I find almost everything about it fine, until it’s time to use a powered up attack. Here’s what I think should happen when you power it up:
While the power up is active, the only possible attack should be a vertical, top down attack, be it light or heavy. We already see this implemented on the new foldable shovels, so it should be easy to implement here. This would do away with the near impossibility of targeting a specific enemy in a crowd, as the current sweeping attack is so wide. Not to mention the attack can only ever hit one target anyway, meaning a sweeping strike makes little sense.
The self stagger I can live with but it needs to be balanced. Currently, it puts you in the same situation the chain weapons sawing attacks used to before their recent fix. You’re just stuck. If the shock of it is so strong as to stagger me, then every enemy in close proximity to the hit target should be staggered too. I think that’s just logical, given what the weapon is doing in that situation.
That’s my prime concern regarding this weapon and I think what I just said is pretty self evident in-game. Only other thing I feel could use improvement is a very slight damage buff to the base light attacks. No cleave on them is fine, but a poxwalker should drop from a single headshot attack in my opinion, though this may be more subjective than the other part.
i don’t think the charged should be a forced vertical. the horizontal swing makes catching drive-by mutants a non-issue. it also make it a lot easier to dodge/strafe and hit enemies like crushers and maulers while they’re dropping their overheads on you.
the top-down swings are good for the shovels’ specials, but it shouldn’t be forced onto the crucis. i don’t use the ironhelm, but doesn’t that have an overhead heavy off a push/block already?
You can still hit mutants with a vertical, it’s only negligibly harder, just look at the new eviscerator. No one is struggling with that there. Same thing with crushers and maulers. What you’re describing is currently only reasonably straightforward if these targets are not surrounded by chaff. There is no downside to the vertical swing I’m talking about but there are plenty with the current horizontal. The Ironhelm does but I can’t recall which attack in the chain it is, but since its powered attack is not a single target hit, it really should have the horizontal as the first one, the way the Crucis does now. This way you would simply further emphasize what these two weapons already are; The Crucis is a single target, directed damage weapon, the Ironhelm is a cleaving, widely distributed damage weapon. Currently, both of them are a couple degrees off in different ways.
Depends entirely on the target though, which means that would be a more complicated solution. I think a small stagger radius around the contact point is a simple and easy fix.
We’ve come a long way since patch 13, where crusis was actually looking pretty good. With the recent updates to ironhelm, I think it’s now probably objectively the better pick of the two. There really is very little reason to play crusis these days, aside from just wanting more of a challenge.
One thing is for certain, crusis definitely needs more oomph. It is among the very few things in the game that I think should be able to one-shot a crusher, for starters. You could give it an overhead attack while activated if you wanted, similar to the new shovels, but I think the damage is really the most pressing issue. It just isn’t impressive enough, especially compared to some of the new weapons we got recently. You might argue that some of those weapons are perhaps overtuned and not the best basis for comparison, but it doesn’t get better if you compare it to the ironhelm either, which due to recent buffs is now so close to crusis in terms of damage output that the difference really doesn’t matter much. The difference between ironhelm and crusis has always been utility vs raw damage, but right now the extra damage on crusis isn’t close to being an attractive option.
Really the only thing crusis does better these days is kill monstrosities. And that’s just not enough. I’ve personally stowed my crusis for the time being. It will remain in storage until Fatshark addresses its mediocre performance. Until then, I’ll be playing with the new king of armor busting - the latrine shovel. Go figure.
I do agree that the powered heavy attack could use a bit more bunch, but I will double down on the attack pattern being equally, if not slightly more, important. If you added more single target damage and you still have to jank your way to an accurate hit with a wide sweeping attack, half the problem is still there. Both, I suppose, are ultimately needed to get it where it needs to be.
The self-stun is what convinced me to swap out my Mk II Thunder Hammer for Mk II a Heavy Eviscerator. If it doesn’t stun the nearby enemies as well via shock, I may as well just run a Heavy Eviscerator.
Yeah my recall isn’t 10/10 but I think I remember dropping a fresh crusher with 2x heavy eviscerator sawing attacks, which is faster than a Crucis hammer, which doesn’t add up.
Theres nothing wrong with the self stun in its current much reduced state. What is wrong with both hammers is the ABYSMAL damage. The MK12 chain axe hits all the breakpoints the THammers wish they could.
I move around perfectly fine, it just feels like the enemies have an easier time landing a hit on me than they do whilst I’m using a Heavy Eviscerator. I’m not sure why.
Yes. I think us thunder hammer lovers need to convene around 1 thing to be changed at a time. First priority is both thunder hammers should be able to 1 shot crushers(and everything below them), crucius without thrust or buff stacks, and ironhelm With buffs and thrust. I would like other things too, but priority now should be that the hammers should be able to destroy all single targets. I think i heard someone say they are supposed to be anti tank weapons. A crusher should be decimated by it.
Side note: Imagine if thunder hammes had brutal momentum. That would be broken as hell, but im frothing at the mouth thinking about it.
The “one” thing that needs changing is that the weapon should be brought to a balanced, reasonable state. That is inherently a multifaceted task and doing half of a rebalance would just be a move from one unbalanced state to another and result in what would be essentially a waste of time.
Two things need addressing and both are simple enough (they were done for several weapons in the latest major patch, now it just needs to happen for one, maybe two):
