The Katana needs more combo variety
The moves are ok, and very cool btw, I wouldnt mind having more wider attacks on fast though.
Where the real problem resides with the Katana, are the delays between the attacks, while the moves are nice see, I dont believe that Samurais would fight that slow.
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I find the combos and how the katana plays just fine. Once you get into a rhythm of how to mix your light attacks and your dash its feels really cool and strategic. Besides, the katana (at least for me) is my go to for wiping out groups of mobs.
However that last light attack I never use; its a long animation and too easy to miss your target, and being stuck in the final animation is the worst. All of that nonsense for one stack of bleed??? No thanks… I do wish the dash had Sunder and the final light attack was a horizontal swing or lunge of some sort.
I also wish there were steel/hardened-steel grade katanas to be made. Starmetal grade is just rough if you want to main katana. Steel/Hardened-Steel would be nicer on my resources. I was hoping that by buying the Yamatai versions, the dlc would give me steel, NOPE! A really weird design choice to be sure.
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In pve yeah, it feels really good specially against 3+ npcs . But if you fight another player with JS claws, even being able to land heavys, the claws hit you 3 times faster.
I understand the Katana being a 2h sword feels like one and by that not a fast sword, but this sword in particular can be manageable quite fast based on its light weight and thin shape.
Cinematic moves like the ones we have, are very pleasant to the eyes, make fights and duels beautiful, movies can be made with it, (like the Yamatai one that is awesome btw), but they need to conect better, an attack animation should not extend for too long because obviously hinders you in place, and not one want to be rooted, thats why ppl unnequip/equip dance on PvP.
The 3rd and 4th attack yeah, the end of the animation makes you stay in slow motion for almost 3 seconds, if they could let we interrupt the clean move like we can with the 4th Greatsword, would be a start.
The 4th light Katana has a good dmg, but just one bleed stack is indeed too little, 5 stacks is acceptable, but I can see 10 stacks being balanced due to the difficult on the hit.
True.
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Yes please! please let us combo from light to heavy back to light again, i want to be able to dash atleast twice in a combo. Take it from the Exiled_lands_improved mod https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1456186728
the comboing of the katana feels so good in that mod. Its faster and you can do 2 light attacks, a 3rd heavy attack then a 4th light. You can also use the heavy dash twice in one combo. The mod also adds a light dash which deals less damage in the end of the light combo. Katana has potential to be a such a feel good combo weapon. Rn its just slow way too slow, add bleed to the heavy dash maybe?
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Hummm, Im pretty sure the heavy can be used more than 1 time mixing with light combo, actually, if you 4 times in a row, counts as you were doing a heavy chain, you can notice the damage gets higher til the 4th that is the highest, thats the combo I use 1light 2light 3light and 4 heavy, deals a lot a lot of dmg.
And having bleeds on heavy attack, very good idea, that would be great :).
I really dont understand how devs dont see that Katana is a very fun weapon but with delays on the attacks, you just gotta play 10 seconds against 2 foes or a fast attacking target to see. I hope its in the next weapon balance plan for tweaking? @Ignasi can you give us a light on that?
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All two-handed swords are really quite nimble and easily controllable because of how the weight is distributed towards the hilt and the fact that you hold it in two hands. I understand why, from a game balance perspective, weapons with higher damage or longer reach need to be slower or otherwise penalized so as not to be too powerful.
I agree that katanas are kinda underwhelming as they are now. The heavy dash seems like a gimmick, and the light attacks, cinematic and beautiful to watch though they are, lack the speed, reach or punch to compete with other weapons.
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Hey there,
We’re continually working on balance changes, as you’ve seen with the last update. Don’t know if the katana is in the plate for the near future, but if it is underwhelming to use we’re sure it will receive some sort of love at some point 
Thanks for the suggestion.
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I wouldn’t qualify it as being underwhelming. But there are a bunch of things that make it unpratical and unconforatble to use :
- When you equip it, there is a good 2 sec when you can’t either attack, nor sprint.
- The animations have some kind of pauses/slow section at their end which causes delays between attacks, it’s very unconfortable.
- The dealy/pauses/slow section at the end of the Light attack 4 combo animation is way too long.
- If you cancel the Charged Heavy, the reset animation is way too long. And it displaces your character, often putting it in an unpractical position.
- All the animation issues mentioned above prevent proper re-oriantation to land next hits. Making the katana a highly unpractical weapon to use. The most annoying one being the Heavy cancel reset animation
Basically, when you use the katana, you feel like you are constantly waiting for animations to end. And locked while you wait for these animations to end. Which make the whole experience frustrating. Throw you off pace, breakes the combat flow more often than not. And breaks immersion.
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Good description, SuperDuperOtter. That’s a very accurate breakdown of the issues with the katana. In a word, it feels unresponsive to me. It’s unintuitive because the actual attack animations are neat and fast but the delay between them is so long that I don’t know when I should click the attack button again. Even the two-handed mallet feels more fluid.
I readily admit that I haven’t had much practice with the weapon, so at least part of the problem may be that the weapon functions in a different way to what I’m used to so I simply haven’t learned the proper rhythm of the thing. I definitely don’t have enough experence to tell the devs what and how should be changed, it’s just a feeling of clumsiness that made me quickly dislike the katana.
I’ll need to conduct further field tests with the weapon before committing to any demands for improvements.
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For me the katana is boring to use.
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