Heavy Weapons question

[one two]

I put a fragment axe on my main tank and it feels pretty lacking because of how slow it is vs the plank. I have 90 strength so I don't think that's the issue. Is the armor pen the main reason to use it? Also how is the falling sun? Considering buying a few for my skele boys

[Bedelguese]

Falling Sun is the best weapon in the game IMO

If you get injured enough you take strength penalties due to the injuries which makes you less effective with heavy weapons.

If you're going for heavy armor you will swing anything slower than you usually would, as well as lose some damage capability for any cutting damage done. A Heavy Jitte would be the best pure defensive weapon for a tank.

[Zee_]

For heavy weapons, you want to make sure you have more than twice the strength of the weapons weight to use it without issues.

90 strength is nice, but if that frag axe weighs 45kg then its too heavy, a minor scratch on your chest or gut will lower your strength to below double so you get penalties. Frag axes are the heaviest weapons in the game, and paired with heavy armor it can slow you down drastically. Due to the heavy weight and high blunt damage of frag axes you can do just fine with a skeleton mk2 or mk3. And for best results run with light or medium armor, I'd suggest against using them for tanking purposes, they're really more for offense focused characters.

My favorite heavy weapons character could use a much heavier higher tier version, but he still runs around with a mk3, because when you hit everything around you for 250+ damage you don't need anything more. Plus I prefer him to keep at maximum attack speed just in case he takes a few shots to the gut. For reference, he wears only light and medium armor, he's an AoE buzzsaw and always the last man standing (well, second last after my dedicated tank character).

As the other posted mentioned above, jittes are great for tanking.

[Fyra'Nok]

Slapped sandals and assassin's rags on my fragment wielders its working like charm

[Sohei]

You need some pretty high dexterity to use heavy weapons effectively as well as strength. Of course you need lots of strength to lift and swing the thing but you also need dexterity to get your attack and block times reduced. Some dodge also helps to avoid getting hit while stumbling.

To the main point though, I think that planks are overall better than fragment axes because you can generally attack with them faster even if you have plenty of strength. More swings is more DPS and more stuns on the enemies. When I had a character with 100 strength I crafted a variety of heavy weapons of equally high quality and found that a plank was the weapon that I liked the best.