasn't.
Either the stats of the weapon or the stance really needs a rework. Butcher's Revelry multipliers are around 100-200% mostly (most weapon stances have 300-500% multipliers with more forced procs, and with better base stat weapons to choose from), and to make it worse they feel slow and clunky, which is very counterproductive, especially considering it's meant to be a status weapon, the type that's meant to be relatively fast to apply statuses faster.

If no change is made, the entire assault saw weapon class is going to fade into obscurity.

It'd be cool if DE remembered the stance needs changes and added one or few more weapons for this weapon class. It'd be interesting to see a more crit oriented corpus assault saw for example.

I know not all weapons are meant to be "meta" or overpowered, but they should be at the very least fun to use, whereas the Ghoulsaw currently is barely usable, which is a shame considering it was interesting and rather unique melee weapon concept.

(And while we're at weapons with a chance to be forgotten, Hespar would also be much better if Galeforce Dawn had better damage multipliers. Another cool weapon concept which has a stance that doesn't do it much favor. Weapon stances in the past few years just don't hit the same. No pun intended.)

[quxier]

7 minutes ago, Harutomata said:

Either the stats of the weapon or the stance really needs a rework. Butcher's Revelry multipliers are around 100-200% mostly (most weapon stances have 300-500% multipliers with more forced procs

Then slap some damage mods. Problem solved. *duh*

7 minutes ago, Harutomata said:

especially considering it's meant to be a status weapon, the type that's meant to be relatively fast to apply statuses faster.

I was using it for Void proc Xaku and it worked just fine.

8 minutes ago, Harutomata said:

and to make it worse they feel slow and clunky,

What part is slow or clunky? I can see some part but I'm not sure what you mean.

10 minutes ago, Harutomata said:

few more weapons for this weapon class. It'd be interesting to see a more crit oriented corpus assault saw for example.

Yeah, few more variants would be cool.

11 minutes ago, Harutomata said:

I know not all weapons are meant to be "meta" or overpowered, but they should be at the very least fun to use, whereas the Ghoulsaw currently is barely usable, which is a shame considering it was interesting and rather unique melee weapon concept.

It's usable, it's kind of fun if you know how to play it. There are some stuffs that I don't like (and some of those complains I have seen already) but it's fine weapon.

12 minutes ago, Harutomata said:

(And while we're at weapons with a chance to be forgotten, Hespar would also be much better if Galeforce Dawn had better damage multipliers. Another cool weapon concept which has a stance that doesn't do it much favor. Weapon stances in the past few years just don't hit the same. No pun intended.)

If you need damage then there are mods already.

This stance/weapon is just nothing special. Even worse if you know that's worse than small scythes. It's just your proper melee.

[Harutomata]

2 minutes ago, quxier said:

Then slap some damage mods. Problem solved. *duh*

I can't tell if you're joking or not. 😑
Mods scale with the base stats and damage mods' percentages are multiplicative. They don't add an additive value.. so if the base stats are not good, you're not going to get a high value. That's how it works.

As for why the stance is bad, take for example the Rakta Dark Dagger with Pointed Wind stance the forward combo does 560%/s damage in 1.6 sec, whereas the same input on Butcher's Revelry does 143%/s damage in 4.9 sec, and that doesn't take it into account that the dagger would have apply around 2-3x times more status procs in that nearly 5 second interval since it swings faster. Meaning the dagger roughly does 4 or 5 times more damage than the saw does in 5 seconds, and daggers are generally not perceived as strong by the community.

Or if you want to compare it to other slow swinging weapons, Galatine Prime has around 30% higher base damage, and taking combo multipliers on Tempo Royale or Cleaving Whirlwind, on paper you get roughly 3x more damage done on most combos, and I didn't even take it into account that most heavy blades have around a meter more range than the Ghoulsaw does. Using the Ghoulsaw instead a heavy blade is not a sidegrade, but a downgrade in basically all ways possible, and from a weapon design perspective, that's not a good thing.
I'd like to use the weapon more, because it can be fun, and it could be more fun with changes. But the issues pile up to the point where you'd rather take other melee weapons to higher level missions.

If you still don't see the problem, I don't know what to say.

38 minutes ago, quxier said:

What part is slow or clunky? I can see some part but I'm not sure what you mean.

This part is more subjective, I personally feel some of the combos/attacks lack "weight", and the multipliers don't do the animations justice. Most combos have something about them that makes them unsatisfying. Forward combo has the saw spinning in place, but it only does damage once. So it only has a chance to apply status once too. And as far as I recall most people were disappointed with the blocking forward combo.
The non moving combo is the most reliable one, though it feels a bit slow, and the non moving blocking one isn't too bad either since it's relatively quick, the spinning part is fun, and it has forced slash procs, but the ragdoll at the end of the combo is questionable, but well, you can opt out from doing the slam part if you pay attention.
There are just some issues which make the stance less satisfying than it could be otherwise.
As for the slow part, it's rather evident. Primed Fury on the weapon feels like you only have normal Fury equipped, and the weapon doesn't pack enough of a "punch", especially compared to other slower weapons with higher base damage.

[Artekkor]

The stance is actually fine, i don't mind it.

The problem is that the saw does not hit hard enough to justify how slow some of the attacks are (especially standing ones).
Also being the first saw to be added its very weak and has "basic" stats. There's no bats**t insane crits or status.

The one true issue i found is that the thing has pathetic reach. I have to use Primed Reach just so the thing didn't feel like it has a reach of 1 pixel in front of me.
Otherwise... We simply need a new superior saw, with better crits and status.

[Harutomata]

2 minutes ago, Artekkor said:

The stance is actually fine, i don't mind it.

The problem is that the saw does not hit fast enough to justify how slow some of the attacks are (especially standing ones).
Also being the first saw to be added its very weak and has "basic" stats. There's no batS#&$ insane crits or status.

The one true issue i found is that the thing has pathetic reach. I have to use Primed Reached just so the thing didn't feel like it has a reach of 1 pixel in front of me.
Otherwise... We simply need a new superior saw, with better crits and status.

One of the main things I'd like the stance to change is the forward combo. Since the blade spins in place, it'd make more sense to it to do damage multiple times instead of one tick. It'd be better to apply statuses too. It could help on combo multiplier build up too for a future saw where it'd prove to be even more useful. Maybe with more ticks, the combo then would also do more damage than a flimsy 143% dmg/s. Probably the weakest combo in the game at this moment.

And yeah, heavy blades have more range, and some of them hit slightly faster. Polearms even more so, and they have combos with around 500% dmg/s.

[Tiltskillet]

5 hours ago, Harutomata said:

If no change is made, the entire assault saw weapon class is going to fade into obscurity.

I upvoted you, but this sentence made me laugh.

[quxier]

2 hours ago, Harutomata said:

3 hours ago, quxier said:

Then slap some damage mods. Problem solved. *duh*

I can't tell if you're joking or not. 😑
Mods scale with the base stats and damage mods' percentages are multiplicative. They don't add an additive value.. so if the base stats are not good, you're not going to get a high value. That's how it works.

2 hours ago, Harutomata said:

As for why the stance is bad, take for example the Rakta Dark Dagger

No, I'm not joking. Weapon may be weaker than other weapons, sure, but is that a problem? Do you have problems with <=100 level? Or 150? Do you have problem with specific content. We need real data not just "oh it's weaker than X, Y" etc. At 100 level, it's easily killing weaker enemies (butchers, lancers). It has some problems with Heavy gunners. That's from my quick tests.

And keep in mind that this weapon may be weaker "on purpose". We may have other, stronger, Assault saws later.

2 hours ago, Harutomata said:

This part is more subjective, I personally feel some of the combos/attacks lack "weight" ()Forward combo has the saw spinning in place, but it only does damage once.

Yeah, I feel the same with forward combo. If we can at least hold to continuously attack it would be much better.

2 hours ago, Harutomata said:

And as far as I recall most people were disappointed with the blocking forward combo.

It has some issues, one can be a little bit fixed.

 

- Speed makes block+forward combo very short. You can press slide to make it travel faster/farther. I wish it makes it travel farther instead of speeding the animations. There is other way later.

 

- Not everyone want to slam or they want to control when they slam. They could make it either:

--- hold to right > release to slam or

--- tap (block + melee) to start riding, tap again to execute slam

You can always roll to cancel. This would solve issue with different speed, at least in some part.

 

I personally like this combo. With sliding is kind of nice. Of course above changes to riding mechanic would make it much better.

 

3 hours ago, Harutomata said:

As for the slow part, it's rather evident. Primed Fury on the weapon feels like you only have normal Fury equipped, and the weapon doesn't pack enough of a "punch", especially compared to other slower weapons with higher base damage.

I've tried it some time ago and block combo is very fast. I don't feel like it looses some speed. It's not like 2-handed nikana stance where one combo is VERY slow (even I that don't use speed mods want it to be faster).

Block+moving (as mentioned) is too fast.

3 hours ago, Harutomata said:

And yeah, heavy blades have more range, and some of them hit slightly faster. Polearms even more so, and they have combos with around 500% dmg/s.

I don't have problem with range but I'm running P.reach on most of my builds (instead of P.fury).

ps. it's funny that Heavy scythe being bigger than normal Scythe have lower range.

[Harutomata]

39 minutes ago, quxier said:

it's easily killing weaker enemies (butchers, lancers). It has some problems with Heavy gunners. That's from my quick tests.

I have about the same experience with the weapon, but that's not much of a consolation when most melee weapon classes have a weapon or multiple ones which can do a lot more than that. Armor stripping through abilities and other weapons in your kit does get rid of that problem, but many status melee weapons don't need that "extra step". It's a status weapon that's too slow to apply many statuses at once, with low crit chance and low crit multiplier. It's not a good combination, that's for sure.
A rework on the forward combo is pretty much necessary.

46 minutes ago, quxier said:

And keep in mind that this weapon may be weaker "on purpose". We may have other, stronger, Assault saws later.

I hope you're right. This is a MR 7 weapon we're speaking about after all, so it's partly not that surprising it doesn't perform that well. I just hope DE is not gonna look at the weapon pick rates and go "for some unexplained reason, people didn't like the Ghoulsaw, so we're not making more assault saws" or something like that.
A Kuva Ghoulsaw could have better stats if they ever add more lich weapons. Or a corpus saw could be cool.

 

[Numerounius]

The first change I would want is for the (base) attack speed of butcher's revelry to be upped. It is just so slow and so clunky even compared to stances of other similar heavy weapon classes.

The ghoul saw can probably stay bad since it is technically a dojo weapon which aren't all that great so I feel like adding in another weapon or two would help the class out. 

[Mu_Gera]

On 2022-11-09 at 7:09 AM, quxier said:

Then slap some damage mods. Problem solved. *duh*

the problem is that it's stats are low compared to even just other status melees on top of it's only stance having literally the lowest damage multipliers of any stance, so just slapping damage mods (or any mods for that matter) makes it barely worth using it for anything besides status priming and that it looks cool. even then though it's also actually not that great compared to other status primers, same builds or not.

funny enough, any nunchaku with atlantis vulcan is a better "saw" melee than the ghoul saw in any sense beside looks.

[(PSN)haphazardlynamed]

"Forgotten"???

The category was introduced way too Recently to be considered forgotten

if you want to talk about forgotten weapon types, have a look a dual split-swords. when's the last time we got one of them?

[(PSN)Frost_Nephilim]

On 2022-11-09 at 6:55 AM, Harutomata said:

know not all weapons are meant to be "meta" or overpowered, but they should be at the very least fun to use, whereas the Ghoulsaw currently is barely usable, which is a shame considering it was interesting and rather unique melee weapon concept.

Considering its the only weapon in its class, i think its rather lame to not let it add variety to the meta. Why keep things so restrictive up there.

[Pakaku]

5 hours ago, (PSN)haphazardlynamed said:

"Forgotten"???

The category was introduced way too Recently to be considered forgotten

if you want to talk about forgotten weapon types, have a look a dual split-swords. when's the last time we got one of them?

Technically it's not unique outside of its stance gimmick, which is permanent as soon as you exit the arsenal. So it's not really forgotten anytime a new heavy blade or dual swords gets added (though we haven't had a new dual swords in a while outside of Dual Keres Prime)

Incarnon melees would arguably be a refined version of the idea, except the weapon type doesn't really change unlike the guns

[Mazifet]

The stance kinda seems too Grineer if you know what I mean. We are slugging it around without any real coordination at all, and it just feels bad to use. Some people forget this, but tenno are ridiculously strong. We can travel around the map going hundreds of kmh, jumping 15 meters in the air, and creating massive cracks in solid ground with our weapons like it is made out of glass. Don't even get me started on the exploiter orb, as it shows us grabbing massive pieces of metal machinery the size of a small car, ripping it out of its socket and tossing it dozens of meters. Meanwhile the butcher's revelry stance has us looking like that one Solaris kid with the hammer in the We All Lift Together cinematic.