Hello!

One of my pet peeves about this game is how unintuitive some weapon lines are in their combos.

Exhibit A) War-master Rocket hammer

For the 2nd attack of the combo (dash), it doesn't apply the hit at the end of the dash, only a small window at the start, making the weapon very unsatisfying to use. Given how the first hit knocks back enemies, it makes the main damage combo of the war-hammer hard to land unless you push the enemy up to a wall. A simple fix is increasing the window in which the 2nd hit can land during the strafe, allowing people to actually properly combo enemies without having to rely on ways to prevent the knockback from sabotaging itself.

The same can be said for the charge attack, as it often sabotages it's second swing with the initial swing. A easy fix would be decreasing the knockback of the first swing in this case, or having enemies being single-directionally pushed with the hammer instead of being absolutely scattered.

Exhibit B)

Catalyzers.

It is a often talked about weapon for being one of the worst weapon lines. This is not due to damage, but rather how one is supposed to apply said damage. Applying tags with the weapons are intuitive because it is now tied with the normal attack, however actually detonating them remains problematic. Hitting a slow moving & mediocre charged shot undermines the weapon nearly as much as the old version relying on it's explosive gimmick to be tied to spamming multiple charged shots to take effect. This is because the time taken to achieve any effect on monsters is far too clunky compared to simply landing attacks.

Instead I suggest allowing all shots to tag enemies with the orbs, and instead having the detonation be based on how many hits the enemy has taken after the initial tag. This would also solve party play, where the weapon becomes borderline unusable.

Exhibit C)

Torto-guns

Another often talked about weapon for being a unworthy weapon line are torto-guns. One of the biggest issues is that they intentionally target around enemies, making their use feel very much like you are actively fighting against the A.I of the gun. Instead I propose it just lands in a fixed area in-front of the player removing this mechanic entirely. One of the most important aspect of a weapon is that the user can control how a weapon interacts with a monster, so linking it's main appeal to a targeting mechanic that is out of player control fundamentally makes the weapon feel very unappealing to use.

Exhibit D)

Shard bombs.

Shard bombs are inconsistent across the board. You can blame the knockback, given how the shocking salt bomb turns out to be the better of the bunch, you can blame it terrible hitboxes and shard spawns, you can blame it on terrible AOE despite being a bomb.
It just needs to excel at something, but it just doesn't and instead actively sabotages itself as well.
More deserving of a complete re-work, given the sheer amount of shard bombs in this weapon line.

Well that covers the most obvious of the bunch, thanks for reading!

Exhibit E)

Flourishes

The normal attacks of flourishes are simple, swift, and single.
Most flourishes have a charge attack however that is clunky, in which you end up swinging wildly after taking a step forward.
This doesn't synergize or really follow the gameplan people actually use flourishes for and so ends up getting ignored unlike most other charge attacks.
My suggestion is to simplify the charge attack to a single deadly thrust, exemplifying the purpose of the flourish to pierce.
Barbarous thorn blade follows this direction, but it is the odd one out in the many flourish lines in the game.

Exhibit F)

Alchemers. Or perhaps just most guns.

The issue lies in that standard use for them involves weapon switching. I feel like this is a mechanic that should either be more intentionally baked into the game for these types of weapons, as having to rebind and weapon cancel/switch to make best use of a weapon line is very counter-intuitive design wise. Perhaps a mechanic in which you "Lock on" on a enemy with a gun decreasing reload speed in hitting the same enemy in rapid succession would be a improvement in the game environment, but as it stands the best use for these guns is the utilizing the weapon switch mechanic. I say utilizing, and not abusing given that I believe this technique much more of a positive than a negative despite being clunky.