The very EXTREME suggestion to nerf → MOST OF ← Brandishes

Although I disagree with most of this, I'm just gonna focus on a few aspects for now that I think are worth noting:

Brandish supremacy (besides acheron) has largely been tied to FSC being THE level to farm. If you remove FSC from the equation, a lot fewer brandishes would be in use during standard gameplay.

Your actual solution should be to make brandishes less viable for farming crowns. Introduce levels where multiple different families spawn (not just undead), and you can't vortex + brandish spam your way through a level. In a given random arcade run currently, your brandish would only really be viable in a select few levels. Even then, with the new buffs we've gotten to other things, you could make an argument for triglav/suda + vortex being superior...

Acheron has already taken a hit with the DVS buffs, but still remains strong in PvP. I don't see any reason to nerf it when other weapons/alternatives have been scaled up around it.

With the current state of the game (rather the state the game has been for the last decade+), nerfing any brandish would not sit right with anyone. Having to balance weapons down means we cannot think of things that other more obsolete weapons need. Focusing on how to buff the lower tier weapons in the game would far more benefit the game. If FSC is the current best cr farming method, then nerfing the line of weapons that best benefits anyone running it would very likely make people wanna play the game less if it means more nerfs may come to meta weapons. Plus, these changes would not do any justice even if they were approved because brandishes will 9 times out of 10 be used in a vortex charge or a large clump of mobs, which will still do plenty of damage despite the change. If you wanna make a real good change, let's focus on weapons like Tortofist, Spur line, Calibur line, and by god do I have plenty of issues with most bombs. If buffs to the rest of weapons in the game still allow brandish to remain the go-to, then more balance work on other weapons is needed.

I do not believe nerfs are the way to go. 2 issues that would be a better option to focus on instead of nerfs would be

1. most swords (weapons but we'll stick to just swords since brandish) are extremely weak and need buffs
2. A lot of the end game content/level design is catered towards Brandishes

We've already seen what GH has done with the first round of balance patches making cutters and troikas a lot more viable. DVS and WHB went from some of the worst weapons to some of the best weapons with DVS even rivaling Acheron depending on the content. I believe continuing to buff underwhelming weapons to be viable and even better in certain content compared to brandishes is the right move going forward. This brings me to the 2nd point.

FSC being the best cr farm makes brandishes shine even more for how great they perform in that mission. Brandish + EV charge is almost perfect for it due to the high mob count and slow enemy attacks making it very easy. Creating new levels where this isn't the case would indirectly nerf them and allow other weapons to shine.

For example:
If we look at current content such as OCH which is another good cr farm (if you have eternals). I'm already starting to see others use DVS instead of Acheron due to it performing better with the recent buffs. The fastest speedrun for OCH currently uses DVS instead of acheron which is a great example that proves buffing weaker weapons and level design catering towards high single target dmg instead of mob grouping works

Id love that they add split shadow damage to the Amputator, and maybe an split shadow, Poison Brandish... on light that the other option is locked behind an event or incredible amounts of crowns in the auctions (if appears).

And yes, the other weapons needs to be rebalanced/buffed so brandishes aren´t top pick for everything.

Yet, this game needs inmediately another T3 boss level whit lots of enemies that aren´t Ghost type.

No

Unfortunately the community will never allow it to happen. Players have gotten accustomed to the braindead gameplay loop that is the Brandish playstyle, which on its own isn't really that big of a problem. But with the recent balance adjustments people have taken a compete 180 on the idea of Brandishes being an overtuned weapon type, and instead have taken the stance of rebalancing weapons around Brandish performance, which is such a baffling vision of proper game balance.

You don't even the scales by pushing everything to one side. The future of weapon balancing is very grim.

It's crazy to suggest nerfs to brandish as if they haven't literally just started buffing weapons. There are so many problems with nerfing anything. Even nerfing orbit and mixer, which were obviously completely bugged to an absurd degree, caused a ton of controversy. Imagine that, but with a weapon that the vast majority of players actually have? Making the game "better" or "healthier" while making MOST players mad in the process will never be a net positive, and they are already on the course of correcting the balance properly.

Ignoring that, brandishes are not as strong as you seem to think. I feel like anyone who has played a bit outside of FSC and actually used other weapons would realize brandishes are simply not as universally supreme as they thought, and there are WAY more ways to play this game effectively, and far more effectively than simply spamming brandish charges.

Not only that, we have craftable diskguns now, cutters that out-DPS most weapons in the game, and many more balance buffs on the way. I'm not the least bit concerned about brandish.

honestly quite reasonable suggestions - in fact i wouldn't expect the meta to change much as a result of these changes being implemented, but it might close the gap among weapons a little bit particularly in normal gate runs

people have a gut reaction to nerfs but i don't oppose them at all, and the direction of bringing everything up to the level of whatever is most unbalanced just threatens to make all normal gameplay trivial. unless you balance out the buffs to weapons with buffs to enemies too (or change the typical gameplay loop from FSC and gate runs to shadow lairs and such). really, playing with new cutters a while i get the feeling they might be overtuned now, they should be a high-DPS but high-risk weapon due to their lower range, but in practice they can easily shred multiple enemies while reliably flinching all oncoming attacks, making them also possibly the safest melee normal attack, which doesn't feel right. of course, DVS is balanced regardless because it competes with acheron

it is true however that the current meta is based on the assumption of FSC in its current state being the #1 thing to play. FSC has genuinely no enemy diversity whatsoever, it's 5 levels of almost nothing but slags, trojans, and lord vanaduke. combuster quickly mops up groups of slags in open areas, electron vortex sets up brandish charges, and blitz instakills trojans and is the only thing that works on vanaduke. (vanaduke in particular is kind of stupidly punishing towards any weapon that isn't blitz, particularly his final phase, which is really frustrating and is the final lock on blitz being totally irreplacable!)

brandishes and magnuses are both able to instantly kill both single strong enemies and large groups of enemies in any mission or gate, and are effective against the majority of enemies, while also being very safe to use relative to other weapons, so yeah i think nerfing them is quite reasonable. on the other hand, autoguns are far less overpowered outside the context of FSC and i don't think blitz or its variants need any changes (other than nerfing vanaduke in such a way that other weapons are more effective against him)

Frankly I'm afraid of a person who can look at a limited roster of viable weapons and then decide that the most pressing action to be made is to nerf one of the few good options available.

normally I like to articulate myself a bit better but im kind of tired of seeing takes from someone uninformed who tries to assert as if theres enough knowledge, so have some bullet points instead

your points on why they need to be nerfed:

"brandishes are low skill ceiling"

that's true of effectively every weapon besides perhaps alchemers, there's minimal setups required to use any weapon and this is by design, the game is meant to be simple to play - this doesn't mean theres no skill expression
things like weapon switching are ways players have found skill expression at a micro level.
this is a false precedent to frame it as a brandish specific issue

"long range catching up with a handgun"

you can fire a charge attack every 3 seconds at best it has ranged capabilities but you have to get in the enemy's face for effectiveness, moot point

"area coverage of a bomb"

true of many swords, such as troikas, sealed swords, wrh charge (if you use it for some reason)

this isn't an issue, instead look towards buffing bombs (or everything else actually, as 2/3rds of the weapons in the game are bad)

"strong status"

this might be your only point I can see where you are coming from to give credit where its due

"lack of endlag"

making the weapon slow would not be a good feeling change, when balancing games you really have to be mindful of slowing down, because it just adds to player frustration. straight up bad change.

other things of concern:

"reducing knockback as a solution for status brandishes"

this suggestion almost reads like it was made out of malice for specifically the ccless brandishes - you even say this wouldn't be bad for the glacius/volt which is true
volt and glacius have viable use cases, glacius isn't as popular but experienced enough players know that it could be taken to places like c42 or sl imf

"amputator is the only balanced brandish"

are we playing the same game? amputator is a really sad weapon held back by being normal damage, and it has lower damage tables than its status variants, explosions are about 3/4ths of the damage
it's not in a good spot and needs buffs

additionally:

yatez basically brings the most important point, brandishes are most valued because they are the best option for the best location to acquire resources. add more options to acquire resources and while strong, they wont be seen as dominant as they used to

jazio also touches on the fact that most swords are undertuned, this is true, like I said before buff everything else

spark of kill is huffing and puffing about it being a "braindead" gameplay loop, like I said above that if you want to be reductionist this is the case for nearly every weapon and that is by design.
the balancing of this game is so poor because too many weapons are way below the performance desired by players. balance upwards, not downwards - theres not many extremely broken things and way too many things that are near unusable. you can't pin this on the community when its a failing of the game to have this many issues in its weapon balancing, which are only now being worked on after 12 years of no change. im particularly unimpressed with you especially after the near sabotaging of DVS we had to go through - divine avenger and gran faust are missing some fine tuning because of the wasted time on the DVS debacle, taking away attention from everything else.

kyiia, the post buff strikers particularly feast on the levels they're effective into, and are solid in the levels they're not, they *should* shred enemies as a predominantly single target weapon, so im not really sure what the problem is, they do what they shouldve always done which is be a single target dps monster.

I think that they're fine as is, but I do agree that swords needs to be re-centralized in terms of viability... Personally though I'd prefer to bring others up and than pull Brandishes down.

Flourish, Snarble Barb, and Calibur all share the same damage table as the Brandish, but their evolutions lag behind which needs to be fixed. The Amputator as well since it needs to match the Combuster in terms of neutral damage.

I'll also say that the Sealed Sword lines should be buffed as well since Heavy style swords should deal more per hit than faster ones, and the Acheron matches the damage values of the Gran Faust and Divine Avenger while having a much faster swing speed and longer combo. Although I think the Troika line needs to stay supreme in terms of neutral damage for 2 swing swords the Sealed Sword lines should at least deal more per hit than the Brandish lines.

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I believe there's better options for balancing and I think that we could also stand to have some new lines and new branches on old lines. This isn't going to be something that can be fixed as a whole by messing with just one or two lines either....

In a sense a universal sword rework would effectively nerf the Brandish lines, but only by empowering everything around it...

Considering brandish attacks cannot pass trough some barriers, guns can pass... why no making a new T3 boss that has these elements that make Brandishes less of a desirable option to traverse it?

Obviously it has to be a level that is rich in resources to gather (such can be done whit enemy density per level and multiple stage fights like vana already does, but whit a twist in design)

A level like that would give all Pulsar series a place to shine as well, and like FSC, it makes use of all 4 attacks tipes has well of weaknesses

Maybe it can be a Gremling themed levels, based on a coliseum designed meticulously to hinder the best knights, being like some sort of labyrinth and many variety of monsters from all family types gathered in many obligatory monster cages next to blast cages to open areas.

And the boss could be the best monster the gremlings could trap and train (Wich would be the exclusive boss)... or the gremling Coliseum wich i think, could be a little gremling that becomes really big and strong like vana, but acts differently and relies more on caged monsters, or some kind of tag team against the player.

I mean... What if the Amputator is Shadow/Pierce split damage? that would make it more interesting to use?

I agree with just about everything Megalianae said. Historically there have been only a handful of weapon types in this game that feel truly good to use, and Brandishes are definitely one of them. For my money the solution isn't to make them feel worse to use, it's to make the mostly-useless weapon lines feel good to use too, so that players can choose between multiple effective options. And that's exactly what GH did with this first round of balancing. The Cutter lines went from a gimmicky joke to being super-viable, and now I can use my Sudaruska as more than a meme. That's a great start! Now sword-wise we just need things like the Spur and especially the Calibur lines to get some love, and maybe some minor tweaks to the Sealed Sword lines' damage values. As far as Brandishes go I'd be fine with toning down the Acheron's neutral damage to match the rest of its family, and obviously the Amputator needs some sort of purpose, but other than that I think they're fine. If anything bombs are in a far more dire state, with only two or three options really worth using in any capacity.

Honestly a few of your points don't even make much sense. Sure, you could use a Brandish at the same range as a gun, but you'd be doing almost no damage plinking enemies with the very tip of the charge. Using it effectively means unloading the charge right onto an enemy, which while it's hardly a "skill check" at least involves some small level of risk. And the charge doesn't cover nearly as much area as a bomb (at least the good bombs) and still leaves you vulnerable from behind if you use it in a dumb spot.

my concern with cutters is just how safe they are to use, they're both much higher dps and much safer than any other melee basic attack in all circumstances and i don't think a weapon should be both. i can more-or-less spam attacks blindly into any horde and anything nearby is just unable to harm me because of how quickly, consistently, and repeatedly everything gets flinched

the buff patch included a specific change to make all cutters flinch on the 3rd and 5th hits; i think that change in particular could get reverted so that you need to think a little bit about how you approach enemies, but leave the DPS alone

wait, if the cutters are too overpowered, at least remove the 5th strike flinch. Other than that i think they´re more efficient than brandishes when exploring the arcade.

As of the last balance update that improved the viability of a broad range of weapons I can say with certainty that this notion of nerfing a mainstay weapon because it is "too strong" appears mostly as a reaction to stagnancy. Not that I disagree that their ubiquity is a concern - it is - but not because of any other reason than this ubiquity ACTUALLY represents a lack of viability for other options, not an excess of power; I think assuming that is bad rationale for a suggestion like this.

Understand this from the perspective of a more casual player (Hello!); the feeling of spending time crafting a weapon only to find that it has barely any utility is unpleasant. That the brandish line is effective as it is makes it attractive to a lot of players, new and old. If your takeaway from this is that this accessibility is "brainless," then I don't know what to offer you in response beyond "this is a children's java game from 2011." Its total absence from PvP (with the exception of the Acheron, I KNOW, I know, see the footnote*) should give all the information anyone would need to understand that it's best-in-slot for exactly one scenario, and it happens to be the only scenario people engage with because it's the most efficient way to engage with the game's very outdated treadmill design.

This isn't me saying "if you nerf the brandish i'll leave because it's a bad idea," this is me saying "if you nerf the brandish, you make the game immediately more tedious to engage with at large because there isn't enough to fill the gap left behind." I'm sorry, but I'm with Megalianae, Holy-Nightmare and Pdtopgun on this.

With all the respect I can muster? This seems more like an attack on a line that you dislike rather than an attempt to improve the weapon balance overall. I don't want to come off as though I don't appreciate why you'd make this case - they really *are* everywhere - but the underlying cause for why hasn't been considered enough in my view. The WHB and DVS have become very valuable weapons to a lot of players, whereas before they were largely seen as cute costume pieces with little viability in actual play. I'm already aware of previously stated distaste for the DVS's design, but consider this: I crafted one of each the moment the patch dropped and have enjoyed using them every single moment I've had them equipped.

If you're tempted to presume that I still use the Combuster all of the time, then I would like to clarify that; "no; when I have the WHB equipped, the Combuster stays firmly in its scabbard, because the WHB is very entertaining to play with." I used to hate wolvers and devilites - they still clip me once in a while now but I definitely feel like I can go toe-to-toe with them in ways I couldn't before. I still get punished for overconfidence, but this feels way better now than it once did - previously I just thought I didn't have a good enough option and chose to craft the wrong weapon; now when I take damage I feel it's because I made the wrong decision in that instant, or overextended, etc etc etc... It feels much better to use, now. The game feels like it rewarded my investment of time with a solid weapon I find fun! Disagree if you wish, but in a game whose main loop is gear progression and PvE, that feels like appropriate balance to me! This whole paragraph is me describing how GH's changes to weapon balance improved the experience of my gameplay, and that feels like it's the most important goal.

This game *is* mostly PvE, too. Balancing for player enjoyment in that context probably represents creating a wide range of tools and a wide range of scenarios to apply them to. That means more viable weapons and more play opportunities with equivalent(**) reward per unit time (RAISING competing weapon viability), more than it does appraising weapons on what mostly seems to be the merits of how "fair" a theoretical talking enemy would think your use of such a weapon against them would feel (LOWERING dominant weapon viability). This ties back to my quip before - about it being a reaction to a weapon you dislike? I don't mean that to offend; genuinely - who benefits from this change? The players who have a part of their experience drawn out and made less satisfying, or you, who's sick of seeing the same loadout? Truly; I'm not trying to be a thwacker about this, that math doesn't work out to me, and probably doesn't to a lot of players.

To that end I feel like a "balanced" lineup of weapons is a two-part equation; fun pointy sticks, and fun places to stick the sharp end. Currently, we've got Brandish and FSC. Maybe if there were more high-earner events that required crowd control of fiend minis the WHB would dominate crown earning. Maybe if there was an event that depended on using knockback to smash otherwise invincible enemies into level hazards, the Troika would dominate crown earning. "Maybe" a lot of things. The only thing I think is a "certainty", though, is that nerfing the brandish will just make a lot of players bitter that a large part of their play is so much more tedious... and that the easier way to reduce Brandish Marriage is to encourage players to engage with other stages where it just isn't a pack leader.

Of course, if we DO give players those other options, and a DIFFERENT weapon dominates, we can chase our tails all over again and demand nerfs of more and more "high viability items" until the game's been sanded perfectly round. A player is always going to choose the weapon that is most enjoyable and often that weapon is the strongest for one reason or another. Sometimes, it's just style, I admit (shoutouts to the Omega Tortofist!), but in a game where you have to either grind or pay to craft gear, you better believe a player wants their time and/or money's worth.

All things equal? No, I don't like this idea. In a vacuum. If there were overall more things to do in the game, though, and less of the grind orbited the viability of how fast you could sweep up FSC, this idea would make more sense. Then I would be compelled to take it more seriously. Otherwise, down this path I feel like we'll eventually find ourselves in the unpleasant place where a player's toys are being taken away because they had the audacity to have too much fun as everything is boiled down to a spreadsheet of steadily normalizing values.

The fact is, everyone has a brandish because all roads lead to Almire. None of us feel like we want to be there any longer than we have to be - I'm sure that most of us would LOVE to do ANYTHING ELSE. Outside that space, though, the variety of choices being made by players is much higher than this suggestion is implying. Bombs dominate compounds. Winter Grave dominates Deconstruction Zones. If you want to hit a Fiend City? Pick a piercing weapon. Usually DBB, but I love the hunting blade now. Dark Retribution for slime arenas and RJP. Everybody's running FSC because none of these options pay. That's not something you can blame on a sword.

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(*The Acheron is never used for its charge attack in PvP, and the charge attack is focal to this post. The next weapon with highest damage and swing-speed will instantly take its place should it be nerfed and in the context of charge attacks this is moot anyway. See: BTB or any other epee/rapier style sword.)

(**I don't want to make this post too much longer but I also want to note that for me it isn't just about crowns. Player motivation and intrinsic vs extrinsic reward for a play decision is a nuanced topic and the "right answer" for what to do about and with it varies on a per-player basis but regardless I want to be clear that I'm not neglecting the value of a tool just being MORE FUN, and that being a reward in its own right.)

Hello to all the fans of Vanaslop and one-shot speedrunning.
Mean spirited remarks aside, I'd like to thank everyone so far for leaving their feedback and impressions on this thread. An update on my end, I've added an extra bullet point regarding Brandish knockback already being prevented by enemy crowds and Vortex bombs. I've been meaning to add that from the start, but I guess it left my memory, thanks @Legendarios for reminding me.
That being said, I still disagree with most of what's been said in my response, so in this post I'll try to counter-argue against most of those comments, and address some of the general echoed points:

"Brandishes are only this popular because of the prevalence of King of Ashes" @Yatez @Jayzio @Sonoviper @Vyre-Acidlashed
This is completely incorrect, Brandishes being "only" useful in FSC is a complete lie, and FSC in this example is being used as a scapegoat if anything, its popularity does not excuse the fact that Brandishes are universally strong in ANY level, no matter where you take them; you could take a Combuster to Compound 42 - a level where the weapon is actively disadvantaged as you deal the defended damage type of Toxoils and Gremlins, on top of constantly lighting up said Toxoils, and you'd STILL be paving your way through, simply due to the weapon's effortless charge attack with all the range and knockback you could need for this type of level.
Off the topic, but introducing new farmable missions will never dethrone Brandishes either, simply due to the fact that FSC will ALWAYS remain the #1 go-to most popular farmable mission, for the simple fact that it's the most documented, studied and accustomed mission in the entire game.

"All/most weapons have low skill expression or basic gameplay, and Brandishes were never the exception" @Megalianae
Again, I find this notion to be VERY incorrect, as many weapon charge attacks either require proper distancing, proper timing, spatial awareness, or a precise aim angle in the case of Alchemers and Magni (plural for Magnus). Even if you take gun switching out of equation, you get such oddballs as:

• Final Flourish charge attack, for which you have to trust your sense of spacing to land all 3 swings of the charged attack while not flying off into the horizon past said targets.
• Magnus charge attacks, which can EASILY earn you a hit from an enemy if you leave one unattended while firing at a completely different target, this may come from either poor timing, not enough distance, or simply being inattentive of your surroundings.
• Leviathan Blade and other Caliburs, which require you to find a way to keep enemies in place by either using the map to your advantage, or using bombs and status effects to keep your targets in place.
• The ABNORMAL endlag of Troikas, Autoguns, and once again, Magni, all of which rely on the assumption that your charged attacks will either take out your enemies right away, or push them far enough where they won't be able to dish out a response-attack.
• Cutter and Antigua charge attacks both take so much time to unload while leaving you rooted in one place and in one direction, it's practically the ultimate test of enemy/map reading.

"Balance upwards not downwards" @Megalianae, but basically everyone
I've mostly expressed my concerns over this on SK Discords, so I'll reiterate it here: Taking the route of only buffing player damage and reducing PvE difficulty is a steady course for a power-crept mess where an average T3 expedition is reduced to be as threatening as a Goomba, and where most weapons will be blended into not playstyles, but "flavours" of one shotting your enemies.

"Amputator's base damage should match Combuster's neutral damage" @Holy-Nightmare
Point taken, I don't disagree, and I still believe this issue and plenty others would've never occurred if dual damage scaling was reprogrammed, or at the very least taken a second look at.

"Player enjoyment represents creating a wide range of tools and a wide range of scenarios to apply them to" @Vyre-Acidlashed
That is the thing though, I'm not against this. In fact, I'm currently ROOTING for this mindset. But you have to understand that the game's current direction in balancing (ESPECIALLY the Cutter reworks) have left the impression that Grey Havens don't want to put the extra care into that vision. It only makes me wonder why we even need damage types in this game to begin with, considering that Dread Venom Striker post-rework now shreds in most of the levels, and it only barely trails behind damage against Undead and Fiends compared to its pre-rework counterpart.
Tldr; my main concerns with Brandishes and future weapon buffs is that all weapons will do the same thing while regular enemy fights will leave no lasting impressions.

I'd like to close this thread by thanking @Kyiia for taking the time to look at this from my perspective, and not immediately disagreeing with my notion. Thank you to @Vyre-Acidlashed too for not immediately bashing the initial comment, and giving me a well-argued response from their perspective, it was the only two disagreeing posts I didn't actively hate reading.

That is all on my end for now, take care and goodnight.

At the very least I think that certain lines should match damage values, the end question is how much should things shift? Should they meet halfway? should weak ones be made strong or strong made weak?

If you're worried about the game getting too easy then you could argue for higher monster HP to go along with bringing many of the weaker weapons up, but that leads to the question of how much and which enemies?

As much as I know the Cutter rework made them stronger it also didn't really sit right that we didn't get more testing done.... just buffed with Shadow Normal and buffed Normal.... no testing done for Elemental Normal as some sort of attempt at keeping the DVS a unique damage/status combo, or something with Pure Normal but with a heavily boosted status chance.

And that's how I think a lot of this whole threat should end up... we just really should get a lot of testing... and not from update hungry players who are frothing at the mouth for a new high from an OP weapon, but from players who are much more concerned with the game's well-being, balance, and longevity... (I'd nominate players like Bopp, Fangel, etc)

It's fair to say "Brandishes being "only" useful in FSC is a complete lie," but I don't remember saying that brandishes are only useful in FSC; I said that they were popular for their effectiveness there; that's an entirely different argument. They are useful generalist weapons everywhere, and in reading your response I'm starting to understand your argument more - but I still can't help but disagree with the thrust of it. Not as intensely this time, I admit, but still.

So far the summary seems to be "It's annoying that everyone is ignoring the rest of the game's gear or mechanics at large in favour of this win button," and I think that's what you're trying to articulate when you say "It only makes me wonder why we even need damage types in this game to begin with," and you MIGHT be right, but the reason I can't help but want to argue the point regardless is because the example offered - Compound 42 - *isn't* run with the Combuster, and that's just to start with. In fact, in my experience it's not even run with the Acheron that often.

It's run with the Winter Grave.

Which, I have learned, is a weapon so powerful that it's used to trivialise the Tortodrones fight - and there's no split damage to speak of there. Regardless of dealing pure shadow (something that Tortodrones resist!) it still pretty much sweeps. Are we not just going to see this conversation happen again and again as the meta shifts? Not to be unreasonable; I do respect what you're trying to get into here, but I think this alone is part of why some users have responded with the whole "let's just make every weapon an 8-bar Normal Club then" bit whenever this topic is raised - other players (myself included) feel like Brandish Generalism is overstated because we just don't use it as much as we're being told we do. It isn't us being prickly, so much as we think we're... maybe being condescended to a little?

Yes, I am aware that the refusal to accept this suggestion implies otherwise, but implication isn't evidence - I want to be careful about heading that off before it forms a basis for calling players the problem.

The centre of my opposing argument (which I admit maybe isn't addressing the matter you're most concerned about, on reflection?) is that "player taste will always allow for the brandish to lose prevalence if other options are more attractive," and we've seen firsthand that this is the case through the last balancing patch. If anything my rebuttal ends at "let's see if it's really the only option left," rather than "this is a bad idea outright." I know that there's some discontent to be had with the idea of making T3 "too easy," but I also basically think that any weapon should be fun - you put in the time and the energy for it.

I mean, there's also the other aspect that I feel the skill requirements of other weapons is being mildly overstated? I'm not great at the game, and even I can solo a bunch of stuff with the Iron Slug alone. Before the WHB changes, the Flourish and BTB was my go-to in fiend levels and it's pretty easy to handle around Gorgers with their awkward movement and Devilites with their diving... This game isn't really that hard, and any spacing "quirks" are pretty basic, to me. And like, no, okay, SURE, I concede having one item negating the game mechanics is a bad thing - but it doesn't, not entirely? The equilibrium feels delicate enough that I'm not certain this is the right play just because of how sharply player opinion shifts will offset it, and that's just issue #1.

If what you say is true; that you're rooting for more options, then this is achievable without pushing for a change very few other players would be excited for. If not, then the goal is to move the brandish out of this spot that it's in. That would mean the changes you want involve making it more and more niche until people don't want to use it as much, which seems opposed to that aforestated mindset. That means we also have to acknowledge that you are one player telling a lot of other players how they should be playing, or if not that, telling GH how they should operate the game, which is absolutely antithetical to the case made. Put plainly... this doesn't actually affect you that much. Anyone, actually. Use what you like, we'll do same, y'know? Players already leave the combuster behind for better options. Despite arguments, it is not the only weapon in the game.

Sure, I'm a big enough gremlin to admit; "The Brandish's Efficacy In All Situations Is Perhaps A Noticeable Flaw In The Game's Design," but I'm also able to admit that a few weapons could replace "Brandish" in that assessment, and that fairly persistently drives me to wonder if the problem might be elsewhere just to head off the subsequent streak of posts from a BUNCH of users in which they DO swap the weapon and keep the argument to the same expression of distaste.

The truth is (especially since the patch) I just don't use the Combuster as much. Maybe there are more players like me.

I've been thinking about this response a lot, I'm imagining the world in which your response to me was "Okay, prove it - stop using the brandish line for a week," and my response to this hypothetical would be, "Okay, I'll swap it for an Iron Slug." I think that a lot of players would do the same? I basically already have stopped using the combuster. To the extent that encounters "leave no lasting impression," it's already the case that enemy TTK is so minimal that it scarcely matters, and in the cases where it does, the brandish often isn't even the big hitter. Even in FSC - there, the Blitz is. Your complaint motivating this whole matter is "the skill entry level is too low." Pick a weapon, chief, I don't know what to tell you. They all knock down us gremlins just fine without much fuss. You click it, you stick it.

I just don't see it, boss. The Iron Slug easily satisfies the same niche as the brandish. So many other weapons are equally viable. Cutters pin enemies in place by attacking from the sides. I really just think that when we start appraising the game on this metric of "but it excels(?) in every situation" that we enter into a race to the bottom where every weapon is brought in line with every other weapon by watching use percentage statistics and trying to make all the numbers equal. In my mind that's just worse. I don't mind that tortoguns kind of suck. I'd like them to kind of suck less so that I can excuse using them more - but I still use them despite that right now. The brandish line doesn't really change that... so I think taste dominates this conversation in every regard.

I don't want to be that guy who gets snippy with you and says "let's remove spec damage entirely, if that pleases you," because it's not contructive; I believe you have a point and I want to take it seriously - it IS a worthy one if it's in the interest of improving the game. I just don't see a way to convince myself it's a watertight one. Even in the impact assessment where you clarify it'll "have less impact than we would think," you're restricting the scope of the change to "single enemies" and in that case... honestly, any weapon handles any enemy very quickly if it's single enemies. Reading back at the additional notes in the top post, I've perhaps changed my mind about what my actual rebuttal is (¶6); now I find myself thinking "players will dislike the change and not even notice it while playing." At this point you probably could just go for it, but that's me admitting that basically none of this matters or means anything. All that's really happening is the brandish can't do one fun thing that every magnus style weapon can do, every autogun can do, every cutter can do. If the nerf will have such limited impact, why propose it at all?

"Cleans up One Guy, guaranteed."

I want to be clear, I don't want to come off as a downer - for what it's worth I believe your proposal is genuinely interesting and I just want to have some fun examining it thoroughly. At this point I really am just here for the discussion. I HAVE come around that I think the nerf wouldn't hurt people as much as they might be feeling it will, you won me over on that... but it doesn't really change my mind about the rest of the points covered. I don't think it's a bad idea, so much as I'm not yet convinced it's good enough to implement, set against everything else it's competing with. Good enough to discuss for sure, but that's another matter.

And hey, thank you for being so kind in response, I'm grateful for that. :)

...yeah i've already mentioned that magnus should also be in line for a nerf! there's no race to the bottom here - brandish and magnus lines just both uniquely do very similar things among all weapons and deserve a similar hand in balance. magnus is unfavored in FSC specifically, which is why it's a little under the radar - blitz by contrast is more uniquely suited to the forever FSC grind, but feels more reasonable in normal levels and needs no adjustments imo. were the commonly proposed suggestion of making vana vulnerable to penetration implemented, magnus would certainly be sharing the same critical eye

That's exactly the point I'm making, though. "The brandish is too powerful," the community switches to the magnus, "The magnus is too powerful," the community switches to the Antigua penetration setup or Blitz/DCG single-target takedown, "The blitz is too powerful," the community switches to the cutters, "The cutters are too powerful," and on, and on. (Foul: Slippery slope, I know, but please bear with me...)

"X should also be in line for a nerf!" is that race I mentioned. In a PvE game where progression costs real time or real money I feel like that's kind of a meaningless set of decisions to make - you're not competing with other players and they're not meaningfully compromising *your* experience because they're not using these weapons on *you*. The only thing changes like this do in the long run is take fun tools away from players who play them because they like them. Not JUST because they like them - efficacy is still a relevant point - but if a thing you like becomes less effective, you like it less. And if nothing else is buffed to take up that space, all you're doing is signalling to the playerbase at large, "no more of that - you've had your fun, now it's time to pay the piper." I feel like that case is really easy to make because it's experientially true, not because it's a strawman argument - enough people in this thread and in others have already concurred on that for me to feel kind of confident here; and the shard bomb nerf speaks for itself all those years ago.

In Grandish's response to all of us he even apparently makes the case that the Magnus is balanced because of it's risk/reward, so even that's up to taste. I can't say concretely that "he disagrees with you about the magnus" because I'm not in his head, but based on the words I'm seeing from him and from you... it does kinda seem that way? I don't know if I'm maybe underestimating myself but I think all of these weapons easily replace one another in my loadout at the very least - because these are genuinely what I use. I don't think that starting this conversation on the central thesis of "the barrier for entry is too low to the brandish" in a game that is already so easy to engage with carries much merit at all; I don't believe the gap is really that wide at all.

Half of the reason people don't use other weapons is because it's not fun to use something that doesn't "feel strong" if you're throwing a couple of hours of grinding at it, or actual dollars; and especially not in a game this small. Of course the aforementioned suite of tools is valued by the community. They feel worth the effort. Mind you, none of this is helped by the fact that it's hard to consistently experiment with new gear if you're a new player until you've ended up at the end game with access to the most profitable ventures - by the time it's worth experimenting, the game is already basically over.

I've crafted and subsequently vendored a lot of weapons because they don't feel good to use. I'd rather not log in one day to find that the ones I kept don't any more either, yknow?

All this in mind, I'm not saying I'm correct, to be fair - I really do believe this is up to taste and I'm only explaining mine. I don't think this game is very rewarding to engage with in terms of the gear grind; there's a lot of stuff to craft and heat but it's not worth actually *using* long-term and I think the problem is there more than anywhere else. I just feel like the recent changes that made other weapons worth having was handled really well, centred a lot of gear as valuable where it wasn't before to the point it unrooted some community mainstays, and has fundamentally contributed to a lot of my public party play feeling very, very different. It's also invited friends of mine who wanted to play the game but didn't want to do a meta build into the higher ranks where previously they were struggling against the fact that the weapons they found cool were just plainly underperforming compared to others.

And my bit in the first pair of posts about stages being option-driving content? Well, the spike storm helped too, bringing more bombers out of the woodwork and into the heart of the game - even convincing *me* to build multiple support weapons that I find ESSENTIAL in my arsenal now. Knowing how good it can be based on that, I really am just saying, "can we do the minor buffs to ancillary weapons *first*, and hold off on the nerfs until there's a little less left to pretty up?", because I don't think these design errors truly are that heinous. I don't consider them "hate crimes of game design," just... clumsy expressions of decade-and-a-half-old mobile-game level content treadmill design. Ones that, to GHs credit, are being steadily spruced up.

More than anything my rationale for wanting that is "I think a playerbase would be happy first getting more tools, and then gradually moving to admit that the brandish is still too prevalent, at which point they'd be more willing to let them go."

For what it's worth I'm less pressed about nerfs than I'm maybe making the case for... I could probably get on just fine with it, right? But I see a lot of users in this thread, other threads, AND in game that would hate the idea, and when I really comb over the points raised so far with my own (admittedly narrow) perspective, I keep finding myself on the buff side of the argument - because I want to Choose other weapons, rather than be Moved to other weapons.

Nerfing Glacius would mean nerfing Winters Edge.

:(

Also it would just make grinding even more annoying.