Catachan Devil's Claw Discussion

[xDaunt]

What's the current thinking on the best setup for a devil's claw? I recently started playing around with a Mk VII again on my zealot. I feel like Shred is a must have blessing given the finesse scaling on the weapon and the zealot's other crit talents. What I have not really been able to settle on is the best second blessing. For a long time, I have been using Devastating Strike, just because it has so much up time with Shred. But recently, I have started using Skullcrusher in conjunction with the Punishment talent. My perks are +melee elite and +weakspot. The weapon seems like it may performing better with this setup, but it's hard to tell.

Any thoughts on the best way to build a devil's claw? Any important break points?

[oh no]

ive only had bad experiences with skullcrusher, the damage bonus does not seem to do anything

heard somewhere that it only actually works when enemies are fully staggered, ie. when they are lying on the floor

[pisslord]

i ran shred/skullcrusher and couldnt decide if it was good or not but im also bad with the dclaw. mostly picked skullcrusher cus it always worked on me club.

Originally posted by OODA Loop:

ive only had bad experiences with skullcrusher, the damage bonus does not seem to do anything

heard somewhere that it only actually works when enemies are fully staggered, ie. when they are lying on the floor

from what i can tell, the description remains weird and somewhat inaccurate. it seems to proc on stagger (at least with a club since thats all ive tested recently), this however is good, because if the description was to be taken at face value, it would make skullcrusher worse than thunderous, which is only usable in the strictest sense of the word

[DLCI]

i use a MK I on my veteran's weapons specialist build with shred+rampage, and it works quite well, but that definitely depends on rending from veteran talents to help kill flak armored enemies at a reasonable pace

shred is very good, because every devil claw sword has terrible armor penetration except for critical hits.

rampage is probably my pick for #1 blessing since it adds power and the devil claw swords benefit from all parts of the bonus damage+cleave+stagger

skullcrusher adds stacks on every hit but only applies bonus damage when you hit an enemy that is in a stagger state

they don't have to be knocked down, but the extra damage is only going to be active part of the time, and devil's claw has such a weak stagger profile that have a short duration so you are only going to get 1-2 hits per stagger

that said, perfect-block parry will ALWAYS staggers non-monstrosity enemies, which means that the bonus damage is ALWAYS going to be applied to the huge follow up hit. for that 1200-1500 damage riposte hit that +80% extra damage is a significant buff.

it's not the worst way to build it, but don't expect it to add significantly to your general use dps like it would on a club or powermaul. it might be more effective with vicious slice, but I haven't tried that in a while.

lastly, i wouldn't use devastating strike anymore even if you have a lot of crit chance, because it doesn't apply ignore-hitmass like it used to. if you want more cleave you can get +200% cleave from wrath or savage sweep instead since they give you a lot bigger bonus vs. the +80% cleave bonus from strike.

[xDaunt]

I look at the posts in here, and I realize that there's so much that I don't understand about the mechanics of the game. For example, I had no idea that devastating strike used to ignore hit mass. I still don't really know what vicious slice does other than it somehow increases impact. I didn't even realize that skullcrusher procced on light staggers (as opposed to knocking enemies down) until recently when playing with the new shock mauls. The documentation that Fatshark provides is garbage.

On the point of skullcrusher, one of the reasons why I have been drawn to it is that the Mk VII is a very light attack-spammy weapon, which does a lot of staggering. In theory, this should mean that skullcrusher is doing a lot of work. However, it is difficult to tell when skullcrusher is actually applying bonus damage, so I could be wrong on this point. That said, my overall damage output seems to be elevated with this setup, so I think it is working.

Also, if I am going to use the Mk VII this way, should I use punishment or grievous wounds to increase stagger? For reference, about 50% of my hits are weakspot hits. I have been using punishment, but I suspect that grievous wounds may be better, especially for the lower cleave light attack patterns.

[Arani]

Originally posted by xDaunt:

What's the current thinking on the best setup for a devil's claw? I recently started playing around with a Mk VII again on my zealot. I feel like Shred is a must have blessing given the finesse scaling on the weapon and the zealot's other crit talents. What I have not really been able to settle on is the best second blessing. For a long time, I have been using Devastating Strike, just because it has so much up time with Shred. But recently, I have started using Skullcrusher in conjunction with the Punishment talent. My perks are +melee elite and +weakspot. The weapon seems like it may performing better with this setup, but it's hard to tell.

Any thoughts on the best way to build a devil's claw? Any important break points?

I use it quite often. Personally I've always favored Shred & Skullcrusher first, Shred & Rampage second. The recent extra aggressive spawns however was something I could feel right away as my DCIV on any class just doesn't cleave enough anymore, often not even with Rampage. I haven't actually tried it yet but I have a feeling the true cleave blessings might be great investment right now.

[Repentance†]

Run Mk IV, it has the best move set out of any of them with T4 Shred and Savage Sweep, it's good.

[xDaunt]

Originally posted by Repentance:

Run Mk IV, it has the best move set out of any of them with T4 Shred and Savage Sweep, it's good.

No, the IV doesn’t have the best move set. Especially not for zealot.

[Repentance†]

Originally posted by xDaunt:

Originally posted by Repentance:

Run Mk IV, it has the best move set out of any of them with T4 Shred and Savage Sweep, it's good.

No, the IV doesn’t have the best move set. Especially not for zealot.

My statement still stands,.

[Steinar]

I'm not an avid Catachan user, but I also favor Shred as primary blessing. For second blessing I could use anything between Rampage, Savage Sweep, Wrath, or Skullcrusher.

Rampage and Savage Sweep being the ones I notice the most, but then again I'm not an avid Catachan user so I haven't really done the best comparisons.

[DLCI]

Originally posted by xDaunt:

Also, if I am going to use the Mk VII this way, should I use punishment or grievous wounds to increase stagger? For reference, about 50% of my hits are weakspot hits. I have been using punishment, but I suspect that grievous wounds may be better, especially for the lower cleave light attack patterns.

well, stagger and impact are somewhat different

tbh it is one of the most complicated mechanics in the game and i can't claim to fully understand how some of it works myself

but i can give you the basics and then make a suggestion

'staggered' is the state that occurs when you hit an enemy with enough impact to exceed their stagger threshold.

impact above what you need to reach the base stagger threshold increases the 'stagger duration' as well as the 'stagger length'. one of those has to do with how long the stagger 'stacks' can build up to a max of stagger-5 (for abilities like 'no respite' that scale vs. the stagger-level), the other has to do with how long the stunned/knocked-down state lasts.

i can't comment on exactly how that works because the math is very complicated.

either way, what really matters is the breakpoints. if you exceed the initial threshold it doesn't help that much to add more impact until you reach the next breakpoint that makes it last long enough for the state to persist in between windows of 'stagger immunity'. more impact is always better, but the scaling doesn't offer anything really significant (maybe +5-10% longer stagger) if you still fall in between the breakpoints.

basically, once you are capable of staggering an enemy, it takes a very large increase to exceed the next tier breakpoint. impact bonuses are proportionately very large for this reason.

i wouldn't recommend giving up one of your blessing slots or picking talents to increase stagger on zealot unless you can verify that it actually changes your ability to reach the initial stagger threshold or one of the breakpoints vs. relevant enemies.

a +30% increase in impact on a weapon with a low base impact may not even appear to be doing anything

(ogryn weapons have much larger base impact so the +25% impact ogryn talent is a different case).

one important detail worth mentioning - the descriptions for stagger/impact talents/blessing are often confusing and even misleading, so there are a couple case worth clarifying

#1 falter.

it does not increase weakspot impact by 90% like it says. it negates 90% of stagger reduction on weakspot hit by multiplying stagger resistance by 0.1

this is extremely powerful vs. elite enemies, especially on a ranged weapon (or shock maul) that does decent weakspot impact because it will usually upgrade your attacks to the point where a single weakspot hit can actually interrupt enemy attack animations or might even knock hard-to-stagger elite enemies (like ragers) down flat on the ground

#2 trauma.

it does not list this in the description, but each stack directly increases stagger duration by +10% in addition to adding +20% impact per stack at T4. if you are looking to increase skullcrusher effectiveness, I would choose this over hammerblow or thunderstrike 9/10 times.

i know its a lot of info to wrap your head around, so i hope that helps

[xDaunt]

Originally posted by Repentance:

Originally posted by xDaunt:

No, the IV doesn’t have the best move set. Especially not for zealot.

My statement still stands,.

The reason why people like the IV is because it has immediate access to the overhead strike down. This strikedown isn't powerful enough to warrant much consideration. What people overlook on the VII are (1) the superior light attack pattern that does more DPS as a consequence of the strikedown on L3 as opposed to L4 with IV, (2) the heavy => light attack pattern on VII is excellent for staggering and cleaving enemies in a wide circle, (3) the H1 is superior on charge zealots for applying bleed to as many targets as possible when charging in, and (4) the follow up attack off the parry on the VII is better than IV.

[xDaunt]

Playing around with punishment and grievous wounds, I think that grievous wounds may be the more effective talent for staggering enemies with the devil's claw. I need to do more testing, but the ratio of melee kills to enemies staggered seems to be significantly higher with grievous wounds. Grievous wounds seemed to offer better control as well, particularly when doing the H=>L combo on the Mk VII.

[Arani]

Originally posted by xDaunt:

Originally posted by Repentance:

My statement still stands,.

The reason why people like the IV is because it has immediate access to the overhead strike down. This strikedown isn't powerful enough to warrant much consideration. What people overlook on the VII are (1) the superior light attack pattern that does more DPS as a consequence of the strikedown on L3 as opposed to L4 with IV, (2) the heavy => light attack pattern on VII is excellent for staggering and cleaving enemies in a wide circle, (3) the H1 is superior on charge zealots for applying bleed to as many targets as possible when charging in, and (4) the follow up attack off the parry on the VII is better than IV.

I actually used to favor VII until like idk 4-6 months back or so, but since then mostly moved back to DCIV.

• What got me started on DC VII was when someone in Fatshark forums said its parry frames had less recovery time & much higher consistency
  
  • Since then however I noticed no real difference myself
    
  • More importantly no DC can parry consistently enough to count as a shield, you always have to use dodges to not get overwhelmed either way, so all in all I feel like the DC mark makes no difference for parrying
• Its anti-horde starts with a heavy. Single-targets are rarely as pressing a concern as big groups so I liked the idea of high initial dmg much more than DCVI's version of light > heavy.
  
  • But then I realized I couldn't feel the difference in impact despite the heavy. Which I attributed to Skullcrusher: For most hordes that DCIV's light > heavy will proc Skullcrusher on the light, then buffing that heavy's dmg by +40%, further staggering & stacking Skullcrusher to max. While DCVII does the same with higher initial stagger thanks to the heavy startup, that first +40% is going to a light attack, yet that light isn't perfectly horizontal for the headshots anyway and is less likely to stack stagger again.
    
  • Ofc. now Skullcrusher is imo less valuable for Shred crit built DC's anyway on account of the more massive hordes so it might not even matter. I'm pretty sure one of the cleave blessings will offer better value overall than Skullcrusher.
    
  • Then again, leading with heavy vs. light still faces the same question when it comes to the 3+ enemy requirement of most cleave blessings, so idk if this question even matters or if anything's changed really
• Initially I also saw the light > heavy > light combo of DCVII as a better alternative to single targets since the last light is also a strikedown with good armor pen. Just something that took more getting used to.
  
  • Iirc there wasn't really much if any real difference in DPS when I compared the two combos in the psykhanium however
    
  • Also after I moved to stamina builds I realized the DCIV's heavy > push-attack > heavy combo is very similar without the delay of that light in the start, and really pushes that Skullcrusher in too
    
  • While the DCVII can combo the push-attack into that light 3 strikedown for an even faster (but weaker) combo, the problem is that push-attack itself being a stab instead of an overhead strike which makes it really hard to keep hitting the heads or even the enemies at all during those stagger animations. And faster speed ofc. also means more stamina spent.
    
  • Above all, the basic light > heavy >light single target combo for DCVII was never something I was happy with. No matter how well I got used to it, that first light setup always felt like a waste.
    
  • Finally DC is one of those weapons where I feel it's important to be able to fluently transform from horde > single-target or the other way around mid-combo without resetting while fighting those mixed hordes. For DCIV that's really easy and natural, not so for DCVII.

So idk, I might have to revisit them now but to sum it up, I ultimately went back to DCVI simply because in practice they didn't seem to have much of a difference at all other than DCVI just being way easier to use.

I might very well be wrong here ofc. Please educate me if I am. :D

[xDaunt]

Alright, after messing around a bit more with the blessings, I got better results with Rampage than I did with Skullcrusher on my VII. Honestly, I'm trying to remember why I moved off of Rampage in the first place.

As for Arani's comments, I think he may have a point regarding the use of Skullcrusher. If you're going to use it, it probably fits better on the IV than the VII just because of how the anti-horde combo works.

However, I still prefer the VII's combos overall, which start with the H1. I much prefer horizontal H1s as opposed strikedown H1s on light weapons because you're going to need to hit things at least twice in many cases anyway. The horizontal H1 is really good at creating some initial space and crowd control, making the VII incredibly safe in very hairy horde situations.

What I find particularly interesting about Arani's comments is how he values the push attack on the devil's claw because of how many combos he starts off of it. I think that this is the wrong way to use the weapon. Why burn stamina on the push attack instead of simply using the parry? That's where the big damage is.

The strongest techniques with the devil's claw combo off of the parry. There's basically two options here. You can either combo into an offensive attack pattern or you can combo into another parry (stamina permitting). Most of the time, you're going to do the former, which is another reason why I prefer the VII over the IV. The VII (along with the I) has the better follow up attack to the parry with that quick strikedown. What's even better, however, is to chain parries together. This is where the damage gets absurd. The basic idea is to abuse the 360 degree parry trigger radius by getting a bunch of trash to hit at you from behind while you spam the parry attack on a hard target in front of you. I'm not gonna lie. This takes some balls to do and is not for everyone.

The point is that aggressive use of the parry is the key to unlocking the full potential of the weapon. The limiting factor to the parry is stamina, so if you really want maximize the weapon, you need to spec into talents and gear that reduces stamina consumption and increases stamina regeneration, and then you also need to active conserve your stamina to use on the parry. You don't want to be using the push attack or regular blocks if you can help it.

[DLCI]

well, parry is much faster to chain from most other actions, and the timing is what makes it effective?

trying to string parries together has a 1.25s delay

whereas chaining it from a light swing has a 0.5s delay and a 0.3s delay from a push

since it doesn't seem like you are aware of this mechanic: if you get the timing exactly right on the parry, so you finish executing the stance right as the enemy swing connects, it qualifies as a 'perfect parry' which costs nothing and can block ANY attack with zero damage.

this includes attacks that are normally flagged as unblockable and result in damage even when you block them, like crusher overheads, plague ogryn smashes, and daemonhost combos

i am pretty sure it is intentionally designed to be much, much harder to time a perfect parry when you spam it. you either need to chain it off an action with a short delay or wait and time it perfectly.