This guide is a product of many community discussions on reddit, trying to provide information as objective as possible, while still being helpful. It starts by giving a few tips on how to obtain and manage loot, describes all available weapon traits, provides all relevant info for every weapon, sorted by characters (inventory screen order) and finishes with a few tips on how to gear up and play with bots.

Every weapon section consists of a summary of weapon traits, a few trait combinations that are considered top choices and notes on the weapon strengths and weaknesses, explaining why are the traits ranked the way they are. You might find more traits in the Top section that you can roll on the weapon, or traits that are not possible to roll together. This is because sometimes it's impossible to declare only one trait combination as 'perfect' and the traits themselves depend on your own preference. As a general rule, you want to get as many Top traits on your weapon as possible, but if you want to know what exactly is possible, look for the "Top trait combinations" right below the trait table, or check:

• Verminguide[verminguide.com]
  
• Full list of possible trait combinations[docs.google.com]
  
• attack patterns and damage spreadsheet - refer to this for most up-to-date info, it's the source for all numbers later in this guide[docs.google.com]

Other useful and interesting links:

• Weapon attack speed values
  
• How headshots work
  
• What attacks interrupt stormvermin
  
• How much damage you actually take from rats
  
• Coordination, decision making & strategy

The traits are listed in 4 categories:

Top - these traits are essential to make the weapon viable, or benefit greatly from it's moveset; these are the traits you are primarily looking for when rolling in the shrine and wouldn't accept a weapon that has none of them

Good - these traits work very well with the weapon, but the weapon works fine without them. There are usually many useful traits that are very similar, subject to personal preference, or mutually exclusive.

OK - these traits have some use, but there are other, better traits to take instead; you would keep rolling if you have tokens to spend, but if you don't a weapon with top/top/OK traits is worth trying

Poor - these traits either harm the weapon, or the benefit is so marginal that it's practically useless - you won't notice the trait is even there; it's therefore locking one of the slots that could be used by a much better stuff. You'll always re-roll a weapon with such a trait, because it's not worth the tokens to unlock it.

Each weapon section also includes a table with damage values, taken from this spreadsheet[docs.google.com], here's an example and explanation:

• Normal enemy: slave rat, clan rat, globadier, assassin
  
• Armoured enemy: stormvermin, ratling gunner
  
• Resistant enemy: packmaster, ogre
  
• some attacks have different damage, based on which attack in the sequence it is; here, first two normal attacks hit two targets, while the third attack hits one target for higher damage
  
• 3/2 means hitting first enemy for 3 damage and second enemy for 2 damage
  
• /0... means that the weapon hits infinite enemies after the values listed there, but deals no damage to them
  
• headshot bonus can be a multiplier (x2, x1.75, ...) or just an addition (+1)
  
• ranged weapons also have number of targets hit with each projectile and friendly fire damage

This table gives you a simplified idea of how strong the weapon push is against normal and armoured targets. All weapons except shields have P1-2 against normal rats and P1 against armour by default, which is boosted to P3 normal, P2 armour with devastating blow (no matter if dual daggers or 2h hammer). Shields are an exception, they start at P3/P2 and get buffed to P4/P2 with dev blow.

• P1 - Rat stutters in place
  
• P2 - Rat is pushed back a few steps
  
• P3 - Rat is shoved far away and sometimes falls over
  
• P4 - Rat flies backward and falls on its back

This table shows how much stamina the weapon has (3 stamina = 3 shields = 6 blocks), how fast you move while blocking, aiming or charging, and dodge info: how many full dodges in a row you can do (efficient dodge), how far and how fast each dodge is. Infinite efficient dodge means you can spam dodge forever and never get tired. The fabled swift strider trinket changes the efficient dodge count value to infinite.

Abbreviations that may be used in this guide (or other discussions)

• nm - nightmare
  
• cata - cataclysm
  
• wh/saltz(y) - witch hunter
  
• ww/elf/kerr(illian) - waywatcher
  
• dr/bardin - dwarf ranger
  
• bw/sienna - bright wizard
  
• es/krub - empire soldier
  
• roger - rat ogre
  
• gas /globe- gasrat/globadier
  
• pack - packmaster
  
• sv/storm - stormvermin
  
• clan - clan rat (clothed)
  
• slave - slave rat (naked, smaller)
  
• tf - trueflight
  
• snd/s&d - sword and dagger
  
• mc - mastercrafted
  
• kb - killing blow
  
• db - devastating blow
  
• pb - perfect balance
  
• bl - bloodlust
  
• ss - swift slaying

Many thanks to u/a8bmiles and u/Suicazura, whose posts I used in this guide and many others on r/vermintide that helped me put all the weapon trait info together, provided feedback, or essential information sources. Big up especially to u/UnShame for his continuous work on weapon spreadsheets.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Vermintide/comments/5au6ed/new_loot_tables/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Vermintide/comments/5onfj6/expected_value_loot_tab

Don't focus on one character and salvage everything that isn't for them. This is the #1 most common mistake newbies make and most people come to regret it.

Don't destroy weapons unless they're duplicates. For the most important reason, you might not always want to play the same character and same weapons. Variety is the spice of life. For another reason, bots use the equipment at your inn box if you are the host, so this will make playing the game intensely easier (a well equipped team of bots with oranges can carry you through nightmare basically on their own). Salvaging 10+ orange weapons you could use successfully on nightmare (even without traits) in order to gamble for an orange weapon is a terrible idea as a new player who doesn't yet have at least 1 orange of each type.

Running missions is by far the best way to obtain gear, that and doing Quests and Contracts. Don't do quests for weapons, get trinkets you don't have or hats you don't have, as weapons are easy to obtain. If you must get weapon variety fast, pray using the tokens you earn from contracts, but it’s often better to keep your tokens for later. Doing hard runs with all books or short mission nightmare runs without any books will not only get you better at the game, it (due to the new improved loot tables) almost always rewards a blue.

You shouldn't focus on a single class for too long, experiencing other classes lets you understand their strengths and weaknesses better. There are plenty of new players who play only elf and feel like they are gods and everyone else sucks. It's also harder to find open games if you are limited to one character.

And for the love of god, don't salvage orange weapons just because they are not for your current character. You'll change opinion in a few days and then lament because you salvaged a weapon that you can't seem to get now. Sure, you can get it again from a shrine or forge, but sometimes RNGesus is not on your side and it can get very expensive. All for what? 20 orange tokens? That you get from half an hour of last stand or one daily contract? Not worth it.

Collect at least one copy of each orange weapon (yes, even the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ ones), maybe more for the weapons that you are going to use a lot, and only then start salvaging.
Doing the daily contracts is a good way to get items, plus the bonus crafting tokens. Farming a single map will get boring pretty soon.

=== Forge ===
The forge stands in a corner next to the fireplace in the inn. You can use it to combine items of the same quality into higher ones (fusing), unlock traits of your new weapons (upgrading) or destroy unwanted items for crafting tokens (salvaging)

Fusing
If you can't obtain oranges by rolling because you aren't yet good enough to do nightmare runs with some books, and aren't patient enough until you get them from nightmare non-book missions (about 1 in 6 missions?), what you could do is collect 5 blue items and fuse them at the forge.

Fusion costs 0 same-type tokens if you fuse 5 items, or more if you fuse less. The item you get out is always randomly chosen from amongst what you put in- put in 5 blue axe and shield, get 1 orange axe and shield. Put in 2 fireball staves, 2 repeater handguns and 1 hagbane bow, you have a 40% chance of one of the first two and a 20% chance of the last one. If you put in 2 handguns, 2 crossbows and pay tokens to skip the last thing, you have a 50-50.

If you don't care about who you play or what you get (basically all weapons are now viable, perhaps except cataclysm), you can fuse 5 random items. If you want to make sure they're segregated by class, only fuse them when you have 5 from that same character. Or 5 blue melee for a character, or so forth. If you really like a weapon, you can keep holding on to it until you get 3+ of that weapon, then upgrade it with only duplicates for a guaranteed orange.

Upgrading
Once you have the traits you want, you unlock them at the tab #2, "Upgrade". Each trait costs more and more to unlock, so oranges cost 60 blue (10 + 20 + 30). Often if your item's 3rd trait isn't great, it's best to just leave it locked to save 30 blue for later.

Salvaging
The third tab allows you to destroy any item, except for purple (community) quality. Yes, even red (veteran) items or any trinkets and hats. It's not advised to overuse it, however. Destroying one orange item will give you about 15-25 tokens, which you can easily get after doing one nightmare game, completing a contract, or playing last stand for a bit. Be careful when salvaging, there is no way to undo the process, although you can cancel it, if you are fast enough, by pressing Esc before the bar is complete.

=== Shrine of Solace ===
The shrine unlocks at level 5, stands to the left of the forge and has three tabs as well. "Pray" lets you generate weapons for specific characters for crafting tokens, "Offer" can re-roll the traits on your weapons and "Invocate" can improve the % of the traits you have unlocked.

Pray
To get a new weapon, select a character by moving its purple trinket to the area on the left. The weapon generated will be randomly picked from this character's weapon pool. Choosing the quality of the weapon determines the quality of tokens you have to pay with. Optionally, select ranged or melee to narrow down the pool of items, but this also increases the price and the selection is still random. You can't get veteran (red) weapons, DLC weapons, or any trinkets or hats from praying.

If you keep getting other weapons than you want, you can always salvage them at the forge, but you'll still be losing tokens. Unless there is a very specific weapon you want and you have the tokens to afford it, the tokens are better spent on re-rolling traits. You can get weapons more effectively from playing maps or fusing.

Offer
You reroll existing loot at the shrine, using tab #2. It's worth doing this only for oranges, or maybe blues. Don't bother with greens. You pay 5 orange to pick between two sets of traits (your old ones or a new set). So if you do this 50 times, you get to pick the best trait set out of 51 chances.

Know that each weapon has about 190 possible trait sets (not all combinations are possible!). If you're in doubt, ask Reddit or research before you spend tokens rerolling. For instance, "Berserking" + "Bloodlust" is impossible except on Wizard Swords and Flaming Swords. Killing Blow cannot appear with Bloodlust except on Red Pickaxe. Regrowth and Bloodlust only can appear together with Crossbow. Et cetera. Use verminguide[verminguide.com] or this spreadsheet[docs.google.com] for all possible combinations.

Finding a two-trait combo you want is not hard: Maybe 60 oranges, 100 if unlucky. Finding a two-trait combo where you are wiling to accept only about half of possible third traits often costs about 200 orange tokens. Finding an exact three trait combination (including if it is two traits that have only a single possible third trait, such as the famous Killing Blow Normal, Regrowth Normal Rapier) costs about 650-1000 orange tokens on average, but can run much, much higher if you are unlucky.

Invocate
Now you have a bunch of traits. Some of them will have random percentages (EG: "3-10% chance to gain 10 HP on kill", when you unlock it, picks a random number. It might pick 6.5%.). You can upgrade the random percentages by purchasing rerolls at the Shrine, using tab #3, "Invocate". Pick the item, and the trait, and pay 6 oranges (for a) to get a reroll. You keep the highest. Do this 10 times and you keep the highest roll out of 11, for instance.

For a new player, for greens and blues I would not obsess over traits. You'll be replacing them anyway. Whether by drop or upgrading in the forge. Neither will keep the traits. As a newbie, if you find an item with a really good trait like healing, you could consider giving it a few invocations if it unlocks poorly. But I wouldn't waste tokens trying to find traits much. You could be using those tokens to upgrade gear in the forge or pray for items.

The bounty board unlocks once you finish all maps from the base game on any difficulty (no dlc maps or last stand needed). You can find it in the inn on a wall to the left of the shrine and forge, or access it by a shortcut U.

The board generates 3 quests and 6 contracts randomly each day. These are the same for all players, so you can expect higher traffic on the contract maps that day and you can find current contracts posted on reddit. PC and consoles have a different set of contracts, however.

The quests are items - weapons, trinkets and hats (except dlc weapons) - that you can unlock with keys from contracts. You always see what the item is before you accept the quest. The current active quest will be shown in upper right corner. Once you have a quest active, complete a key contact and hand it in; the key will count towards your active quest. If you turn in a key without having an active quest, the key is wasted. Once you have enough keys on the quest, turn it in to receive the item. Accepting a new quest will delete the old one with all keys you had there.

Your item priority when choosing quests should be the following:

• Trinkets - you can only get them through map loot rng, so grab any orange trinket you miss, no matter how close you are to finish the current quest
  
• if you are interested in collecting hats, they are just as painful to get as trinkets; if you don't care, skip this point
  
• red weapons and hats are very hard to roll and even if you have a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ one on the board, taking it reduces the item pool for other reds (note: you can get duplicate reds from bounty board, but not by loot drop)
  
• orange weapons with good traits; you can get weapons by playing, forging or praying, but if there is a nice one, or you have nothing better to take, go for it; don't be shy to abandon this quest the second something better comes in
  
• lower quality items, are you a collector or what?

So how do you get the keys? By doing contracts. There are always two contracts that reward you with a key - one also rewards a random boon and can be completed on any difficulty, the other has to be done on nightmare+ and reward orange crafting tokens as well. The goal you have to compete and map you have to do it on are generated randomly (but same for all players).

Apart from the key contracts, there is a contact for green, blue and orange tokens that have to be completed at least on normal, hard and nightmare respectively, plus one more contract for a boon (easy+). Most players don't bother with the blue and green token contracts, but it can be a nice bonus source of tokens for new players.

Some contracts require you to play dlc maps. You can only select and complete these contracts if you own the dlc. Given that you can play the maps and get dlc items for free, it's a very fair deal. At least one key contract should be guaranteed to be for a vanilla map.

There is a special contract for two keys and a lot of orange tokens every Sunday, but it has to be completed in cataclysm. The goal is always the same: Complete map X

You have to accept a contract to start working on it. You can have 3 contracts active at once, shown on the right side of the board. You can decline a contract you've taken but can't finish to make room for others; the progress on the contact will be lost and if it's one of the current day contracts you can take it again, otherwise it disappears.

Once the contract is completed, select it and turn it in to receive the reward. A key will immediately count towards the current quest and boons will activate. You may wish to wait with turning the contracts in; they don't expire while in the active section and you can store them indefinitely (even incomplete). You may wish to stock up on damage boons or keys and turn them in when needed.

The optimal contract management could look like this:

• Day 1: You have nothing better to take, so you select a weapon quest for 6 keys. Complete 2 key contracts but don't turn them in, there may be something better tomorrow.
  
• Day 2: Nothing good on the board. Complete key contracts, turn one in and save the other; you have 3 keys stored now.
  
• Day 3: Nothing good again. Turn in one key and use that slot to complete all contracts you want with a key contract as the last one. Finish the day with 3 keys on the weapon and 3 in storage.
  
• Day 4: Orange potshare trinket! Dump the weapon quest, ♥♥♥♥ the keys it had. Take new quest and put 3 keys you had stored + 2 keys from today. Quest is at 5/9 right now.
  
• Day 5: Add 2 keys to the quest. 7/9
  
• Day 6: Red sword and dagger! Fortunately, you can use the 2 keys today to finish the trinket and take the red quest.
  
• Day X: Nothing new for ages, but the past two weeks you were storing 2key cata contracts. You complete new contracts on the last slot and finish with a key contract.
  
• Day X+1: Orange trinket! You can immediately pump your 2+2+1 keys you have stored and 2 more from today into it. You'll be able to finish it tomorrow and choose a new quest.

Apart from getting items and crafting materials, the bounty board also provides you with 'boons' - limited time bonuses that apply to all your and your bots' weapons. The boons activate when you turn in a contract and cannot stack - new boon will just reset the timer.

Damage boon - duration 2 hours, improves all damage by 25%
This is the most interesting one and a reason to play contracts even for veteran players with perfectly optimized gear. 25% is not that much and on most weapons it only leads to unneccessary overkills, but on some it pushes you over certain breakpoints that allow you to pull off some kills much easier. You'll want to stock up on these and pop one for difficult cata runs.
The following list is for notable damage boon effects on cataclysm.

• Dwarf pick - normal attacks kill slaves in one hit and clans in two, charged kill clans in one hit. Major change in viability
  
• Trueflight - with hakwkeye you kill SV in one shot
  
• Longbow - you kill SV on one headshot even without hawkeye
  
• 2h hammer - normal attacks kill clanrats on bodyshots
  
• Repeater handgun - shots kill clanrats in one hit, great with scavenger and rupture
  
• Glaive - normal attack second target kills slaves in one hit (2 slaves per hit in hordes)
  
• Repeater pistol - normal shots kill slaves in one, clans in two hits (need to verify this one)

Let me know if I missed anything

Stamina boon - duration 1h, gives you +1 shield of stamina
Basically a free perfect balance, great for weapons with 2 shields (dual daggers, falchion, glaive), weapons with 3 shields are safer when reviving teammates.

Defense boon - duration 2 hours, 30% damage reduction
Less damage is always good. With drakefires or wizard staff, exploding from overheat while at full health keeps you barely alive (not an actual strategy, just a neat bonus)

Stagger boon - duration 2 hours, improves push stagger
Nice for weapons with poor push (all elven melee, rapier, falchion, wizz dagger) but if you run dev blow it's just a marginal improvement. Not very interesting.

WORK IN PROGRESS

- when do slots unlock
- how do you get them
- list, description, detailed mechanics and comments on usage
- community trinkets

WORK IN PROGRESS

- getting hats

https://imgur.com/gallery/6XrXd

Weapons in Vermintide come in 5 rarity types:

• white/plenty is the starting gear with low damage and no trait
  
• green/common has one trait but low damage
  
• blue/rare has two traits and medium damage
  
• orange/exotic has 3 traits and max damage
  
• red/veteran has two sets of 3 fixed traits with max percentage, damage is the same as orange

You can reroll traits for all weapons at the shrine. Red weapons are an exception, they have 2 sets of fixed traits you can switch between. Switching a trait set means you have to unlock them again in the forge. The red traits always have max percentage, other weapons may need to be improved in the shrine.

Majority of the red weapons have at least one usable trait set that makes them perfectly viable for cataclysm. Getting reds shouldn't be your primary focus, it only leads to disappointment, view them more as collective rewards and a good alternative to spending thousands of tokens on each weapon.

Some red weapons do have unique trait combos you won't find on orange weapons. Most notably elf sword, sword & dagger, glaive, WH axe, pick, hammer, mace and some shields.

Red items appear on the top of the loot table on nightmare and cataclysm. There is a 25% chance that two red items appear on cata, making it slightly better to farm red items, but only if you can finish full book runs consistently. For most players nightmare will be a safer bet. 3 tomes and 2 grimoires are absolutely essential, loot dice also help a lot. Pay attention to players wearing luck trinkets and let them open chests. Don't get too focused on farming reds, however. The more you try the harder it is and it can get frustrating quite fast. Forget about reds, focus on gittin gud and you'll soon have plenty of them.

Unlike other items, you cannot get duplicate red items from map loot. The red item pool get smaller with each one you get, so even if you get something you'll never use, it gets you one step closer to the good stuff. You can also find reds on bounty board from time to time, except dlc reds. It's completely random so there's no guarantee that all of them will appear. This is also the only way of getting duplicate red items.

The dlc reds are the biggest pain to collect, as they only drop on the dlc maps they belong to and there's usually only 1-2 maps with full books worth running. What's worse, vanilla reds can appear just as likely on the dlc maps, so if you want to get serious about collecting all reds, collect all vanilla ones before farming dlcs.

If you only have 1 red missing, all loot tables will have it. If you get 2 red table on cata, both reds will be the same. Once you collect them all, the top slots will have orange items instead. If you have all vanilla reds and miss the dlcs, vanilla maps will have orange items on the top and dlc maps will have the dlc reds only.

With that in mind, if you are in need of more orange tokens and have every red item, salvage at least 1 so that you can get it in the loot table since red weapons can be salvaged for more tokens than an orange can be.

On-kill traits - bloodlust, scavenger, berserk

• work with any attack type
  
• ideal for low-target, high-damage weapons
  
• applying poison or fire on enemies and switching to weapon with on-kill trait can make it proc when they die (same with bombs), the only exception is the fire patch on the ground from full conflagration blast
  
• usually block other on-kill traits and killing blow normal
  
• work better on nm or lower difficulties compared to on-hit traits, because rats are fast to kill and don't require many hits
  

On-hit traits - regrowth, swift slaying, (heroic) killing blow, earthing rune, endurance

• usually have varying proc chance for different weapons without an obvious pattern, not worth using if the chance is too low
  
• every rat hit by the attack provides a proc chance, so in general they are good for fast weapons that hit multiple targets, but some suffer from low proc chance
  
• limit you to one attack type (except endurance), which is not always ideal, but is great on weapons that mainly use one type of attacks
  
• work better on cata because all rats require more hits to kill, hence more chances to proc the effect
  
• push attacks on sword and dagger, dual swords, dual daggers, 1h axes and ceremonial dagger are considered as normal attacks
  
• pistol attack on the rapier doesn't trigger any melee on-hit traits
  
• damage over time doesn't proc on-hit traits

The descriptions below are rewritten from the in-game descriptions to reflect the actual effects.

Healing traits:

Bloodlust (Blutdurst)
When killing an enemy, there is a 3-10% chance to recover 10 health.

• in fact, it procs whenever you to hold the melee weapon in hand when a rat die from any damage from you, including DoT / projectile / bomb damage
  
• heals 1 HP per 1 kill on average, and a total of 150-300 HP per run normally
  
• need to compete with teammates with kills, could be a problem if they have powerful horde killing ranged weapons

Regrowth - normal attack (Regeneration - Standardangriff)
When hitting an enemy with a normal attack, there is a 3-10% or 1-5% chance to recover 5 health.

• hits with 0 damage can still proc, so with some weapons you can get more health from a given number of rats
  
• if you hit more headshots, you might reduce the number of hits required to kill rats and so you receive less health from a given number of rats, conversely you can farm procs by hitting bodies only
  
• 10% variant is much better than 5% variant because of the compound effect: it heals faster, so earlier in a fight,

Regrowth - charged attack (Regeneration - Aufgeladener Angriff)
When hitting an enemy with a charged attack, there is a 3-10% or 1-3% chance to recover 10 health.

• 10% max for dual daggers (still, single target)
  
• the percentage and healing delivered is really low, so other healing traits are usually better
  
• shield charged attacks can now proc this on all targets in the bubble, making it comparable to other healing traits

Stamina traits:

Improved pommel (Verbesserter Knauf)
Pushing costs half stamina and there is a 20-40% chance that the push won't cost any stamina.

• at 40% proc chance, reduces push cost to 30% on average
  
• considering the basic stamina regeneration and free pushes, you can push almost forever
  
• fantastic synergy with devastating blow
  
• on dual daggers your pushes cost 1/4 shield

Improved guard (Verbesserte Parierscheibe)
Blocking costs half stamina and there is a 10-30% chance that the block won't cost any stamina.

• at 30% proc chance, reduces block cost to 35% on average
  
  
• fantastic on shields, blocking SV and reviving teammates with a lot of aggro on you
  
• weapons with fast block-move-speed (elven swords, rapier, etc) can use it to kite much more effectively

Second wind (Langer Atem)
30-50% chance to instantly replenish all stamina if the player's block is broken. Reduces stun duration when block is broken.

• also reduces stagger when your block is broken, which is great for a lot of bad situations
  
• if your block is broken and second wind doesn't proc, keep blocking and each additional hit has a chance to get second wind again

Perfect balance (Perfektes Gleichgewicht)
Adds 1 stamina shield to the weapon's max Stamina Points and reduces stamina regeneration delay by half.

• +1 shield means more blocking and more pushing, plus the stamina regen makes this very balanced trait (pun intended)
  
• most effective on dual daggers, glaive and falchion (2 base shields), good on 3 shield weapons, a bit redundant on shields (with 5 shields base stamina)
  
• on weapons with default 3 stamina shields, perfect balance prevents guard breaking when you block an SV overhead with full stamina, because it costs 3.5 stamina shields to block and your max is 4 stamina shields

Endurance (Unermüdlichkeit)
When hitting an enemy, there is a 10-20% chance that the player replenishes all stamina.

• works with both attack types
  
• best on weapons with high targets and enough base stamina (shields, 2h weapons), crap on dual daggers or glaive

Devastating blow (dev blow/DB) (Vernichtender Schlag)
Pushes made with this weapon will be extra powerful.

• Increases the strength of your push against normal rats and makes you able to interrupt stormvermin - very useful when fighting patrols, or stormvermin mixed in hordes
  
• Shields can do the same without DB; with DB normal rats fly away and get stunned - great crowd control tool, but also potentially very annoying and dangerous
  
• it also upgrades some attacks to interrupt stormvermin, which only works if you are the host, however
  
• you can only get one 'stamina' trait on a weapon, but dev blow is an exception (endurance+improved guard is not possible, but endurance+dev blow or improved guard+dev blow is)

Offensive traits:

Berserking (Raserei)
When killing an enemy, there is a 5-12% chance to to increase your attack speed by 40% and reduce damage taken by 50% for 5 seconds.

• great trait for any weapon, but it's blocked by bloodlust and scavenger, which are often more important
  
• the sudden boost in attack speed can be more confusing than helpful without a mod showing you temporary effects and their duration

Swift slaying - normal attack (swift) (Schnelles Abschlachten - Standardangriff)
When hitting an enemy with a normal attack, there is a 2-7% or 1-4% chance to increase your attack speed by 40% and movement speed by 50% for 5 seconds.

• great trait especially for maces, hammers, 2h swords, ex. swords, glaives and picks, but any weapon with 2+ targets on normal attack can benefit
  
• the movement speed boost can give you more safety, but also kill you if you don't handle it properly
  
• the sudden boost in attack and movement speed can be more confusing than helpful without a mod showing you temporary effects and their duration

Swift slaying - charged attack (Schnelles Abschlachten - Aufgeladener Angriff)
When hitting an enemy with a charged attack, there is a 2-7% or 1-4% chance to increase your attack speed by 40% and movement speed by 50% for 5 seconds.

• same points as for swift normal apply here, but much fewer weapons have charged attacks that benefit properly - shields, longswords or 2h hammers mostly

Killing blow - normal attack (KB) (Todesstoß - Standardangriff)
When hitting a man-sized enemy with a normal attack there is a 5-15% chance to instantly slay it.

• does not apply if target receives 0 damage (e.g. most normal attacks on armor, mace/hammer attacks on targets 3+); headshots on armor can still work because the target receives damage
  
• it actually applies to all enemies and replaces the weapon damage with 20/20/40 against normal/armored/resistant target (no headshot bonus), which is enough to kill anything except ogre and Krench on cata
  
• mace, mace&shield, sword&shield and hammer&shield don't have it in orange version, but do in blue and some red; 1h hammer is an exception

Heroic killing blow - charged attack (HKB) (Heldenhafter Todesstoß)
When hitting an enemy of any size with a charged attack there is a 1-3% chance to instantly slay it.

• the low proc chance and being tied to charged attacks make it inferior to killing blow, except for shields that can spam

On-kill traits

• bloodlust, scavenger, berserk
  
• ideal for low-target, high-damage weapons
  
• applying poison or fire on enemies and switching to weapon with on-kill trait can make it proc when they die (same with bombs), the only exception is the fire patch on the ground from full conflagration blast
  
• unlike melee weapons, few ranged weapon traits block each other - mostly just those with similar effect (bloodlust/regrowth, berserk/haste)

On-hit traits

• great for fast weapons that hit multiple targets
  
• poison/fire damage can proc only on the first hit, but not on the subsequent damage ticks

Healing traits:

Bloodlust (Blutdurst)
When killing an enemy, there is a 3-8% chance to recover 10 health.

Regrowth (Regeneration)
When hitting an enemy, there is a 5-12% or 3-7% or 2-5% chance to recover 5 health.

• works with any attack type, unlike the melee variants

Ammunition traits:
Scavenger (Wiederverwertung)
When killing an enemy, there is a 10-24% or 10-20% chance to replenish 5% of ammunition for your weapon.

• Returns 1 ammo for weapons with 1-39 max ammo, 2 for 40-59, 3 for 60-79, etc.

Ammunition holder (ammo holder/extra ammo) (Munitionshalter)
Increases the maximum amount of carried ammunition by 30%

• can improve scavenger returns if you jump over the next 5% threshold (hagbane, longbow, repeaters)

Extra capacity (clip size/clip capacity) (Größeres Fassungsvermögen)
Increases the amount of ammunition this weapon can hold in a clip by 50% or 40% or 100%.

• 100% for grudge raker
  
• top selection for every weapon where it is available (repeaters, volley, grudge)

Offensive traits:

Hail of Doom (hail/HoD) (Hagel des Verderbens)
Each shot has a 5-15% chance to split into 2 projectiles.

• Original shot consumes one ammo, duplicated shot is free
  
• duplicated shot is done a few milliseconds later, therefore calculated on new frames, hitting new targets (shotgun rupture issues, etc)
  
• does not apply to some special shots - shotgun bash, conflag blast, beam/drakefires blast

Skullcracker (skull) (Schädelknacker)
When hitting an enemy, there is 5-15% chance that it will count as an automatic headshot.

• Some weapons have +1 headshot modifiers, others have x2 and more; it's much more effective on those

Rupture (Durchbohrung)
Projectiles have a 80-100% chance of penetrating two additional targets.

• Gunpowder weapons only
  
• Many weapons have some default target penetration, this adds +2 to it

Berserking (Raserei)
When killing an enemy, there is a 3-10% chance to to increase your attack speed by 30.0% and not consume ammo/generate heat for 5 seconds.

• on weapons with clips the ammo is free only if the reload is completed within the effect
  
• to fully utilize the free ammo, modded effect timers are recommended

Haste (Hast)
When hitting an enemy, there is a 5-12% or 3-7% or 2-5% chance to increase your attack speed by 30.0% and not consume ammo/heat for 5 seconds.

• on weapons with clips the ammo is free only if the reload is completed within the effect
  
• to fully utilize the free ammo, modded effect timers are recommended

Other...

Targeteer (Treffsicherheit)
Decreases the spread of this weapon by 50%.

Mastercrafted - reload speed (MC) (Aus Meisterhand)
Reloading this weapon is 25% or 20% faster.

• pressing R right after a shot (known as active reload) increases reload speed further; this was removed on handguns

Mastercrafted - attack speed (Aus Meisterhand)
Attack speed is 25% faster.

• Usually on bows and staffs
  
• shares the same icon with MC reload speed, some weapons can even have both so don't get confused

Inspirational shot(Inspirierender Schuss)
Scoring headshots will replenish the stamina of your allies.

• Replenishes 0.5 stamina shield for trash rats, 5 stamina shields for other enemies.

Diversion (distraction) (Ablenkung)
Attacking an enemy that is attacking a Knocked Down ally, will extend the ally's Knocked Down health

• Great utility for any weapon, but those without reload will benefit the most
  
• apart from most other traits that marginally improve the abilities of your weapon, this gives it a new, unique function - can often make a difference between saving your dying teammate holding a grimoire, or losing it

Skirmisher (Plänkler)
Movement speed while aiming is increased by 50.0% and hip-fire accuracy doesn't change while moving

• The effect depends on weapon movement speed, check here
  
• the hip-fire accuracy allows you to perform otherwise impossible shots with longbow or handgun

Knockback (Rückstoß)
When hitting an enemy, there is a 20-40% or 10-20% or 5-10% chance to knock them back.

• the stagger duration is shorter than expected, usually a poor choice

Hawkeye (Adlerauge)
While zooming you can get increased zoom distance using special attack. Improves headshot modifier.

• the improved headshot is great on weapons where it makes a difference between killing stuff in one or two shots (trueflight, longbow) but doesn't matter if you kill them anyway (handgun, crossbow, except for ogre dps)
  
• improves headshot both for normal and zoomed shots

Heat-related traits:

Stability (Beständigkeit)
Overcharge generated by this weapon is reduced by 10%.

Channeling rune (Kanalisierungsrune)
Reduces the damage you take from venting by 50% and increases venting speed by 25%.

• with the damage reduction and speed bonus it is more effective to heat and vent a lot, than taking stability; channeling is a great trait on any weapon now

Strong against / Strengths
Clan rat on nm, ogre, packmaster;
Staggering rats by light attacks, infinite dodge count, high block move speed

Weak against / Weaknesses
High density rats, SV, specials;
Low body shot damage, weak push

Attack and damage pattern

• very fast normal attacks that hit two targets, low damage but have x3 headshot multiplier to kill nm clan rats / cata slaves on headshots; hitting SV head does 3 damage
  
• combo pattern is 1st-2nd-3rd-2nd-3rd-... and the transition from 3rd to 2nd is slower than the others; block canceling the combo also adds some delay; therefore the effective attack speed is not that fast
  
• first two attacks are downward 45 degrees diagonal, might be better for scoring headshots but harder to hit separated rats, combine dodge and camera movements to extend the swings if necessary; third attack is upward diagonal but flatter
  
• in theory 2 normal headshots kill a cata clan rat, but the stagger animation makes it hard to achieve at full speed
  
• horde DPS when you hit one head every swing is not bad among all melee weapons, but is the lower end of the 1-handers
  
• unusual for a fast attack, stagger duration is double of 1h swords', which compensates the fewer targets per swing; hitting new rats each swing provides comparable crowd control as 1h swords
  
• getting headshots not only increases the damage but also improves crowd control in a slave horde as there will be one less rat absorbing the swing
  
• despite the rapier being a longer weapon, attack reach is slightly shorter than 1h swords; 1st swing has a shorter reach than the others, and that can be a reason to use the 2rd-3rd-... combo
  
• another point to note is the extremely short delay between the key press and the actual swing, makes it safer when trying to hit the rats before they hit you, or attack after blocking, etc.
  
• after a push it starts from the 2nd normal attack
  
• there are two charged attacks (both are thrusts) based on the length of charge time: the quick charged deals 5 damage to a single normal target with x1.75 headshot multiplier, it is the fastest charged attack of all weapons; when you charge long enough (so that Saltzpyre pulls back the arm), you can launch the heavy charged attack that hits 2 targets with x2 headshot multiplier (it has a signature sound cue); SV as 1st target will absorb the target count
  
• you still need headshots to kill most trash rats on nm/cata and it's harder to do with a thrust, normal attacks get used more
  
• quick and heavy charged have same stagger for normal targets, but quick charged doesn't stagger SVs while heavy charged can stagger SV overheads
  
• damage against SVs isn't amazing even with headshots, so if you don't need the stagger, doing normal headshots has better armored DPS if headshot rate is high
  
• heavy charged attack has shorter reach than quick charged and takes longer to block cancel afterwards
  
• combining normal and charged attacks, common ways to kill cata clan rats are:
  - 1 normal headshot + 2 normal bodyshots
  - 1 quick charged bodyshot + 1 normal headshot
  - 1 quick charged headshot + 1 normal bodyshot
  - 2 quick charged bodyshots
  - 1 heavy charged headshot
  
• normal attack headshots are also the best for ogres / packmasters
  
• quick charged with dodge cancel increases move speed by ~15%
  
• the rapier comes with an off-hand pistol with 16 bullets, shoot it with the special attack button (check your key bindings); it hits single target and kill nm clan rat or cata clan rat with headshot; you can free teammates from assassin pounce with it; doesn't proc any on-hit traits
  
• you can block and shoot the pistol, but it only keeps the block state if you are host
  
• the pistol shot is very slow, quick switching to ranged to shoot and switching back is even faster and safer; use it only to save ammo or to finish off an enemy; note that you don't gain ammo from scavenger trait
  
• highest mobility among all non-elven melee weapons, top block move speed, top push move speed and infinite dodge count, but dodges still fall short vs elf; push strength is weaker than average, rats won't be pushed back as much
  
• bloodlust is better than regrowth normal 5%, although the latter isn't that bad when you intentionally body-hit everything
  
• regrowth charged 10% is quite good as the charged attacks are either very fast or hits 2 targets; it does requires you to play non-optimally while farming procs
  
• killing blow upgrades the weak body damage to instant kill, and helps to reduce the size of horde into manageable numbers; also useful for SVs as normal headshots are already the best way to damage them; it blocks bloodlust and is tied to off balance, which is not so useful without improved guard / second wind
  
• scavenger blocks bloodlust but you can try healing traits on ranged weapons
  
• swift slaying normal / charged doesn't proc as much as on 1h swords, it's still a decent damage boost that comes with bloodlust
  
• with the moderate killing power, berserk might not proc at the beginning of a fight where attack speed is needed the most
  
• second wind on a 1h weapon helps you kite, deserve a special mention
  
• devastating blow improves push strength and let you push SV overheads; it's not necessary for the user as dodge is always available, but it helps the teammates
  
• charged attacks are very fast and HKB is worth to try
  
• poison flask synergizes well with fast normal attacks
  
• overall the rapier is very headshot dependent and it's one-of-a-kind so it takes extra practice time to make it work on cata; minus the pistol part it's just a weaker sword and dagger; for Saltzpyre the main benefit is the infinite dodges so you can drop the swift strider trinket
  
• red rapier has killing blow + swift slaying normal + devastating blow, worth trying if you don't take damage or have healing on ranged weapon
  
• gameplay by Jsat (patch 1.9)

List of traits
Red variant A: Regrowth normal 5% + Scavenger + Off balance
Red variant B: Killing blow + Swift slaying normal 4% + Devastating blow

Recommended trait combinations:

• Bloodlust + Stamina + Devastating blow
  
• Bloodlust + Swift slaying normal/charged + Stamina/Devastating blow
  
• Bloodlust + Improved guard/Second wind + Off balance
  
• Regrowth charged + Berserk/Scavenger + Stamina/Devastating blow
  
• Killing blow + Regrowth normal/charged (+Off balance)
  
• Regrowth charged + Scavenger/Stamina/Devastating blow + HKB
  
• (Red) Killing blow + Swift slaying normal + Devastating blow

Strong against / Strengths
SV, clan rat on nm, 1-2 rats on cata, ogre, packmaster, gunner

Weak against / Weaknesses
>3 group up rats on cata;
Low horde skill speed, low crowd control

Attack and damage pattern

• normal attacks deal 6 normal damage to single normal target, kills nm rats and cata slaves on body, requires headshots to kill cata clan rats with its x1.7 multiplier; 5 armored damage makes it the best 1h weapons for killing SVs, 3-4 bodyshots or 2-3 headshots get the job done
  
• normal attack is a 3 swing combo; the transition from 2nd to 3rd swing is the fastest, while from 3rd to 1st takes very long, so for optimal damage output, use normal 1-3 and block cancel / quick switch cancel the 3rd swing
  
• the hitbox on 1h axe has about half the size of the usual, so it's harder to land headshot
  
• (for cata) the stagger for normal targets is quite strong; knockback of clan rat is a bit much as you need to turn to do a second hit; it staggers SVs but not the overheads
  
• charged attack hits single target and deals 10 normal damage or 7 armored damage, good for killing cata clan rat when you can't headshot (e.g. when it faces away), but it's not going to kill armor faster than normal attacks
  
• charged attack has weaker stagger for normal targets, and doesn't stagger SV overheads
  
• charged attack speed is lower than most other weapons
  
• this is one of the few weapons that comes with a push attack, hold the attack button after pushing to use it; unfortunately it is weaker than the normal attacks (only x1.5 headshot multiplier) unlike the elven weapons; one of the uses is to cover some distance to strike further target as you gain speed from pushing; it is considered a normal attack for traits
  
• the 120% push move speed lasts very long here (0.6s - 0.8s) if you don't do any action afterwards, which can be used to gain distance from threats or speed run; with swift strider trinket you can outrun clan rats and SVs
  
• differences from Bardin's 1h axe: (1) longer reach, (2) slightly higher normal attack speed (~4%) but lower push attack speed, (3) better blocking animation, (4) dodge distance and cooldown is normal here; height difference of the characters might also affects the ease of headshots
  
• 1h axe is definitely strong against SVs; it's arguably strong against nm clan rats - one bodyhit can kill them, but many 1h weapons also kill them with headshot and damage a few more; so 1h axe is only truly strong against scattered cata clan rats and SVs
  
• the attacks lack crowd control and comes with average attack speed and average mobility, very unsafe to fight horde, and its horde DPS is a lot lower than most 1h weapons (with decent headshot rate); moreover, 1h axe usually has to do some blocks and pushes which further reduces damage output; nevertheless, it can have high kill counts because each swing is a guaranteed kill
  
• 1h axe plays differently on nm and cata: on nm you just try to swing at the body as fast as possible (headshot does nothing for trash rats); on cata it takes finesse to headshot clan rats and to defend yourself, and rats tend to pile up more often because they are harder to kill
  
• here we outline some ways to handle hordes / group of rats:
  (0) in general, try to hit new targets every swing
  (1) the easiest way in a team is to let them do crowd control, stick close to a teammate so that he/she staggers some rats and attract some attacks
  (2) use the trait combo devastating blow + improved pommel / perfect balance for crowd control: repeat push + 1 or 2 normal attacks to stagger rats periodically; this style is more suitable for team play as pushing also helps teammates, but not very safe when fighting many rats alone, since rats can attack outside the push radius, and blocking some attacks will deplete stamina and eventually lead to guard break; improved pommel allows more chain pushes, but it's advised to not spam dodges when stamina is low to allow regen; perfect balance leans towards dodge dancing as you can regen stamina while chain dodging
  (3) when fighting many rats alone, use the fact that normal 1 + dodge at the same time + block cancel has long block up-time: you can bait rats to do standing attacks before a dodge, and leave you enough time to do one swing (also aim at the head on cata, if possible); ideally you should dodge almost all attacks, but you might need to block some, so second wind / perfect balance / improved guard is good for this style
  
• push-spam trait combos let you pick off SVs among trash rats more easily to fulfill the anti-SV role
  
• to use 1h axe to full potential, you want to rush all scattered ambient clan rats in safe situation so they don't have chance to group up, and clearing the area allows the team to progress forward
  
• bloodlust is preferred healing trait, as each normal attack in a horde is a guaranteed kill; regrowth normal 5% does almost nothing, while charged attack is not used much (useless on nm) and too slow
  
• scavenger blocks bloodlust but you can try healing traits on ranged weapons
  
• attack speed from swift slayings / berserk helps with horde fight, but swift slaying proc chance is low, and berserk blocks bloodlust
  
• killing blow doesn't help for rats that you can already kill, blocks bloodlust and is tied to backstab
  
• endurance suffers from single target attacks
  
• heroic killing blow might be interesting for last stand
  
• backstab can increase SV and ogre damage, but reaching the back of other rats is a risk by itself; you can bait attacks of SV and they will be facing one direction for a full second
  
• red version has bloodlust + berserk + backstab, very offensive on nm, no stamina trait but the damage reduction and healing can possibly work on cata too
  
• gameplay by Jsat
  
• gameplay by Zeropathic

List of traits
Red variant A: Bloodlust + Swift slaying charged 7% + Backstab
Red variant B: Bloodlust + Berserk + Backstab

Recommended trait combinations:

• Bloodlust + Improved pommel/Perfect balance/Second wind + Devastating blow/Backstab
  
• Bloodlust + Swift slaying normal/charged/Backstab + Stamina/Devastating blow
  
• (Red) Bloodlust + Berserk + Backstab

Strong against / Strengths
Medium density rats; great heal w/ regrowth

Weak against / Weaknesses
SV, high density rats, packmaster, ogre, gunner;
Low single target kill speed (can be remedied by killing blow), low mobility

Attack and damage pattern

• normal attack hits 6 targets, the total damage when you hit all the targets is fantastic, but single target damage is on the lower end; it kills 3 slaves rat on nm on body; cata slave requires 1 headshot and cata clan rat requires 2; this is the faster way to deal with cata clan rats; the second swing has better headshot multipliers on later targets
  
• attack arcs are diagonal, combine dodges and left / right camera movements to extend and flatten the swing arc; if there are <6 rats in your stationary swing arc, dodge in the direction of the swing to hit more rats to achieve maximum damage output
  
• range of light swings is surprisingly lower than 1h sword's, try to stay at the edge of the horde instead of embedding into it, otherwise you can get hits from second row of rats; change positions so that not too many rats can get to stab you; against dense horde, try to hit new targets with each swing instead of hitting the same 6 rats to keep you safe
  
• charged attack hits 6 targets with more damage, stagger and range; 6 slaves on nm will be cleaved in half and it kills the first clan on nm; you can kill cata clan rat with 1 charged + 1 normal, and 3 cata slaves in one swing if you headshot them, but on cata it has lower DPS than normal attack spam
  
• you can use charged when you come in contact with the horde, but charging move speed is low, dodge in the direction of the swing to get in striking position; when you can hide behind teammates, you can spam charged attacks by dodging back and moving forward to strike
  
• charged attack staggers SV, you can use it to control single SV while killing the rats on each side of it, but the armor damage is very poor and attack speed is slow
  
• you cannot block during 0.4s-0.7s after a normal attack started
  
• delay between the key press and the actual normal attack is quite long (can be reduced by swift slayings / berserk)
  
• time to switch away from this weapon after a normal swing is particularly long, noticeable when you try to do a quick snipe
  
• the dodge is better than most 2h weapons, but the block move speed is worse
  
• push radius is slightly better than standard (2.25 vs 2)
  
• if the rats are in a line towards you, sometimes it's better to push them together so you can get a good swing through multiple rats
  
• the 2h sword is a specialized horde killer, and to maximize its value you want each swing to hit as many rats as possible, but the short reach of normal attack, charging time of charged attack, and the max 6 target per swing make that risky to achieve
  
• Saltzpyre is so tall that the reach is even shorter than Kruber; crouching while swinging increases your reach
  
• normal attack spam works well with regrowth normal, swift slaying normal and killing blow; its killing power in horde also makes bloodlust and berserk procs very often
  
• swift slaying normal, berserk and killing blow synergize well with the weapon and cover some of its weaknesses: higher kill speed helps to lower rat density, higher attack speed improve crowd control of attack spam for high density rats, and all of them improve average single target damage
  
• swift slaying normal also compensates the move slow and makes normal attack dodge dance easier
  
• killing blow can help you fight SV if you can constantly headshot it or if you are lucky, but because of the swing angle you can't really cleave other rats and land a headshot, and a teammate can kill it faster; it is tied to safety in numbers
  
• scavenger benefits nicely from horde kill speed, supplies ammo for you to kill rats that you can't effectively kill with 2h sword
  
• devastating blow and push-assisting stamina trait make use of the increased push radius, and help to protect yourself from hyperdensity or SVs, to prepare the charged attack, and to push rats into your attack arcs; generally stamina traits help to stand the ground against threats that can force you to move otherwise
  
• safety in numbers can be triggered by attacks or push, you can try it with improved pommel / perfect balance
  
• poison flask can occasionally kill SVs and cata clan rats faster
  
• this is the only melee weapon in Saltzpyre's armory that has reasonable regrowth normal 10% + scavenger combo, worth using if you want to shoot more; it's still a viable choice on cata but it this weapon has many weaknesses, offset them with your ranged weapons
  
• on the red you can get kiiling blow normal + regrowth normal without safety in numbers
  
• dodge dance instruction by Jsat
  
• gameplay by Jsat

List of traits
Red variant A: Regrowth normal 10% + Swift slaying charged 4% + HKB
Red variant B: Killing blow + Regrowth normal 10% + Swift slaying charged 4%

Recommended trait combinations:

• Regrowth normal + Berserk + Stamina/Devastating blow
  
• Bloodlust + Swift slaying normal + Stamina/Devastating blow
  
• Killing blow + Regrowth normal (+ Safety in numbers)
  
• Regrowth normal + Scavenger + Stamina/Devastating blow
  
• Bloodlust/Regrowth normal + Stamina + Devastating blow
  
• Regrowth normal + Scavenger/Stamina/Devastating blow + HKB
  
• (Red) Killing blow + Regrowth normal + Swift slaying charged

Strong against / Strengths
Everything, especially clan rat on cata if you can headshot;
Bonus mobility during light attacks

Weak against / Weaknesses
Low stamina and weak push

Attack and damage pattern

• the 1st, 2nd and 4th normal attacks hit 3 targets, notably doing 4 damage to the first rat with x2.5 headshot multiplier, doing 10 damage on the head, making the falchion very efficient at killing cata clan rats; it's probably not particularly strong on nm since most weapons can one-headshot nm clan rats, and killing 2 nm slaves on body isn't too impressive
  
• the 3rd normal attack is quite slow to execute, hits only one target for 6 damage but only x1.5 headshot multiplier so it can't kill cata clan rats, so normally it's better to skip it by block canceling; however it can do 5 damage to armor (7.5 with headshot) if you see fit
  
• block canceling is a lot faster here than on other weapons
  
• the hitbox is larger on normal 1, 2, 4 so it's easier to score headshots
  
• all normal attacks have move speed boost for the first half of the swings, but slight move slow in the second half (still faster than block move speed), dodging during the second half can reduce the move slow; block canceling when the falchion reach the center of the screen also gives ~10% move speed on average
  
• normal 1 + block cancel offers much more block active time, safer to use when you have low health
  
• stagger for the first two targets of normal 1, 2, 4 is strong (1h hammer / mace level), combined with the killing power and mobility that naturally let you hit new rats each swing, falchion has more than sufficient crowd control to protect its user from the rats
  
• perhaps falchion feels worse in narrow places that doesn't allow you to dodge dance and where the rats pile up more to form high density, in this case you can still joust and use the normal attacks stagger to prevent rats from advancing; also you can avoid the situation beforehand by moving forward a few meters to an open space e.g. say when the team is cornering
  
• charged attack deals 10 normal damage and 4.5 armored damage and hits a second target, comes with x2 headshot multiplier for massive damage against SVs, the attack speed and charging move speed are decent as well, overall very strong compared with other weapons; the only drawback is the very short reach, and overshadowed by the fact that normal attacks already do 10 damage
  
• charged attacks can be used on clan rats when they are facing away or lying on the ground so that you can't headshot
  
• the short reach of charged attack sometimes causes SVs to push you first and canceling your attack
  
• transition from 2nd charged to 1st charged is slightly slower
  
• normal 1, 2 headhosts and charged headshots have similarly high ogre DPS, but normal attacks should be safer to use; use charged when you are behind the ogre
  
• the 120% push move speed lasts longer here (0.3s - 0.5s) if you don't do any action afterwards, which can be used to gain distance from threats
  
• bloodlust is the best amazing trait as you can usually get the kills; regrowth normal 5% wouldn't provide much heal if you kill the rat in one hit
  
• regrowth charged 10% is good as charged always hit 2 targets, use it if you use charged attacks more or pair it with scavenger / berserk
  
• swift slaying normal / swift slaying charged / berserk are useful as usual, and in addition the normal attack spam will gives you higher move speed because the second half of the swings are cancelled faster; swift slayings are compatible with bloodlust, while berserk should proc a lot more
  
• scavenger is very effective but it blocks bloodlust; you can try healing traits on ranged weapons
  
• killing blow doesn't provide much value here as you can already kill all trash rats in one hit, and each swing only damages 2 targets (can proc on the third if headshot but the swing arc makes it difficult); main problem is that it blocks bloodlust and is tied to backstab, reducing the survivability of the weapon
  
• devastating blow (in addition to the usual benefits) lets you push SVs first to initiate charged attacks, also allows charged attacks to stagger SV overheads, so you can just stunlock an SV and kill it
  
• second wind procs more because of low stamina
  
• perfect balance gives you +50% stamina and faster regen (can regen in dodge dance), but doesn't avoid guard break from SV overhead
  
• improved pommel combined with devastating blow and helps to control SVs + horde or hyperdensity by chaining pushes; also let you get more push move speed boosts
  
• endurance is ok, but notice the weaker effect because of lower total stamina
  
• backstab increases damage when rats are facing away so that you can't headshot, but reaching the back of other rats is a risk by itself; a fancy move is to do a charged backstab headshot for SVs (easier to do when their attacks miss and they are standing still); also boosts ogre DPS from behind
  
• backstab benefits from swift slaying move speed buff as you can reach the back more easily
  
• red falchion has a good defensive trait combo as well as a very offensive one with regrowth normal 10% + swift slaying normal 7% + backstab (unique combo and higher percentages), this regrowth provides similar or stronger healing than bloodlust, swift slaying boosts damage and let you control distance from rats or sneak to the back for backstabs
  
• gameplay by Jsat (patch 1.8)

List of traits
Red variant A: Bloodlust + Perfect balance + Devastating blow
Red variant B: Regrowth normal 10% + Swift slaying normal 7% + Backstab

Recommended trait combinations:

• Bloodlust + Stamina + Devastating blow
  
• Bloodlust + Swift slaying normal/charged/Backstab + Stamina/Devastating blow
  
• Regrowth normal/charged + Berserk/Scavenger + Stamina/Devastating blow
  
• Regrowth normal/charged + Scavenger/Stamina/Devastating blow + HKB
  
• (Red) Regrowth normal + Swift slaying normal + Backstab

Strong against / Strengths
Lined up horde & multiple SVs (w/ rupture + haste and/or scavenger), ogre (w/ haste and headshots), clan rat on nm

Weak against / Weaknesses
Most enemies on cata if not lined up or w/o rupture;
Relatively low total ammo, no armor stagger, charged attack recoil

Attack and damage pattern

• normal shots hit single target, kill nm clan rats and cata slaves in one bodyshot and have x2 headshot multiplier; massive stagger against normal targets but no stagger against armor; accuracy is ok at long range but insufficient for consistent headshots
  
• normal shot fire rate is the slowest among all multi-shot weapons; on the other hand it has no movement spread and minimal recoil spread, and the recoil camera movement resets perfectly because of the slow fire rate, arguably good for run-and-gun
  
• normal shots can be fired fully automatically when you hold the button
  
• charged attack is normal attack with triple fire rate, also full-auto; as the recoil camera movement doesn't have enough time to reset, you need to pull the mouse down to adjust for the recoil; also in the rapid firing stance your movement speed is reduced to 10%, but dodges are not affected, so it's a unique play style where the user dodges to re-position
  
• because dodge distance can't be adjusted, sometimes you are in an awkward situation that the target is blocked by obstacles before and after the dodge; dodging left or right also invokes extra lateral camera movements that can cause some missed shots
  
• normal type specials require 3-4 bodyshots to kill on nm/cata, while armors take 6-8 bodyshots; kill speed can be ok with charged shots but definitely total ammo is a problem on cata; another solution is to aim for the head every shot, but that replies on your aim speed and accuracy
  
• normal shot fire rate is usually too low for specials (especially on cata), you can go to charged mode and use aimed semi-auto shots to gain higher fire rate for a split second; because of the "obstacle" problem above,it's better to charged only when you have line of sight
  
• stagger for normal type specials is a bit too much and often you need to re-aim after hitting once
  
• it's hard to move the mouse to compensate the recoil movement and track moving targets at the same time
  
• rupture boosts your normal shot targets from 1 to 3, tripling your damage against lined up rats and prevent trash rats from blocking your shots at the specials / SVs; also as a gunpowder weapon, the shots can penetrate armored and resistant targets with rupture, so you can do very good damage on patrols
  
• with rupture, you are incredibly strong against lined-up trash rats, so it is advised to find a choke point to linearize the flow of the rats, dodge backward if a rat happens to bypass the bullets; on the other hand, it doesn't work very well when cornering as the rats come in an arc and teammates will possibly walk in front of you
  
• haste and berserk let you fire faster and, more importantly, without spending ammo for 5 seconds, converting the charged shots into a mounted turret; logically you want to pair it with rupture which gives you up to triple proc chances
  
• berserk procs more often on hordes, but haste is still strong for hordes, and in addition greatly improves patrol and ogre DPS, and free shots proc while shooting specials
  
• with haste active and with consistent headshots, the brace of pistols is ranked the 3rd best ogre killer (among many weapons that have similar DPS); grab the ogre aggro and start shooting at the head at close - medium range, try to dodge to keep distance and avoid ogre attacks, as switching to melee to block loses the attack speed buff
  
• scavenger returns 2 ammo, 3 with ammo holder; by itself the effect is limited, but once combined with rupture and/or haste or berserk you can gain ammo from shooting hordes; note that the ammo gain can be quite marginal depending on the density and the composition of the rats (slave/clan and nm/cata)
  
• ammo holder vs scavenger is difficult, if you choose only one; ammo holder might be better if you shoot specials more and/or you have melee scavenger, but you can't regenerate ammo in hordes; scavenger is hugely affected by map geometry and team composition (teammates can kill rats too fast); take the one that suits your ammo management
  
• targeteer helps to headshot medium to long range targets, it can increase kill speed and save ammo against ratlings etc. if you are confident with your aim
  
• hail of doom and skullcracker are 15% damage boost that have synergy with many other traits, e.g. rupture, scavenger, berserk, bloodlust; only hail of doom increases proc chance of haste
  
• hail of doom is better than skullcracker, if you choose only one, in that: (1) bonus shot from hail of doom is as accurate as the original shot since the recoil spread is small, (2) if one bodyshot already kills the rat (nm or cata slave), hail of doom proc can kill more rats while skullcracker only does overkill damage, (3) skullcracker has no effect if you get manual headshots
  
• fitting bloodlust or regrowth on the weapon and scavenger on melee is a possible build
  
• knockback helps to control SVs but you don't have much ammo to spare
  
• better push strength (i.e. axe and 2h sword) and devastating blow on your melee weapon can give you space to initiate charged shots
  
• as a general-purpose weapon, brace of pistols function essentially the same as Kruber's repeater handgun except that it's sub-par in every aspect; imo you can only gain some advantages by using rupture + haste here (no need for extra capacity and haste is stronger for no-reload weapons); rupture is also the only advantage over swift bow for horde killing
  
• gameplay by Zeropathic (patch 1.9)

List of traits
Red variant A: Scavenger 24% + Skullcracker + Distraction
Red variant B: Rupture + Haste 7% + Skullcracker

Recommended trait combinations:

• Rupture + Haste + Scavenger/Ammo holder <- all-round and overall best
  
• Rupture + Berserk + Scavenger/Ammo holder/Bloodlust/Regrowth <- for hordes
  
• Rupture + Scavenger + Ammo holder/Hail of doom/Bloodlust/Regrowth
  
• Rupture + Targeteer + Haste/Scavenger/Ammo holder/Hail of doom

Strong against / Strengths
Lined up horde (w/ rupture + scavenger), close SV, packmaster, ogre;
Staggering / killing assassins, gas rats and packmasters

Weak against / Weaknesses
Distant gunners;
Shorter effective range for special sniping (can be improved by targeteer), insufficient total ammo, recoil

Attack and damage pattern
Charged shot damage is reduced over distance, stated is per one projectile

• normal attack deals 3.5 damage to one normal target and +1 headshot bonus; it does have a high rate of fire (0.1s per shot), double of that of swift bow, some players might have trouble reaching that fire rate; base accuracy is mediocre but moving spread is small
  
• you can fire full-auto by holding the fire button, but the fire rate is 1/3 of the max fire rate by manual clicking
  
• recoil camera movement is straight upward, so it's not hard to control at max fire rate when shooting at stationary targets, but when aiming at moving targets probably one of fire rate or accuracy has to be sacrificed
  
• while normal shots (and the overall gun design) are for general purposes, you can take down nm/cata non-armored specials in a blink and have a few spare shots left in the clip, so some players use it exclusively for special hunting; notably it only takes 3 shots to kill nm/cata packmasters
  
• imo the strength of repeater pistol for special hunting is that just one hit can stagger assassins and gas rats, which are the most dangerous specials on cata
  
• normal shot headshots are quite decent for ogre DPS, you might want to get closer to shoot at max fire rate without missing
  
• charged attack fires all the remaining shots in the clip in a shotgun pattern; the bullets use a different damage profile from normal shots, higher damage at close range and lower at long range, but the drop off is not as significant as real shotguns; they also penetrate one more target than normal shots
  
• the extra capacity trait increases the clip size from 8 to 12, which greatly affects the damage potential and ammo cost of charged shots
  
• charged attack has decent chance of one-shotting specials at close - medium range (higher with extra capacity), but it costs a lot more ammo than necessary and it's still not very reliable
  
• a niche is to one-shot SVs at close range (need extra capacity on cata), but it's only guaranteed kill at melee range, and you can either get pushed while charging, or completely miss if the SV moves a lot; there is a 0.1 second delay between pressing the shoot button and the actual charged attack
  
• the charged shots can penetrate armored and resistant targets (so are the normal shots when equipped with rupture), potentially very useful on patrol
  
• if your field of view is not 65, then the crosshair size doesn't represent the actual spread; practice in the inn to know the spread
  
• charged shot can stagger armor in normal state but not SV overhead / shooting ratling; normal shot doesn't stagger armor and has minimal stagger to trash rats
  
• the number of headshots (+1 normal / +0.5 armored damage) can have some influence on the charged attack damage, while aiming at torso maximize number of bullets hit
  
• the bane of repeater pistol is medium - far ratlings, charged shots are ineffective and on cata you can't kill them using normal shots in one clip, even with ammo holder (unless you are lucky to get 10 headshots), you will need covers to approach / bait it, or rely on teammates
  
• total ammo seems high, but it takes quite a number of shots to kill most targets, spending the ammo on specials and SVs mean you won't have spare for trash rats, unless you take some ammo traits
  
• normal shots can cancel reloading so there is no reason not to reload; if you try to charge while reloading, then there is a trick/exploitable bug that the weapon can be spinning without animation while reloading (listen to the sound to find it out), it helps to get the charged shots ready earlier after reload, but can also mess up your reload
  
• rupture boosts your normal shot targets from 1 to 3, tripling your damage against lined up rats and prevent trash rats from blocking your shots at the specials / SVs
  
• extra capacity makes it easier to kill a special in one clip and increases ogre DPS, also affects charged shots as mentioned above
  
• scavenger returns 5 ammo per proc, 6 ammo with ammo holder; on nm one shot can kill one slave rat without extra trait, so scavenger already provides positive net ammo
  
• rupture + scavenger has very high ammo return for both nm and cata, if you can hit 3 rats most of the time with normal shots; also the ammo cost of charged shot is normally too high for hordes, but becomes acceptable with rupture + scavenger
  
• targeteer enhances the accuracy to shoot distant specials, and also reduces bullet spread of charged shots, as a result it is easier to kill SVs with charged shots
  
• if you focus on specials / SVs, ammo holder provides better ammo sustain than scavenger as you won't have many kill counts
  
• hail of doom procs are done per charged shot (double all bullets or nothing)
  
• mastercrafted reload reduces reload time by 0.25s, a small benefit but makes combat reload easier, and effectively boosts charged shots fire rate
  
• regrowth 5% provides little heal in practice, takes bloodlust and kill trash rats if you want healing
  
• knockback and distraction might be worth trying because of high fire rate and ammo, note that it only procs once per charged shot; knockback applied to charged shots is also affected by a bug
  
• headshot bonus doesn't hit any significant breakpoint so skullcracker is generally avoided
  
• poison flask can help you kill armor faster and increase ogre damage with normal shot spam
  
• damage boon reduces number of bodyshots to kill specials by 1, and lets you kill cata SVs with one charged shot without extra capacity
  
• gameplay by Jsat

List of traits
Red variant A: Extra capacity 50% + Mastercrafted reload+ Regrowth 5%
Red variant B: Extra capacity 50% + Rupture + Hail of Doom

Recommended trait combinations:

• Extra capacity + Rupture + Targeteer/Ammo holder <- for specials / SVs
  
• Rupture + Scavenger + Extra capacity/Ammo holder/Bloodlust/Mastercrafted reload/Hail of doom <- general purpose with decent horde clear

Strong against / Strengths
Ambient SV, up to 5 rats lined up in a row, gunner

Weak against / Weaknesses
Assassin, packmaster on cata, ogre, moving targets

Attack and damage pattern

• one bolt can kill 5 rats (10 damage) in one hit, or 8 armor / 35 resistant damage; has potential of dealing a lot of damage in cata, but you have to line up your targets to make most of it
  
• the bolt doesn't penetrate armored or resistant targets
  
• the bolt has practically no ballistic drop although it is a projectile weapon
  
• all specials on nm and cata require at least 2 bodyshots to kill, and SVs and gunners on cata take 3; a bodyshot and melee finish is a good tactics as well
  
• the bolt can stagger SV overheads but not firing gunners
  
• x2.5 headshot modifier allows you to one headshot kill SVs and gunners on cata, better ammo efficiency than handgun if you do that often
  
• moving targets, especially assassins, are difficult to snipe as the bolt has flight time and you need to lead the targets; scoring headshots is even harder, you might consider rapid bodyshots
  
• if you use ranged weapon along to kill packmasters, crossbow is worse than most other choices unless you get a headshot, otherwise you need two shots with long reload time in between and the bolt doesn't stagger it
  
• normal shots and charged shots deal exactly the same damage; it takes a quarter second to zoom down the sight, the zoomed shot is pin-point accurate if standing still and has minimal spread while moving, but you move at 25% speed; the unzoomed shot is also fairly accurate while standing still and slightly inaccurate on the move
  
• unlike most other games, crouching usually make the ranged weapons less accurate
  
• use zoomed shots to aim at the heads or distant targets, but it's worth to learn shooting from the hip against closer targets as it has better fire rate
  
• try to shoot those idle SVs before they notice you, wait until they turn the head to make sure their head won't move; once they are approaching it's difficult to hit the head
  
• this weapon is silent, you can snipe rats down in a group one by one and being unnoticed the whole time; one way to progress through the map is to shoot only the rats on the way and sneak pass the oblivious ones
  
• unique to crossbows: if you are being damaged, the crosshair spread is much larger than other weapons, friendly fire burn or poison damage makes it unable to shoot for 3-5 seconds
  
• one advantage over elven longbow is that the normal shot is immediately available after weapon switch, making it easier to snapshot an SV or to seize the opportunity to pierce multiple rats when they overlap for a split second, even at melee range
  
• the weapon stat is identical to Bardin's, but Saltzpyre is taller and more suitable for the sniper job
  
• mastercrafted enhances every bit of the crossbow's performance: faster consecutive bodyshots to kill specials and SVs, higher fire rate to kill horde, safer to reload etc.
  
• scavenger is sweet if you primarily shoot rats and score a lot of kills during hordes, and you can heal a lot with bloodlust
  
• uniquely, you can roll bloodlust + regrowth, but having an ammo trait instead of regrowth would allow you to spam shots and proc more bloodlust
  
• hail of doom is also useful for all purposes: bonus shots to dense rats, occasional double bodyshots to kill specials, or lucky headshots from the bonus shot; notice that the bonus shot has medium spread
  
• ammo holder gives you more ammo for all targets, but it doesn't increase scavenger return; scavenger can generate more ammo on its own in horde
  
• skullcracker on crossbow is tied to inspirational shot; it's better than hail of doom in the sense that its proc can kill SV and gunner on cata
  
• hawkeye increases ogre headshot damage by 40%, but you don't need it for other targets; note that you need to carry the crossbow in your hand when the bolt hits to trigger the effect
  
• skirmisher allows you to strafe faster while aiming and removes the spread while moving; it's not a huge improvement as the crossbow already has acceptable accuracy while moving
  
• knockback has 40% chance can will occasionally knock down the targets you didn't kill for follow up shots
  
• devastating blow on your melee weapon can help to give you space to reload, or push SVs to allow for easy headshot
  
• if damage boon is on, you can two-bodyshot-kill SVs and gunners on cata and one-bodyshot-kill packmasters on cata
  
• more headshot tips
  
• gameplay by Zeropathic

List of traits
Red variant A: Mastercrafted + Bloodlust + Hawkeye
Red variant B: Mastercrafted + Hail of doom + Rupture

This is the only rupture available on any crossbow, but it won't help you hit more SVs and boosting normal targets from 5 to 7 is an overkill

Recommended trait combinations:

• Mastercrafted + Scavenger + Hail of doom/Bloodlust/Ammo holder
  
• Mastercrafted + Hail of doom + Ammo holder/Bloodlust
  
• Mastercrafted + Bloodlust + Regrowth
  
• Mastercrafted + any reasonable combinations

Strong against / Strengths
Ogre, packmaster, close specials;
One of the best ogre-killing weapons

Weak against / Weaknesses
Distant specials;
Super long reload time, low total ammo

Attack and damage pattern

• normal shot hits two targets for 7 normal / 3 armored / 25 resistant damage with x2.5 headshot, killing nm rats and cata slaves on body, all nm specials on head
  
• recoil spread is quite large (same as the single shot crossbow), shooting fast prone to cause some shots to miss
  
• charged shot is 3 normal shots fired at once and spread out horizontally, this attack is famous for its ogre killing potential; 3 bodyshots / 1 headshot + 1 bodyshot kill all normal type specials, but the spread is quite large; you can kill SVs with a charged shot to the head at extreme close range
  
• killing ratlings can be fast but costs a lot of ammo, best bet is to try multiple normal headshots
  
• the crosshair size doesn't represent the actual spread; practice in the inn to know the spread
  
• charged shots produce no recoil at all (no increased spread and no camera movement), despite the crosshair expanding visually
  
• the bolt has practically no ballistic drop although it is a projectile weapon
  
• the bolt doesn't penetrate armored or resistant targets
  
• all shots can stagger SV overheads but not firing gunners
  
• "fire rate bug": the charged shot fire rate is not continuous, you can either fire the next charged shot after 0.5s, or hold the charge button and fire the next shot after 0.8s; clicking shoot button between 0.5-0.8s has no effect
  
• another related "bug" is that releasing charge button and shooting within 0.5s still produces a charged shot, making ammo preservation harder
  
• move speed is very low in charged state, but once you start firing at maximum fire rate you can move at 100% speed, useful to maintain distance from the ogre; firing at low fire rate resumes the charged state and move slow applies again
  
• terribly slow reload (5 seconds), impossible to do once a combat starts, and even if you reload in safe situations it means you are not engaging enemies, so try not to over-reload; on the other hand, you need enough ammo in the clip to kill specials or ogres; try to learn all the ogre trigger points and reload in advance
  
• reload can be cancelled by normal shots but not charged shots, but canceling means that you give up all the time invested in the reload attempt
  
• bodyshotting ogre with full clip charged shots does only 375 damage (no extra capacity) to 525 (with extra capacity) without other traits or potions, far from enough to kill nm/cata ogres; DPS during one clip is slightly better than hagbane, but much lower if we count the reload time, and it's impractical to reload in combat, therefore...
  
• getting charged headshots during strength potion effect is essential to kill ogres quickly (better at close/melee range), either hold the potion yourself or coordinate with the potion share player; try to keep the aggro of the ogre (see below), so that the ogre is facing you, shoot at the head after dodging the first attack at zero distance so that all 3 bolts (or 6 bolts with hail of doom) hit the head, dodge or switch to melee to block when necessary; if everything goes right the ogre should drop when the clip is almost empty
  
• because you have to focus on the ogre alone for a few seconds, it's much harder to do if rats are very close to you, judge the situation to see if you want to do it or just do some damage by shooting at less optimal angle or distance
  
• aggro management: if no teammate shoots the ogre and you are the closest to the ogre (by moving forward etc.), the ogre should target you; however, it's not always the best for teammates to refrain from shooting, many weapons e.g. hagbane swiftbow, repeater handgun, trueflight longbow, longbow, swift bow, bolt staff and fireball staff can do serious damage and have a much longer effective range than volley crossbow, and can almost kill the ogre if more than one players are shooting with these weapons
  
• teammates should be ready to finish off the ogre in case it's not dead
  
• while the volley crossbow is often viewed as a specialized ogre killer, it would be a waste to not use for specials when situation requires, the charged shot can often kill a special at medium - close range; it is a quite versatile weapon, but limited by the low total ammo and long reload time
  
• this weapon is silent, you can shoot ambient rats while being unnoticed
  
• extra capacity gives you a lot more burst ogre damage from one clip and makes you feel more comfortable after shooting 3-6 bolts without reloading
  
• mastercrafted reload reduces reload time from 5s to 4s, nice to have on the move but doesn't help much in a combat scenario
  
• hail of doom performs normally for normal shots (i.e. bonus shot receives the recoil spread), but it changes the charged shots to be 6 bolts fired at once horizontally, 5 of them centered around the crosshair with the same separation between two adjacent bolts, and the last bolt added on the right, so hail of doom is effective only for close range targets
  
• skullcracker has greater effect here because of the high headshot multiplier and some bolts from the charged shots often miss the head, can boost ogre damage quite a lot in less optimal situations; it procs for individual bolt for the charged shot
  
• if you reserve one clip (~21 bolts) for the ogre, the other 24 bolts can be used against specials etc., and ammo holder will raise that to 38 bolts; however it doesn't affect scavenger ammo return
  
• with scavenger, the ammo efficiency isn't too bad to be used on slave rat hordes, if you manage to hit 2 rats with every bolt
  
• targeteer affects only normal shots but not the spread of charged shots, can help to snipe far away specials; also reduces normal shot recoil spread by half so rapid shooting is more accurate
  
• the only safety in numbers available on any ranged weapon, probably meant to be distraction but it does work
  
• on cata you will need every edge if you want to kill the ogre all by yourself (hail of doom and skullcracker are listed top for that reason), but for nm you can probably make some compromises and put some ammo traits on to turn it into a general-purpose weapon
  
• gameplay by Karton

List of traits
Red variant A: Extra Capacity 40% + Skullcracker + Mastercrafted reload 20%
Red variant B: Extra Capacity 40% + Skullcracker + Hail of Doom

Recommended trait combinations:

• Extra capacity + Hail of Doom + Skullcracker <- for max ogre DPS
  
• Extra capacity + Mastercrafted reload + Hail of Doom/Skullcracker
  
• Extra capacity + Scavenger + Ammo holder/Mastercrafted reload <- general purpose
  
• Extra capacity + Ammo holder + Mastercrafted reload <- general purpose

Strong against / Strengths
Everything, can be further buffed by killing blow;
Infinite dodge count, high block move speed, great heal w/ regrowth

Weak against / Weaknesses
Weak push

Attack and damage pattern

• first two normal attacks hit 4 targets with x2 headshot multiplier and they are among the fastest attacks in the game (about 30% faster than kruber/sienna's 1h swords) and have long reach, provide very strong crowd control and damage; nm clan rat and cata slave die from 1 headshot
  
• that said, attack arcs are 45 degrees diagonal so you need to combine dodges and quick left / right camera movements to hit rats on your left and right
  
• the third normal attack is a stab with x1.75 headshot multiplier, able to kill cata clan rat on the head and seriously injure SV; it also gives you significant movement speed boost, so you can even use it if you kill the last rat with the 2rd normal attack
  
• normal attack and push is faster after blocking than most weapons (0.25s vs 0.3s), so better block canceling
  
• against a horde, tap block to cancel the third attack to get better crowd control; given enough space to maneuver and spread out the density, normal attacks spam and dodge dance are more than sufficient to handle a horde, not even block or push is needed
  
• normal 1 + block cancel offers much more block active time, safer to use when you have low health
  
• after normal 1 or 2, takes a much longer wait to automatically reset to normal 1, while block/push reset is instant; you can make use of it can make normal 2 or 3 your next attack
  
• charged attack hits single target for 10 damage, killing cata clan rat on body, and comes also with x1.5 headshot multiplier, making it stronger than similar attacks from other weapons against SV
  
• charging move speed is also much higher than that of other 10 damage charged attacks
  
• if you attack right after pushing, you will start from the 2nd normal attack; it doesn't affect the weapon's performance but might need some getting used to; it can also be advantageous because you can use the 3rd normal attack more readily against SVs
  
• facing SVs, alternative to charged attacks, you can do the combo push + light 2+3 which does comparable damage with headshots and gives you 2 chances to proc killing blow and other on hit traits, as well as better crowd control from the push
  
• this weapon has the top block move speed, top push move speed, top dodge speed and infinite dodge count, making you very easy to get out of tricky situations; however, push strength is weaker than average, rats won't be pushed back as much
  
• regrowth normal is the best healing trait here; bloodlust is also viable with its kill speed and the charged attack, but more so on nm; bloodlust can have extra effect if it procs from hagbane poison kill
  
• killing blow further improves the horde kill speed, and helps to reduce the size of horde into manageable numbers
  
• scavenger benefits nicely from horde kill speed, and supply ammo to elf's strong ranged weapons
  
• uniquely, the killing blow + regrowth normal combo is not tied to one, but 11 other traits, making it much easier to roll, and you can have scavenger or stamina as the third trait
  
• swift slaying blocks regrowth normal, and berserk blocks scavenger; they are good by themselves but probably outshadowed by killing blow + regrowth normal
  
• when swift slaying is on, it might be more efficient to do normal attack spam instead of normal 1+2 + block cancel
  
• second wind on a 1h weapon helps you kite, deserve a special mention
  
• devastating blow improves push strength and let you push SV overheads; it's not very necessary for the user as dodge is always available, but it can be helpful for the teammates
  
• beware that heroic killing blow is not available on this weapon
  
• among all elf's melee weapons, only this one offers scavenger together with strong healing, pick it if you want to use the bow more
  
• the red version has killing blow + bloodlust + scavenger which works very well with hagbane, although you can roll killing blow + regrowth normal + scavenger which on cata should provide more heal on its own
  
• gameplay by Jsat

List of traits
Red variant A: Killing blow + Regrowth charged 10% + Scavenger
Red variant B: Killing blow + Bloodlust + Scavenger

Recommended trait combinations:

• Killing blow + Regrowth normal + Scavenger/Stamina/Devastating blow
  
• Regrowth normal + Berserk/Scavenger + Stamina/Devastating blow
  
• Bloodlust + Swift slaying normal/charged + Stamina/Devastating blow
  
• Bloodlust/Regrowth normal + Stamina + Devastating blow
  
• Bloodlust/Regrowth normal + Improved guard/Second wind + Off balance
  
• (Red) Killing blow + Bloodlust + Scavenger

Strong against / Strengths
Everything;
Infinite dodge count, bonus mobility during light attacks

Weak against / Weaknesses
Weak push; requires headshots to do good single target damage, when compared to other elven melee weapons

Attack and damage pattern

• normal attack combo consists of 4 swings, all hit 4 targets with x2 headshot multiplier and have long reach, nm clan rat and cata slave die from 1 headshot
  
• despite hitting 4 targets consistently, the attack speed is slower than that of the elven 1h swords, the 4th attack is particularly slow and you might want to block cancel it; 3rd and 4th attacks are reverse diagonal cuts so it can be harder to get headshots with them
  
• the attack arcs are flatter than that of elven 1h sword, so you don't need exaggerated camera movements to hit multiple rats, but it should make no difference after enough practice
  
• normal attack and push is faster after blocking than most weapons (0.25s vs 0.3s), so better block canceling
  
• all normal attacks have move speed boost for the first half of the swings, and moderate move slow in the second half; if you want higher move speed in dodge dance, dodge during the second half
  
• given enough space to maneuver and spread out the density, normal attacks spam and dodge dance are more than sufficient to handle a horde, not even block or push is needed
  
• normal 1 + block cancel offers much more block active time, safer to use when you have low health
  
• charged attack deals 6 normal damage and 5 armor damage to first target with x2 headshot multiplier, killing nm clan rat on body, cata clan rat on headshot and causing an astounding 10 damage to SVs; beware that it doesn't stagger first armor target
  
• charging move speed is slowest among elven 1h weapons, turn and dodge into position if you need to
  
• for the charged attacks, only the right hand weapon deals damage and the left hand weapon is fake (try hitting things in the inn); charged 1 is diagonal downward and charged 2 is left to right horizontal, so charged 2 can be harder to headshot
  
• charged attacks are weak against packmasters and ogres, use normal attacks instead
  
• the normal attack combo and charged attacks rely on headshots to do very good single target damage compared to other elven melee weapons, and it is noticeable on cata
  
• this is one of the few weapons that comes with a push stab, hold the attack button after pushing to use it; it hits single target, deals 6 normal damage and 3.5 armor damage with 2.5x headshot multiplier, another very effective anti-armor attack; it is considered a normal attack for traits
  
• pushing + push stab also gives you incredible move speed, however beware that it can leave you open and the follow up input actions are kind of messed up
  
• this weapon has the top push move speed, top dodge speed and infinite dodge count, making you very easy to get out of tricky situations; however, push strength is weaker than average, rats won't be pushed back as much
  
• regrowth normal is only 5%, so bloodlust is probably better even on cata
  
• regrowth charged is pretty much a dead trait, only 3% but charged attack hits only 2 targets
  
• killing blow further improves the horde kill speed, and helps to reduce the size of horde into manageable numbers (can be used to get lucky procs on SV headshot too, and the 3rd swing procs on body); unfortunately it blocks bloodlust and is tied to safety in numbers
  
• scavenger benefits nicely from horde kill speed
  
• swift slaying normal / swift slaying charged / berserk are useful as usual, and in addition the normal attack spam will gives you higher move speed because the second half of the swings are cancelled faster
  
• when swift slaying is on, normal 1+2 + block cancel should still be smoother than normal attack spam because normal 3 and 4 are too slow
  
• safety in numbers can be triggered by attacks or push, you can try it with improved pommel / perfect balance
  
• second wind on a 1h weapon helps you kite, deserves a special mention
  
• improved pommel in addition allows more push attacks
  
• devastating blow improves push strength and let you push SV overheads; it's not very necessary for the user as dodge is always available, but it can be helpful for the teammates; it might push the rat too far and make you miss the push stab
  
• overall, compared to elven 1h sword, here the lack of regrowth normal 10% restricts the trait combo but you gain stronger melee anti-armor ability; slower attack speed means it has lower horde DPS but you gain mobility to compensate
  
• the red variant has the swift slaying 7% which is higher than the orange version; it is probably the best trait for damage boost here, and the faster attacks provide better crowd control so it's ok without stamina trait
  
• more dual sword tactics
  
• even more dual sword tactics
  
• gameplay by Jsat

List of traits
Red variant A: Regrowth charged 3% + Swift slaying normal 7% + Scavenger
Red variant B: Bloodlust + Swift slaying normal 7%+ Devastating blow

Recommended trait combinations:

• Bloodlust + Swift slaying normal + Stamina/Devastating blow
  
• Bloodlust + Stamina + Devastating blow
  
• Regrowth normal + Berserk/Scavenger + Stamina/Devastating blow
  
• Killing blow + Regrowth normal (+Safety in numbers)
  
• Regrowth normal + Scavenger/Stamina/Devastating blow + HKB
  
• (Red) Bloodlust + Swift slaying normal 7% + Devastating blow

Strong against / Strengths
Everything, especially the red version;
Infinite dodge count, bonus mobility during light attacks

Weak against / Weaknesses
Fighting high density rats with no space to dodge;
Weak push

Attack and damage pattern

• normal attack combo consists of 4 swings, hitting 2-3-1-1 targets respectively; attack speed is among the fastest, especially the first 2 attacks
  
• first attack has x3 headshot multiplier for the first target, reducing the time to kill cata clan rats and deals 3 damage to SV head; last two attacks can one-headshot them as well; attack arcs are quite horizontal and it's possible to get multiple headshots each swing
  
• the third and fourth normal attacks deal 1 damage to armor, good for proc-ing killing blow
  
• all normal attacks have move speed boost for the first half of the swings, but noticeable move slow in the second half, although the next attack in the chain can cancel a portion of the move slow; if you want to maintain move speed in dodge dance, dodge during the second half; blocking is also effective because block move speed is faster than the move slow, especially after normal 4
  
• another point to note is the extremely short delay between the key press and the actual swing, which makes it safer when trying to hit the rats before they hit you, or attack after blocking, etc.
  
• when fighting a horde, tap block to cancel the third and fourth swings to get better crowd control, and try to keep a slight distance from the horde (e.g. dodge diagonally backward) so that only 2-3 rats approach you; given enough space to maneuver and spread out the density, you can deal with hordes with only dodge dance and a few pushes
  
• first normal attack first target receives double stagger duration
  
• blocking canceling after normal 4 makes the next swing faster and removes move slow
  
• charged attack combo consists of 2 attacks:
  
• first charged attack deals 6 normal damage and 5 armor damage to first target with x2 headshot multiplier, killing nm clan rat on body, cata clan rat on headshot and causing an astounding 10 damage to SVs; beware that it doesn't stagger first armor target
  
• second charged attack deals 10 normal damage to single target, but only 4.5 armor damage without headshot multiplier, good for following up on cata clan rats but not SVs; being a downward stab it also has shorter reach
  
• best way to kill SVs is to use first charged attacks two times, block canceling in between
  
• 1st charged attack is weak against packmasters and ogres, use normal attacks for them or the 2nd charged attack for packmasters
  
• for the charged attacks, only the right hand weapon deals damage and the left hand weapon is fake (try hitting things in the inn)
  
• repeat charged 1 + normal 2 is usable for hordes
  
• this is one of the few weapons that comes with a push stab, hold the attack button after pushing to use it; it hits single target, deals 6 normal damage and 3.5 armor damage with 2.5x headshot multiplier, another very effective anti-armor attack; it is considered a normal attack for traits
  
• pushing + push stab also gives you incredible move speed, however beware that it can leave you open and the follow up input actions are kind of messed up
  
• common ways to kill a singular cata clan rat are:
  - normal 1/2 bodyshot + normal 3+4 bodyshots
  - 1st normal 1st target headshot + any normal bodyshot
  - 1st normal 2nd target headshot + 2nd normal headshot
  - normal 3/4 headshot
  - push stab headshot
  - 1st charged headshot
  - 2nd charged bodyshot
  
• this weapon has the top push move speed, top dodge speed and infinite dodge count, making you very easy to get out of tricky situations; however, it has the weakest push strength along with dual daggers, rats won't be pushed back as much
  
• regrowth normal is only 5%, so bloodlust is probably better even on cata
  
• regrowth charged is 10%, and the charged attacks are quite fast and can hit 2 targets, so it's usable if you can't reroll better traits
  
• killing blow further improves the horde kill speed, and helps to reduce the size of horde into manageable numbers (can be used to get lucky procs on SV headshot too, and the 3rd and 4th normal attacks proc on body); unfortunately it blocks bloodlust and is tied to off balance (not so useful without improved guard / second wind)
  
• scavenger benefits nicely from horde kill speed, but it blocks bloodlust
  
• swift slaying normal / swift slaying charged / berserk are useful as usual, and in addition the normal attack spam will gives you higher move speed because the second half of the swings are cancelled faster
  
• when swift slaying is on, it might be more efficient to do normal attack spam instead of normal 1+2 + block cancel
  
• second wind on a 1h weapon helps you kite, deserve a special mention
  
• improved pommel in addition allows more push attacks
  
• devastating blow improves push strength and let you push SV overheads; it's not very necessary for the user as dodge is always available, but it can be helpful for the teammates; it might push the rat too far and make you miss the push stab
  
• heroic killing blow is worth trying as because of the above average charged attack speed
  
• overall, compared to elven 1h sword, here the lack of regrowth normal 10% restricts the trait combo on orange tier but you gain stronger melee anti-armor ability; higher attack speed also let you kill individual rats faster
  
• the red variant has the killing blow + regrowth normal 10% combo, higher percentage for regrowth (stronger than bloodlust on cata) and comes with improved guard instead of off balance
  
• gameplay by Jsat

List of traits
Red variant A: Killing blow + Regrowth normal 10% + Off balance
Red variant B: Killing blow + Regrowth normal 10% + Improved guard

Recommended trait combinations:

• Bloodlust + Stamina + Devastating blow
  
• Bloodlust + Swift slaying normal/charged + Stamina/Devastating blow
  
• Bloodlust + Improved guard/Second wind + Off balance
  
• Regrowth normal/charged + Berserk/Scavenger + Stamina/Devastating blow
  
• Killing blow + Regrowth normal (+Off balance)
  
• Regrowth normal/charged + Scavenger/Stamina/Devastating blow + HKB
  
• (Red) Killing blow + Regrowth normal 10% + Improved guard

Strong against / Strengths
1-3 clan rats on cata, packmaster, ogre;
Infinite dodge count, bonus mobility during light attacks, high block move speed, half stamina push

Weak against / Weaknesses
>4 grouped up rats;
Low stamina and weak push, attacks have low crowd control, specials mixed in rats - pair with hagbane for crowd control, or avoid dense rats

Attack and damage pattern

• extremely fast single target normal attacks with 3x headshot multiplier, able to one-headshot cata clan rats, or quickly finish them with 3 body hits in case of missing; hitting SV head deals 3 damage (in terms of combat on nm, it has no real advantage over other elven 1h weapons because the headshot damage is overkill and it lacks crowd control)
  
• the transition from 1st to 2nd swing is slower than the others, encourages you to use the whole combo
  
• attack reach is significantly shorter than any other melee weapons; you might miss the rat if you dodge dance as usual, try to turn your camera so you dodge in a curve instead of a straight line away from your target
  
• stagger duration is as short as 1h swords
  
• normal attack and push is faster after blocking than most weapons (0.25s vs 0.3s), so better block canceling
  
• delay between the key press and the actual swing is shorter, making it safer when trying to hit the rats before they hit you, or attack after blocking, etc.; here it has limited use because of the single target attacks
  
• getting headshots is crucial, so here are a few tips: (1) if the rat was not attacking, it is easier to land headshots with the left hand swings, so you can use the 1st swing in the air (which gives you bonus move speed) while approaching and use the 2nd swing to hit it, (2) the arc of the right hand swing will usually hit the arm or body if used statically; try dodging left and turning camera right, at that angle the rat's head protrudes to the right; (3) after a rat standing attack, its head is positioned on the right side so right hand swings will get the headshots
  
• the lower combat performance is backed-up by the mobility: normal attack spam grants you ~10% bonus move speed
  
• to be more precise, all normal attacks have move speed boost for the first half of the swings, and slight move slow in the second half; attacking/dodging/blocking during the second half can reduce the move slow
  
• charged attack is rather fast and hits single target for 10 damage, killing cata clan rat on body, has x2.5 headshot multiplier for damaging SVs, but it takes the same amount of hits as that of sword dagger / dual swords to kill SVs
  
• for the charged attack, only the right hand weapon deals damage and the left hand weapon is fake (try hitting things in the inn)
  
• attack reach is probably shorter than that of normal attacks, and at that range the SVs tend to push you away before you can hit it
  
• charging move speed is slower than that of elven 1h sword, turn and dodge into position if you need to
  
• one normal attack headshot can kill a packmaster instantly, but beware of hitting a stray rat instead; both attacks are pretty good for ogres with headshots
  
• uniquely, push only costs 0.5 stamina (same as basic block cost)
  
• you can use the push stab by holding attack button after pushing; it hits single target, deals 6 normal damage and 3.5 armor damage with x1.75 headshot multiplier; considered as a normal attack for traits; more spammable but weaker than the push stabs of sword dagger / dual swords (lower headshot multiplier) and attack reach is shorter
  
• pushing + push stab increases move speed; beware that it can leave you open and the follow up input actions are messed up, e.g. you can't do charged attack right after a push stab; normal attack spam should be safer to achieve similar mobility
  
• this weapon has the top block move speed, top dodge speed and infinite dodge count; it has only 2 stamina and the weakest push strength along with sword dagger, so survival relies on mobility and avoidance of rats; push move speed is lower
  
• dual daggers excel at killing small number of ambient rats, but if you really have to fight horde, try to hit new targets with every swing to stagger more enemies to keep you safe, mix in some pushes whenever you feel there are too many rats around you (beware that rat attack is longer than push radius), also try to bait rat standing attacks by moving towards them and dodge once they are locked in animation
  
• it's a good idea pairing dual daggers with swift bow or hagbane; swift bow thins out hordes and hagbane kills or at least staggers rats for melee; ammo can be a problem as there is no good trait combo with scavenger on dual daggers, so the bows better have some ammo traits
  
• regrowth normal 5% for single target is very weak, get bloodlust instead; regrowth charged is ok but forces you to use the slow charged attack
  
• with only single target attacks, 2 stamina and the weakest push possible, hordes are your biggest problem; invest in stamina
  
• second wind procs more from the low stamina and synergizes well with the kiting ability
  
• perfect balance gives +50% stamina (2 more pushes) and faster regen (also in dodge dance), but doesn't avoid guard break from SV overhead
  
• free pushes from improved pommel don't stop stamina regen (if not dodging), giving you effectively ~20 pushes on average
  
• devastating blow + perfect balance / improved pommel should give you the needed crowd control in hordes
  
• endurance and improved guard probably don't work so well because low stamina
  
• killing blow is not as strong as it is on other weapons that cleaves multiple rats, but it still helps the low bodyshot damage; note that it blocks bloodlust and is tied to backstab
  
• scavenger doesn't suffer from low proc percentage and you can get ammo from ambient kills, you can put healing on the bow
  
• swift slaying and berserk give higher move speed buffs from normal spam
  
• backstab buffs ogre damage when it targets somebody else, but frontal headshots are more damaging for all targets and trying to the reach the back of other rats is a risk by itself
  
• heroic killing blow might be interesting for last stand, as the charged attack is relatively fast
  
• gameplay by Jsat

List of traits
Red variant A: Perfect balance + Devastating blow + Backstab
Red variant B: Bloodlust + Endurance + Backstab

Recommended trait combinations:

• Bloodlust/Scavenger + Perfect balance/Improved pommel/Second wind + Devastating blow
  
• Bloodlust/Scavenger + Perfect balance/Improved pommel/Second wind + Swift slaying normal/Swift slaying charged/Backstab

Strong against / Strengths
Clan rat on nm and cata, medium density rats, SV, gasrat, assassin, gunner;
Very long stagger duration (for cata), good mobility during light attacks

Weak against / Weaknesses
High density rats, packmaster, ogre;
Low stamina

Attack and damage pattern

• normal attack hits 2 targets for 6/4 damage with x2 headshot multiplier, aim for the head to kill cata clan rats (you might want to keep distance to avoid the swing to hit their left arm first); you can dodge left and turn the camera right so the 2nd target appears higher on the screen
  
• unlike most weapons, here you can't block once the normal attack started, until 0.5s later
  
• normal attack 1 + block cancel is faster than consecutive normal attacks, and using this means you always attack from right to left, so adjust position accordingly; the only exception to this is when you hit the bodies of 2 cata clan rats, using normal 2 will finish them off in one hit because the rat on the left has 6 hp; still it is safer to do normal 1 block cancel
  
• normal attack 1 + quick switch cancel is even faster but requires more button taps
  
• on the other hand, normal 2 is arguably better for headshotting single clan rat
  
• headshotting the 2nd target seems to provide the best damage output, and solves the problem of headshotting 1st target means missing 2nd target
  
• on nm this weapon is a heavy hacker; on cata you will notice the heavy stagger is very helpful, stagger duration is among the longest of all weapons' normal attacks
  
• normal attacks stagger SV but not the overhead unless you have devastating blow as host
  
• as usual with low target attacks, you want to hit new targets to keep you safe, but in the case of the glaive the knockback is so huge you probably don't need to move to achieve that
  
• you get some move speed bonus in the middle of the normal attack swings, so it's easier to "joust"[vermintide.fandom.com] and some mobility to attack while on the move or retreating
  
• by turning the camera and/or dodge, you can hit 2 targets that are extremely far apart
  
• charged attack consists of a 2-swing combo; execute 2nd charged by tapping attack after 1st charged; each hits a single target, first swing has the same damage as a normal attack, which leads to the devastating overhead attack which kills all normal type enemies on cata (20 damage) and almost kills a cata SV (16 damage), you can aim for the head or finish with a normal attack
  
• charged 1 knocks the target back a bit, so keep going forward to hit the SV with charged 2, or swing the first in the air and land a headshot with the second one
  
• charging is perhaps too slow when rats are already in melee range, fall back to charge and move forward as you swing, works well with the mechanics above
  
• both charged 1 and 2 can interrupt SV overhead
  
• charged combo is also very good for breaking pillars and chains
  
• normal attack headshots are only slightly slower to kill SVs, if you don't have the space to use charged attack
  
• all attacks have slow DPS against ogres and packmasters, at best try normal headshots, or just use your bow
  
• block / push move speed and dodges are better than all 2h weapons, close to the lower end of 1h weapons
  
• push ability is same as most 1h weapons but consecutive push is slower than standard
  
• only 2 stamina and the better mobility and stagger provided by the normal attack seem to reward using the attacks to control rats rather than using push or block to defend, that said a stamina + devastating blow combo is sufficiently defensive
  
• bloodlust heals the best on both nm and cata, but regrowth normal is not too far off on cata as it can proc from body hits, intentional or not
  
• swift slaying normal speeds up the normal attacks to kill or control, gives you movement speed to keep you out of danger (you get more move speed bonus from consecutive normal attacks), easier jousting from faster backward speed, and reduces the charging time as well
  
• berserk has similar effects and can have higher up-time depending on your headshot rate
  
• scavenger works quite well as you can often get the kills before your teammates
  
• second wind procs more because of low stamina
  
• perfect balance gives you +50% stamina and faster regen (can regen in dodge dance), but doesn't avoid guard break from SV overhead
  
• endurance and improved guard probably don't work so well because low stamina
  
• killing blow has some effect, most notable on SVs, but blocks bloodlust and is tied to off balance, which is harder to use as you can't block as much compared to other weapons
  
• the red glaive has two perfect trait sets, bloodlust + scavenger + berserk is all on-kill traits that trigger from hagbane poison kills
  
• gameplay by Jsat

List of traits
Red variant A: Bloodlust + Swift slaying 7% + Perfect balance
Red variant B: Bloodlust + Berserk + Scavenger

Recommended trait combinations:

• Bloodlust + Swift slaying normal + Stamina/Devastating blow
  
• Regrowth normal + Berserk/Scavenger + Stamina/Devastating blow
  
• Bloodlust/Regrowth normal + Stamina + Devastating blow
  
• (Red) Bloodlust + Berserk + Scavenger

Strong against / Strengths
Specials, ogre, SV, moving targets, targets behind obstacles

Weak against / Weaknesses
Target embedded in many rats; SV and gunner on cata require 2 arrows;
Low total ammo - proper ammo management is crucial, or use melee scavenger

Attack and damage pattern

• both normal and charged attacks are target seeking arrows, homing to the body of one of the closest rats by default, to the head if the target is locked on (highlighted in red or blue outline, see below)
  
• damage profiles: normal shots can one-bodyshot nm clan rats and cata slave rats and have x2 headshot multiplier; charged shots deal 8 normal damage and 4 armored damage with x3 headshot multipliers, one-headshot all assassins, gas rats and packmasters on cata (see below for armor)
  
• all arrows don't penetrate armored or resistant targets
  
• normal shots don't stagger SVs, charged can stagger armor but not SV overheads
  
• time to switch away from this weapon after a normal shot is longer, beware when you need to block quickly
  
• making use of the lockon mechanics and getting headshots is important for killing specials quickly and to save ammo; it is more complex than bolt staff because normal shots are also affected by the lock
  
• the first lockon starts 0.5s from the beginning of the charge, it selects the closest valid target hit by the line of sight and highlight it in red outline, regardless of accuracy and bypass obstacles to some degree, i.e. it can lock onto a target behind a wall; afterwards it updates the target selected every 0.1s by the same line of sight check, you won't lose the lock when you hold right click and don't lockon another rat; the update can lead to target switch when another rat walks in front of the desired target
  
• note that without attack speed buffs (mastercrafted, haste, etc.), you can only shoot charged 0.65s after charging begins
  
• the blue outline from anyone pinging an rat will override the effect of the red outline, that means the bolt prioritize tracking the target in blue; if the pinged rat is the same one with the red outline, it is also visually overwritten by the blue outline; there are mods that make the bolt ignores ping and prioritize red outline
  
• after one successful charged shot with a target locked on, the bow "remembers" the locked target and subsequent normal shots will also home to the head of the same target; normal shots are weaker but faster, allow you to quickly finish off an SV or gunner you didn't kill with the first arrow; you can even shoot the second arrow before the first one hits
  
• efficient combinations of charged and normal shots to kill armors are:
  - nm: 1 charged headshot + 1 normal bodyshot
  - nm w/ hawkeye: 1 charged headshot
  - cata: 2 charged headshots, or 1 charged headshot + 2 normal headshots
  - cata w/ hawkeye: 1 charged headshot + 1 normal headshot, or 1 charged headshot + 2 normal bodyshots (in case it misses)
  
• for SVs you can get one charged headshot and finish with melee to save ammo
  
• against ogre, charged headshots are best for DPS and ammo efficiency, but if you have hawkeye and ammo is not a concern (e.g. ammo crate is near or haste is active), normal headshots have acceptable DPS and can be safer if threats are close
  
• the "memory" lasts until you charge again and lock onto a new target, or switch the ranged weapon in the inventory box; that means you can switch to melee and switch back to the bow for a quick headshot
  
• you can curve the arrow trajectory by locking onto the target and shoot in another direction, the arrow will find its way to the target with a certain turn rate, as long as the target is within the 135 degree "cone" of the arrow direction; use this to get around obstacles, rats and teammates
  
• if the target is facing away, the arrow can be flying to the head but hits another body part before that; if you suspect that can happen, try to use the curve mechanics to shoot the arrow upward or in the facing direction of the rat, provided that it doesn't hit an obstacle; use this to get headshots on ogres aggroed to teammates
  
• the lockon mechanics can be used for scouting and searching for rats, especially specials, behind obstacles before you can see it: one way to use it effectively is to start charging to initiate locking, then wiggle the crosshair in the general direction where you predict the rat to be, and the target would be highlighted if your line of sight happens to cross over it; map knowledge of the player, the audio cue and the character dialogues will provide more clues to where the special is located, and all these can make a trueflight longbow user a lot more efficient at special sniping, and kill the most dangerous specials on cata - assassins and gas rats - before they even post a threat to the team
  
• aim at the torso of the target so not to miss it, e.g. if you aim at the leg level the crosshair can be off and it won't lockon; or you can try wiggling around the target a bit, if the target is alone so there is no risk of picking the wrong target
  
• the charged shot does't require accuracy to headshot the target, so you can dodge and aim at the same time, making trueflight longbow very good at dealing with assassins, gas rats and packmasters even when you are surrounded by many rats
  
• on the other hand, it is almost impossible to lock onto the desired target if it is standing close to a bunch of other rats on the screen; try to change the position for a better sight if the target exactly standing among the rats
  
• although you can lock onto target after the arrow is fired and before it hits, the arrow will only acquire the target locked at the moment of firing
  
• for targets within ~10m, there isn't enough space for the arrow to curve itself so you need to manually aim at the head or the body of the target, even when it is locked; also it's easier to miss at close range if the target moves the head
  
• quickly dragging the crosshair across the target might not lockon if it skips over the 0.1s update interval
  
• after hitting the locked target, the arrow looks for bodyshot on a random target in a roughly 45 degree cone; you can control where it goes by curving the bolt at the desired angle
  
• charged headshot can one shot cata clan rats, and spamming normal shots has decent kill speed as the arrow should always kill 2 slaves without aiming, so you can shoot at maximum rate; the only issue is the small total ammo pool, you won't kill that many trash rats and will lose the ammo to kill specials, SVs and ogres
  
• if you find an ammo crate, spamming normal shots can clear the field ahead and you don't even need to aim (use charged on SVs); it is indeed efficient, if not a bit boring and mindless
  
• this weapon is silent, you can snipe rats down in a group without being noticed by other rats

• hawkeye increases the headshot multipliers (x2 to x3 for normal, x3 to x4 for charged), lets you one-headshot SVs and gunners on nm; on cata it lets you do one charged headshot then one quick normal headshot to kill them, instead of two charged headshots which is much slower; also greatly boosts your ogre damage; note that you need to carry the longbow in your hand when the arrow hits to trigger the effect
  
• mastercrafted improves overall fire rate, and in addition brings down the minimum charging time from 0.65s to ~0.5s, so you can shoot charged as soon as the target is locked; the split second can be the difference of killing a special before it attacks or after it deals significant damage to the team, and makes the user safer to snipe when surrounded, so it's a very good trait to improve the sniping capability, and ogre DPS as well
  
• ammo holder lessen the ammo limitation, in base game there are not too many specials (usually up to 20 for an average run), so minus the fixed amount of ammo reserved for specials, ammo holder provides a lot more extra ammo for SVs and ogres
  
• scavenger returns only one arrow per proc, if you do use all the ammo, the ammo gain on average is about the same as ammo holder; however, scavenger has weaker effect on SVs, gunners because they take 2 arrows to kill, and arrows used on ogre has no effect; you only get better ammo return if you kill 2 nm clan rats or cata slaves per shot, but it's still a negative ammo gain on average; so in general scavenger is less preferable than ammo holder on its own
  
• melee scavenger is highly recommended to prevent running dry, if you are decent at melee, you can general a lot more ammo than any ammo traits above, so you might not need ammo holder or scavenger on the bow
  
• ammo traits are also less necessary if the map is full of ammo crates, in case you want to roll a speicialized trueflight for certain maps; still, for general use, some ammo traits are recommended
  
• haste let you fire faster and, more importantly, without spending ammo for 5 seconds; the main advantage is to have a lot more free shots for the ogre or Krench fight if it procs; also has an impact when there are several specials and SVs in sight if it procs early; but what often happens is it procs on a special or SV kill and there are only trash rats around for you to shoot, so you don't really get extra ammo for the important targets; additionally, haste blocks mastercrafted, so it's more likely haste doesn't proc and you have slower fire rate for multiple specials; so it's a trade-off of better average performance vs more ammo for ogre and better ammo sustain sometimes
  
• haste being on-hit with higher proc chance is strictly superior to berserk, which also blocks mastercrafted
  
• the scavenger + haste combo allows you to gain ammo from trash rats after it procs; note that the ammo gain is often negative if you spend ammo to proc haste on trash rats, so only shoot trash rats when haste already procs on specials, SVs or ogres
  
• notably this combo is very good on Well Watch for killing waves of trash rats, as you don't need to worry about ammo there; on cata, try to proc haste by aimed charged shots on clan rats (for better scavenger procs), then spam normal shots to the slaves
  
• hail of doom affects normal and charged shots; the extra arrow has the same homing behavior as the original arrow: home to the head of the target in red/blue outline, or if that target is dead before it hits or no target is locked, it would find new targets to do bodyshot; it gives you a chance to kill armor by only shooting once (but a bit awkward if you are used to shoot 1 charged + 1 normal immediately), and increases ogre damage on average; it has synergy with many other traits as the extra shot can proc on-hit and on-kill traits, e.g. scavenger, haste, bloodlust, regrowth
  
• bloodlust and regrowth only have an impact when you kill a lot of rats, so you can get heal by spamming next to an ammo crate and it's map dependent; or try to combine with haste + scavenger, but then you lose so many other useful traits; regrowth is 12% and offers better heal on ogres and cata armored rats
  
• skirmisher allows you to strafe faster while aiming so you can move to a better position, you will get a lockon more easily than dodging and aiming at the same time, but probably the benefit is too marginal
  
• knockback has 40% chance, but you should aim to kill the target so it won't be useful
  
• distraction can help a far away teammate but you won't have the ammo to do it for long
  
• skullcracker is tied to distraction and only realistically works on the arrow's second target
  
• targeteer shouldn't do anything for this weapon
  
• this weapon deals good burst damage against Krench, pick hawkeye/hail of doom/haste/mastercrafted and keep shooting it while dodging back in circle if it targets you
  
• poison flask lets you kill armor with one shot sometimes on nm without hawkeye or cata with hawkeye, but it's hard to detect at long range; the trinket in general favors a spam play style so it works better with scavenger + haste; it can help with that combo in Well Watch
  
• damage boon allows you to one-headshot armor on nm without hawkeye, or one-headshot armor on cata with hawkeye; also allows one charged bodyshot to kill cata clan rats
  
• compared to bolt staff, trueflight has limited ammo, but has hawkeye for damage boost and higher fire rate, kills armor slightly faster and has better ogre damage; you don't need to reload or vent, and with good ammo management and melee scavenger allow you to transit well between ranged and melee
  
• trueflight mechanics test
  
• how to use trueflight effectively for hordes
  
• gameplay by Jsat

List of traits
Red variant A: Ammo holder + Mastercrafted + Hail of doom
Red variant B: Scavenger 20% + Haste 12% + Hail of doom

Recommended trait combinations:

• Hawkeye + Mastercrafted +
  Ammo holder/Hail of doom/Scavenger/Skirmisher/Bloodlust/Regrowth <- general sniper build
  
• Scavenger + Haste + Hawkeye/Hail of doom/Bloodlust <- horde focus, especially for Well Watch
  
• Hawkeye + Haste + Hail of doom <- high ogre damage and ok ammo sustain, also best against Krench
  
• Hawkeye + Ammo Holder + Scavenger/Hail of doom <- more effective ammo
  
• Hawkeye + any reasonable combinations

Strong against / Strengths
Ambient SV, ogre, gunner, ambient clan rat on cata, lined up rats;
Decent ammo pool

Weak against / Weaknesses
Assassin, moving targets;
Armor requires headshot

Attack and damage pattern

• normal shot hits 2 targets and kills nm rats / cata slaves in one bodyshot; with x2 headshot multiplier it kills cata clan rats on headshot too; fire rate is not that fast for the damage, but usable when you don't have the extra 0.75s for the charged shot when you need to stagger gas rat / assassin quickly
  
• normal shot moderately decreases move speed for a split second
  
• charged shot hit 3 targets for 10 normal damage or 4 armored damage with x4 headshot multiplier, good for quickly killing ambient cata clan rats (for SVs / specials see below); pin-point accurate when standing still, but unlike handguns / crossbows, charged shot has moderate moving spread, either take skirmisher or stand still when you snipe; this can affect players who are used to adjust their aim by character movement
  
• the arrows don't penetrate armored or resistant targets
  
• most efficient ways to kill various targets (excluding some difficult headshots):
  - gas rat / assassin: 2 charged bodyshots
  - packmaster: 1 charged bodyshot & 1 normal bodyshot, or 3 normal bodyshots, or w/ hawkeye 1 normal headshot
  - SV / ratling: 1 headshot w/ hawkeye or damage boon on cata, or finish with 1 charged bodyshot
  
• time to switch away from this weapon after a normal shot is longer, beware when you need to block quickly
  
• charged shot fire rate is faster than crossbow's normal and charged shots, you don't need to reload between shots so your crosshair can stay on the target, plus you can use the even faster normal shots here, making longbow a lot stronger at killing specials; still, sniping moving assassins / packmasters / gas rats can be difficult because of arrow flight time, although longbow charged shot can stagger packmasters which helps the follow up normal shot
  
• if you shot assassins once, stagger time is too short to charge so just keep doing normal shots
  
• both normal shots and charged shots have significant ballistic drop, which doesn't affect bodyshots that much, but getting headshots for those SVs / ratlings at various range requires practice; normal shots projectile speed is about half of that of charged shots, adjust your shot-leading accordingly
  
• you can check the sections for handguns or crossbows to find some tips on headshotting ambient SVs, but missing some shots is not as punishing on longbow and you get 3-4 shots in before the SVs start moving, or you can do a bodyshot stagger then aim for the head
  
• this weapon is silent, you can snipe rats down in a group one by one and being unnoticed the whole time; one way to progress through the map is to shoot only the rats on the way and sneak pass the oblivious ones
  
• disregarding ammo cost, normal shots have better horde kill speed on both nm/cata as they have double fire rate of that of charged shots; either way you can delete most of the hordes coming from far away
  
• mastercrafted improves all fire rate and the charged draw speed, so faster consecutive bodyshots to kill specials and more chances to headshot SVs / ratlings, higher fire rate to kill horde, safer to snipe in melee; one of the top traits to have
  
• hawkeye allow you to kill SVs / ratlings on cata with one headshot, reduces the ammo cost and the time spent on special killing, thus minimizes the risk of getting hit by a stray rat; killing multiple advancing SVs is also easier; ogre DPS is increased as well, and with both hawkeye & mastercrafted and consistent headshots, the longbow would be ranked 3rd as one of the best ogre killers (among many other weapons), following hagbane; note that you need to carry the longbow in your hand when the arrow hits to trigger the effect
  
• on nm you don't need hawkeye to kill any target, so it only boosts ogre damage, but on nm the ogre maybe dying too quickly to justify taking hawkeye
  
• skirmisher allows you to strafe faster while aiming, removes the spread while moving and let you adjust position for a better snipe angle, worth considering because longbow is headshot-dependent and charged shot has moving spread
  
• charged shot triple kills are great for bloodlust and scavenger, and you have enough ammo to spare for ambient clan rats; regrowth is not bad as well
  
• scavenger returns 2 arrows per proc, 3 with ammo holder
  
• longbow is good for everything and ammo holder gives you more spare ammo for that
  
• haste being on-hit with higher proc chance is strictly superior to berserk, both traits mainly see the use in hordes and have nice synergy with scavenger and bloodlust (you might want to proc haste with charged shots first then start spamming normal shots); note that both haste and berserk are mutually exclusive to mastercrafted
  
• skullcracker is tempting but it is tied to inspirational shot, leaving only one trait slot
  
• hail of doom works better on longbow than on crossbow / handgun because the recoil spread is much smaller; in case of no hawkeye, you can get a lucky headshot + bodyshot to kill some targets; also gives better chance to proc on-hit traits because of the extra arrow, compared to skullcracker
  
• knockback has 40% chance and will occasionally knock down the targets, but it might be harder to headshot afterwards
  
• targeteer is probably similar to skirmisher in practice
  
• given good aim, longbow is probably a lot better than crossbows because of higher fire rate & no reload time & no reload animation that disrupts aim & more total ammo and ammo sustain & very good ogre damage; but on cata hawkeye will occupy one more trait slot here, while crossbows can get some fancy traits such as scavenger and bloodlust
  
• trueflight has the unmatched advantage of killing specials behind obstacles before they even show up, plus you can spend much less time aiming regardless of skill level; the ordinary longbow has a better ammo pool and is more ammo efficient against SVs / ratlings / clan rats / hordes (especially on cata)
  
• damage boon lets you one-charged-headshots SVs / ratlings on cata, taking away half the benefits of hawkeye; if you have a longbow without hawkeye you can try it with damage boon
  
• more headshot tips
  
• gameplay by Jsat

List of traits
Red variant A: Mastercrafted + Hail of Doom + Bloodlust
Red variant B: Mastercrafted + Hail of Doom + Skullcracker

Recommended trait combinations:

• Hawkeye + Mastercrafted + Skirmisher/Ammo holder/Scavenger/Bloodlust/Regrowth <- sniper on cata
  
• Scavenger + Haste/Berserk + Hawkeye/Ammo holder/Bloodlust/Regrowth/Hail of doom <- horde focus
  
• Mastercrafted + any reasonable combinations that suits your style and map difficulty

Strong against / Strengths
Normal rats, gasrat, packmaster, assassin, ogre;
Quickly clearing areas, large ammo pool

Weak against / Weaknesses
SV, gunner, approaching spread out rats;
Armor requires multiple headshots, no armor stagger, normal shots fire rate limited by recoil

Attack and damage pattern

• normal shots have very fast fire rate, hits single target and kills nm rats / cata slaves, requires double-tap to kill cata clan rats; +1 headshot bonus doesn't hit any important breakpoint, so just focus on landing bodyshot with the high fire rate; no damage to armor, and note the x1.5 headshot multiplier for ogres / packmasters
  
• fire rate seems to depend on game FPS and seems 0.2 second + 1 frame per shot, this can result in variable fire rate if FPS is not stable
  
• accuracy is mediocre but sufficient for bodyshots, might start to feel inaccurate when recoil spread kicks in
  
• has an unconventional recoil camera movement to lower-right; the recoil is very large at max fire rate because there is no time at all for it to reset; better shoot in short bursts and re-aim, unless there is a huge chunk of overlapping rats
  
• normal shot slightly decreases move speed for a split second
  
• charged shots are almost the same as normal shots, but pierce additional target, deal 2.5 damage to armor and have x2 headshot multiplier; use it for lined-up rats or to headshot cata clan rats to save ammo, and to do some damage to SVs / ratlings; fire rate is rather low for its damage
  
• the arrows don't penetrate armored or resistant targets
  
• neither normal or charged shots stagger armor
  
• charged shots are pin-point accurate when standing still, but have moderate moving spread
  
• arrows have significant ballistic drop, doesn't affect bodyshots that much, but getting headshots for those SVs / ratlings at various range requires practice; against common sense, projectile speed for charged shots are slightly lower than normal shots
  
• since ammo is usually not a problem, against assassins / gas rats / packmasters spamming normal shots is the fastest way to kill (3-4 shots), and any hit can stagger assassins / gas rats
  
• against ratlings it's not as hopeless as repeater pistol as charged shots deal acceptable damage with headshot bonus; requires 3-4 headshots to kill so it depends on your aiming skill, and you can't shoot shoot accurately when under fire
  
• SVs give you at most one headshot before moving as the arrows don't stagger them; it shouldn't be a problem as all elven melee weapons have good armor damage, but be ready to fight melee
  
• ogre DPS is good if you can spam normal shots to the head; charged shots are too slow even with headshots
  
• needless to say the swiftbow is amazing anti-horde, but because of the recoil it does the job better at choke points when rats are linear; for people with inhuman aim, shooting spread out rats doesn't lose value unlike weapons with penetration
  
• swiftbow is silent, you can kill most ambient rats while being unnoticed
  
• strength potion let you deal normal damage to armors and kill multiple SVs / ratlings very quickly with normal shots (applied to off balance as well but it's per rat); beware of the high friendly fire damage
  
• top level dodge with good dodge count allows you to keep distance from rats and keep shooting; also useful when you have glaive and want better dodges
  
• scavenger returns 5 ammo per proc, 6 with ammo holder, using normal shots on nm rats / cata slave rats already has positive net ammo gain on average; to get even more ammo, use charged shots to kill 2 rats
  
• hawkeye helps you snipe SVs and gunners, they drop in 2-3 charged headshots on nm/cata; note that hawkeye doesn't affect normal attack headshot damage on ogre / packmaster, which remains x1.5; normal headshots still have higher ogre DPS than hawkeye charged headshots; note that you need to carry the swiftbow in your hand when the arrow hits to trigger the effect
  
• with high horde kill speed and little ammo restriction, you can end up killing all trash rats with the bow so your melee healing traits won't work; if you get into that situation often, consider putting bloodlust on the bow so you don't need to care about melee
  
• regrowth is strictly weaker than bloodlust when used on all the targets you should shoot
  
• haste and berserk don't affect normal shots fire rate, only charged shots, so you are taking it mostly for the free shots, which does let you care less about aiming when active, or regenerate ammo on horde when combined with scavenger
  
• haste vs berserk is difficult: haste has below half proc chance of berserk so it's worse on all trash rats, still too low for meaningful benefits from specials, but might help with SVs and ogres as you need a lot of arrows for those
  
• hail of doom is 15% damage boost that has synergy with many other traits, e.g. scavenger, bloodlust, haste, berserk, and also helps with armor killing as you need multiple shots; skullcracker is weaker than hail of doom because of the lack of headshot bonus and unable to damage more targets
  
• mastercrafted affects only charged shots fire rate, take it for better anti-armor, or if you prefer charged shots for hordes
  
• ammo holder does its job and give you spare ammo for ogres, but starts to feel overkill with scavenger and/or haste/berserk; it's the only ammo trait that doesn't depend on your hit rate
  
• skirmisher and targeteer improves accuracy that is usually not needed; charging move speed is already very high for skimisher to work there, and charged shots are accurate enough; targeteer also halve recoil spread and might help shooting ogre head
  
• distraction might be worth trying because of high fire rate and ammo, and there aren't many necessary traits for the weapon to work properly
  
• knockback is weird: either your normal shots kill the target quickly, or you use the charged shots which is too slow for it to proc reliably; can possibly work with haste/berserk
  
• inspirational shot on the red version only gives 0.5 stamina shield when shooting trash rats, can be occasionally useful when shooting ogre head
  
• poison flask can help you kill armor faster and increase ogre damage with normal shot spam
  
• overall the swiftbow is a versatile and flexible weapon that is slightly weak against armor, and it doesn't require you to get the exact traits for it to work fantastically
  
• more headshot tips
  
• gameplay by Jsat

List of traits
Red variant A: Scavenger 24% + Knockback 10% + Inspirational shot
Red variant B: Ammo holder + Scavenger 24% + Haste 5%

Recommended trait combinations:

• Scavenger + Haste/Berserk + Hawkeye/Hail of doom/Bloodlust/Ammo holder
  
• Scavenger + Hawkeye + Hail of doom/Mastercrafted/Haste/Ammo holder <- better anti-armor
  
• Scavenger + ......

Strong against / Strengths
Ogre, horde, packmaster, assassin, ambient clan rats on cata;
Good crowd control, staggering specials and eventually killing them by poison, second best ogre-killing weapon

Weak against / Weaknesses
Mass SVs, specials takes a few seconds to die;
No armor stagger, low total ammo without ammo traits

Attack and damage pattern
X direct damage is applied on impact on one target and Y arrow poison damage applied to it over 3 seconds, plus Z poison cloud damage applied over 3 seconds to every target in the initial impact area of 1m (normal) or 2m (charged), for a total of (X+Y1/Y2)+Z1/Z2 damage as in the table (50% chance between Y1/Y2 and Z1/Z2)

• all attacks shoot poison arrows that have 3 damage components: direct hit impact damage, direct hit arrow poison DoT, and poison cloud DoT; the first two apply only to the target you hit, while the poison cloud is basically an explosion that deals AoE DoT; arrows have no penetration at all and always explode on impact
  
• extremely high single target total damage to the primary target: 10-13 normal damage (bodyshot cata clan rats, 2 bodyshot cata assassins and gas rats), 38-46 resistant damage (bodyshot cata packmasters); beware that it takes 3 seconds to deal full damage, but melee rat units should cause no problem outside of melee range, and you can speed up the process by shooting more arrows; damage has a range because there is 50/50% chance for each DoT to lose one stack
  
• poison cloud can damage infinite amount of rats inside the radius (4-5 normal damage with 50/50% chance) and applies very strong stagger to trash rats - 1.8s stagger duration on cata, together with its high fire rate you can crowd control and kill the whole horde alone; poison cloud is the only attack that has different stagger duration for different rarity, 1.2s for white / green and 1.5s for blue
  
• headshots have negligible damage bonus so focus on landing bodyshots
  
• main differences of normal shots and charged shots are (1) fire rate, (2) slight direct hit damage, (3) poison cloud radius (1m for normal and 2m for charged), and (4) only charged shots can apply poison to armor (see below)
  
• normal shots have high fire rate (0.3s per shot), good for killing ambient clan rats, bodyshotting packmasters and double tapping assassins / gas rats, and to kill ogre quickly (see below)
  
• normal shots can substitute melee push to some degree: while fighting melee and the several rats overlap in front of you, try to do a quick shot to stagger and damage all of them; in case of being partially surrounded, spamming normal shots in all directions can stagger all rats on the front row and prevent them from attacking you
  
• charged shots have double poison cloud radius so quadruple area coverage, better for horde killing and crowd control; also you need charged shots to damage SVs / ratlings
  
• charged arrow projectile speed is 60% higher than normal shots
  
• "finger rolling": releasing right click after each charged shot increases consecutive charged shot fire rate by 60% to 0.5s per shot
  
• 1 poison cloud kills nm slave rats; you need 1-2 poison clouds for nm clan rats or cata slave rats, and 2-3 poison clouds for cata clan rats to kill them; or just weaken them with fewer arrows and finish by melee
  
• optimal landing spot for hordes varies with your elevation: shooting at the front row of rats pushes back all rats and give you more time to shoot, but only half of the poison cloud area applies; on the other hand, when you are standing higher than the horde and have some obstacles between rats and you so that approaching rats aren't a problem, shooting at the center of the horde maximizes the damage and stagger of each arrow and delay the maximum numbers of rats; notice how rats are pushed away from poison cloud center and create denser rats in other spots, and shoot follow up shots there; also choke points, climb-up spots and drop-down spots where rats tend to bunch up are good places to shoot at
  
• even when you can't accurately shoot fast moving assassins, firing normal / charged barrage in the general direction should have decent chance of it being caught by multiple poison clouds and die; you need 4 poison clouds, or 1 bodyshot + 2 poison clouds on cata (fewer on nm)
  
• for maximum ogre DPS, spam normal shots at its belly or lower back so that the poison cloud can reach its unit center; charged shots have the advantage of doing full damage (which is the same as normal shots) even when shooting at the wrong body parts but have lower DPS
  
• under strength potion effect, you need 16-19 arrows to kill nm ogres and 22-27 arrows on cata, so try to conserve some ammo if you don't have many ammo traits
  
• poison vs armor logic: poison cloud DoT is never applied to them; arrow poison DoT is applied only when armor is penetrated (i.e. direct damage is done), so arrow poison is applied when
  (1) charged shot hits directly, 5-6 damage,
  (2) normal shot hits the head with +1 direct damage, 5-6 damage, or
  (3) normal shot hits the body when strength potion / off balance debuff is active, 6-7 damage, on cata try to get at least one headshot to guarantee armor kill in 3 shots
  
• shoot 3-4 charged shots to kill ambient SVs or ratlings on nm/cata
  
• facing SVs mixed in horde, decide whether you want to kill the SV or the horde first depending on the size of horde: shoot charged at the SV to damage it and all the trash rats in 2m radius at the same time, or when the trash rats get out of control, shoot at the front row or frank to cut down their numbers
  
• while SV kill speed is not bad, hagbane can't stagger SVs at all and it takes a few seconds for the poison to kill, so be ready to engaged SVs at close range, dodge attacks or melee them, or use mobility to get away (although that's not necessary good in teamplay)
  
• friendly fire from the poison cloud is minimal; direct hits can hurt a bit, and they will accumulate if spammed too hard; the most negative effect is that the poison DoT makes teammates can't shoot accurately for 3s (including the hagbane user)
  
• there is a less known game mechanics that if a player take damage with <50% stamina, it will gain half a stamina shield back; this effect can be triggered by the poison cloud on yourself and teammates, which is perfect for exploiting this mechanics because of the low damage and multiple damages from DoT
  
• as rats tend to build up near the teammates in melee, DPS-wise you want to shoot at those rats but make sure not to cause too much friendly fire or annoy teammates too much
  
• top level dodge with infinite dodge count allows you to keep distance from rats and keep shooting; against a long frontline you can keeping dodging left or right and shoot at the rats to control the whole line; also useful when you have glaive and want better dodges, and you can drop the swift strider trinket
  
• this weapon is silent, you can shoot ambient rats without aggroing too many rats, but rats won't die instantly and will inform nearby rats

• total ammo is average, but the high killing power means you can gain a lot from scavenger, and the AoE attack can trigger haste very easily; as the weapon stats are good enough, you don't need traits to improve its performance and it is recommended to take ammo traits to allow more shooting
  
• scavenger returns 1 arrow per proc, 2 with ammo holder; ammo holder is therefore the first trait to look for ammo sustain, and it affects melee scavenger as well
  
• one charged shot can kill a lot of nm slave rats quickly, so scavenger is already very strong; on cata the poison cloud takes more ammo and longer to kill
  
• to get procs from on-kill traits (scavenger, bloodlust and berserk) on the bow, you need to have it in your hand when the rats die; easy if the horde is far, difficult in close range
  
• having melee scavenger allows you to switch weapons freely without giving up scavenger procs, also poison kills can proc bloodlust on melee, the bloodlust + scavenger combo on red 1h sword and red glaive might be interesting
  
• furthermore, teammates (humans or bots) might kill the poisoned rats that will die a few seconds later (perhaps they are threatened by the rats in melee), so either coordinate with the team to leave those rats to you, or shoot only those rats that won't be killed by the team
  
• haste gives you 5 seconds of free ammo, great against ogre as you need to spam at it (one proc gives you ~23 free normal shots); combined with scavenger you can gain ammo from hordes, and provide better crowd control by spamming which further increases the time you can hold the bow, hence more scavenger procs on the bow
  
• haste procs on all rats hit by the poison cloud (but not from the poison DoT stacks), so the highest chance is achieved by shooting charged at the center of a horde; in case of ogre + horde fight you can try to proc haste by shooting charged at the horde first, then spam at the ogre (even better if horde and ogre are standing at the same position)
  
• however, haste encourages you to stick to the bow (switching to melee maintains the free ammo but removes the attack speed buff), so less on-kill traits proc on melee; adjust play style accordingly
  
• normal shots attack speed is limited by the reload time 0.2s, so you won't get full value with >1 attack speed buffs (haste, berserk, speed potions, mastercrafted)
  
• as seen in the descriptions above, many applications are provided by spamming the bow; therefore haste is highly recommended, and you also want ammo holder + scavenger for ammo sustain; best if you have melee scavenger as well
  
• berserk has higher proc chance than haste, but to wait for the poison kills takes several seconds so you won't get the benefits at the beginning of a horde where it is most needed; also it has minimal effect on ogre (except when a horde is near)
  
• bloodlust has the same handling problem as scavenger, as mentioned above; healing is good if you can utilize it
  
• regrowth would be good if not for the 5% proc chance, which means it only work reasonably well on dense hordes, and you need to spam quite a number of arrows to see the effect, but taking regrowth means you have one fewer ammo trait
  
• hail of doom is on average 15% damage boost that have synergy with many other traits, e.g. haste, scavenger, berserk, bloodlust; however as a damage boost and free ammo trait it's weaker than haste
  
• mastercraft affects all attacks and work with finger rolling (same as haste), makes SV and ratling kills faster but doesn't give free shots like haste
  
• distraction can proc on many rats attacking your friends, shooting 1-2 charged easily saves them
  
• knockback and poison flask can be triggered by the poison cloud and helps to damage or stagger mass SVs, but it's not that much to be relied on
  
• accuracy and headshot related traits don't help at all
  
• by far the most overpowered weapon that has very high base stats, excellent in almost every situation regardless of solo / teamplay, and possesses many advantageous bugs / exploits
  
• while hagbane is usually rated as the 2nd best ogre killer, volley crossbow is 1st place only in ideal situations and when used properly, otherwise its DPS is more or less the same as haste hagbane; in tough ogre + horde or ogre + specials fight hagbane is also more useful than volley
  
• gameplay by Jsat

List of traits
Red variant A: Ammo holder + Hail of doom + Distraction
Red variant B: Ammo holder + Scavenger 24% + Bloodlust

Recommended trait combinations:

• Scavenger + Haste + Ammo holder <- best
  
• Ammo holder + Scavenger/Haste + Bloodlust/Hail of doom/Knockback/Regrowth/Distraction
  
• Ammo holder + Mastercrafted + Hail of doom <- better anti-armor?

Strong against / Strengths
Horde of any size, 1-2 clan rats on cata;
Very good crowd control, great heal w/ regrowth, no dodge cooldown

Weak against / Weaknesses
Low horde kill speed (can be remedied by killing blow)

Attack and damage pattern

• first three normal attack hits infinite amount of rats, two swings are almost horizontal and the third is upward diagonal; x2 headshot multiplier applies only to the first target of normal 1+2, you can kill nm clan rat or cata slave with it
  
• the fourth single-target attack has white weapon level damage; the third swing gives you some move speed, but no other benefits neither; better skip them by block or push cancel
  
• the attack speed is 20% faster than Kruber's 1h mace, but slightly shorter reach; Bardin's height makes him closer to the rats so it is not so noticeable
  
• normal attack and push is faster after blocking than most weapons (0.2s vs 0.3s), so better block canceling
  
• charged attack hits one target vertically, kills cata clan rat in one hit and solid damage against armor, ogre and packmaster as well; this is the fastest among all the single target 10-damage charged attacks of all melee weapons, but the range is a bit short
  
• charged attack following a normal attack is extremely fast, you can stagger a rat with normal swing first for extra safety
  
• you can deal with any number, any density and any formation of normal rats (not being surrounded, of course) using the normal attacks alone and dodge dance; no need for block or push
  
• you can dodge in the direction of the swing to stagger more rats in a wider arc, but that also means rats are staggered and spread out in a larger area and so harder to deal with; alternatively let the rats come closer to be hit by the next swing
  
• normal swing stops when it hits armor or resistant target, it can stagger the SV but be ware of the rats on the other side of it
  
• with infinite target swings that stagger SVs, you have 2 ways to handle horde mixed with SVs: if you want to stagger the SV to stop it from advancing, you can use normal 1+2 to hit the SV and the horde on both sides; if you want to control the horde, better keep your distance so the swings don't come in contact with armor
  
• normal attack reach is better than the push radius
  
• this weapon is among those whose block move speed equals push move speed
  
• Bardin's 1h melee weapons have shorter dodge distance than all other 1h weapons, but no dodge cooldown; as a result, chain dodging gives you >30% move speed, the fastest mode of movement (need trinket for infinite dodge, or you need to dodge jump to reset) excluding swift slaying and speed potion, and you can outrun all melee enemy units; it has a lot of high level uses which won't be listed here
  
• regrowth normal is clearly marvelous with normal 1+2 spam; bloodlust can work on nm, or if you kill a lot of ambient clan rats with charged attack on cata
  
• swift slaying normal has very high up-time and buffs offense / defense / mobility; berserk can proc from charged attack kills but slightly later in a horde fight; both of them increases charged attack speed and helps killing multiple cata clan rats or SVs; the choice usually comes down to healing trait combo
  
• killing blow only works if you deal damage to the target, it can proc on headshot on 3rd to infinite targets and the first two normal attacks are close to horizontal to make it procs more often; for SV you can smack its head until it procs
  
• charged attack is useful enough for charged traits to have a place, but you will need to adjust your play style for them
  
• scavenger can be combined with regrowth normal and works best with charged attack on ambients; good for supplying ammo to your grudge-raker
  
• devastating blow and stamina traits that assist push let you fulfill the crowd control role better, also let your attacks stagger SV overhead if you are host
  
• second wind on a 1h weapon helps you kite, and it's even more ridiculously strong given Bardin's dodges
  
• heroic killing blow is more interesting because of the fast charged attack, but the range is low so it requires better dodge skill from the user; aim at ogre's head for better damage and reach
  
• poison flask can buff your damage a lot while you control rats by normal attacks, can also inflict poison on SVs; poison flask + 1h hammer (+ killing blow) has good melee horde killing speed for Bardin
  
• the red hammer has killing blow + regrowth normal + devastating blow, which can be more useful than off balance on orange
  
• gameplay by Karton

List of traits
Red variant A: Regrowth normal 10% + Swift charged 7% + Devastating blow
Red variant B: Killing blow + Regrowth normal 10% + Devastating blow

Recommended trait combinations:

• Regrowth normal + Berserk/Scavenger + Stamina/Devastating blow
  
• Bloodlust + Swift slaying normal/charged + Stamina/Devastating blow
  
• Killing blow + Regrowth normal (+Off balance)
  
• Bloodlust/Regrowth normal + Stamina + Devastating blow
  
• Regrowth normal + Scavenger/Stamina/Devastating blow + HKB
  
• Bloodlust/Regrowth normal + Improved guard/Second wind + Off balance
  
• (Red) Killing blow + Regrowth normal + Devastating blow

Strong against / Strengths
SV, clan rat on nm, 1-2 rats on cata, ogre, packmaster, gunner;
No dodge cooldown

Weak against / Weaknesses
>3 group up rats on cata;
Low horde skill speed, low crowd control

Attack and damage pattern

• normal attacks deal 6 normal damage to single normal target, kills nm rats and cata slaves on body, requires headshots to kill cata clan rats with its x1.7 multiplier; 5 armored damage makes it the best 1h weapons for killing SVs, 3-4 bodyshots or 2-3 headshots get the job done
  
• normal attack is a 3 swing combo; the transition from 2nd to 3rd swing is the fastest, while from 3rd to 1st takes very long, so for optimal damage output, use normal 1-3 and block cancel / quick switch cancel the 3rd swing
  
• the hitbox on 1h axe has about half the size of the usual, so it's harder to land headshot
  
• the normal attack reach is so short that you might miss the target if you dodge and strike at the same time
  
• (for cata) the stagger for normal targets is quite strong; knockback of clan rat is a bit much as you need to turn or move to do a second hit; it staggers SVs but not the overheads
  
• charged attack hits single target and deals 10 normal damage or 7 armored damage, good for killing cata clan rat when you can't headshot (e.g. when it faces away), but it's not going to kill armor faster than normal attacks
  
• charged attack has weaker stagger for normal targets, and doesn't stagger SV overheads
  
• charged attack speed is lower than most other weapons
  
• this is one of the few weapons that comes with a push attack, hold the attack button after pushing to use it; unfortunately it is weaker than the normal attacks (only x1.5 headshot multiplier) unlike the elven weapons; one of the uses is to cover some distance to strike further target as you gain speed from pushing; it is considered a normal attack for traits
  
• the 120% push move speed lasts very long here (0.6s - 0.8s) if you don't do any action afterwards, which can be used to gain distance from threats or speed run; with swift strider trinket you can outrun clan rats and SVs
  
• differences from Saltzpyre's 1h axe: (1) much shorter reach, (2) lower normal attack speed (~4%) but higher push attack speed, (3) blocking animation occupies most of the screen, (4) better dodges (see below); height difference of the characters might also affects the ease of headshots
  
• Bardin's 1h melee weapons have shorter dodge distance than all other 1h weapons, but no dodge cooldown; as a result, chain dodging gives you >30% move speed, the fastest mode of movement (need trinket for infinite dodge, or you need to dodge jump to reset) excluding swift slaying and speed potion, and you can outrun all melee enemy units; it has a a lot of high level uses which won't be listed here
  
• 1h axe is definitely strong against SVs; it's arguably strong against nm clan rats - one bodyhit can kill them, but many 1h weapons also kill them with headshot and damage a few more; so 1h axe is only truly strong against scattered cata clan rats and SVs
  
• the attacks lack crowd control and comes with average attack speed and average mobility, very unsafe to fight horde, and its horde DPS is a lot lower than most 1h weapons (with decent headshot rate); moreover, 1h axe usually has to do some blocks and pushes which further reduces damage output; nevertheless, it can have high kill counts because each swing is a guaranteed kill
  
• 1h axe plays differently on nm and cata: on nm you just try to swing at the body as fast as possible (headshot does nothing for trash rats); on cata it takes finesse to headshot clan rats and to defend yourself, and rats tend to pile up more often because they are harder to kill
  
• here we outline some ways to handle hordes / group of rats:
  (0) in general, try to hit new targets every swing
  (1) the easiest way in a team is to let them do crowd control, stick close to a teammate so that he/she staggers some rats and attract some attacks
  (2) use the trait combo devastating blow + improved pommel / perfect balance for crowd control: repeat push + 1 or 2 normal attacks to stagger rats periodically; this style is more suitable for team play as pushing also helps teammates, but not very safe when fighting many rats alone, since rats can attack outside the push radius, and blocking some attacks will deplete stamina and eventually lead to guard break; improved pommel allows more chain pushes, but it's advised to not spam dodges when stamina is low to allow regen; perfect balance leans towards dodge dancing as you can regen stamina while chain dodging
  (3) when fighting many rats alone, use the fact that normal 1 + dodge at the same time + block cancel has long block up-time: you can bait rats to do standing attacks before a dodge, and leave you enough time to do one swing (also aim at the head on cata, if possible); ideally you should dodge almost all attacks, but you might need to block some, so second wind / perfect balance / improved guard is good for this style; this method is weaker for Bardin's 1h axe's as it's harder to see in block state and harder to hit rats with short reach
  (4) use drakefire pistols or grudge-raker bashes for hordes
  
• to use 1h axe to full potential, you want to rush all scattered ambient clan rats in safe situation so they don't have chance to group up, and clearing the area allows the team to progress forward
  
• due to word count limit, please refer to Saltzpyre's 1h axe section for trait suggestions; here backstab is not available and instead there is off balance; scavenger is mostly for grudge-raker and crossbow that can be used to kill trash rats, and does nothing to drakefire pistols
  
• red version has bloodlust + berserk + scavenger, very offensive on nm, no stamina trait but the damage reduction and healing can possibly work on cata too; pairs very well with grudge-raker; scavenger is a waste for drakefire pistols but they still complement each others
  
• gameplay by Jsat

List of traits
Red variant A: Bloodlust + Swift slaying charged 7% + HKB
Red variant B: Bloodlust + Berserk + Scavenger

Recommended trait combinations:

• Bloodlust + Improved pommel/Perfect balance/Second wind + Devastating blow
  
• Bloodlust + Swift slaying normal/charged + Stamina/Devastating blow
  
• Bloodlust + Improved guard/Second wind + Off balance
  
• (Red) Bloodlust + Berserk + Scavenger
  
• (Red) Bloodlust + Swift slaying charged + HKB <- for last stand probably

Strong against / Strengths
Horde of any size, SV, packmaster;
Good crowd control and stagger, larger push radius

Weak against / Weaknesses
Low horde kill speed, low mobility, crowd control requires charge up time

Attack and damage pattern

• normal attack deals 9 damage to single target with +1 headshot bonus, killing cata clan rats on headshot but takes you double time to kill if you miss the head; it can stagger SV overhead and kill it in 2-3 hits
  
• normal attacks alone are very slow and there is a lot of wasted idle time after the attack is landed, during which you are vulnerable and suffer from significant move slow; either do (1) block cancel or (2) quick switch cancel after an attack to gain some benefits
  
• the two inputs above also make normal attacks faster, (1) is safer but you will receive the block move slow, and there is a rather huge gap between the hit and the block; (2) doesn't put you in block state, but makes your attacks even faster and let you move faster to approach the next target (optimal input gives you near 100% move speed)
  
• you cannot block during 0.3s-0.7s of a normal attack, which can be problematic as the attack only hits a single target and both your block and attack might be too slow to deal with another rat attacking you, and you can only dodge; for this reason it is safer to use charged attack against >2 rats unless you are sure the other rats won't catch the opening
  
• normal attack kills packmaster with one headshot
  
• charged attack hits infinite targets, dealing 5/3.5 damage to only the first two rats, below average horde damage but still better than pushes or shield bashes; note that it stops when it hits an armored / resistant target
  
• charged attack is characterized by its knockback and long stagger duration for crowd control, but beware that the stagger strength is lowered for the 3rd target and up, specifically those hits don't stagger SV overhead; low attack frequency often suffers from stagger overwrite: attacks from teammates can overwrite your stagger by a weaker one
  
• the main advantage of the charged attacks (over 1h hammer / mace) is that it inflicts huge knockback to SVs, combined with dodges to control the direction, you can knock the SV to the backline of the horde and provide time for you and the teammates to deal with normal rats; 2h hammer also has longer reach than 1h hammer / mace
  
• move the camera and/or dodge in the direction of the swing to hit and stagger more rats; also try to aim at head level as every headshot deals +1 bonus damage, on nm headshot kills the first clan rat
  
• try not to spread out the rats when you knock them around, as it is harder for teammates to defend from them; e.g. when swinging from right to left, make sure to start from hitting the right-most rat so all rats are knocked to the left, concentrated and a smaller angle to defend; e.g. if you are on the right edge and the next swing is left to right, dodge and turn your camera left so rats are knocked backward
  
• normal attack follow up is very fast after a charged attack, mixing them in the attack flow would improve the damage output as that of charged attacks alone is quite low; but beware of the opening from normal attack
  
• charged attack grants you moderate move speed boost, making it easier to "joust"[vermintide.fandom.com] with compared to great axe/2h swords as you can get back to the original position; combined with dodging to cancel charging move slow will give you >100% move speed, pretty rare on a two-handed weapon
  
• the only crowd control attack requires charging means that you often need to hide behind teammates or initiate with a push to start charging up
  
• unique to 1h/2h hammers and mace, the push begins faster after the block (0.2s vs 0.3s); for 2h hammer it can compensate for the slow attacks as a panic button
  
• another feature of the 2h hammer is the larger push radius which is identical to the shields (2.5 vs standard 2), utilizing pushes is probably a safer way to do crowd control
  
• compared to charged attacks for crown control, push keeps you in block state and has effect in all directions, while the downside is stamina cost and the lack of damage
  
• with the aid of some push stamina traits, you can quickly repeat push + normal attack to rush kill SV in a horde safely
  
• dodge is very poor, dodge trinket solves the low dodge count but not the dodge distance and dodge speed
  
• hitting corpses with normal attack doesn't consume the target count, but animation stops and the hammer might not hit the living target behind
  
• bloodlust works best with the normal attack that has one-hit kill potential, and charged attack that always kill 2/1 slave rats on nm/cata
  
• regrowth charged might be tempting, but its effect is limited to larger horde, and even then the teammates might kill the rats too quickly
  
• with low mobility and slow crowd control attack, a stamina trait is recommended for both offense and defense
  
• improved pommel pairs naturally with the stronger pushes, devastating blow gives you more space to charge up and it's the only way to control multiple SVs, and let charged stagger SV overhead as >2nd target; both of them reinforce the crowd control role, also let you pick off SVs among trash rats easier
  
• perfect balance and endurance can work better if you attack more often than push
  
• swift slaying buffs mobility and attack speed, the weaknesses of 2h hammer, but it takes more practice to maintain the attack rhythm
  
• berserk makes your charging process uninterruptible
  
• scavenger blocks bloodlust and stamina + devastating blow, but you can try it with healing on ranged, e.g. shotguns
  
• heroic killing blow procs on all targets hit by the charged attack
  
• safety in numbers can be triggered by attacks or push
  
• damage boon lets you kill cata clan rat on body hits, kill 2nd cata slave rat with charged headshot, and reduces number of hits to kill cata SV by 1
  
• poison flask trinket can inflict poison to all the rats hit by the charged attack, and occasionally upgrade cata clan rat body hit to a kill, a good pair to the 2h hammer if you have the trinket slot
  
• gameplay by[http//gameplay+by]

List of traits
Red variant A: Regrowth charged 3% + Perfect balance + Safety in numbers
Red variant B: Regrowth charged 3% + Perfect balance + Devastating blow

Recommended trait combinations:

• Bloodlust + Improved pommel/Perfect balance/Second wind/Endurance + Devastating blow
  
• Bloodlust + Swift slaying normal/charged + Stamina/Devastating blow
  
• Bloodlust + Improved pommel/Perfect balance + Safety in numbers

Strong against / Strengths
SV, clan rat on cata, spread out targets, ogre

Weak against / Weaknesses
Grouped up rats, high density rats;
Low stamina, low mobility, requires charge up time against group

Attack and damage pattern

• normal attack deals 10 damage to single target with x1.5 headshot bonus, killing cata clan rats on body and SVs in 2-3 hits; headshots allow you to kill cata SV in 2 hits when compared to 2h hammer; ogre dps is very good as well, especially with backstab; however the high damage is an overkill for nm rats
  
• normal attacks alone are slow and there is a lot of wasted idle time after the attack is hit, during which you are vulnerable and suffer from significant move slow; either do (1) block cancel or (2) quick switch cancel after an attack to gain some benefits
  
• the two inputs above also make normal attacks slightly faster, (1) is safer but you will receive the block move slow (this technique is more effective on great axe than on 2h hammers), (2) doesn't put you in block state but let you move faster to approach the next target (optimal input gives you near 100% move speed)
  
• unlike most weapons, here you can't block once the normal attack started, until 0.5s later
  
• despite that, this is a relatively defensive weapon, very small window to be struck after swing if you go directly into a block, you can keep block up most of the time, quickly attack when there is an opening and cut rats down one at a time; in this regard it plays differently from 2h hammers
  
• jumping might allow you to hit SV more easily in a horde to compensate for Bardin's height
  
• normal attack kills packmaster with one headshot
  
• charged attack hits 4 targets for decent horde damage, kills 4 nm slave rats per swing, but on cata it's still lower than 1h weapons, try to hit the head of the 2nd target to kill 2 cata slave rats at once (theoretically up to 4 headshots); against >4 rats bunched up it lacks crowd control because of the low attack speed, you can "joust"[vermintide.fandom.com] behind a teammate to keep swinging
  
• charging move speed is quite high among all weapons, especially the for the first charged attack
  
• because of the low mobility and low defense, it's probably safer to charged attack the rats as they come instead of moving to positions that hit the most rats
  
• charged attack has good stagger, but on cata the stagger duration is about the same as the time to do one charged attack; also it doesn't stagger SV overhead unless you are host with devastating blow (same for normal attack)
  
• with massive killing power but low defensive ability against density, you generally want to quickly murder rats before they can group up
  
• normal + block cancel is arguably safer than charged attack, and definitely more efficient against any number of cata clan rats
  
• mobility is the lowest possible of all weapons, worst dodge and slowest block move speed; dodge trinket solves the low dodge count but not the dodge distance and dodge speed
  
• push ability is standard, same as most 1h weapons
  
• 2.5 stamina might seem lower than the standard 3, but it still allows you to push 3 times when full because you can push with the last 0.5 stamina
  
• since normal attack doesn't require precision to kill most targets, it is quite effective to push to stagger all the rats and chop them down one by one; for that people usually prefer stamina + devastating blow, and they gives you crowd control as well to protect yourself and teammates
  
• bloodlust is the obvious healing choice on all difficulties; both regrowth work quite badly
  
• swift slaying normal should have decent up time as normal attack is the main attack, and reinforce the ambient clearing role; both swift slaying normal / charged help to make charged attack safer to use, jousting is easier because faster backward speed, but not to be relied on
  
• berserk and scavenger are good but block bloodlust, you can use it if you don't need healing, or have enough from ranged weapon
  
• devastating blow, aside from the usual benefits, staggers rats for longer so you can mix in more normal attacks in between
  
• stamina trait is still mostly personal choice, noteworthy points: improved pommel is active defense / offense; improved guard / second wind helps with the block centric style; perfect balance raise stamina to 3.5 but doesn't avoid guard break from SV overhead; endurance should be less effective because of slow attacks
  
• push-spam trait combos let you pick off SVs among trash rats more easily to fulfill the melee anti-SV role
  
• backstab provides the best way to damage ogre for Bardin, move backward to bait the ogre punch and hack away when ogre turns it back to you; but you won't use it on ambient rats and you can take SV faster with two headshots; situationally it can boost charged attack damage on hordes
  
• killing blow does nothing to most targets, and can cause headshots to ogre do less damage (45 vs 40); as usual it's tied to backstab and blocks bloodlust
  
• gameplay by Jsat

List of traits
Red variant A: Berserk + Improved Pommel + HKB
Red variant B: Berserk + Improved Pommel + Backstab

Recommended trait combinations:

• Bloodlust + Devastating blow + Improved pommel/Perfect balance/Second wind/Backstab
  
• Bloodlust + Swift slaying normal/charged + Stamina/Devastating blow/Backstab
  
• Bloodlust + Improved pommel/Perfect balance/Second wind + Backstab

Strong against / Strengths
Grouped up rats;
Good crowd control, staggering multiple SVs, great heal w/ regrowth

Weak against / Weaknesses
Armor, specials, ogre;
Very low damage output (can be remedied by killing blow), low mobility, very low armor damage

Attack and damage pattern

• normal attack hits infinite targets, great for on-hit traits, but damages only 2 targets and has no headshot multiplier; the third single-target attack has white weapon level damage, better skip it by block or push cancel
  
• the hammer's reach is 20% shorter than that of Bardin's 1h hammer and Kruber's mace and shield
  
• you can dodge in the direction of the normal swing to stagger more rats in a wider arc, but that also means rats are staggered and spread out in a larger area and so harder to deal with; alternatively let the rats come closer to be hit by the next swing
  
• normal swing stops when it hits armor or resistant target, it can stagger the SV but be ware of the rats on the other side of it
  
• with infinite target swings that stagger SVs, you have 2 ways to handle horde mixed with SVs: if you want to stagger the SV to stop it from advancing, you can use normal 1+2 to hit the SV and the horde on both sides; if you want to control the horde, better keep your distance so the swings don't come in contact with armor; third way is to use the charged attack
  
• charged attack is a shield bash that damages only one target but creates a secondary bubble effect that pushes other rats and SVs back, it only stops SV overhead if it's the first target
  
• charged attack speed is slower than axe & shield by 33% (although the 1st charged attack has a better bubble radius than usual, 2.5m vs 2m); you should rely on normal attacks and pushes to control crowds
  
• against SVs, your best bet is still bashing it for 7-10 times with the shield; however, it's better to control it, kill it with a gun or let teammates do the work
  
• default push stagger is like other weapons with devastating blow, enough to stagger SV in overhead animation; push radius is longer too (2.5 vs standard 2)
  
• against dense horde, after you push the first row of rats, the second row can still rush to you so be ready to block or push again
  
• try to push the rats only when necessary and only in one direction; panic pushing will just spread out the rats and put danger to the team
  
• don't use the shield bash on patrol, as the SV overhead has longer reach than your bubble; instead push the closing in ones and move backward slowly
  
• the superior push is the best defensive action you can get in the game, it protects the user and the teammates if they stand next to you; if you buff it with improved pommel then no rat can touch you
  
• without any trait, 5 stamina allows you to block an SV overhead and not have guard broken, and it's easier to get a revive when surrounded
  
• endurance procs give you full stamina, which is obviously more effective on a shield than on other weapons; it procs on all targets of the shield bash (except for the primary target because bug)
  
• perfect balance reduces the stamina regen delay and allows you to push again faster when you are out of stamina
  
• devastating blow is controversial: it flings the rats back and stuns them, making them easy to mistake for dead; some players love this, some consider it counter-productive as you have to chase them around; if you take it, make sure you finish off the stunned ones
  
• one definite advantage of devastating blow is that mace strike can stop SV overhead and shield bash will now stagger all SV overheads inside the bubble, if you are the host
  
• regrowth normal is a great choice, you can control the rats while healing to full
  
• bloodlust is usable only on nm, where the mace can at least kill a slave in one strike
  
• swift slaying normal has decent uptime, but you can't roll regrowth normal with it
  
• regrowth charged and swift slaying charged suffer from low percentage, and you probably won't use the charged attack; they proc on corpses
  
• scavenger requires you to actually kill something, which may be a problem, especially on cata
  
• killing blow is available only on red and blue, hits with 0 damage won't proc it, but it can proc on headshots on 3rd to infinite targets and on SVs; it gives you a way to deal with SVs, you can use first two swings to stagger rats on each side of an SV and use the third attack on it
  
• heroic killing blow is weird - each rat (including corpses) in the bubble rolls for a chance to proc it, but it only applies to the primary target; it also has a bug that it never procs on a single target; however it is less effective than axe & shield
  
• poison trinket can buff your damage output quite a lot, but your teammates would still get the kill most of the time
  
• poison flask and endurance work the same way as HKB on shield bash
  
• no matter what traits you take, you simply won't kill much on cata; get used to being the slow moving impenetrable shield wall and leave dealing damage to others
  
• this weapon doesn't offer much to advanced players, as axe and shield can do crowd control better with shield bashes and has better armor damage; hammer and shield is probably good for beginners for staying alive in nm/cata against trash rats and SVs, as you can block passively, spam pushes and heal by infinite target swings
  
• on cata, the blue variant has almost the same damage breakpoints as orange/red variant; killing blow + regrowth normal on blue has good balance of offense and healing; however, the lack of stamina trait and mobility probably makes it less safe compared to 1h weapons
  
• please recommend a good gameplay video

List of traits
Red variant A: Killing blow + Perfect balance + Improved guard
Red variant B: Killing blow + Regrowth charged 3% + Scavenger

Recommended trait combinations:

• Regrowth normal + Berserk/Scavenger + Improved pommel/Endurance/Perfect balance
  
• Regrowth normal + Improved pommel/Endurance/Perfect balance + Devastating blow
  
• Bloodlust + Swift slaying normal + Improved pommel/Endurance/Perfect balance
  
• (Red) Killing blow + Perfect balance + Improved guard
  
• (Red) Killing blow + Regrowth charged 3% + Scavenger
  
• (Blue) Killing blow + Regrowth normal

Strong against / Strengths
Clan rat on nm, SV;
Good crowd control, staggering multiple SVs

Weak against / Weaknesses
Clan rat on cata;
Low horde kill speed, low mobility, light attacks have no armor stagger

Attack and damage pattern

• normal attacks hit single target for 6 damage, kill nm rats in one blow, deal good damage of all types but has slower attack speed than 1h axes
  
• normal 1-2 have no headshot multiplier and normal 3 has x1.5 headshot multiplier (not enough to kill cata clan rats); only normal 3 staggers SVs so be careful if you are used to 1h axes
  
• charged attack is a shield bash that damages only one target but creates a secondary bubble effect that pushes other rats and SVs back, it only stops SV overhead if it's the first target
  
• charged attack speed is the faster ones among all shields, slightly slower than sword & shield; in fact the charged attack speed is pretty close to that of normal attacks
  
• default push stagger is like other weapons with devastating blow, enough to stagger SV in overhead animation; push radius is longer too (2.5 vs standard 2)
  
• against dense horde, after you push the first row of rats, the second row can still rush to you so be ready to block or push again
  
• try to push the rats only when necessary and only in one direction; panic pushing will just spread out the rats and put danger to the team
  
• pushes and charged attacks chain into normal attacks very quickly, you can do more damage while crowd controlling with push/charged + 1 or 2 normal attacks (for cata slave / clan rats or nm clan rats); this combo is also efficient against SV as you want the push/charged to stagger it
  
• against nm slave rat horde, the charged attack can already kill one rat at a time so it's better to just spam charged instead of mixing normal attacks
  
• charged 1 + normal 1 headshot is very fast and deals 10.5 damage to cata clan rat, you can try it instead of normal 1 + 2
  
• don't use the shield bash on patrol, as the SV overhead has longer reach than your bubble; instead push the closing in ones and move backward slowly
  
• be ware that your axe swing can cancel the previous stagger from shield bash or push; except normal 1 and 2 hit on armor and it can be an advantage
  
• the superior push is the best defensive action you can get in the game, it protects the user and the teammates if they stand next to you; if you buff it with improved pommel then no rat can touch you
  
• without any trait, 5 stamina allows you to block an SV overhead and not have guard broken, and it's easier to get a revive when surrounded
  
• endurance procs give you full stamina, which is obviously more effective on a shield than on other weapons; it procs on all targets of the shield bash (except for the primary target because bug)
  
• perfect balance reduces the stamina regen delay and allows you to push again faster when you are out of stamina
  
• devastating blow is controversial: it flings the rats back and stuns them, making them easy to mistake for dead; some players find it useful, some find it counter-productive as you have to chase them around; if you take it, make sure you finish off the stunned ones
  
• one definite advantage of devastating blow is that shield bash will now stagger all SV overheads inside the bubble, if you are the host
  
• bloodlust is strong on nm as you can kill all trash rats in one axe hit, and slave rats with shield bashes
  
• all healing traits don't have good proc chance on cata, choose according to your play style: bloodlust if you use axe to kill slaves and clan rats but you need to compete with teammates, regrowth charged if you use charged attack a lot, regrowth normal if you use axe to hit clan rats and SVs; probably bloodlust is the most viable choice, and it procs from drakefire DoT kills
  
• swift slaying normal can be useful as you would normally use the axe a lot, and boosts your kill speed for bloodlust procs
  
• regrowth charged and swift slaying charged proc on corpses but not the first target because bug
  
• scavenger is ok, but Bardin does not need a huge ammo supply except for grudge-raker, and you either get regrowth normal which has low proc chance, or regrowth charged that doesn't encourage you to kill rats
  
• berserk is tied to regrowth normal/charged and encourage you to take regrowth normal, which has low proc chance
  
• heroic killing blow is weird - each rat (including corpses) in the bubble rolls for a chance to proc it, but it only applies to the primary target; it also has a bug that makes it never procs on a single target; combined with fast charged attack it can be useful for SV in horde (or last stand?)
  
• poison trinket and endurance work the same way as HKB on shield bash
  
• the red version has 2 sets of unique traits, both come with 2 stamina traits; swift slaying charged is 7%, and the one with perfect balance + endurance has very good stamina regen
  
• gameplay by Karton

List of traits
Red variant A: Swift slaying charged 7% + Perfect balance + Improved guard
Red variant B: Bloodlust + Perfect balance + Endurance

Recommended trait combinations:

• Bloodlust + Swift slaying normal/charged + Improved pommel/Endurance/Perfect balance
  
• Regrowth normal/charged + Berserk/Scavenger + Improved pommel/Endurance/Perfect balance
  
• Bloodlust/Regrowth normal/charged + Improved pommel/Endurance/Perfect balance + Devastating blow
  
• Regrowth normal/charged + Scavenger/Improved pommel/Endurance/Perfect balance + HKB
  
• (Red) Bloodlust + Perfect balance + Endurance

Strong against / Strengths
Medium density rats, SV mixed in rats, heavy charged attack against SV

Weak against / Weaknesses
High density rats, clan rat on cata, packmaster, ogre;
Low horde kill speed, low single target kill speed (can be remedied by killing blow), very low mobility

Attack and damage pattern

• normal attacks hit 4 targets for 4/4/3/0 damage and has a very long knockback distance and very long stagger duration, but attack speed is quite slow
  
• it kills 3 nm slaves per hit, on cata you can kill 2 slave rats by lining up 2 headshots per swing; nm clan rats die from 2 hits, cata clan rats require 2 headshots but they would be knocked around after a hit so headshot is difficult; coupled with the slow attack speed you can't expect to do much damage
  
• normal attack can interrupt an SV overhead with a simple body hit, plus it deals 3 damage if it is the first target, so you can just stunlock and kill it eventually
  
• knockback and stagger duration is like 2h hammer charged, faster but hits fewer targets, probably the fastest way to stagger an SV (even doing overhead) along with a few trash rats and dealing some damage at the same time
  
• on the other hand, rats also get thrown around by the normal attack, will lie on the floor and be mistaken as dead (more often on cata of course); try to control the direction of the knockback by positioning and finish off the rats on the ground
  
• normal 1 + block cancel let you throw rats in one direction
  
• because of the knockback, normal attacks should naturally hit and stagger new targets; still, try to hit new targets with each swing for better crowd control in horde
  
• you cannot block during 0.3s-0.7s after a normal attack started
  
• normal attack has excessive move slow which pins you down for a whole second, quick switch to remove it at the end of a fight; block cancel also has some effect
  
• quick switch cancel can theoretically speed up normal attack speed a lot, but it is used for anti-horde which is usually done with dodge dance, and it's very difficult to do both efficiently
  
• charged attack hits single target and has two forms: the quick charged deals 8 damage with only +1 headshot bonus, so it's fine for nm clanrats, but disappointing on cata, 2 normal attacks take about the same time and do the same damage to SVs and is safer
  
• when you charge for longer you get the heavy charged attack which can kill everything except ogre; its primary use is to kill cata SVs, but it's requires charging for more than a whole second, charging it in combat is too slow
  
• when the heavy charged is ready in the charging process, you get a short move speed boost which is useful to get closer to your target (or away, if you need to)
  
• that brings it to 2 opportunities for using it: (1) either charge and run straight towards a single SV, make sure no rat can get close to the path, or (2) when teammate is engaged with an SV (with or without trash rats), step back and charge, however this gives up the crowd control position
  
• jump when you use the charged attack to hit the taller SV if necessary, so you don't waste it on a trash rat
  
• if you want to use this fancy move, better inform the teammates because they might kill all the SVs using handgun / crossbow / longbow / bolt staff etc. before you can reach them
  
• both charged attacks stagger SV overhead
  
• time to switch away from this weapon after a charged attack is particularly long, noticeable when you try to do a quick snipe
  
• block cancel after a charged attack is also quite slow so assess the surrounding first
  
• mobility (block / push move speed and dodges) is slightly better than Bardin's other 2h weapons, but insufficient for dodge dance; dodge trinket is very essential for that style
  
• push ability is same as most 1h weapons but consecutive push is slower than standard; normal attacks also has better reach than pushes
  
• bloodlust should do worse than regrowth normal in most cases, except for killing nm slave rats in hordes
  
• attack speed is the main limitation of the crowd control ability and damage output, so swift slaying and berserk allow you to control rats just by swinging, and in addition makes charging faster; swift slaying has the mobility advantage which is worth using even with bloodlust
  
• killing blow helps a lot on cata as you can pop instant kills while controlling rats and SVs (can proc on 1st armored target), and helps to reduce the size of horde into manageable numbers; unfortunately it's tied to off balance, which is not so useful without improved guard / second wind
  
• devastating blow mostly helps against hyperdensity or multiple SVs, but you can spread them out given good positioning; a stamina trait should have higher priority if you only choose one
  
• scavenger provides ammo to your crossbow / grudge-raker for faster trash rat kills
  
• damage boon is very useful for cata, as it pushes the weapon past the important breakpoints: 5 damage to kill slaves in one hit, clan rats in two, quick charged kills clan rats and packmasters
  
• poison flask adds 4 or 5 damage, which can finish off some rats lying around
  
• red pick has very strong trait combo killing blow + bloodlust + swift slaying normal, which has very good kill speed for Bardin, especially against SVs, and covers most of the weaknesses of the weapon
  
• imo the pick's characteristic is the relatively fast way to control and damage SV mixed in some trash rats (2h hammers require charging), and enjoys the healing from regrowth normal
  
• gameplay by Jsat (patch 1.9)

List of traits
Red variant A: Killing blow + Bloodlust + Swift slaying normal 7%
Red variant B: Regrowth normal 10% + Scavenger + Perfect balance

Recommended trait combinations:

• Regrowth normal + Berserk/Scavenger + Stamina/Devastating blow
  
• Bloodlust + Swift slaying normal + Stamina/Devastating blow
  
• Killing blow + Regrowth normal (+ Off balance)
  
• Bloodlust/Regrowth normal + Stamina + Devastating blow
  
• (Red) Killing blow + Bloodlust + Swift slaying normal

Strong against / Strengths
Specials, ambient SV, lined up SVs, patrol

Weak against / Weaknesses
Multiple specials, ogre;
Long reload time, armor requires headshot

Attack and damage pattern

• one bodyshot from this hand-cannon kills gasrats, assassins and packmasters on both nm and cata; it leaves SVs and gunners at 2 hp on nm and 8 hp on cata, on nm you can easily finish the SV with melee instead of waiting to reload and spending more ammo
  
• the shots can penetrate armored and resistant targets
  
• the shots can stagger SV overhead but not firing gunners
  
• on cata, always try to headshot SVs and gunners; generally speaking this weapon is more aim-skill based, ammo efficiency is very good if you can one shot everything, but it punishes missing shots
  
• normal shots and charged shots deal exactly the same damage; it takes almost half a second to zoom down the sight, the zoomed shot is pin-point accurate if standing still and has minimal spread while moving, but you move at 25% speed; the unzoomed shot is also fairly accurate while standing still, but the spread is horrible when firing from the hip on the move
  
• unlike most other games, crouching usually make the ranged weapons less accurate
  
• use zoomed shots to aim at the heads or distant targets, but it's worth to learn shooting from the hip against closer targets as it has better fire rate
  
• try to shoot those idle SVs before they notice you, wait until they turn the head to make sure their head won't move; once they are approaching it's difficult to hit the head
  
• the shooting noise will attract nearby rats and SVs, so it's better to shoot further away
  
• the weapon itself is identical to Kruber's, but Bardin's height makes him harder to see; rats, teammates and obstacles can block your sight and your shot
  
• press reload right after a shot to make reload faster, mastercrafted helps with the painfully long reload
  
• skirmisher not only allows you to strafe faster while aiming, but also removes the spread while moving and firing from the hip; great for making precise quick-shots in tight situations and let you adjust position for a better snipe angle; note that some moving spread remains right after switching weapon
  
• each shot hits only 2 targets, rupture improves it to 4, useful for patrols, hitting specials through packed crowds, or thinning out hordes; for Bardin it's quite helpful, especially in narrow maps
  
• ammo holder gives you spare shots in case you miss, or just more ammo to be spent on clan rats and ogres
  
• bloodlust or scavenger might be useful, but without rupture you won't kill that much and scavenger gives you only 1 bullet, even with ammo holder; regrowth is just worse than bloodlust
  
• skullcracker is better for the sniping job than hail of doom, as the second shot from HoD has a large spread
  
• hawkeye increases ogre headshot damage by 50%, worth trying if you don't have a need for other traits; it doesn't help with other targets though
  
• knockback has 40% chance but it has a bug to make it more useful
  
• haste and berserk don't affect reload speed (and thus fire rate), so they are only for the free reload; haste is strictly superior being on-hit with higher proc chance
  
• devastating blow on your melee weapon can help to give you space to reload, or push SVs to allow for easy headshot
  
• if damage boon is on, you can one-bodyshot-kill SVs and gunners on nm
  
• more headshot tips
  
• gameplay by Karton

List of traits
Red variant A: Mastercrafted + Rupture + Bloodlust
Red variant B: Mastercrafted + Ammo holder + Hail of doom

Recommended trait combinations:

• Mastercrafted + Skirmisher + Rupture/Ammo holder/Skullcracker/Hawkeye
  
• Mastercrafted + any reasonable combinations

Strong against / Strengths
Ambient SV, up to 5 rats lined up in a row, gunner

Weak against / Weaknesses
Assassin, packmaster on cata, ogre, moving targets

Attack and damage pattern

• one bolt can kill 5 rats (10 damage) in one hit, or 8 armor / 35 resistant damage; has potential of dealing a lot of damage in cata, but you have to line up your targets to make most of it
  
• the bolt doesn't penetrate armored or resistant targets
  
• the bolt has practically no ballistic drop although it is a projectile weapon
  
• all specials on nm and cata require at least 2 bodyshots to kill, and SVs and gunners on cata take 3; a bodyshot and melee finish is a good tactics as well
  
• the bolt can stagger SV overheads but not firing gunners
  
• x2.5 headshot modifier allows you to one headshot kill SVs and gunners on cata, better ammo efficiency than handgun if you do that often
  
• moving targets, especially assassins, are difficult to snipe as the bolt has flight time and you need to lead the targets; scoring headshots is even harder, you might consider rapid bodyshots
  
• if you use ranged weapon along to kill packmasters, crossbow is worse than most other choices unless you get a headshot, otherwise you need two shots with long reload time in between and the bolt doesn't stagger it
  
• normal shots and charged shots deal exactly the same damage; it takes a quarter second to zoom down the sight, the zoomed shot is pin-point accurate if standing still and has minimal spread while moving, but you move at 25% speed; the unzoomed shot is also fairly accurate while standing still and slightly inaccurate on the move
  
• unlike most other games, crouching usually make the ranged weapons less accurate
  
• use zoomed shots to aim at the heads or distant targets, but it's worth to learn shooting from the hip against closer targets as it has better fire rate
  
• try to shoot those idle SVs before they notice you, wait until they turn the head to make sure their head won't move; once they are approaching it's difficult to hit the head
  
• this weapon is silent, you can snipe rats down in a group one by one and being unnoticed the whole time; one way to progress through the map is to shoot only the rats on the way and sneak pass the oblivious ones
  
• unique to crossbows: if you are being damaged, the crosshair spread is much larger than other weapons, friendly fire burn or poison damage makes it unable to shoot for 3-5 seconds
  
• one advantage over elven longbow is that the normal shot is immediately available after weapon switch, making it easier to snapshot an SV or to seize the opportunity to pierce multiple rats when they overlap for a split second, even at melee range
  
• the weapon stat is identical to Saltzpyre's, but Bardin's height makes him harder to see; rats, teammates and obstacles can block your sight and your shot
  
• the orange and red versions of Bardin's crossbow have weapon models that block the crosshair while zooming; you can use QoL/VMF to change its model to the blue version
  
• mastercrafted enhances every bit of the crossbow's performance: faster consecutive bodyshots to kill specials and SVs, higher fire rate to kill horde, safer to reload etc.
  
• scavenger is sweet if you primarily shoot rats and score a lot of kills during hordes, and you can heal a lot with bloodlust
  
• uniquely, you can roll bloodlust + regrowth, but having an ammo trait instead of regrowth would allow you to spam shots and proc more bloodlust
  
• hail of doom is also useful for all purposes: bonus shots to dense rats, occasional double bodyshots to kill specials, or lucky headshots from the bonus shot; notice that the bonus shot has medium spread
  
• ammo holder gives you more ammo for all targets, but it doesn't increase scavenger return; scavenger can generate more ammo on its own in horde
  
• skullcracker on crossbow is tied to inspirational shot; it's better than hail of doom in the sense that its proc can kill SV and gunner on cata
  
• hawkeye increases ogre headshot damage by 40%, but you don't need it for other targets; worth considering for Bardin as he doesn't have other anti-ogre ranged weapons; note that you need to carry the crossbow in your hand when the bolt hits to trigger the effect
  
• skirmisher allows you to strafe faster while aiming and removes the spread while moving; it's not a huge improvement as the crossbow already has acceptable accuracy while moving
  
• knockback has 40% chance can will occasionally knock down the targets you didn't kill for follow up shots
  
• devastating blow on your melee weapon can help to give you space to reload, or push SVs to allow for easy headshot
  
• if damage boon is on, you can two-bodyshot-kill SVs and gunners on cata and one-bodyshot-kill packmasters on cata
  
• more headshot tips
  
• gameplay by Jsat

List of traits
Red variant A: Mastercrafted + Skullcracker + Bloodlust
Red variant B: Mastercrafted + Ammo holder + Hail of doom

Recommended trait combinations:

• Mastercrafted + Scavenger + Hail of doom/Bloodlust/Ammo holder
  
• Mastercrafted + Hail of doom + Ammo holder/Bloodlust
  
• Mastercrafted + Bloodlust + Regrowth
  
• Mastercrafted + any reasonable combinations
  
• (Red) Mastercrafted + Skullcracker + Bloodlust

Strong against / Strengths
Grouped up rats, close gasrat and assassin, patrol & Krench w/ strength potion;
Good heal w/ regrowth

Weak against / Weaknesses
Spread out rats, armor, ogre, packmaster;
Relatively low total ammo

Attack and damage pattern

• normal shot deals massive damage against normal targets up close, capable of killing all rats, globadiers and assassins on cata; the damage is heavily reduced over distance, however
  
• each pellet hits only 2 targets; ammo efficiency and horde killing power is questionable
  
• the shots can penetrate armored and resistant targets
  
• there is a 0.1 second delay between pressing the shoot button and the actual shot
  
• if your field of view is not 65, then the crosshair size doesn't represent the actual spread; practice in the inn to know the spread
  
• you can fire full-auto by holding left click, which has 24% faster fire rate than left clicking
  
• instead of charged shot there is a bash, damaging one target for medium damage (enough to kill a slave on nightmare) and knocking the others back; good for last second defense, stunlocking single SV, or arranging rats into a compact bundle before shooting
  
• the bash radius (2m) is comparable to shields, longer than that of blunderbuss (1.5m)
  
• the shot deals some damage to SVs, gunners and packmasters up close, but be ready to fire again, or finish them by melee
  
• the spread of the pellets is denser than blunderbuss, and you have multiple shots, making the grudge-raker a better special hunter
  
• the shot is loud, so expect to attract a lot of rats upon shooting
  
• despite the poor armor damage, each pellet can stagger an SV and you can clear small rats around the SV; drinking strength potion massively boosts your armor damage, good for fighting patrol
  
• strength potion also increases your friendly fire damage from 0.5 per pellet to 18; you can kill your entire party so be very careful with your shots
  
• reload time is quite long for the small clip size, but normal shots can cancel reloading so there is no reason not to reload; in fact, you can improve fire rate by more than double if you reload after every shot and shoot while reloading, good for tight situations or shooting horde in a wider arc
  
• all on-hit traits are only triggered by the first pellet per shot, which should be the one that is directly above the crosshair
  
• extra capacity doubles your clip size, greatly improves your sustained fire power, and is better than mastercrafted at reducing your overall time spend on actual reload
  
• rupture doubles the penetration, it is mandatory if you want to turn it into a horde killer
  
• scavenger helps with the low total ammo, can be buffed by rupture; you can kill rats with the butt at low ammo, damaging rats with your melee weapon and finishing them with the bash works great
  
• bloodlust is ok if you use the gun aggressively, you can kill faster than your teammates but not that many, unless supported by rupture, scavenger, ammo holder etc.
  
• bashing group of rats with regrowth is one of the best ways of healing in the game
  
• mastercrafted is good, but not necessary if you have extra capacity
  
• ammo holder doesn't increase scavenger's ammo return, so other good traits should take higher priority
  
• targeteer reduces bullet spread only, not the damage drop-off; it still makes the gun much more effective against distant targets due to more projectiles hitting them, making it a very good gasrat and assassin sniper, but also causes more pellets to be absorbed by the first targets in a horde, so it's a trade-off; if you use it, fire at hordes from further away to adjust for the smaller spread
  
• hail of doom is more luck based than the other traits, and a waste on targets that doesn't require more than one shot; its proc is done per shot, not per pellet
  
• knockback, on paper, helps with controlling multiple SVs in clutch situations, 40% is a decent chance given that you hit many SVs, there is a bug however
  
• grudge-raker is also a very effective Krench killer if your team saves strength potions for the fight
  
• red version has a perfect trait combo with a higher percentage scavenger
  
• gameplay by Jsat

List of traits
Red variant A: Extra capacity 100% + Mastercrafted reload + Skullcracker
Red variant B: Extra capacity 100% + Rupture + Scavenger 24%

Recommended trait combinations:

• Extra capacity + Rupture + Scavenger
  
• Extra capacity + Scavenger + Bloodlust/Regrowth/Ammo holder/Targeteer/Mastercrafted reload
  
• Extra capacity + Targeteer + Hail of doom/Mastercrafted reload <- for Krench
  
• Rupture + Scavenger + Bloodlust/Regrowth/Targeteer/Ammo holder/Mastercrafted reload <- less spam and make each shot count
  
• (Red) Extra capacity + Rupture + Scavenger 24%

Strong against / Strengths
Normal rats in any formation, SV mixed in rats, mass SVs, patrol, packmaster;
Infinite ammo, great crowd control, great heal w/ regrowth

Weak against / Weaknesses
Specials depending on distance, hopeless against distant gunner;
Low accuracy

Attack and damage pattern
(X1>X2)+Y1/Y2 = Attack instantly deals X damage based on distance (X1 up close, decreasing to X2 for distant targets) and deals a total of Y damage over 2 seconds (50% chance between Y1 and Y2)

• normal attack hits single target, kills one nm clan rat / cata slave in one hit up close; damage is reduced over distance, headshots can sometimes allow you to one shot rats at medium or far distance
  
• accuracy is low for distant targets, but the radius of the fireball and the fire rate makes it easier to hit moving targets e.g. assassins at medium range; recoil spread is high so try to shoot slowly for distant targets
  
• damage on assassins, gas rats and packmasters is decent, you just need to hit them enough number of times; you can stagger SVs and gunners when they are not doing overhead or shooting, but don't expect to do significant damage
  
• normal attack produces the loudest sound to rats' ears, firing it often attract every rat already spawned in the map
  
• the projectile has a life time of 1 second so it has a maximum range; it explodes at the end of its life time and deals 1 damage to all targets in 1m radius; it doesn't explode if it hits something
  
• normal attack reduces move speed by 10% for 0.75s
  
• charged attack is a short range blast that hits a maximum of 10 targets for serious knockback and damage to all rats and SVs; it has damage over time to trigger melee bloodlust but the DoT damage is random (1 or 2 damage)
  
• 1 blast kills nm slaves, 1-2 blasts kill nm clan rats or cata slaves depending on distance, and 3 blasts kill cata clan rats
  
• SVs will take 2.5-3.5 total damage at close range and the blast is one of the best way to deal with mass SVs, multiple of them can be stunlocked and kept at distance while they burn to death; the blast doesn't stagger firing gunners
  
• heat cost of the blast is high, so the frequency at which you can use it depends on heat management and traits, mixed in melee if needed
  
• the charged attack cone has a range of 7m and an angle about 35 degree on each side of the crosshair center; check your field of view (the number is the vertical angle from the top of screen to the bottom) to estimate the effective area on the screen; it can only target the necks of rats
  
• only the inner 21 degree of the cone deals friendly fire damage
  
• the fire rate of the blast is almost half of beam staff blast, but double the stagger duration
  
• "finger rolling": release right click for a split second between blasts for much faster blasting speed
  
• since the blast push rats back and (tries to) targets the closet rats, 2-3 blasts can handle density to some degree because each blast should stagger new rats, albeit a bit random; however, make sure to keep your distance in case a rat slips pass the flame when you are not ready to fire the next shot
  
• the blast can substitute melee push; it has longer reach but only in one direction; you can hold right click to block with your melee and switch weapons, drakes will pop up with the charged mode ready to fire
  
• be cautious of the rats on both sides of the blast that might not get hit, be ready to fire another blast, dodge, or switch to melee to block; it might be better to blast at the left or right edge of a horde instead of the middle
  
• move speed is reduced in charged state, firing charged let you move at 100% speed until the next charging phase
  
• you can also quick switch to drakes and use the normal attack to stagger rat / SV in a pinch
  
• drakes don't use ammo, but generate heat instead; it's the only ranged weapon other than the staves that uses the overheat system, choosing it can save ammo drops for your teammates
  
• overheat system summary: you only take damage when you vent above the first 25% threshold; the vent speed and vent damage increase the higher your overheat is; there is a slow passive cooling even when you don't vent; you will explode when you reach max heat, taking all your hp away
  
• vent damage causes crosshair to spread and further decreases normal attack accuracy
  
• channeling rune is top choice, although less mandatory than it on wizard's staves because the drakes don't have much long range applications and you won't use it all the time; still venting can hurt without it, and your melee performance suffers on high heat
  
• on-hit traits can be triggered by the normal attack and the charged blast on all targets
  
• healing trait is usually recommended because you can recover from the vent damage by shooting; bloodlust can work better than regrowth on nm as the blast can instantly kill most slave rats up close, and it benefits from ambient kills; on cata you usually blast the horde 2-3 times so regrowth is better, plus you can switch to melee bloodlust for double heals
  
• haste has decent up time no matter you are shooting ambients or blasting horde, it complements the slow fire rate and high heat of the charged blast, and you can kill entire horde or patrol with almost no cost, also boost the healing you can get from bloodlust or regrowth; it's the only trait that makes drakes better than beam staff
  
• berserk is under the same situation as bloodlust: it can work on nm horde, but on cata it procs after something is killed, that means later in the engagement and you won't benefit from the free shots as much; also less effective against patrol
  
• targeteer reduces bullet spread only (including recoil spread), not the damage drop-off, nor the cone of effect of the charged blast; the trait makes normal shots more accurate for distant targets
  
• hail of doom only procs when using normal shots, helps you to kill single target faster, or more fireball barrage against distant targets; it doesn't affect the charged blast
  
• mastercrafted has effect on normal shots, but on charged shots only when you do finger rolling
  
• distraction allows you to save a nearby downed teammate with a blast
  
• poison flask can buff damage in general because both attacks are quite spammable, help you kill armor with normal attacks, and kill mass SVs with charged attacks faster; it's usually overkill for horde killing if you have haste
  
• the drakefire pistols are considered the best weapon to take in heavy SV maps
  
• gameplay by Jsat

List of traits
Red variant A: Regrowth 7% + Hail of doom + Stability
Red variant B: Bloodlust + Channeling Rune + Distraction

Recommended trait combinations:

• Regrowth + Haste + Channeling rune <- best
  
• Bloodlust/Regrowth + Haste/Berserk/Targeteer/Hail of doom/Knockback/Mastercrafted/Stability + Channeling rune

Strong against / Strengths
1-2 clan rats on cata, spread out rats, SV

Weak against / Weaknesses
>4 grouped up rats;
Low crowd control - any staff that deals with horde is good

Attack and damage pattern

• normal attacks have an unusual pattern: vertical single target -> upward diagonal 4 targets -> diagonal 3 targets -> diagonal 3 targets
  
• first normal attack deals 5 damage to normal rat and 4 damage to armor; requires a headshot to kill clan rat on nm, but decent damage against SV and staggers SV overhead
  
• second normal attack deals 6 damage to one normal rat and staggers 4 targets, but the hit zone is too narrow to be useful outside of overlapping rats, even with camera movement; treat it as a safer single target attack, it kills clan rat on nm, decent damage to SV but can't stagger SV overhead
  
• third and fourth normal attacks are the conventional left-right swings that hit 3 targets, but very slow to execute; they don't provide any real advantages over other weapons either
  
• charged attack hits single normal target for 10 damage and deals solid damage to armor; it's the only melee attack on wizard that can one shot cata clan rat, use it on ambient rats to conserve heat
  
• you will struggle against horde; push first to initiate your normal / charged attack, you will start with the second normal attack after you push, which helps with dense rats; nevertheless you will take random hits unless you use the staff or push a lot
  
• the best way to kill SV is to use first normal attack 4-5 times (use block cancel), much higher DPS and more frequent stagger than charged attack; mix in the second normal attack if a few rats are around
  
• the mace has better ogre DPS than 1h sword when you can't headshot it
  
• the attack speed and move speed slow down by 15-25% when you have medium to high overheat on the staff; put channeling rune on the staff and vent a bit before going to melee
  
• this weapon is among those whose block move speed equals push move speed
  
• you can roll bloodlust and berserk at the same time, they work with both attack types and proc on staff DoT kills; very useful if you focus on charged attack
  
• regrowth normal can work if you bonk SVs a lot, and use second normal attack on rats
  
• both earthing runes are much less effective than those on swords; channeling rune on staves just works better
  
• killing blow speeds up SV kills, take it if that is your primary purpose with the mace; it is tied to backstab and blocks both bloodlust and berserk
  
• push-related stamina traits and devastating blow help with the push focus style; push most of the rats and finish them one by one, or fight the few standing ones remained
  
• backstab sounds interesting, but its usefulness depends on your positioning; a niche use is that conflag blast makes rats focus on the blast core and exposing their backs to you, in that case first and second normal attacks can one shot cata clan rat
  
• backstab increases ogre DPS if you decide to melee it
  
• backstab benefits from swift slaying move speed buff as you get reach the back more easily
  
• heroic killing blow might be interesting for last stand, as the charged attack is relatively fast
  
• you can bring this weapon to break mission objective chains faster, e.g. in River Reik
  
• overall, this weapon should be accompanied by a staff that protects you from hordes, unless the team can handle that part
  
• more on wizard's mace
  
• gameplay by Són

List of traits
Red variant A: Bloodlust + Second wind + HKB
Red variant B: Bloodlust + Earthing rune normal + Devastating blow

Recommended trait combinations:

• Bloodlust + Stamina + Devastating blow
  
• Bloodlust + Berserk + Stamina/Devastating blow/Earthing rune normal/charged
  
• Killing blow + Regrowth normal + Backstab
  
• Bloodlust + Earthing rune normal + Stamina/Devastating blow
  
• (Red) Bloodlust + Second wind + HKB <- for last stand probably

Strong against / Strengths
>2 grouped up rats, everything w/ killing blow;
Great heal w/ regrowth, venting heat w/ earthing rune

Weak against / Weaknesses
Relatively low SV and single cata clan rat kill speed (can be remedied by killing blow)

Attack and damage pattern

• first two normal attacks are fast swings with very long reach that hit 4 targets with x2 headshot multiplier; nm clan rat and cata slave die from 1 headshot, and cata clan rat dies from 2
  
• the second normal attack is a horizontal swing that can hit 4 heads and deal 6/4/4/4 damage; it can easily surpass most melee weapons in term of kill speed
  
• the third normal attack is a vertical slash with no headshot multiplier, it deals about the same damage as normal 1/2 headshot, but also good armor damage
  
• against a horde, tap block to cancel the third swing to get better crowd control; if there are <4 rats in your stationary swing arc, dodge in the direction of the swing and combine camera movements to hit more rats to achieve maximum damage output
  
• given enough space to maneuver and spread out the density, the normal attacks alone with dodge dance are more than sufficient to handle a horde, not even block or push is needed
  
• normal 1 + block cancel offers much more block active time, safer to use when you have low health
  
• charged attack hits infinite targets in a horizontal line with good reach, dealing damage to first two; it can be used to control high density rats
  
• the 3rd charged attack takes slightly longer to charge (0.65s vs 0.55s)
  
• common ways to kill a singular cata clan rat are:
  - normal 1-3 bodyshots
  - normal 1+2 headshots
  - normal 1/2 bodyshot + normal 3 headshot
  - normal 1/2 headshot + normal 3 bodyshot
  - charged 1 headshot + normal 2 bodyshot
  
• facing dense horde, first charged + second normal combo is a good compromise of control and damage
  
• charged attack can stagger SVs and you can control the rats on one side of an SV
  
• to kill SVs, do two charged headshots and follow up with the third normal headshot; this combo deals a total of 12 damage and all 3 hits can stagger
  
• against SV mixed in horde, it's usually better to keep distance from the SV or bait its attack and dodge, and use normal attacks to clear the horde; this requires space and you can't hold a position; if you want to do that it's advised to take some push-related traits
  
• this weapon is among those whose pushes increases move speed, so you can push to crowd control and reposition at the same time
  
• the weapon itself is identical to Kruber's 1h sword, but it has extra traits (earthing runes) and extra trait combos (bloodlust + berserk etc.)
  
• the attack speed and move speed slow down by 15-25% when you have medium to high overheat on the staff; put channeling rune on the staff and vent a bit before going to melee
  
• it could be difficult to pull off charged attack on high heat
  
• choice for healing depends on your play style; if you have a staff that deals damage over time then the delayed kills can proc bloodlust when you switch to melee, and if all the rats have half hp then you have much fewer chances to proc regrowth normal; if you don't use the staff much or has bolt staff then regrowth normal is generally better, but both regrowth block earthing rune
  
• both earthing rune normal / charged are effective; charged version has the advantage in a dense horde, but you might have a staff that kills the horde already; normal version is more useful in general; both are not necessary as you should roll channeling rune on the staff
  
• berserk buffs offense / defense, can proc from the staff's DoT kills and counter the low attack speed on high heat
  
• swift slaying normal has high up-time and buffs offense / defense / mobility and compensates the attack speed on high heat; it blocks regrowth normal and earthing runes
  
• when swift slaying / berserk is on, it might be more efficient to do normal attack spam instead of normal 1+2 + block cancel
  
• the bloodlust + berserk + earthing rune normal / charged combo can vent your staff quickly, but leaves you no defensive traits
  
• killing blow further improves the horde kill speed, and helps to reduce the size of horde into manageable numbers (can be used to get lucky procs on SV headshot too, and the 3rd swing procs on body); unfortunately it's tied to off balance, which is not so useful without improved guard / second wind; killing blow also blocks bloodlust and berserk
  
• second wind on a 1h weapon helps you kite, deserve a special mention
  
• devastating blow let you push SV overheads (or charged attack stagger if you are host) if you can't dodge; note that for a few normal rats it can throw them away so far that normal swings can't hit multiple of them anymore
  
• heroic killing blow procs on all targets hit by the charged attack; the charged attack is not very fast, but the long reach allows you to keep hitting ogre safely in any direction
  
• poison flask can buff the damage output of charged attack, occasionally kill cata clan rats faster and poison SVs by stray hits
  
• gameplay by Jsat

List of traits
Red variant A: Regrowth charged 3% + Earthing rune normal + Devastating blow
Red variant B: Bloodlust + Earthing rune normal + Perfect balance

Recommended trait combinations:

• Bloodlust + Berserk/Earthing rune normal/charged + Stamina/Devastating blow
  
• Bloodlust + Berserk + Earthing rune normal/charged
  
• Killing blow + Regrowth normal (+Off balance)
  
• Regrowth normal + Berserk + Stamina/Devastating blow
  
• Bloodlust + Swift slaying normal/charged + Stamina/Devastating blow
  
• Bloodlust/Regrowth normal + Stamina + Devastating blow
  
• Bloodlust/Regrowth normal + Improved guard/Second wind + Off balance
  
• Regrowth normal + Stamina/Devastating blow + HKB

Strong against / Strengths
High density rats, any number of rats;
Good heal w/ regrowth, venting heat w/ earthing rune

Weak against / Weaknesses
Relatively low SV and single cata clan rat kill speed (can be remedied by killing blow)

Attack and damage pattern

• first two normal attacks are fast swings with very long reach that hit 3 targets with no headshot multiplier, the second attack does lower damage but has even longer reach; it is essentially a weaker 1h sword, but the attacks have double the stagger duration
  
• first two normal attacks visually set rats on fire but doesn't deal actual damage over time
  
• the third normal attack is a thrust with x2 headshot multiplier that applies a DoT that deals 3 damage over 3 seconds; you can one shot headshot a cata clan rat with good aim, or cause 4.75 total damage to SV on body and a whooping 7.25 total damage on headshot; it does not stagger SV, however (DoT has ~2% chance of doing 2 damage and ~4% chance of doing 4 damage)
  
• if you are fighting a horde and don't need the third normal attack, it might be better to use first swing only and cancel the others by block or push; try to hit new targets with every swing to stagger more enemies to keep you safe
  
• charged attack hits infinite targets and set them on fire, dealing 2 damage over 2.5 seconds to rats, hitting the heads gives a bonus 1 damage; the stagger to normal rats is on par with 2h hammer charged, but minimal to SVs; use it to control the rats on one side of an SV; charging time is quite long so use it when it's safe or combine dodges (DoT has ~2% chance of doing 1 damage and ~0.4% chance of doing 3 damage)
  
• some players hate the fire effect as you can't see the rats' actions
  
• damage over time is also a worse damage source than direct damage, because rats can still stab you before they die, and absorb other damage
  
• to kill a singular cata clan rat, use normal 1-3 bodyshots, or normal 3 headshot if you are in the middle of a combo
  
• to kill SVs, do two charged headshots and follow up with the third normal headshot; this combo deals a total of 15.25 damage, including DoT
  
• this weapon is among those whose push increases move speed, so you can push to crowd control and reposition at the same time
  
• consecutive push is slower than standard
  
• the attack speed and move speed slow down by 15-25% when you have medium to high overheat on the staff; put channeling rune on the staff and vent a bit before going to melee
  
• the charged attack is a bit too slow to be used without support from teammates, especially on high heat, attack speed traits can help a bit
  
• choice for healing depends on your play style; if you have a staff that deals damage over time then the delayed kills can proc bloodlust when you switch to melee, and if all the rats have half hp then you have much fewer chances to proc regrowth normal; if you don't use the staff much or has bolt staff then regrowth normal is generally better, but both regrowth block earthing rune
  
• both earthing rune normal / charged are effective; charged version has the advantage in a dense horde, but you might have a staff that kills the horde already; normal version is more useful in general; both are not necessary as you should roll channeling rune on the staff
  
• berserk buffs offense / defense, can proc from the staff's DoT kills and counter the low attack speed on high heat
  
• swift slaying normal has high up-time and buffs offense / defense / mobility and compensates the attack speed on high heat; it blocks regrowth normal and earthing runes
  
• when swift slaying / berserk is on, it might be more efficient to do normal attack spam instead of normal 1+2 + block cancel
  
• rather unique combination of bloodlust and berserk is available, which, in combination with earthing rune, provides both healing and vent, plus it's not limited to an attack type; but it leaves you no defensive traits
  
• killing blow is less effective because of fewer target hits, it can help to get lucky procs on SVs, but you should use more charged attack when possible with flaming sword; killing blow is also tied to safety in numbers and blocks bloodlust and berserk
  
• devastating blow and any stamina trait that gives you more pushes help to protect yourself from SVs, to prepare the charged attack, and to push rats into your attack arcs
  
• safety in numbers can be triggered by attacks or push, you can try it with improved pommel / perfect balance
  
• second wind on a 1h weapon helps you kite, deserve a special mention
  
• heroic killing blow procs on all targets hit by the charged attack
  
• poison flask can buff the damage output of charged attack, occasionally kill cata clan rats faster and poison SVs by stray hits
  
• all in all, compared to the 1h sword, the flaming sword serves better in the cornering situation where the horde stacks in front of the team
  
• gameplay by Jsat

List of traits
Red variant A: Regrowth normal 10% + Earthing rune charged + Improved pommel
Red variant B: Bloodlust + Earthing rune charged + Improved pommel

Recommended trait combinations:

• Bloodlust + Berserk/Earthing rune normal/charged + Stamina/Devastating blow
  
• Bloodlust + Berserk + Earthing rune normal/charged
  
• Killing blow + Regrowth normal (+Safety in numbers)
  
• Bloodlust/Regrowth normal + Stamina + Devastating blow
  
• Bloodlust + Swift slaying normal/charged + Stamina/Devastating blow
  
• Regrowth normal + Stamina/Devastating blow + HKB
  
• (Red) Regrowth normal + Earthing rune charged + Improved pommel

Strong against / Strengths
Running away from enemies, speed running, 1st charged attack has ok crowd control, above average ogre damage

Weak against / Weaknesses
The dagger fails when engaging in melee combat

Attack and damage pattern

• conclusion first: this dagger is not made for melee combat, but gives the wizard move speed to run away from danger and use the staff
  
• push attack spam gives you about 1.2x move speed on average, you can outrun clan rats and SVs by a little; combined with the swift strider trinket you can even outrun packmasters
  
• obviously, improved pommel gives you more than double amount of push stabs, greatly helps to sustain the move speed
  
• the push stab is counted as a normal attack, so it can proc swift slaying normal to further buff your move speed
  
• as a secondary selling point, the first charged attack is a shield bash that deals damage over time to all target in the stagger bubble effect; it can be chained to itself to provide decent crowd control; to do it, charge again after it ends as soon as physically possible
  
• the default push strength is weaker than average, devastating blow can buff both the pushes and the stagger of the first charged attack (staggers all SV overheads in the bubble, if you are host)
  
• standard (but irrelevant) information:
  
• the first three normal attacks hit single target for poor damage, neither the x3 headshot multiplier or the fast attack speed can make up for it, but they give you bonus move speed while attacking, you can use them if you are out of stamina
  
• the fourth normal attack deals good damage, but you need to do the other three in the combo to get to it
  
• normal 1-4 all headshots combined deal 19.5 damage to SV, none of them staggers it
  
• after normal 3, the attack chain takes a much longer wait to automatically reset to normal 1, which means the stronger normal 4 will be your next swing for that duration
  
• first charged is good for staggering rats and setting them on fire for minimal damage, it can be chained to itself (see above), or just chain into quick normal and reset
  
• second charged is single target again with DoT, it kills cata slaves on body and cata clan rats on headshot, and deals good total damage to SV; you can use first charged to stagger rats and snipe SV with second charged, but it would be easier using most staves
  
• devastating blow helps you to push rats out of the way when using push stab to move, and in combat it helps you to initiate the charged attack for crowd control
  
• charged 1 chains into normal 2, and charged 2 chains into normal 3, you can get to normal 4 if you don't do canceling
  
• push strength is weaker than average, rats won't be pushed back as much
  
• bloodlust benefits from rats dying from your conflag/fireball/beam staves and provides the best healing; you might want regrowth normal / charged if combined with bolt staff
  
• among all stamina traits, probably improved pommel (see above) and second wind have better synergy with the weapon as a mobility tool
  
• charged earthing can get your heat down with infinite target 1st charged attack effectively
  
• heroic killing blow is weird - each rat (including corpses) in the 1st charged attack stagger bubble rolls for a chance to proc it, but it only applies to the primary target; it also has a bug that makes it never procs on a single target; can be useful for last stand
  
• 1st charged attack triggers the poison trinket and endurance the same way as HKB
  
• most other traits require you to use it as a melee weapon, apart from that most of them do their jobs, except those normal attack on-hit traits which are less effective
  
• gameplay by SneakyPanda

List of traits
Red variant A: Bloodlust + Earthing rune charged + Devastating blow
Red variant B: Killing blow + Bloodlust + Earthing rune normal

Recommended trait combinations:

• Bloodlust/Swift slaying normal + Improved pommel + Devastating blow
  
• Bloodlust + Earthing rune charged + Stamina/Devastating blow
  
• Regrowth charged + Stamina/Devastating blow + HKB
  
• (Red) Killing blow + Bloodlust + Earthing rune normal

Strong against / Strengths
Specials, SV, ogre, moving targets, targets behind obstacles, horde in nm, ambient clan rat on cata, up to 5 lined up clan rats on cata

Weak against / Weaknesses
Target embedded in many rats;
Weaker against horde compared to other staves, SV and gunner take longer to kill and cost more overheat, harder heat management

Attack and damage pattern

• normal attack shoots fast sparks, each hitting only one target, but you can knock back the foremost advancing rat in a horde so you can hold a horde at choke point for a while; the sparks have even better kill speed and heat efficiency than conflagration staff's fireballs, kill nm/cata slaves in 1-2 hits and clan rats in 2-3 hits, but don't stagger armor
  
• also good for staggering assassins or gas rats from attacking in split second to avoid damage to the team, you can continue sparking or choose to shoot a bolt afterwards
  
• charged attack is a target seeking bolt with x3.5 headshot multiplier, automatically homing to the head if the target is highlighted in red or blue (see below), body otherwise
  
• bolt has three levels of charge depending on charging time, first (0.5s-0.8s) is enough to kill all unarmored targets, second (0.8s-1.25s) to kill armor on nm, third (>1.25s) to kill armor on cata or to kill 5 cata clan rats by bodyshot penetrations
  
• there is no distinctive signal for the charge level (except the end of animation means full charge), so it comes down to experience to use the exact bolt
  
• medium and maximum bolts are both good for ogre, and they have similar DPS and heat cost if they are released as soon as they are ready, probably it's harder to time the medium charged precisely, while it's more risk to charge for longer for the maximum charged if there are other threats
  
• all bolts don't penetrate armored or resistant targets
  
• you can spam minimum bolt to one shot ambient clan rats and vent in between, use sparks on horde, or use maximum bolt to kill 5 clan rats
  
• using maximum charged (e.g. to kill SVs and gunners on cata) raises the heat level close to the first threshold, so it's likely to costs health to vent; this is the only factor to prevent the user to kill all SVs on sight as soon as possible, though the user can still do it with the expense of health; the combination of charge time and heat cost makes it a bit annoying for sniping ratling gunners
  
• all charged shots stagger SV overheads but not firing gunners, you can help a far away teammate with a minimum bolt in a pinch
  
• more importantly, understanding the lockon mechanics is essential to effective use of the bolt staff: the first lockon starts 0.5s from the beginning of the charge, it selects the closest valid target hit by the line of sight and highlight it in red outline, regardless of accuracy and bypass obstacles to some degree, i.e. it can lock onto a target behind a wall; afterwards it updates the target selected every 0.1s by the same line of sight check, you won't lose the lock when you hold right click and don't lockon another rat; the update can lead to target switch when another rat walks in front of the desired target
  
• the blue outline from anyone pinging an rat will override the effect of the red outline, that means the bolt prioritize tracking the target in blue; if the pinged rat is the same one with the red outline, it is also visually overwritten by the blue outline; there are mods that make the bolt ignores ping and prioritize red outline
  
• you can curve the bolt trajectory by locking onto the target and shoot in another direction, the bolt will find its way to the target with a certain turn rate, as long as the target is within the 135 degree "cone" of the bolt direction; use this to get around obstacles, rats and teammates
  
• if the target is facing away, the bolt can be flying to the head but hits another body part before that; if you suspect that can happen, try to use the curve mechanics to shoot the bolt upward or in the facing direction of the rat, provided that it doesn't hit an obstacle; use this to get headshots on ogres aggroed to teammates
  
• the lockon mechanics can be used for scouting and searching for rats, especially specials, behind obstacles before you can see it: one way to use it effectively is to start charging to initiate locking, then wiggle the crosshair in the general direction where you predict the rat to be, and the target would be highlighted if your line of sight happens to cross over it; map knowledge of the player, the audio cue and the character dialogues will provide more clues to where the special is located, and all these can make a bolt staff user a lot more efficient at special sniping, and kill the most dangerous specials on cata - assassins and gas rats - before they even post a threat to the team
  
• aim at the torso of the target so not to miss it, e.g. if you aim at the leg level the crosshair can be off and it won't lockon; or you can try wiggling around the target a bit, if the target is alone so there is no risk of picking the wrong target
  
• because the minimal bolt is fast and does't require accuracy, you can dodge and aim at the same time, making bolt staff the best to deal with assassins, gas rats and packmasters even when you are surrounded by many rats
  
• on the other hand, it is almost impossible to lock onto the desired target if it is standing close to a bunch of other rats on the screen; try to change the position for a better sight if the target exactly standing among the rats
  
• although you can lock onto target after the bolt is fired and before it hits, the bolt will only acquire the target locked at the moment of firing
  
• for targets within ~10m, there isn't enough space for the bolt to curve itself so you need to manually aim at the head or the body of the target, even when it is locked; also it's easier to miss at close range if the target moves the head
  
• quickly dragging the crosshair across the target might not lockon if it skips over the 0.1s update interval
  
• after hitting the locked target, the bolt looks for bodyshot on a random target in a roughly 45 degree cone; you can control where it goes by curving the bolt at the desired angle
  
• overheat system summary: you only take damage when you vent above the first 25% threshold; the vent speed and vent damage increase the higher your overheat is; there is a slow passive cooling even when you don't vent; you will explode when you reach max heat, taking all your hp away

• channeling rune is almost mandatory, as venting can hurt without it, which greatly reduces the frequency at which you can use the staff, and your melee performance suffers on high heat
  
• bolt staff doesn't provide as much healing as the other staves, so you can't vent at high heat as often, and heat management is more crucial
  
• bloodlust is usually preferred over regrowth, as you usually kill your target with the bolt
  
• if you have regrowth, using the sparks more gives you better chance to proc it
  
• the bolt can trigger melee bloodlust or berserk if you switch weapon before the bolt hits, especially when using maximum bolt to kill 5 rats
  
• stability might be a good choice because there aren't many competitors, and it helps with heat management
  
• hail of doom affects sparks and bolts; the extra bolt will home to the head of the target in red/blue outline, or if that target is dead before it hits or no target is locked, it would find new targets to do bodyshot; only helps when your bolt doesn't kill the target in one shot, or when firing in horde
  
• with inspirational shot, hitting trash rat head restores 0.5 stamina to your party and hitting everything-else head replenishes 5 stamina; particularly useful in the ogre fight when the teammates often run out due to ogre punches
  
• knockback lets you stagger SVs and gunners with sparks but it only triggers every 2 seconds on average, you would be better off shooting a bolt at it
  
• bolt staff is a good candidate for the Krench fight for dealing constant damage safely
  
• compared to trueflight longbow, bolt staff doesn't have an ammo problem but requires user to manage heat, and venting means you are not doing other actions; bolt staff can kill assassins and gas rats better without the aid of traits, and can kill ambient rats while moving; usual combos on bolt staff use bloodlust for some heal and can use inspirational shot
  
• the red version has an interesting skullcracker + inspirational shot combo that lets you supply stamina spamming sparks on horde, or bolts through several rats when the subsequent bodyshots can be upgraded to headshots; but in general the hail of doom variant is more useful
  
• gameplay by Jsat

List of traits
Red variant A: Skullcracker + Inspirational shot + Stability
Red variant B: Hail of doom + Inspirational shot + Stability

Recommended trait combinations:

• Bloodlust + Hail of doom/Stability/Inspirational shot + Channeling rune

Strong against / Strengths
Everything;
Good crowd control and horde kill speed, great heal w/ regrowth

Weak against / Weaknesses
Weaker against mass SVs compared to other staves, SV and gunner cost more overheat if you can't headshot

Attack and damage pattern
(X1>X2)+Y1/Y2 = blast deals X damage immediately (decreasing over distance from X1 to X2) and deals a total of Y damage over 2 seconds (50% chance between Y1 and Y2)
X+Y1/Y2 = beam deals X damage every tick and sets the target on fire, dealing total of Y damage over 3 seconds (50% chance between Y1 and Y2)

• normal attack is a short range blast that hits a maximum of 10 targets for serious knockback and damage, but doens't stagger SVs; it has damage over time to trigger melee bloodlust but the DoT total damage is random
  
• 1 blast kills nm slaves, 1-2 blasts kill nm clan rats or cata slaves depending on distance, and 3 blasts kill cata clan rats
  
• the normal attack cone has a range of 7m and an angle about 35 degree on each side of the crosshair center; check your field of view (the number is the vertical angle from the top of screen to the bottom) to estimate the effective area on the screen; it can only target the necks of rats
  
• only the inner 21 degree of the cone deals friendly fire damage
  
• the fire rate of the blast is almost double of drakefire pistols blast
  
• since the blast push rats back and (tries to) targets the closet rats, 2-3 blasts can handle density to some degree because each blast should stagger new rats, albeit a bit random
  
• the blast can substitute melee push; it has longer reach but only in one direction
  
• charged attack is a beam that sets targets on fire, the tick frequency increases the longer you channel it to the same target
  
• the beam stunlocks all units except packmaster and ogre, but you are rather slow and the zoom makes it difficult to watch your surrounding
  
• switching target during channeling resets the tick frequency and there is an extra 0.675 second delay before the next beam tick starts again, but still costing overheat in between; because of this, raying the beam on a horde doesn't deal good damage
  
• the beam is a great way of killing ogre, just keep channeling so that it reaches max frequency; failing to keep the beam on target significantly lowers the DPS
  
• left click during channeling the beam results in a single-target handgun shot with x2 headshot multiplier, costs medium heat, enough to kill clan rat on cata; kill ambients and vent a bit between shots
  
• it takes about 1-1.5 seconds (frame rate dependent) to transit from the shotgun spread to the handgun spread, making it more difficult to score headshot; the crosshair size will tell you how accurate it is relatively, although it doesn't represent the actual spread
  
• the beam tick can shake the target's head, which further increases headshot difficulty
  
• 2 ways to achieve headshots: (1) aim and shoot the beam above in the air, lower the beam and as soon as it hits the head, detonate, (2) stagger the target by beam and time the shot
  
• some ways to combine beam ticks and shots to kill specials:
  - gas rat / assassin: 2 bodyshots, or 2/3 ticks + 1 bodyshot on nm/cata
  - packmaster: 1 bodyshot on nm, or 1 tick + 1 bodyshot on cata
  - SV / ratling: 4 ticks + 1 bodyshot on nm, 3 ticks + 1 headshot without hawkeye (or 2 bodyshots) on cata, or 8 ticks + 1 bodyshot on cata
  
• killing SVs and ratlings on cata with 3 bodyshots costs high overheat
  
• overheat system summary: you only take damage when you vent above the first 25% threshold; the vent speed and vent damage increase the higher your overheat is; there is a slow passive cooling even when you don't vent; you will explode when you reach max heat, taking all your hp away
  
• channeling rune is almost mandatory, as venting can hurt without it, which greatly reduces the frequency at which you can use the staff, and your melee performance suffers on high heat
  
• on-hit traits can be triggered by each beam tick, the beam shot and the blast on all targets
  
• healing trait is usually recommended because you can recover from the vent damage by using your staff; bloodlust can work better than regrowth on nm as the blast can instantly kill most slave rats up close, and it benefits from ambient kills; on cata you usually blast the horde 2-3 times so regrowth is better
  
• hawkeye lets you one shot headshot SVs and gunners on cata, also boosting ogre damage if you use the handgun shot, very good if you practiced headshots
  
• skirmisher helps to give you more mobility and more accurate handgun shot on the move
  
• mastercrafted has effect on the blast fire rate, but not the beam tick frequency, it helps to get more blasts in a wider arc or before the rats are knocked back for higher damage; it has minor effect on handgun shot fire rate, but larger effect if you do "finger roll": release right click briefly after each shot can make the next shot faster with mastercrafted, also works if you vent between shots; for this reason mastercrafted helps with killing assassins and gas rats with 2 bodyshots faster
  
• knockback helps you to control mass SVs with blasts but the percentage is low
  
• distraction benefits from infinite ammo and AoE
  
• hail of doom only affects the handgun shot, and the bonus shot is inaccurate
  
• poison flask can buff damage of the blast and beam ticks
  
• damage boon lets you one shot headshot SVs and gunners on cata without hawkeye
  
• because you often use beam staff at close range and it doesn't have haste (so you don't stick to the staff), you can pair it with a bloodlust + earthing rune normal 1h sword to vent heat just by fighting melee and to gain more heal
  
• usually the blast has higher DPS than 1h sword (without killing blow) when there are >4 rats so choose your weapon accordingly
  
• beam staff offers the best versatility of all staffs, you have an answer to everything, headshotting is skill-based if you want to achieve max effectiveness
  
• the red version has worse regrowth percentage than the orange version
  
• more headshot tips
  
• beam staff tutorials
  
• gameplay by Jsat
  
• gameplay by Karton

List of traits
Red variant A: Regrowth 5% + Stability + Distraction
Red variant B: Bloodlust + Skirmisher + Stability

Recommended trait combinations:

• Bloodlust/Regrowth + Hawkeye/Mastercrafted/Skirmisher/Stability/Knockback/Distraction + Channeling rune

Strong against / Strengths
Horde, grouped up rats, packmaster, mass SVs, ogre;
Great heal w/ regrowth

Weak against / Weaknesses
Specials behind obstacles, spread out rats, moving group of rats;
Excessive friendly fire damage

Attack and damage pattern
Normal attack deals X damage on impact + a total of Y damage over 2 seconds
Charged fireball deals damage to targets it pierces, then it detonates for X1 to X2 damage (based on charge duration) and sets the targets on fire, dealing additional Y1 to Y2 (varies for unknown reason) fire damage over 2 seconds

• normal attack hits single target and has decent range, accuracy and good damage against all targets, but can get caught on obstacles because of the fireball radius; it kills clan rat on nm in one shot, clan rat on cata can be killed by one shot + one melee hit to save heat
  
• there is a 0.27 second delay between pressing the shoot button and the actual shot
  
• the fireball itself is the same as conflagration staff's fireball, but fire rate is 25% slower
  
• damage over time of the normal fireballs is random, so better count your attack based on the minimum damage, that means 3 bodyshots for gas rats and assassins, 2 bodyshots for packmasters, 4/6 bodyshots for SVs and gunners on nm/cata; you can sometimes save one hit if you score multiple headshots
  
• charged attack flies slowly through rats and teammates and detonates when it hits a solid surface, or an armored / resistant target; the closer the target is to the explosion center, the more damage and stagger it takes; the explosion can hit infinite targets in the radius
  
• charging increases the fireball projectile radius (0.2-0.5m), explosion damage and explosion radius (0.75-3m, dealing maximum damage within 0.5-2m and decreases from this radius to the edge); it takes 1 second to reach full charge (unsure: without attack speed buff it takes 0.3 second to shoot the charged fireball as soon as possible, so it already charges up at 30%?); note that the visual explosion effect doesn't change with charge level
  
• there is a 0.3 second delay between pressing the shoot button and the actual shot; that makes you unable to shoot charged fireball under 2 or more attack speed buffs, because the shot is cancelled by the next action, release your right click when it happens
  
• very rare for ranged weapons, charged fireball direct hit can stagger armor but not SV overheads; normally it's the explosion stagger that takes place, which staggers armor, but only SV overheads and firing gunners within the maximum damage radius, while the explosion edge does not
  
• charged fireball direct hit has low total damage, but the projectile can hit 8 trash rats and knock them back in a straight line, providing some linear crowd control, you can spam minimum charged to cover more angles; charging a bigger projectile might cover a slightly wider track but no practical difference; however, the projectile size also means it tends to hit teammates or get caught on various map objects and explodes prematurely near the team
  
• minimum charged has an explosion radius so small that can only hit almost overlapping rats and hardly be considered an AoE, and in general direct hit + explosion has lower damage than normal fireballs; however, if you want to use it to damage single trash rat, aim at the mid-point of the feet so the projectile hits the rat and it is at the center of the explosion; aiming too high means the fireball penetrates and explodes behind the rat; it's easier to damage armored and resistant rats effectively because the charged fireball explode on contact
  
• to maximize the damage output in horde, hit the rats in a way that they are knocked back into the explosion center, so that they receive both the pierce damage and explosion damage; shooting at center of mass means the trajectory is flatter, pierces more rats but unlikely to encompass the rats in the explosion, depending on the charge level; therefore it's more reliable to use multiple shots, the first one knocking rats back, and then shoot follow ups at the landing spot
  
• overall it is very difficult because of the slow projectile and the trajectory, especially when the target is moving in other directions; for that reason it works best when horde is dense, e.g. at choke points, or when you can bait the rats to run a straight line to you
  
• the charged explosion can be used to knock rats into your melee range and let you finish them by melee; this is more relevant on cata as the clan rats more likely to survive the charged attack
  
• medium - maximum charged is fantastic for SVs mixed in horde, it explode on the SV dealing damage and serious stagger and push all the rats back, also you don't need to calculate the landing position of the fireball
  
• charged fireball direct hit + explosion can instantly kill packmaster; to damage ogre efficiently, you want to spam minimum charged at its belly or lower back near the feet so that the explosion can reach its unit center
  
• charged piercing is the only attack that does more friendly fire damage than damage to rats, and explosion has high friendly fire damage as well; because of this the fireball staff is notorious for high friendly fire damage in average players' hands; to avoid this, when horde comes, position yourself in front or to the side of the team (could be risking getting hit), or less effectively try to jump and shoot over teammates
  
• the charged projectile normally knocks rats back, but the explosion can cause rats fly in all directions, and the knockback animation can pass through players, so rats can land to the side and the back of the team if it explode to close and post danger to the team; try to avoid it, or in case that happens, use melee to push away and stagger the rats if they are close
  
• the explosion is also a blinding effect to human teammates, so avoid shooting in front of teammates if possible; burning rats also produce some visual pollution, it is impossible to avoid so make sure they die fast enough by more fireballs or melee when they get close
  
• charged fireball is the only ranged attack that can break doors and planks
  
• charging has no move slow so you can keep charging while progressing through the map
  
• overheat system summary: you only take damage when you vent above the first 25% threshold; the vent speed and vent damage increase the higher your overheat is; there is a slow passive cooling even when you don't vent; you will explode when you reach max heat, taking all your hp away
  
• vent damage causes crosshair to spread and can impede long range sniping with normal attacks

• channeling rune is almost mandatory, as venting can hurt without it, which greatly reduces the frequency at which you can use the staff, and your melee performance suffers on high heat
  
• on-hit traits can be triggered by the normal attack and the charged fireball on all targets
  
• on cata you will need at least 2 hits to kill most targets (except maximum charged on slave rats), so regrowth is better than bloddlust; on nm slaves and clan rats can die from the direct damage so it's a difficult choice
  
• haste has a pretty good chance to trigger in large group of rats and gives you 5 seconds of free magic with increased fire rate, it boosts horde DPS, crowd control and also single target DPS against all targets; try to linearize the horde so the charged fireball pierces many rats and catch more rats in the explosion for maximum proc chance; in case of ogre + horde fight you can try to proc haste by shooting at the horde first, then spam charged fireballs at the ogre (even better if horde and ogre are standing at the same position)
  
• berserk has the same effect as haste, but lower proc chance on cata and never procs on ogre hit
  
• mastercrafted affects the normal attack and minimum charged fire rate, but doesn't speed up your charging (same for haste and berserk)
  
• hail of doom affects both attacks, helps to get your kills faster if you run bloodlust etc.
  
• knockback loses value because all attacks already stagger SV and gunner
  
• lobbing a charged fireball at your downed teammate is easy, even over large distances, so distraction comes in handy sometimes
  
• poison flask can proc a lot if you use the charged attack pierce effectively and aim well with the explosion
  
• overall fireball staff is similar to conflagration staff, deals more direct damage and better for linear horde, but requires much more finesse from the user to offer the same assistance to the team and not to do too much friendly fire damage
  
• more on fireball staff
  
• fireball staff weaknesses by Jsat
  
• gameplay by Jsat (patch 1.9)

List of traits
Red variant A: Bloodlust + Channeling rune + Distraction
Red variant B: Bloodlust + Hail of doom + Channeling rune

Recommended trait combinations:

• Regrowth + Haste + Channeling rune <- best
  
• Bloodlust/Regrowth + Haste/Berserk/Hail of doom/Mastercrafted/Stability/Knockback/Distraction + Channeling rune

Strong against / Strengths
Horde, grouped up rats, mass SVs, packmaster, assassin, ogre;
Good crowd control and horde kill speed, helping teammates instantly, great heal w/ regrowth

Weak against / Weaknesses
Specials behind obstacles

Attack and damage pattern
X+Y1/Y2 = attacks deal X damage on impact, plus total of Y damage over 2 seconds (over 4 seconds for "core" and "main") (50% chance between Y1 and Y2)

• normal attack hits single target and has decent range, accuracy and good damage against all targets, but can get caught on obstacles because of the fireball radius; it kills clan rat on nm in one shot, clan rat on cata can be killed by one shot + one melee hit to save heat
  
• there is a 0.27 second delay between pressing the shoot button and the actual shot
  
• the fireball itself is the same as fireball staff's normal attack, but fire rate is 20% faster; recoil is a bit large for long range specials when firing at max fire rate
  
• damage over time of the normal fireballs is random, so better count your attack based on the minimum damage, that means 3 bodyshots for gas rats and assassins, 2 bodyshots for packmasters, 4/6 bodyshots for SVs and gunners on nm/cata; you can sometimes save one hit if you score multiple headshots
  
• charged attack creates a fire blast on the ground that has no target limit, requires no projectile, which makes it very easy to target what you want; the closer the target is to the center, the more damage and stagger it takes; listed above are the 3 damage profiles based on the distance
  
• damage is quite high, "core" attack has more direct damage while the others are more about DoT; notably, "main" kills nm clan rats certainly and "core" kills cata clan rats at 50% chance, SVs also go down with 4/5 "main" attacks or 2/3 "core" attacks on nm/cata
  
• stagger is very strong as well, for all 3 attacks on trash rats, while "main" can stagger SV overheads and firing gunner, and "main" can stagger SV overheads, but "edge" doesn't stagger armor
  
• there is a 0.1 second delay between pressing the shoot button and the actual cast
  
• charging only increases the blast radius (0.75-3.5m), not the damage; it takes 1.8 seconds to reach full charge (unsure: without attack speed buff it takes 0.2 second to cast as soon as possible, so it already charges up at 11%?)
  
• notice the charged can hit rats with the "edge" attack standing about 1m away from edge of the visual circle, while "main" and "core" are true to 75% and 25% of the visual circle radius; the hit zone is much larger compared to charged fireballs because of the extension
  
• for minimum charged you need to cast directly between the rat's feet to apply "core" and it's very precision based; for higher charged level you can estimate the "core" hit zone to be slightly smaller than the inner circle
  
• the volume of effect has a vertical height of 6m, you can use it on column of rats climbing on a wall
  
• when hitting a creature with the blast, only the highest damage region applies, but subsequent DoT effects stack and expire independently (so you can spam minimum blast on ogre)
  
• "finger rolling": spamming quick blasts is faster if you release right click after each cast; theoretically, against few spread out targets, blasting each one with blast core gives you highest DPS
  
• charging the blast to full creates a similar effect to the fire bomb - a burning patch on the place it was detonated; with the cost of higher heat and a very long charge time
  
• fire patch lasts for 4 seconds; rats will try to avoid the fire patch if possible, you can use this tactically to limit approach routes and force a dispersed horde to condense (for your crossbow / shotgun-loving teammates)
  
• rats will attempt to pass through the fire patch if there is only one path to advance, but the patch can stagger normal rats, and rats will pile up behind the patch; you can use maximum blast to group up rats and barbecue them with a few short blasts
  
• only "core" does friendly fire; the DoT on teammates is visually annoying and disrupts aim and healing, so try to avoid unnecessary charged attacks close to your group; in emergency, however, don't hesitate to burn them or your own feet
  
• to damage SV, try to hit him 3/4 times with the core of the minimum blast or try 4/6 normal shots on nm/cata; medium and maximum blasts work better against multiple SVs, e.g. patrol, and you can stagger most of them
  
• "main" and "core" can kill packmaster in one hit but takes 1.6-2.4 seconds for the DoT to fully apply; depending on its threat, blast more to kill faster or shoot normal fireballs; in case it catches a teammate the blast can stagger all the rats around while killing it
  
• spamming minimum blasts is the best way to damage ogre, place the center under ogre's belly button to apply the "core" attack, again it requires precision and missing it lowers the DPS a lot
  
• the blast is good for hitting fast moving assassins at medium range, either by minimum charged spam or the huge hit zone of the medium - maximum charged, and finish it off once it's staggered; can also knock assassins off mid-leap or on top of teammates instantly
  
• it is easy to kite with this staff as you can dodge and cast blast to slow down the rats
  
• while the blast has great crowd control at all range, certain usages can be inconvenient or even dangerous for the teammates, the reason is that rats can be knocked quite far away from the charged attack center, and the knockback animation can pass through players, so if blast is cast close to a teammate, the rats can be knocked around in a way that completely blocks the teammate from moving and interferes his/her dodges; either avoid it entirely, or in case that happens blast a bit more to stagger or knock away the rats in bad positions, or use melee to push away and stagger the rats if they are close
  
• rats are being thrown radially away from the blast center, experienced players can control the direction to control rat positions better and change the turn of battle
  
• the blast can be used to knock rats into your melee range and let you finish them by melee; this is more relevant on cata as the rats are more likely to survive the blast
  
• casting right in front of human teammates also cause a blinding effect to them, either avoid doing it or spam enough to make sure all rats are staggered; burning rats also produce some visual pollution and they take several seconds to die (or not at all) depending on how many DoT stacks they have; the stagger duration of the blast alone is long enough for the rats to have little time to act before the burn wears out, but teammates can apply another stagger to them which cancels the strong stagger from the blast; the burning effect is impossible to avoid so the best way is to keep them staggered by more blast spam and kill them faster at the same time

• for various configuration of rats, there is probably a mathematical way to optimize the damage and stagger dealt by the blasts (cast position, charge time etc.), but for most situations spamming minimum - medium all over the place is sufficient and produces constant stagger to help the team; maximum single target DPS certainly relies on accurate casting
  
• charging reduces move speed to 10% so you will need to rely on dodges to move around; the move slow is less noticeable with minimum charged spam or more with longer charges; swift strider trinket can be useful for maintaining some mobility
  
• overheat system summary: you only take damage when you vent above the first 25% threshold; the vent speed and vent damage increase the higher your overheat is; there is a slow passive cooling even when you don't vent; you will explode when you reach max heat, taking all your hp away
  
• vent damage causes crosshair to spread and can impede long range sniping with normal attacks
  
• channeling rune is almost mandatory, as venting can hurt without it, which greatly reduces the frequency at which you can use the staff, and your melee performance suffers on high heat
  
• on-hit traits can be triggered by the fireball and the blast on all targets, but not the fire patch
  
• regrowth is great for targeting large groups with the blast, especially on cata, you can get bloodlust on melee and get heals when the rats burn to death
  
• bloodlust can be more useful on nm, you can score many kills with both attacks there
  
• haste has a pretty good chance to trigger in large groups and gives you 5 seconds of free magic (2 free full blasts) with increased fire rate; it boosts horde DPS, crowd control and also single target DPS against all targets, makes conflagration staff ranked 3rd best ogre killer (among many weapons that have similar DPS); in case of ogre + horde fight you can try to proc haste by shooting at the horde first, then spam charged fireballs at the ogre (even better if horde and ogre are standing at the same position)
  
• the charged attack spam allowed by haste changes the weapon qualitatively, e.g. even when surrounded by rats alone, spamming charged close to your feet in all directions can stagger and kill all the rats and keep the user safe; also a lot more regrowth procs without heat cost
  
• berserk has the same effect as haste, harder to trigger when you mostly use DoT to kill, and less proc chance on SV and ogre
  
• mastercrafted has very little effect on normal attack (which is faster than fireball staff already), works on minimum charged blast when you do "finger roll", but doesn't speed up your charging (same for haste and berserk)
  
• hail of doom affects only the normal attack
  
• knockback loses value because all attacks already stagger SV and gunner
  
• distraction is easy to trigger and greatly outweighs the friendly fire damage you deal with the blast; you can sustain dying teammates practically forever
  
• poison flask has very high proc chance and can improve the damage output a lot, especially those hit by the edge of the charged attack
  
• the conflagration staff fills a similar role as the fireball staff but probably has better handling, much better area crown control because of larger hit zones but less linear crowd control, and has more tactical features going with it
  
• conflagration staff is probably safer to use because minimum charged has way better stagger and is spammable; the maximum charge of both staves have about the same damage profile, conflagration staff again has a large hit zone while fireball staff can fully charge much faster; fireball staff requires charging to do more damage, while an accurate minimum conflagration charged can do maximum damage so the latter has better damage potential
  
• on the other hand, fireball staff is slightly safer when the user is alone because the stagger effect begins from the user, and it kills packmasters faster under pressure
  
• the red version has worse regrowth percentage than orange version
  
• gameplay by VernonKun

List of traits
Red variant A: Regrowth 5% + Stability + Knockback 20%
Red variant B: Regrowth 5% + Channeling rune + Distraction

Recommended trait combinations:

• Regrowth + Haste + Channeling rune <- best
  
• Bloodlust/Regrowth + Haste/Berserk/Stability/Knockback/Distraction + Channeling rune

Strong against / Strengths
Horde of any size, 1-2 clan rats on cata;
Very good crowd control, great heal w/ regrowth

Weak against / Weaknesses
Low horde kill speed (can be remedied by killing blow), slower light attacks and low movement speed during light attacks

Attack and damage pattern

• first three normal attack hits infinite amount of rats, two swings are almost horizontal and the third is upward diagonal; x2 headshot multiplier applies only to the first target of normal 1+2, you can kill nm clan rat or cata slave with it
  
• the fourth single-target attack has white weapon level damage; the third swing gives you some move speed, but no other benefits neither; better skip them by block or push cancel
  
• normal attack and push is faster after blocking than most weapons (0.2s vs 0.3s), so better block canceling
  
• the attack speed is 17% slower than Bardin's 1h hammer, which could result in rats hitting you first instead of the opposite
  
• charged attack hits one target vertically, kills cata clan rat in one hit and solid damage against armor, ogre and packmaster as well; this is the fastest among all the single target 10-damage charged attacks of all melee weapons, but the range is a bit short
  
• charged attack following a normal attack is extremely fast, you can stagger a rat with normal swing first for extra safety
  
• you can deal with any number, any density and any formation of normal rats (not being surrounded, of course) using the normal attacks alone and dodge dance; no need for block or push
  
• you can dodge in the direction of the swing to stagger more rats in a wider arc, but that also means rats are staggered and spread out in a larger area and so harder to deal with; alternatively let the rats come closer to be hit by the next swing
  
• normal swing stops when it hits armor or resistant target, it can stagger the SV but be ware of the rats on the other side of it
  
• with infinite target swings that stagger SVs, you have 2 ways to handle horde mixed with SVs: if you want to stagger the SV to stop it from advancing, you can use normal 1+2 to hit the SV and the horde on both sides; if you want to control the horde, better keep your distance so the swings don't come in contact with armor
  
• normal attack reach is better than the push radius
  
• this weapon is among those whose block move speed equals push move speed
  
• regrowth normal is clearly marvelous with normal 1+2 spam; bloodlust can work on nm, or if you kill a lot of ambient clan rats with charged attack on cata
  
• swift slaying normal has very high up-time and buffs offense / defense / mobility; berserk can proc from charged attack kills but slightly later in a horde fight; both of them increases charged attack speed and helps killing multiple cata clan rats or SVs; the choice usually comes down to healing trait combo
  
• killing blow only works if you deal damage to the target and is only available on blue and red, it can proc on headshot on 3rd to infinite targets and the first two normal attacks are close to horizontal to make it procs more often; for SV you can smack its head until it procs
  
• charged attack is useful enough for charged traits to have a place, but you will need to adjust your play style for them
  
• scavenger can be combined with regrowth normal and works best with charged attack on ambients; good for supplying the ranged weapon for kill speed
  
• devastating blow and stamina traits that assist push let you fulfill the crowd control role better, also let your attacks stagger SV overhead if you are host
  
• second wind on a 1h weapon helps you kite, deserve a special mention
  
• heoric killing blow is more interesting because of the fast charged attack, but the range is low so it requires better dodge skill from the user; aim at ogre's head for better damage and reach
  
• poison flask can buff your damage a lot while you control rats by normal attacks, can also inflict poison on SVs
  
• the red mace has a ridiculous combo of killing blow + bloodlust + swift slaying normal
  
• on cata, the blue variant with killing blow + regrowth normal might be worth trying
  
• gameplay by Karton

List of traits
Red variant A: Bloodlust + Swift slaying normal 7% + Second wind
Red variant B: Killing blow + Bloodlust + Swift slaying normal 7%

Recommended trait combinations:

• Regrowth normal + Berserk/Scavenger + Stamina/Devastating blow
  
• Bloodlust + Swift slaying normal/charged + Stamina/Devastating blow
  
• Bloodlust/Regrowth normal + Stamina + Devastating blow
  
• Regrowth normal + Scavenger/Stamina/Devastating blow + HKB
  
• (Red) Killing blow + Bloodlust + Swift slaying normal
  
• (Blue) Killing blow + Regrowth normal

Strong against / Strengths
>2 grouped up rats, everything w/ killing blow;
Great heal w/ regrowth

Weak against / Weaknesses
Relatively low SV and single cata clan rat kill speed (can be remedied by killing blow)

Attack and damage pattern

• first two normal attacks are fast swings with very long reach that hit 4 targets with x2 headshot multiplier; nm clan rat and cata slave die from 1 headshot, and cata clan rat dies from 2
  
• the second normal attack is a horizontal swing that can hit 4 heads and deal 6/4/4/4 damage; it can easily surpass most melee weapons in term of kill speed
  
• the third normal attack is a vertical slash with no headshot multiplier, it deals about the same damage as normal 1/2 headshot, but also good armor damage
  
• against a horde, tap block to cancel the third swing to get better crowd control; if there are <4 rats in your stationary swing arc, dodge in the direction of the swing and combine camera movements to hit more rats to achieve maximum damage output
  
• given enough space to maneuver and spread out the density, the normal attacks alone with dodge dance are more than sufficient to handle a horde, not even block or push is needed
  
• normal 1 + block cancel offers much more block active time, safer to use when you have low health
  
• charged attack hits infinite targets in a horizontal line with good reach, dealing damage to first two; it can be used to control high density rats
  
• the 3rd charged attack takes slightly longer to charge (0.65s vs 0.55s)
  
• common ways to kill a singular cata clan rat are:
  - normal 1-3 bodyshots
  - normal 1+2 headshots
  - normal 1/2 bodyshot + normal 3 headshot
  - normal 1/2 headshot + normal 3 bodyshot
  - charged 1 headshot + normal 2 bodyshot
  
• facing dense horde, first charged + second normal combo is a good compromise of control and damage
  
• charged attack can stagger SVs and you can control the rats on one side of an SV
  
• to kill SVs, do two charged headshots and follow up with the third normal headshot; this combo deals a total of 12 damage and all 3 hits can stagger
  
• against SV mixed in horde, it's usually better to keep distance from the SV or bait its attack and dodge, and use normal attacks to clear the horde; this requires space and you can't hold a position; if you want to do that it's advised to take some push-related traits
  
• this weapon is among those whose pushes increases move speed, so you can push to crowd control and reposition at the same time
  
• regrowth normal is the best healing trait here; bloodlust can be used if you can do headshot and want swift slaying, it's more viable on nm
  
• killing blow further improves the horde kill speed, and helps to reduce the size of horde into manageable numbers (can be used to get lucky procs on SV headshot too, and the 3rd swing procs on body); unfortunately it's tied to off balance, which is not so useful without improved guard / second wind
  
• scavenger benefits nicely from horde kill speed, and provide spare ammo to kill SVs
  
• swift slaying normal has very high up-time and buffs offense / defense / mobility, although 1h sword might not need them; berserk procs slightly later in a fight and trades move speed for damage reduction, otherwise still fantastic; the choice usually comes down to healing trait combo
  
• when swift slaying / berserk is on, it might be more efficient to do normal attack spam instead of normal 1+2 + block cancel
  
• second wind on a 1h weapon helps you kite, deserve a special mention
  
• devastating blow let you push SV overheads (or charged attack stagger if you are host) if you can't dodge; note that for a few normal rats it can throw them away so far that normal swings can't hit multiple of them anymore
  
• heroic killing blow procs on all targets hit by the charged attack; the charged attack is not very fast, but the long reach allows you to keep hitting ogre safely in any direction
  
• poison flask can buff the damage output of charged attack, occasionally kill cata clan rats faster and poison SVs by stray hits
  
• the red version has regrowth normal + swift slaying normal which works very well with the normal attack spam dodge dance
  
• gameplay by Jsat

List of traits
Red variant A: Regrowth charged 3% + Swift slaying normal 7% + HKB
Red variant B: Regrowth normal 10% + Swift slaying normal 7% + Devastating blow

Recommended trait combinations:

• Regrowth normal + Berserk/Scavenger + Stamina/Devastating blow
  
• Killing blow + Regrowth normal (+Off balance)
  
• Bloodlust + Swift slaying normal + Stamina/Devastating blow
  
• Bloodlust/Regrowth normal + Stamina + Devastating blow
  
• Bloodlust/Regrowth normal + Improved guard/Second wind + Off balance
  
• Regrowth normal + Scavenger/Stamina/Devastating blow + HKB
  
• (Red) Regrowth normal + Swift slaying normal + Devastating blow