ironbreaker bardin's best melee weapon?

[Certified_weeb]

I've been using axe and shield for most of my career with bardin but its just not really working out. I can do very little damage and I'm terrible against hordes. basically all I can do is use my shield for the extra blocking and bait the horde and stagger them. is there any weapon you can use to compliment iron breakers tanky style and still do decent damage with (especially against hordes.)

[BlinkBlade]

its best u have a melee that can deal with armored enemies and a ranged weapon for hordes, same thing can apply when u want to run a melee for hordes then u should have a ranged weapon with high dmg for armored enemies, all of em are good a way i recommend going thro some chaos mode and change and test weapons there on champion dif

[Scipo0419]

Axe/Hammer and Shield work best when playing with others as you can heavily control the horde. Royale w/ Cheese recommends:

General Melee build
https://www.ranaldsgift.com/5/122221/8,1,3,6/6,1,3,2/3,2,1/4,1,2/3,2,2
Description:
This build is meant for normal melee playstyle.
With this build, you should prioritize on horde damage. When there are Elites mixed inside a bunch of mobs, try to peel horde mobs away from them and focus on mobs, so other Elites killing careers have more space to do what they are good at.

The core talent of this build is Level 25 talent The Rolling Mountain and Level 30 talent Drengbarazi Oath. Rolling Mountain can make sure that you always have your career skill for an emergency situation, and Drengbarazi Oath greatly boosts your whole team’s damage to help ease the situation.

Recommend to pair with melee weapons like Great Axe, War Pick, Two-Handed Hammer, Hammer and Shield, Dual Hammers, Cog Hammer.

[Pyro Penguin]

axe and shield can work well with drakefire pistols, during horde just spam the secondary fire on the pistols, you can vent them as much as you need to since shield bash will generate so much thp in a horde

[Fizzie]

Dual hammers are fun along with the Cog Hammer. I mostly use those paired with Torpedo. Cog does a great job filling both roles of horde clear and armor pen with its heavy swings. Dual hammers better for horde control

[tools guy-kun]

can't go wrong with cog hammer. the light attacks do the horde clearing, while the heavy attacks do the elite killing, which makes quick work of chaos warriors, even.

I love and hate cog because it's so good that it feels difficult to use other weapons once you're hooked to the power it has. that could just be a me problem, though.

[Scrotum Scratcher]

axe and shield with drakefire pistols is solid

[uzze]

meme weapons:
-drake guns
-shields

Use a hammer, any hammer.

-Dual hammers are one of the best horde control weapons, you can just spam attack and you stagger most things.

-2h hammer, power attack side dodge and repeat. If there's armoured inside a horde, power attack to stagger them all and love tap the armoured.

-Coghammer more versatile, combination of both in that it kills armoured fast and does fast sweeps.

Most dwarfs play coghammer or dual hammers. I use 2h hammer on ironbreaker out of preference.

Now imagine you have a shield+axe/hammer and drake pistols. You shield bash the mobs back and slowly kill them all or switch to your pistols and power attack them while checking you arent about to explode. All while stealing everyones temp health farming. A storm caller spawns in and you take pot shots at it from afar while trying not to be sucked up in to the storm, all you can do is run because drake guns are mid range at best. Why do all that when you can just use a hammer on them all and have your ranged ready for when a special spawns in?

[cape]

My favorite is hammer&shield (opportunist trait).

I mainly use 3 attack chains depending on the situation:
1. For thp and extra cc, spam heavy, heavy or heavy, block cancel for only shield hits for max cc and thp.

2. For hordes, heavy, light, light on repeat. 1st attack is shield hit and repeated cycles will be the heavy hammer swing. That third light swing does the most damage (much more than 2nd heavy) and also has armor penetration and 10% extra crit chance. Can also get to the heavy hammer swing 1 attack sooner with push attack, light to skip the weaker middle light attack. Can also open with 3 lights then into the heavy light light chain, but I prefer one of the two previous openings. Why not just heavy spam (or open with heavy, heavy)? The shield hit does very poor damage and you want to get to the final light swing for the best damage. Mixed horde, make sure the last light hits armored enemies.

3. For armor, push attack, light, heavy, repeat. That light attack will be that big 3rd light extra damage swing with armor penetration. Can also just skip the heavy and only do push attack, light but that will deplete your stamina (unless HM is near? not sure if stamina regen property will fix that). So with the heavy hammer swing your stamina will have time to recover from the push attack.

You probably won't be top killer unless you're carrying the others, but not too far behind. Takes a bit longer to kill armored. Combine with fire pistols for faster horde killing power, but a bit limited (not impossible) sniping. Almost guaranteed win for the team.

[Frostbeast]

Originally posted by uzz:

meme weapons:
-drake guns
-shields

Its pretty good on the Outcast with Gromil plated ammo.

[Ardariel]

Best? Axe+shield.
Most damaging vs armor? well, 2hHammer or 2hAxe. But they are not best overall.

[Emilia Tempest]

Pretty much depends on what weapon is good for yourself. Here's an personal example:
People say that the Bilhook is Saltzpyre's best weapon (on WHC its Rapier), its pretty strong but for me? I cant use it, I perform way better with the greatsword that this weapon. So while the weapon itself is "pretty strong", for me its as weak as the axe.

Having said that, just use whatever melee you want and are good at on Ironbreaker, it does not matter at all if you take a shield or if you take another melee.


You'll still be tanky, and you can play him more as a buffer+tank if you pick "The Rolling Mountain" and "Drengbarazi Oath" while also taking a melee weapon that does a lot of single target damage (like the Great Axe). You do great damage, you can throw out your ult in nearly every horde, you give everyone (including yourself) 20% extra damage.
And if you want more tankiness take the talent that reduces the cooldown on his Gromril Armor trait from 20 to 10.


You can also use other builds and rather go for dual hammers, cog hammer, great hammer to still have better horde control but also higher damage output if the buffer-tank aint your style.

But if you still want to use a shield, the probably best set-up is using Shield&Axe + Drakefire Pistols. (you can use the "Under Pressure" talent, but its more of a nerf in my opinion)
Shield and axe is for armored targets (you can also do "heavy attack > block > heavy attack" on repeat for hordes), drakefire pistol (hold right click and then fire for the shotgun blast) for hordes.

Or you can also go for the flamethrower (do NOT use "Under Pressure", its not worth it on this weapon), it'll melt hordes, can hold back stormvermin patrols easily. And if youre concerned to get stabbed, simply hold rightclick for a very short time and just hold leftclick right away to do short bursts of flames. It's more tedious to do, but its less risky if you do end up getting hit while doing your fire (its also more efficient)

However both of these leave you open to specials being a massive threat as both weapons suck at dealing with them (the drakefire pistols can hit a special, but it takes forever on legend to kill anything past mid-range thanks to the low damage and the massive spread

[Mysterious Sir Knight]

As you can clearly see, there is zero consensus on what the 'best' IB weapons are. So instead of telling you what I think is the best, I'll just try to give the best reasons to pick each weapon and you can decide what sounds fun yourself.

Melee:
1h Axe: Single Target With Good Mobility
1h Hammer: Very Generalist
Axe & Shield: High Stagger Output, Good Single Target Damage
Cog Hammer: Powerful Overheads, Fast Sweeps
Dual Hammers: Fast High Stagger Swings
Great Axe: Fast Single Target Attacks
Great Hammer: Powerful Sweeps, Good Single Target Damage
Hammer & Shield: High Stagger Output, Decent Sweeps, Decent Single Target Damage
Pickaxe: Decent Sweeps, Big Overheads

Ranged:
Crossbow: Fast Elite & Special Sniping
Drakefire Pistols: Horde Clearing, Medium Ranged Primary
Drakegun: Horde Clearing, High Area Stagger
Grudge-Raker: Horde Clearing, High Unarmored Damage
Handgun: Single Shot That Usually 1 Taps
Masterwork Pistol: Rapid Fire, High Damage
Trollhammer: Monster DPS, Elite Group Eradication

[Ol'Chum]

Cog hammer. Easy horde control, infinite hp because cleave talent, can stagger a SV out of overhead on cata with a light and also 1 taps said SVs with a charge hs on cata. Beast of a weapon

[Ardariel]

Originally posted by Ol'Chum:

Cog hammer. Easy horde control, infinite hp because cleave talent, can stagger a SV out of overhead on cata with a light and also 1 taps said SVs with a charge hs on cata. Beast of a weapon

Can you show me vid of how people perform good on cata with it? Not just "okay" but actually good and carrying?

Cause so far i hear some people praise it, but no matter how hard i try to use it, it seems to me as weaker version of 2hHammer with attemps to be closer to 1hHammer, but lacking mobility of second and CC and damage of first. Not to mention said charged attack first strike is way too slow to practicaly utilise its damage, so you end up getting better result with 2hHammer.

But maybe i am mising something, just noone can point me out what i am missing. So can you link me some good gameplay footage?

[Mysterious Sir Knight]

Originally posted by Ardariel:

Can you show me vid of how people perform good on cata with it? Not just "okay" but actually good and carrying?

Cause so far i hear some people praise it, but no matter how hard i try to use it, it seems to me as weaker version of 2hHammer with attemps to be closer to 1hHammer, but lacking mobility of second and CC and damage of first. Not to mention said charged attack first strike is way too slow to practicaly utilise its damage, so you end up getting better result with 2hHammer.

But maybe i am mising something, just noone can point me out what i am missing. So can you link me some good gameplay footage?

Think of the Heavies like Krubers Executioner sword and the Lights like Dual Hammers with their speed and stagger. It's really stinkin good offensively but it trades that for having uncancelable Lights and only 2 dodges. It's an 'offence is the best defence' kind of weapon. I would record a video for you myself but it'd be in like 15 fps because of my potato PC, although if you're down we could hop in the same lobby and you could see me run it on IB or Slayer.