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.

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 😅

Holy moly, this is the ogrynomicon but for chaxe lovers. Good shit.

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

This is phenomenal and I wish I could upvote it multiple times.

The mk4 is so damn good now, i absolutely love it on my martyrdom zealot

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

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!

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'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.

Your channel has come a long way man, my favourite Darktide content creator for sure! Congrats and enjoy your Christmas!

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!

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.

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?

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.

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.

@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.

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.

impressive, very nice, now lets see Paul Allen's mk15 heavy chainsword

I’ll hat some tests in for Ogryn soon, bud. Great vid. Now I’m going to have to blow the dust off my Chaxe.

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

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 found I generally preferred the XII's move set, but you've convinced me to give the IV another whack. Fingers crossed that I can get a decent one!

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!

thanks very much, your vids have been amazing for me getting into the game.

Finally scriptures from the emperor

Great tutorial video!! I used it in auric maelstrom recently and it's really, really good. I like the Mk IV much more than the new MkXII.

19:11 What is this sorcery?! Did they fix the most infamous (at least for me) ledge?! 😲??? (great video btw)

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.

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 ^^

Love the Veteran Build, its Not Meta but its fun as hell

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)

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.

i cant stop using a mk3 power sword with power cycle level 2 on it...3 hits with a charged attack...devastating actually

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

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.

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 like XII, but this mk is also nice

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.

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.

Is the passive “Punishment” worth picking up?

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

Would a build with slaughterer and head taker work? if so can someone you tell me how?

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.

noice

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 just can’t use a weapon that sticks in an enemy that long

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)

Just wish the swing patterns were a bit more interesting.

What about Shield of Contempt? Any good on martyrdom build?

could u do the new chainaxe whenever you get a feel for it ?

How do you have so many war gear sets?

Don't worry about pronouncing "Landsknecht", i don't think native english speakers are physically capable of pronouncing the "ch" correctly ^^

Wtf is a Landschneckt? Did you mean Landsknecht?

ok je test

You know it is a compium when people need to make almost hour long videos trying to convince others how something is good or fun.