Excuse my spelling, aint my strong side
Since the patch dropped, i have been experimenting with lots of heavy melee oriented builds.
Tried Sns/Spear/Greatsword/Greataxe/Warhammer/Blunderbuss.
And im here to share my results, and how its like to pvp as a heavy user.
First of, Sns is a MUST if you are gonig with heavy, since you are extremely imobilized in a game thats all about mobility.
You have the worst dodge and next to no movement speed. the ONLY* way for you to fight people is by utalizing abilities (Mainly) from the sns tree, such as Leaping Strike/shield Rush or running Defenders Resolve with the speed buff. Every time any of these spells are on Cooldown, you basically are dead weight and cant do anything at all.
Secondly, As a heavy user using SNS as a main hand weapon, you honestly are not tanky at all unless you run 300 con (AND even then) you are not as tanky as you should be.
You are able to tank 2 people (Maybe 3-4 if you are pure BIS)- However, if the people who fight you are somewhat skilled, you wont survive long anyway.
Heavy armor is not much tankier than medium, and blocking with a shield only helps you for 4 seconds, 2-3 heavy swings from any weapon and your stam breaks and you basically die.
More or less, You have no mobility/ no survivability/ if you get out numbered you cant escape like someone in light armor can do ( Hold W spam roll and use a bow/hatchet for movement speed and just literally run away to safety )
You are forced to take all fights you come across.
Now lets go over the builds i have tried-
SNS+Spear: 150 str/ 100 dex or 200 str and 100 dex, rest con- Spear does so litte damage in heavy, and you cant really chase people down with the spear, with sns we used to be able to do a reliable combo involving vault kick, but now vault kick only lasts about 0.20 seconds, so its completely useless to use. overall terrible experience (( 4/10 ))
SNS+Greatsword: 300 Str/ 200 Con all the way. The 10% bonus on heavy attacks is really good, and honestly the damage from the greatsword is quite fine… If you ever could utalize it, since ags AGAIN’ nerfed range on melee weapon, catching people is next to impossible with gs, 70% of all swings are swings towards the wind, hitting someone is extremely tedious and feels pointless, most of the time when i use a gs, i feel like i might aways just use my SNS only.
You do a heavy, miss, relentless rush, target dodges, heavy, miss, and now your enemy has caused sucha distance that you can do anything, since doing actions as a melee roots you in the ground. Overall terrible experience (( 2/10 ))
SNS+Greataxe: 200 str or 300 con, rest in str or con, basically, do you want grit and be abit tanky, or do you want some extra damage… And believe me you do want that damage, In my testing, Greataxe does the LEAST* damage of all the weapons i have tried, even pure SNS does way WAAAY more damage if you spec it in the damage tree, than the greataxe does,
Only thing the greataxe has going for it is… Its fun, its really fun to throw a gravity well and wirlwind around the target, however most of the time, they just roll out of it, and your spins do like 300-400 damage per hit, so… Literally the worst weapon of em all so far.
Overall experience (( 1/10 ))
SNS+Warhammer: 300 str 200 con OR 200 str 300 con, only way to go about it.
If you want to kill people 1v1 then 300 str is better, if you want to survive and be able to win 2v1’s then 300 con is better. And here is the thing.
Warhammer+sns is the only viable build for heavy pvp, its extremely hard to play, and if someone runs 4x freedom then its gonna be EVEN harder, but overall, this build somewhat works.
You are able to make a fun decent combo that will take 60% hp of light armor users, and 40% hp of medium users, (granted they dont have freedom) And thats where my complaint in this issue is.
Hitting targets with sns or with hammer as heavy is… Really hard, probably the hardest thing you can do in this game pvp wise, since everyone are SO mobile, every time i manage to land a bash i always think to myself… Really?? you allowed me to do this xD ???
But yeah, works, before the patch this build was really really good, now its quite worse, but managable. Every time i try a fun build like sns gs or sns spear, i eventually end up in 2v1 or lose somehow, i switch to hammer and i always win, or atleast manage allot allot better.
Overall experience (( 6/10 ))
Lastly Sns+BB, 150 str, 150 int rest con, only way to go about it, tried 200 str and 150 con, problem is… the bb does not do enough damage in heavy, and again with no mobility you end up not really being able to do much, however running net and grapple hock does give you more options than the other builds to gap close, however its a strictly 1v1 build, if 2 people gank up on you, its over.
Overall experience (( 4/10 ))
Thats how its like to pvp in range light armor meta as heavy atm.
Not tanky, no survivability, no mobility, and you cant catch anybody.
You cant escape fights, and you can barely tank for them ether.
Suggestions:
Add more survivability to heavy armor users. like having heavy weight + 300 con should give 15-20% all damage ressistance, and the health difference should be bigger, 200 con - 300 con is like 2500 hp give or take… Thats like 1x fire ball difference in Hp…
Secondly, increase melee attack range/ OR make it so we arent rooted in the ground while attacking. Reduce attack recovery frames or something like that.
Speed up animations or increase stun durrations for shockwave on warhammer, and vault kick on spear.
Currently they only last 0.50 seconds, sometimes even less…
And they have super slow animations, and are almost impossible to land on their own.
Even before the patch, they where almost impossible to use, now its even worse.
as heavy we rely purely on landing a cc, so we can do a follow up strike, we already have super low damage so we NEED to be able to cc our targets.
For a heavy melee to beat a ranged light armor currently we have to spend 2 min surviving/chasing and IF we manage to land a stun or start a combo, it wont even kill them.
and versus medium armor melee users we cant land attacks since they can spam iframe dodges while we cant.
Stamina blocking should be harder to break aswell, based on enemies nearby.
If you 1v1 then 3-4 heavy strikes should be enough, but if you try to tank 3-4 people, it should scale up so you can block longer, most of the time they circle you anyway and attack your back, and someone is shooting aoe spells on you, aint no harm in upping blocking stammina.
