I picked up the chaxe for a little bit when the first guide came out but since this buff its become one of my daily drivers. Such a fun and satisfying weapon. The ability for lights to stagger ragers has become a little bit of a crutch for me now though 😅
It was fun but bad back in the day. Not awful, usable of course, but like definitely...bad compared to other options. Now? Now its incredible and such fun to use. The buffs did wonders.
Hope you find it helpful! I have a few other tutorials on the weapon that are still relevant, like soloing the bosses. No significant changes to unyielding damage for example.
Not only is this video a great entry point for newer players like myself to become familiar with certain game mechanics, but it's an amazing guide that technically gives you every single thing you would need to handle any horde by yourself. Thank you a ton for this incredibly digestible in-depth review.
@@Reginald-sc9tk now fatshark just have to add a dual wield option. Chainaxe in one hand, chainsword in the other. That way we can dance on the knife edge of blood god heresy!
They called me mad for using the mk4 back in the day, look whos laughing now. ITs me this thing makes me giggle and I have always been laughing never stopped actually, send a therapist
A 38 minute video about a single variant of a weapon type? I think this shows how deep of a combat system Fatshark have made. Yes, it's not explained well AT ALL by them, but when understood it makes for fun, unique, and interesting gameplay decisions all the time within the larger, constantly changing target priority during missions. Thanks to you and others for interpreting all this raw data and just telling us what to use lol
Going the stunstorm grenade route on the Zealot build, taking grievous wounds underneath thy wrath be swift adds a lot of extra stagger - often chaxe lights against crushers' weakspots would *sometimes* stagger them but with grievous wounds, it works every hit. OR like you said, just lose the extra toughness node and get sustained assault.
I think the stagger advantage of some of those talents is something very worth exploring in future videos. This weapon has a ton of interesting interactions with various talents and maybe its bias on my part but it feels very impactful on this weapon compared to others.
Another masterpiece in the breakdown segment of yours and one more reason why I learned to love the chainaxe. I’ll take what you gathered here and merge it into my way of playing it. Thx a lot for your effort in those videos man. Keep it up!
I'm thrilled to see your video because I've had a pretty good Mk IV since the game's early days and spent a long time not playing Darktide, so I'm reacclimating. You've helped me a lot. Great work.
I found a god roll X12 chain axe on my veteran and it puts in so much work its crazy to me more people arent playing with it. I can one shot basically anything in the game and it chunks bosses.
I like the 12, I think its a good and strong weapon. I'll be talking about it next. But upfront I can tell you I think the MK4 is better. Most of the breakpoints the MK12 gets the MK4 gets too, and where it doesn't its not far off and only takes a little extra to drive it over the line. Plus the push attack is better and I think, as latching attacks, the lights are more useful on the MK4 than the heavy attacks on the Mk12. Still its good to have variety and I like both weapons. And the other chain weapons for that matter.
@@Reginald-sc9tkill play with one if i ever find one but my XII is like a 374 weapon with tier 4 carapace/unyielding and it has tier IV thrust and skullcrusher or whatever that other blessing is. I also found it in the armory and dont at all engage with brunts unless im blessing searching cuz screw brunts. I have a few god rolled weapons and i never engage with brunts, cuz what takes you 10,000,000 ordo dockets and thousands of plasteel cost me 17k and a few resources. Brunts isnt worth it imo but everything I find is a blessing with how bad rng is.
Chainaxe with the latching lights is one of the few weapons that can outright one tap those obnoxious fat boi dregs with their dumb terminator plate bucket helmets.
This is the one chain weapon I've been waiting to use, and I've been using it with the Lawbringer(w/Flechette/Manstopper) and between Opening Salvo, Deadshot and Weapons Specialist it really makes the special action shot come alive. I also use Skirmisher to ramp up crit chance for that same shot. The MK4 fills all the holes for biggies, and I'm loving it! Thanks for making the video it's always great to see someone do the diligence for the rest of us and make it loud and clear! This particular weapon has been the only chain weapon I've really took a shine to even before the last incaration, it's time has arrived yay!
@Reginald-sc9tk the heavies leave some to ge desired barring special killing. But the lights paired with rampage and ?wrath? (+cleave on hit) make it the single best weapon I've used If you have a discord channel I'd love to share some video of it
Just wanted to say thanks for the great guide man! I've been rocking this build with a kantral shotgun with scattershot and flechette on Veteran. Been able to push into consistently clearing Auric and Maelstrom missions with it. Still getting used to the heavy swings, but it's starting to click. I love sitting back and lighting the horde on fire then coming in and helping to clear out the marauders and crushers with the rev lights.
there's just ONE SMALL, ALMOST NON-EXISTENT issue I have with the Mk4 ChAxe revamp, and that's after you do the push attack, the heavy attack after that is from the RIGHT and not the LEFT anymore xD
I still remember using my chain axe on vet when the game released... good times lol. thankyou for the content Reginald, really informative video, I appreciate it.
The veteran build in the description uses a Mk12 chaxe with thrust and head taker. Is that your preferred build over a thunderous + blood letter Mk4 chaxe for veteran?
Thanks for your help with the mark 12, slaughterer made horde much easier, and with thy wrath be swift i actually felt comfortable heavying when there was mixed horde, i cant believe I actually thought i could get away with not grabbing it.
Happy to help out. Glad you worked out a better way to use it in your build too. I feel like Thy Wrath makes a lot of sense considering its a heavy attack focused thrust weapon.
Massive rant on Veteran chainaxe role: Veteran used to get huge value from dual-wield quickswapping plasma-chainsword constantly. One complemented the other. However the new talents made standalone plasma or standalone chainsword sufficient by themselves. Chainsword doesn't really need attack speed buffs, plasma venting is forgiving enough you no longer need to constantly melee while the weapon cools, and high health ammo sinks now die quickly enough that sawing them to save ammo isn't required. The chainaxe, though! It's slow enough that attack speed bonuses matter to avoid being staggered out of swings. If you're running a melee-heavy talent tree, the 5 second +25% damage boon from Agile Engagement lets plasma hit breakpoints. The heavy swing stagger and push attack angles make it safe enough in melee you can skip survival talents. And while rev no longer stands alone as a miracle mutant remover other weapons wish they had, it's still a reliable carapace remover that lets you skip krak grenades. (Krak grenades are easier and faster, but sawing crushers is *fun*!) The main challenge with veteran talent trees is you want more things than you have points for. Chainaxe-plasma is complementary enough you can shave off points while still hitting breakpoints, then use those points to pick up cool stuff only the vet can do. In particular: - Wallbanging ogryns with executioner stance is hilarious. You lose voice of command's (overtuned) survivability to do it, but with mindful positioning and movement the chainaxe doesn't need it. You lose counterfire, but plasma treats cover as concealment and your weapons provide enough horde clear and ogryn damage to run... - Smoke grenades! Usually a meme, with chainaxe-plasma they let you maintain optimal positioning while doing maximum damage. You don't need ogryn removal or horde clear or panic stagger. You need to keep swinging with your shoulder to something that stops flanks. Timely, correctly-placed smokes mindbreak the enemy AI into putting away their guns and running into optimal axe range, saving time you would've otherwise spent extracting them from cover All of this is really cheap on talent points. You don't need Always Prepared since plasma needs so few reloads. Your attacks are so heavy that brittleness stacking isn't worth it. If you're not a fan of smoke grenades, you can skimp on their regen to pick up improved medkits and ammo crates. Or wallhack for allies. Or decent boss damage. There's actually enough points left over to tune to your preferred playstyle! tl;dr chainaxe is the quickswap melee pairing to plasma that's strong enough to free up talent points to use on what you want. Key talents to reach are Weapons Specialist, Agile Engagement, and Superiority Complex with zero points in the final middle tree. (You really don't need Iron Will or Tactical Awareness.)
I largely agree with you on all of these points and they definitely reflect my experience with the weapon. I think the mk4 is stand out on the vet for its versatility and usability and pairs nicely with lots of weapons.
So, I was running out of weapons to try out on my zealot, and I've long known you favoured this axe so I said fuck it, let's give it a try. After the changes with the latching I seem to have no issues at all with it anymore, which is the whole reason I had parked it.Gave a quick gander at the blessings you use and thus I've now one more toy to play with. I like it a good bit now. thanks! (still waiting for the Eviscerator to be added to the game btw)
@@Reginald-sc9tkThe Emperor provides! Got one as an after mission reward, not a god-roll, but servicable enough. I definitely underestimated how much the light attack shreds. Even on my ranged vet build it deletes specials when I'm forced into melee. Conversely I was having trouble controlling and clearing hordes with vet's abysmal stamina (skill issue, might need a good stamina curio). I think the 4 seems to have a higher skill cap to use effectively compared to the 12. I now feel prepared to field them both depending on my team comp and build. Thanks for the guide!
Congrats! Glad you got a decent one to run and try. A good stamina curio tends to help a lot on Vet in my view. If you don't have trench fighter drill in your build the MK4 can feel sluggish so those push-attacks are key to wrangling hordes. I have run it on my left tree vet for the sake of testing and it definitely is a slow but generally safe horde clear weapon. But the highs you can get on lights and specials can make it worth it since getting bullied by big boys can be a huge pain when playing ranged vet. @@WedgeSkyrocket IMO on ranged build vet its almost like using a thunder hammer.
@Reginald The reason using chastise the wicked before swinging at maulers does more damage is the passive of Chastise that reduces the armor class of the target by 1 The head of a mauler would be treated as flak instead of carapace.
Its specific to hitting their bodies, which are flak. Not their heads. Hitting their heads they take more damage if you chastise after hitting. Also the reduction of armor value, to my knowledge, is only for ranged attacks. Could be wrong on that.
I'd love to see your thoughts and analysis on the different unique psyker weapons. After trying the chain ax near launch i wrote it off as something that i would love to use, but just didn't see how i could. Now, after watching your stuff on it, I'm willing to give it another go.
Another thing I notice. I used to get an extra horizontal strike after the push attack. I used to shred hordes with this Seems I can no longer pull this off.
This is a fantastic guide. Super comprehensive, trying it now. If you were looking for ways to display inputs, why not try mapping your inputs while making the test videos in the future? Speedrunners do it to show their complex inputs, and I think it would look great. Loved stealth knife zealot so much I was having a hard time finding something else. For the Emperor!
Blood letter was doing like 5 stacks of bleed for so long I ended up scrapping my axes that rolled it. Looks like they finally buffed it to be at the level of stacks that chain sword and eviscerator always had, never made sense to me why it was so much weaker on the axe
If my memory serves: bloodletter was buffed at the same time as it was on the chainsword and nerfed on the heavy chainsword. The full 16 stacks is pretty nutty.
personaly i like going stunstorm and then dipping into Scourge instead of Restoring faith for basicaly a +10% to bosses to take full advantage of those bleedes from Bloodletter i dont see stunstorm being sigificatly worse than Immolation nade so the trade is woth it IMO
GREAT vid about your favorite little cool Chainaxe man ;) as usual : VERY informative and the in depth numbers + sats are just IMPRESSIVE. Love your Vids and hardly every leaves any open questions, keep up the good work dude. P.S. you did it wrong again :P it´s LANDSKNECHT ^^
Would you recommend this to be run on a Veteran that uses a Marked for Death setup? As always thank you for the content and the refreshing sounds of heretics mulched to death for the God Emperor. The Emperor Protects.
I did actually test this out on my focus target build without Trench Fighter drill and it tends to suffer from low horde clear speeds BUT its very safe to use and I would say I rather liked it over the chainsword I originally designed the build for. Sure I clear hordes slower without the improved attack speed but the huge stagger options, reliable push attack, and fabulous special attack damage and stagger made it feel great in my view. I'd run it with headtaker over thunderous just to help a bit with improved cleave from +Power unless you have trench fighter drill in your tree.
@Reginald-sc9tk Thanks for the thorough response and preemptive testing. I typically run an experienced pre made so the minor slack can easily be picked up.I shall rip and tear to my pinging delight.
What's your opinion on a full Blazing Piety crit build with Chainaxe? I run it on T5 Auric and to me personally it feels like the best keystone. Doesn't require you to be low HP, has almost 100% uptime, and you don't have to run Wound curios. You also get the crit damage reduction and can dash ult every 5-10 seconds in combat.
I love the chainaxe. I just created a 537 with bloodletter 4 but only bloodthirsty 4 as the second blessing (locked me out when I thought I could swap in thunderous 4) Got maniac damage on it as well. From what I see bloodthirsty is just decent? Tbh I’m not doing the grind to get perfection with how crafting is right now.
Bloodthirsty is "fine" but you're going to end up not getting a ton of value out of it compared to a power blessing or thunderous on vet which can help buff light or heavy attacks as well as special damage.
Using it in current patch, this still holds up so well. I only just got into it but I don't think I'll ever like any non-ogryn melee weapon as much as I do with the MK4 axe ever again. What can I say except it just feels perfect for nearly everything, especially against Ragers which helped me finally earn the Overwatch achievement.
I shall trow the smoke grenades down the cliff. :D I hate them with passion but they do have a use so not like FA have to get rid of them just that its easier when things simply die instead of get blinded, or a bubble shield that actually blocks attack as some enemies seem to ignore the fact smoke is blocking their view and they just keep blasting trough it.
Yeah, I don't love smonks either. I will say that I think gunners keep shooting through the smoke but lose targeting. So they just fire at your last position, just like they do if you run around a corner.
Chain axe aint my favorite, but its only BAD if people refuse to use the block/push mechanics. Im just way too used to the big ole two handed chainsword.
Love the tutorial! Very detailed and well-thought-out. The Mk4 is imo the most enjoyable weapon, and just makes playing the game more fun. As a vet, the breakpoints feel a bit interesting. This might sound a bit odd, but I try to base my breakpoint off of killing a Scab Bruiser with 1 light head attack (most of the other breakpoints work without optimizing) Small question: I'm wondering if there's hidden breakpoints with mutants/dogs/trappers, and movement speed/dodging. For example, a base veteran with a mk4 will need to dodge a mutant when the sound cue triggers. But if armed with a chainsword + rev it up + 5% movement, it feels like even just side moving counts as a dodge. Don't know if this makes any sense, but I'm wondering if there's movement speed breakpoints that trigger a dodge without dodging? PS: love your spreadsheets
Killing scabs in one headshot is important to me too but is very accessible to the newly buffed mk4. To my knowledge Its not magic dodging or anything but enemies do have real impact radiuses of some kind. So if you move behind their hit and turn radius they won't get you.
The only time I had the chance to witness a chainaxe player, was by joining a lobby as dead, an shield Ogryn was tanking a DH in a corner (guess I replaced some ragequit after an oopsi xD). The chainaxe dude took a minute, what felt like an hour, to take out about 5 poxwalkers and 3 gunners. Dude didn't even revv, 3 light hits+ 1 charged. 4 f*ing hits to kill a gunner. Man. Devil swords, dagger, chain/powerswords... All of them on hit them. Chainaxe took 4 hits. That's all I need to know about it, no video will convince me otherwise. Also, with actual skill and perks unlike that random, two tapping ragers isn't nice, or even remotely safe. First, dash out and gun them down, thats what people NEED to know. Melee should be the last despair move ever.
I am not sure if you are aware of this but the chain axe recieved significant buffs in the last patch. I cannot speak to your anecdote other than to say it directly conflicts with my testing data. Its just a video game you can just try it or not.
I should indeed have mentioned that it was a POST BUFF game. Still, you're free to try whatever you want, I did try one with 380 base rating in the testing room, and I'm pretty sure no perk will remove its clunkiness. And I'm not a "meta only" type, I switch builds fairly often. It's just hard to purposely play with a weapon performing as good as others in one gimmick, and worse in everything else.
I think my data bares out that this weapon competes or exceeds many weapons in its current form. But it is a weapon that has a certain taste to it that some don't like. I'd point to Telopots and his change of opinion on it over a few of his recent videos. Obviously if you just want to use something that is equally strong and easier to use there are options which i think is fine.
love your stuff! One question, what do you use to get shots like the one at 2:09? is there a photo mode mod available or something? I'd love to play around with anything that let me see my character in game (I got vanity issues)
Yea, it'll work fine. Even great. It'll just have lower boss output than bloodletter but otherwise its strong. You'll have to test all the exact breakpoints yourself but Telopots has videos where he is running that combo with inexorable judgement
Definitely. Not even that hard to grab honestly. I just tend to prefer builds as zealot that are a bit self-centered. Focusing most of all on kills over support. I do like support builds conceptually but find they play best on Vet or Psyker. That's not to say its not a strong talent its just harder to grab amongst other things I want.
Its worth mentioning that the full swing duration and saw of a MK4 light attack is faster than an Antax light attack swing duration. 'Course antax hits multiple people in one swing ;)
@@Reginald-sc9tk just Landsknecht, Landsknechte is the plural. I'm Austrian so was like whaaat? But yeah, I hate german too xd. Not only is it very difficult to spell and pronounce, it also sounds awful (especialy in modern german-rap).
Can't win 'em all in spellcheck land. But you gotta love the pants. Wish the Rogue Trader cosmetics didn't cost more than the game Rogue Trader and had actual color. I'd be interested if only to LARP. @@v.3T
@@Reginald-sc9tkyeah the pants are sick. I'm wishing for a mock Space Marine skin for Ogryn. Him not fiting into the armour would look pretty funny, also add a smily on the face mask. Although, that would probably be heresy, nor ever be realeased since warhammer 40k is too dark for this kind of stuff.
Compium? And the chaxe very recently received fairly big changes in the latest patch/update. Changed like this usually come with a lot of players interested to know if the Chaxe is worth using now and if so, what blessings/perks/etc. are the best for the weapon. (Bc they haven’t been using the weapon and therefore aren’t familiar with it)
