Actually, I’m pretty upset about the current state of the weapon. While the Update Cador patch did help things a little, the broadsword, and .1 Warrior weapons in general, are still far too weak to be “viable”.
The current problems I face with the broadsword are that while the DPS is a bit better than the hammer, the hammer has much more control, much more +hp, and with the addition of heavy cleave, can now do much greater AE damage with it’s single target DPS not far behind the broadsword.
I think there are several ways to go about improving the broadsword to a state where it at least can compete with other melee weapons in PvE and PvP, as I’m of the belief that every weapon should be useful in both PvE and PvP, in their own way. So I’ll throw out some ideas.
I’m not saying ALL of these should be done, even just picking a couple of these to implement would put the broadsword in a much better place than it is now. To be clear, I don’t expect the broadsword+shield in heavy plate to ever have the DPS and killing power of a lighter geared setup, I just would like to be a bit sturdier, and able to peel players from my teammates, or hold someone down for my DPS comrades to come in and take em out, maybe have a bit more damage to put pressure on people. Right now, none of those things are really possible.
Also keep in mind, these numbers are from my tier 6 broadsword and hammer. I’ll update this list once I’m able to use higher tiers, though it’s gonna be a while since almost nobody wants a broadsword user in their group.
- Increase the amount of +health on the broadsword, right now it’s hundreds below the hammer and mace, and even though the battleaxe has about the same amount, with the self-heals on the axe its effective health is considerably greater.
- Increase the damage all around, right now the hammer and mace are able to heavy cleave for several hundred on many opponents at once, while the broadsword can usually only hit for 300 on a low armor single target with a fully charged mighty blow.
- Increase the movement speed bonus of Heroic Strike by about 3 or 4% per charge.
- Add a stun effect to Mighty Blow that scales up with charges of Heroic Strike, perhaps 2-3 seconds with 1 charge, 5-6 seconds with 2 charges, and 8-9 seconds with 3 charges.
- Add a silence effect to Interrupt.
- Add a bleed effect to cleave, perhaps make the bleed damage do 100% of the initial damage over 2 seconds.
- Increase the snare % and/or duration of Hamstring, perhaps add a short root followed by the snare.
I hope one day we can all use the weapon we want and be able to be effective.